Into the Vaporous Air

By Michael Mauro DeBonis
©Copyright 2019. All rights reserved.

“At the ocean’s seaside, so I stand,

near the word-rich waves, upon the the sand.

It was the manor grounds lastly I was seen,

at my island house, before the summer green. 

I walk the hills and the beaches I pace…

but over the years, I’ve lost my place.

Secrets are the things that made me moved,

away from all in my heart I had loved.

Time will one day make me found,

and I’ll rest in a spot of some happy ground.”

   February 7, 2019

Death by Disappearance: The Secret Story of Alice Parsons

By Michael Mauro DeBonis

Copyright ©2019. All rights reserved by the author.

In a noir crime narrative worthy of Dashiell Hammett or Mickey Spillane, a real-life drama played out in Stony Brook, New York, on the late morning of June 9, 1937, with most puzzling and suspicious circumstances surrounding it. It involved the utter disappearance of wealthy New York City and Long Island heiress Alice McDonnell Parsons, from her countryside home, called Long Meadow Farm. Her maid lastly saw mrs. Parsons, a Russian émigré named Anna Kuprianova (also spelled Kupryanova) who came to the USA from Russia, during World War I. Anna told American law enforcement officials probing Alice Parsons’ vanishing she had to leave her homeland because of the hostile Communist takeover there, from Czarist authorities, at that time (Gardner, 1-2).

Mrs. Kuprianova told the FBI and New York State Police (as well as the Brookhaven Town Police) that Alice Parsons left her north shore Long Island estate to show a family property that was then up for sale, to a middle-aged couple, who were both interested in purchasing it. Mrs. Parsons’ home to be sold was called Shoreland (Brosky, 41) and it was located in the Suffolk County town of Huntington (Brosky, 42). Shoreland, like Long Meadow Farm, was also located on the Island’s north shore, and it rose above the Long Island Sound below it (Price, 4) at Lloyd’s Neck and Harbor (Gardner, 1).

Earlier that morning (Wednesday, June 9, 1937) Mrs. Parsons had driven her also rich husband William H. Parsons, to the Stony Brook railroad station, so William “…could make a 7:47 AM train,” (Brosky, 42). Alice Parsons returned home and “…informed her housekeeper [Anna] that a couple was coming over around eleven AM…that she [Alice Parsons] would be taking them over to see her aunt and uncle’s estate in Huntington…” (Brosky, 42). “Alice got inside the [couple’s] car with the couple…and that was the last time Alice was ever seen…” (Brosky, 42).

History and Genealogy: The French Princess Legend – And Legacy

By Joanne Polizzi Mansfield

©2019. All rights reserved.


This story starts out sounding like a mystery novel. A woman becomes interested in her husband’s family history. She finds a mysterious letter among old unlabeled photos and newspaper obituaries of unknown people.

The letter, written in 1905 to “Cousin Nelson” in Chautauqua County, Western New York, looks to be from a family member in Colorado, encouraging keeping family records for future generations. There is a list of names and a story of “your family” that lived in Connecticut and Canada.

For many years there has been a legend about a "French Princess" that married into the family; that she hid in a barrel of hemp for an unknown reason. She was hiding from something-some trouble, danger, possible kidnapping? One version was that she was escaping to the United States and doing so, hid in a barrel. It was a dramatic and romantic story in the family and a mystery! The letter to Cousin Nelson tells the story, adds names and dates and provides details that can be used for research. How could this story possibly relate to a farm family in a quiet corner of New York? What could this history mean to descendants many generations later?

"Indian Woman Still in Jail: Mrs. Norma White Fails to Raise $5,000 Bail."

By Richard White
Copyright ©2019 All rights reserved.

On May 16, 1937, this was the Buffalo Courier-Express' title of its page 1 report on a 16-year-old Cayuga girl awaiting grand jury action on a manslaughter charge of shooting her husband on May 13 with a shotgun. Mr. and Mrs. Ivory White resided on the Cattaraugus Reservation in Western New York since their marriage eight months earlier. Ivory was a well-known Seneca athlete whose specialties included professional boxing. Constable William J. Murphy responded to the scene and transported the victim to the hospital in nearby Gowanda where he died. Events moved forward quickly.

Murphy also briefly quizzed Mrs. White whose statements to him appeared on May 14 on the front page of the Buffalo Evening News. Murphy stated that Norma was "sick of" her husband's constant mental and physical abuse for much of the previous year. For example, he had repeatedly threatened "to tie her to the nearest railroad tracks….and keep her there…. until the train ran over her." He noted as well her black eye from her husband's punch, and she informed him that she had a burn on her left leg "inflicted by a match held by her husband." In this interview and all the others, Mrs. White stated that she did not remember shooting her husband because "everything went black" beforehand.

