The Bark Europa (Post #2)

This is the 2^nd post detailing my 2024 voyage to the South Pacific. (Thanks to all of you who responded to my last post asking for more info!)

Herewith I shall answer the essential questions. To wit:

What is it that I’m doing?

My primary impetus for this expedition is to follow in the wake of the artist Alfred Agate, born in Sparta village (today’s Ossining) in 1812.

I am constantly amazed by how the local can connect us to the world. I mean, local history is the bridge that gets you from your neighborhood in Ossining to Tahiti, to Fiji, to Antarctica and beyond. Plus, let’s face it, history is often taught in a rather remote way, dealing with Great Men, dates, wars and empires – things that are grand and far removed from our everyday experience. I think the more we can weave these threads of local connection into the global fabric, the more interesting history becomes, and the tighter our understanding and bonds become with people and cultures around the world.

It’s my hope that I can make the life of Alfred Agate and his experience on the US Exploring Expedition of 1838 – 1842 not only more immediate, but also relevant to our understanding of the world today. Because understanding the past can help us learn from it and move this knowledge forward to do things better in the future.

2. Where am I going?

On July 3, 2024, I’ll be embarking on the Bark Europa from the port of Papeete, Tahiti (French Polynesia) for a 35-day journey to the Fiji Islands, by way of Tonga and whatever other islands the wind leads us to. Our precise route will be determined by the Captain, the weather, and the permits of the local authorities.

3. How am I getting there?

What exactly is this Bark Europa of which I speak? Well, she’s a square-rigged, steel-hulled barque that sails under the flag of the Netherlands and is owned and operated by a Dutch company.

Sailing a variety of routes, the Europa often spends her summers in the Antarctic and the Southern Ocean. (As I write this, she just left Pitcairn Island, home to the HMS Bounty mutineers c. 1780s, and South Georgia Island, where Ernest Shackleton landed in 1916 after an 800-mile journey from Elephant Island to arrange the rescue of his crew. Yeah, I might be a little obsessed with the Southern Ocean . . .)

This past fall, the opportunity arose for me to sign on as voyage crew on the Bark Europa on this Tahiti-Tonga-Fiji route. Deep into my obsession with Alfred Agate and the USXX, it seemed like a sign. And sometimes, you just have to say yes to the universe.

Now, for my sailing experts (and to avoid sounding like the neophyte I am regarding all things sail), here is some text lifted in its entirety from the Bark Europa website giving the nitty gritty details on the ship:

Rigged as a bark, the Europa carries twelve square sails in total: six on both the fore and the main mast. The mizzen mast carries the spanker and the gaff topsail. Moreover, she carries ten staysails, to be found between the masts and between the jibboom and the foremast. Sailing broad reach in seas with winds up to 5 Beaufort, Europa can carry six studding sails. In total, a huge area of canvas that has to be set and manned by a lot of hands.

When not under sail, Europa has two Caterpillar 380 HP diesels driving two propellers. For manoeuvring, the ship also has a DAF 180 HP engine that drives a bow thruster and the anchor winch. Both are used in shallow waters, when hoisting anchor and when finding a way through the ice. Bunker capacity for diesel fuel is limited and diesel is also needed to drive the generators for electricity.

This, my friends, is not a Carnival Cruise with unlimited umbrella drinks, a Guy Fieri 24-hour burger buffet and luxury Platinum cabins:

No, as a member of the voyage crew, I’ll be standing watch, acting as helmsman/lookout, climbing the rigging, and practicing all those knots I learned when the boys were in Scouts. (I’ll also learn what the spanker and jibboom are!)

It’s also going to be an experience of slow travel and a return to the pre-internet, pre-smartphone world. There’s satellite communication onboard, but that’s it, and I’m told one pays about $1 per KB for email messages, so don’t expect any Instagram or blog posts from me for the duration (unless we should happen upon an internet café!)

Finally, there will be about 65 people aboard, consisting of crew and passengers.

Feel free to leave a comment if there’s something else you want to know!

For my next post I’ll be giving a little history of the US Exploring Expedition and after that, stories and images of Tahiti, Alfred Agate-style.