After speaking with the Constable, Mrs.White traveled to the home of Justice of the Peace, Julius J. Flogaus, with her mother and sister, and tearfully informed him of the shooting. White did not say that she was "battered" but stated that she was the victim of constant abuse, although it appears that no complaints of mistreatment were ever recorded by law enforcement. According to the Cattauragus Republican on May 19, the Justice pointed out that the husband was already in trouble with the law in that he had been on probation from a charge of assaulting the girl's grandfather. Also, Flogaus knew what to do with Mrs. White, saying that "I knew her ancestors from way back. She's good stock. I recommended that they let her go home." Who the "they" were is still unclear, but she did spend the night at her home and returned the following morning when Murphy came for her.
This case was now a Federal matter. The Constable took her—apparently not in handcuffs—to the Federal Building in Buffalo to be questioned by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Buffalo Evening News on May 14 declared that the F.B.I. "was called in because the shooting occurred on government property." By late Friday afternoon, United States Attorney George L. Grobe reasoned that Norma's crime required an arraignment before United States Commissioner, Boyce H. Butterfield which took place in his office. A defense attorney, Richard A. Grimm, was appointed, but there is nothing in the press on his strategy or advice—in any case, Norma pleaded not guilty when charged with voluntary manslaughter. When the defendant could not meet the bail of $5,000, she was taken to the Erie County jail where she would stay until the Grand Jury rendered its decision.

Beginning on May 25 in Rochester, the Grand Jury met. Grobe presented the case, but it is unknown if he called upon witnesses. The Jury's decision on June 8 was a "no-bill," meaning that Norma was not indicted. She was free. However, Federal officials pursued other involvement. The Gowanda News discussed this new phase on June 10, reporting that "Following the jury's pronouncement…Richard A. Grimm…and George L. Grobe moved to help the girl, who is an expectant mother. Her case will be taken with the State Social Welfare Bureau…"

Violence against women was not a native tradition, and generally, Iroquois women enjoyed equality, political power, and respect. However, in 1937, a pivotal case in women's rights arose on the Cattaraugus Reservation. An extreme manslaughter case involving a desperate young woman was settled in her favor.


About the author: Richard White's articles have appeared in Civil War History, The Journal of Negro History, and other publications.

St. John Honeywood Salem Poet, Artist, Lawyer, Educator763-1798

Author photo

By William A. Cormier
Salem Historian

History in Stone

In 1976, the year of our country’s Bicentennial, I wrote a short biography about St. John Honeywood, Salem’s poet laureate. A recently published book in which he is mentioned has rekindled my interest in telling the rest of the story.


In an unheralded grave in the Salem Revolutionary War Cemetery lies the body of Salem’s finest 18thcentury poet, artist, intellectual, educator, politician, lawyer, and newspaper editor. His gravestone speaks these words: “In Memory of St. John Honeywood, Esq., Who Died Sept. 1, 1798, Aged 36 yrs.” The epitaph on the stone is a poem written by Scottish poet, James Thomson. It reads: “The wintry blast of death, Kills not the buds of virtue, No—they spread beneath the heavenly beam, Of brighter suns thro’ endless ages, Into higher powers.” These few short words do not give the casual visitor to his grave a full understanding of St. John Honeywood’s life. On this the two hundred and twentieth anniversary of his death, his importance, not only to Salem but to the entire country, deserves to “spread thro’ endless ages.

            

Schenectady’s Jews, Zionism and the Persecuted European Jews

by Harvey Strum of The Sage Colleges
© 2019 All rights reserved by the author.  