If you haven’t already subscribed and are interested in following this journey, you can do so here:

You can also follow the route of the Bark Europa here updated in real time.

Ossining and the US Exploring Expedition of 1838 – 1842 (Post #1)

Soon I shall be heading to sea on the above Dutch-registered, steel-hulled barque as voyage crew to follow in the footsteps of Ossining’s own Alfred Agate, best known as one of two illustrators for the US Exploring Expedition of 1838 – 1842 (USXX).

Wait, what?

“To sea”?

“Voyage crew”?

“Alfred Agate”??

“US Exploring Expedition of 1838 – 1842”???

Oh yes, I hear all your questions. So consider this the first of several blog posts detailing the life of Alfred Agate, the US XX (aka the Largest All-Sail Exploring Expedition You’ve Never Heard Of), and my 21^st century pilgrimage on a tall ship.

Today’s post will focus on Alfred Agate, Ossining artist and International Man of Illustration.

Now, truth to tell, I knew nothing about Alfred or his family until I stumbled into the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet at the Ossining Historical Society and learned about this surprisingly influential family of artists.

First, perhaps you’re familiar with this house that still stands at the corner of Hudson and Liberty Streets in the Sparta area of Ossining?

Built over 200 years ago by Thomas Agate, it is the grand home of one of the first English settlers in Sparta.

[NOTE: much of the following information comes from a 1968 article written by Ossining historian Greta Cornell, Ancestry.com, and Phillip Field Horne’s A Land of Peace.]

Here’s some background: Alfred’s father, Thomas Agate, was born in Sussex, England c. 1775. He came to Sparta in the 1790s with his siblings John, William, Ann & Mary. In about 1795, the Agates purchased two lots of Sparta land from James Drowley’s estate via a Richard Hillier. They were Baptist/Republicans who didn’t believe in the monarchy, so settling in the recently independent colonies must have been a no-brainer for these motivated Brits.

Thomas seems to have been scrappy and ambitious, and according to Philip Horne, kept a “House of Entertainment” in Sparta until about 1811. (Excellent term, no? Sounds like a strip club to me, although it was likely just a tavern.)

In 1795, he married Hannah Stiles and would continue living and prospering in Sparta. After leaving the “entertainment” business, he would run a store in Sparta, manage the Sparta dock, and buy and sell numerous parcels of land in the neighborhood. When copper was discovered practically right under his house in 1820, Thomas Agate was one of the first to invest in the Westchester Copper Mine Company. Unsurprisingly, nearby Agate Street is named after the family, and the house pictured below was still in the family as late as 1960!

6 Agate Avenue
In 1959, home of descendant Melodia Agate Foster Wood

Thomas and Hannah would have at least 4 children:

Edward Priestley Agate:

b. August 29, 1798

m. Mary Williams (7 children “all died young”),

d. November 22, 1872

Frederick Stiles Agate:

b. January 29, 1803

Never married

d. May 1, 1844 (buried in Sparta Cemetery)

Harriet Ann Agate Carmichael

b. March 29, 1817

m. Thomas J. Carmichael c. 1835

d. January 12, 1871 (buried in Sparta Cemetery, though his headstone is currently missing)

Alfred Thomas Agate

b. Feb. 14, 1812

m. Elizabeth Hill Kennedy, 1844

d. Jan. 5, 1845 (buried Mt. Olivet Cemetery, Washington DC)

But Frederick, Harriet and of course Alfred are the ones we are most interested in here.

Older brother Frederick was a precocious and artistic child who, at the age of 15 or so, was sent to study art in New York City with John Rubens Smith. Frederick would then teach his siblings Alfred and Harriet the rudiments of oil painting and find them teachers at the National Academy of Design (which Frederick would help found in 1825 with his bosom friend Thomas Seir Cummings, and painter/telegraph inventor Samuel F.B. Morse.)

At the time, historical and portrait painting was a lucrative career – photographs of course did not yet exist, so painted portraits were the only way to capture a person’s likeness.

Alfred studied with Thomas Seir Cummings at the National Academy of Design (NAD), and by the age of 20 he was exhibiting his paintings at their annual exhibition. By 25, he had his own studio at 25 Walker Street and churned out portraits – both oil paintings as well as miniatures.