The situation in Palestine attracted the attention of Schenectady's Jews. A Zionist movement started in Schenectady with the formation of the Schenectady Zionist District in 1898. A report in the local press in 1903 noted a "mass meeting of Schenectady Zionists"[1] that raised funds for Palestine settlements. The membership indicated the participation of the congregants of Agudas Achim. Schenectady's Jews joined the Sons and Daughters of Zion, fraternal organizations affiliated with the Federation of American Zionists. The groups used dances to attract members and explain the Zionist cause.[2] For those interested in Socialism and creating a Jewish homeland in a location other than Palestine they could follow the leadership of Israel Zangwill and the Jewish Territorial Organization that promoted a Jewish homeland in Uganda. A socialist offshoot of his movement the Socialist Territorialist Labor Party had a Schenectady chapter operating in 1909 combining elements of Socialist Labor Zionism and Zangwill's acceptance of a territorial solution other than Palestine. Another Zionist group, the Mount Moriah Zionist Association formed in 1913. By November 1915 another women's Zionist organization formed a local chapter of Hadassah that developed from the local chapter of Daughters of Zion, as occurred in other parts of the United States. Then, in 1917 a socialist Zionist group Paolei Zion (Workers of Zion) established a local chapter.[3] As early as 1914, representatives of the Moriah Zionists, including Nathan Sahr and P.S Naumoff, attended the June meeting of the Federation of American Zionists, as the Moriah Zionists, like the Sons of Zion affiliated with the FAZ. In December 1917, the chapter of Paolei Zion sent William Siegel to their annual convention.[4] The war stimulated the growth of the Zionist movement in Schenectady. World War I was the catalyst for fundraising to help Jews in Palestine. The war increased support for the restoration of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Immigrants from Eastern Europe embraced the Zionist cause as an escape from Czarist oppression for their co-religionists still in the Russian Empire. The variety of Zionist groups in Schenectady before 1920 suggested the conflicts within the Zionist movement and differences within the local Jewish community. However, it indicated the richness and diversity of Jewish communal organizations from 1900 to 1925. It suggested that the debate over Zionism did not exist solely at the national level or within Zionist groups in Palestine. Even in small upstate New York Jewish communities the debate appeared and divided the immigrant community into factions over which was the best path to creating a Jewish national home.

“Douglass left Binghamton… disgusted...”

By Richard White

Copyright 2019 © All rights reserved by the author

In 1872, Frederick Douglass campaigned widely for the Republican cause under the leadership of President Ulysses S. Grant. While on his way by rail to Oswego, he made a scheduled stop-over in Binghamton at 3 A.M. on Thursday, September 27, where the unexpected happened. When he stepped off the train, there was no crowd, not even one person, to welcome him. For Douglass, or any person of his stature, this situation was at least a slight, or an affront. The city’s Democratic news-
papers, especially the weekly Democratic Leader, pointedly and racially examined the situation with virulence.

On October 4, The Leader declared that “Fred Douglass, the white darkey, telegraphed Injun DeVoe that he would arrive here Thursday night of last week.” But the response of the local Radical Republicans led by Benjamin DeVoe prompted the Binghamton Daily Democrat on the 27th to suggest “the Radicals [were] aware of his arrival, but somehow they seem to neglect their duty….This is a specimen of Radical love for the nigger!” In reference to Douglass’ excuse for not being invited to Grant’s White House dinner earlier in the year, the same article sarcastically states, “Wonder if Fred will swear, as on a former occasion, that it was all a mistake, an oversight on the part of his professed admirers, and excuse them, as he did his master Grant, for their want of courtesy.”

Douglass walked the platform as he waited until local civil rights activist, Henry C. Jones, arrived and escorted him to the Exchange Hotel. There is no reference of Jones being a Radical Republican. The Leader reported that he “was boiling over with rage; mad—cross as a bear, and closed himself up in his room.” At this point, the Leader reported that DeVoe re-emerged and

“tried to make amends during the [early] morning by picking up a stray darkey here and there and taking him up to see Douglass. This was adding insult to injury. Maybe Ben did not know it, but if there anyone that detests negroes socially it is Douglass.” 

This dramatic assertion may have some legitimacy and deserves attention. In Frederick Douglass (1991), William S. McFeely discusses Douglass' contempt for working class people, and that his “strong self-confidence was accompanied by an arrogance that could be exposed by the smallest slight.” Similarly, David W. Blight posits in Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (2018) that many for years Douglass was bothered by the “listless indifference” of black Americans, and he “often turned attacks on white racism into angry rebukes of black lethargy.” Unlike Henry C. Jones who did alright with Douglass, maybe he perceived “a stray darkey” as “listless” or lethargic.

Four months before Frederick Douglass' visit to Binghamton, on June 1, his home for 25 years in Rochester was destroyed by arson. This disaster prompted Douglass to express his anger in his weekly New National Era on June 13, charging that Rochester ”has its full share of the Ku Klux spirit… It is the spirit of hate…” Binghamton at least had a “spirit of hate” but Douglass, unfortunately, did not write about his stay in the city in the next 3 issues of Era. The Leader was not profound when it concluded, “Douglass left Binghamton… disgusted….”

About the author: Richard White's articles have appeared in Civil War History, The Journal of Negro History, and other publications.