Now, during this time, it’s entirely likely (though I have so far found no concrete evidence of it) that Frederick and Alfred met and socialized with Charles Wilkes, the man who would become the leader of the USXX. Wilkes was a Navy man, a talented artist himself, and, most importantly, a skilled navigator, cartographer and surveyor. It does seem that he took some drawing classes at the NAD during the late 1820s/early 1830s.

This connection will become important when the US XX, an expedition that was about a decade in the making, starts to come together in the late 1830s.

In late 1836 our Alfred is offered a position as illustrator for what was then called the “South Seas Surveying and Exploring Expedition.” Here’s his acceptance letter written to Secretary of the Navy Mahlon Dickerson:

Isn’t his handwriting gorgeous???
Courtesy of the National Archives

Now, as promised, I will expound on the development and purpose of said Expedition in a future post. For now, let us concentrate on young Alfred.

Alfred Agate, c. 1838
Courtesy of the New-York Historical Society

It is believed that brother Frederick painted this portrait just before Alfred left for his voyage to points south. And if you look closely, you can see some subtle iconography in the form of the red sketchbook under Alfred’s left arm and the boat anchors on his fetching gold buttons. Here they are in close up for your amusement:

On August 18, 1838 six ships set off from Norfolk, Virginia on what is often described as the world’s last all-sail exploration expedition:

Approximately 440 men served – 82 officers, 345 sailors, 7 naturalists/scientists and 2 illustrators.

Alfred shared the load with fellow illustrator Joseph Drayton and their importance to the expedition cannot be underestimated. With no ability to photograph anything, it was up to these two artists to document as many plants, animals, landscapes, and people as possible. (Knowing that the US XX sent back about 40 TONS of artifacts, it would have been an Herculean task to document it all.) To that end, to save time, the illustrators often used the Camera Lucida, an optical projection device that some say was developed in the 1600s, though it wasn’t patented until the early 1800s.

Alfred tended to do landscapes and portraits, while Drayton focused on botanical and animal illustrations

Sometimes they worked from sketches of others – many of the officers were passable artists themselves and would give sketches to the illustrators to work from.

During the course of the expedition, hundreds of sketches, watercolors, oils, and later, engravings were made. Just a small number of these were published in the multi-volumed post-expedition Narrative of the USXX.

Sadly, some of Agate’s work was lost in the wreck of the Peacock in 1841, and in a later fire at the Philadelphia publisher’s plant, but there still are a large number extant.

Today, the Naval History and Heritage Command website has digitized and interpreted its significant collection of Alfred’s USXX illustrations. Check it out here.

The route of the USXX is mind-boggling:

And our Alfred sketched wonderful portraits throughout — here are just two of many:

Alfred returned to New York on June 10, 1842, landing at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. After spending a week in quarantine, he likely came back to Ossining to recuperate at his parents’ home on Liberty Street. He was apparently unusually sickly on the expedition (at least, according to Charles Wilkes’ memorial to him). He regained enough strength to relocate to Washington, DC to finalize illustrations for the first volume or two of the Narrative of the US Exploring Expedition written by Charles Wilkes. He also married Elizabeth Hill Kennedy in October 1844. But, tragically, his life was cut short by tuberculosis, that scourge of the 19th century, and he died just a few months after his wedding.

He was fondly remembered by all who knew him, and Senator James A. Pearce of Maryland would honor him with the following words:

The delicacy and sensibility of the man seemed to characterize the productions of his pencil. His drawings, which have been published, and those which remain to be published, show a truthfulness and harmony which stamp him as an artist of the highest order of talent.

RIP Alfred Agate.

Type your email address below to subscribe and make sure you don’t miss the next exciting posts about the USXX and the upcoming voyage I’ll be taking to Tahiti, Tonga & Fiji in July/August 2024 to see the actual sights our Alfred memorialized!

Or click here for the next post in the series on the Bark Europa.

Emma Goldman – Anarchist on Allapartus!

Emma Goldman, c. 1890s
Courtesy of Duke University Library

Emma Goldman
1869 – 1940

Feminist
Anarchist
Author
Nurse
Magazine Editor & Publisher,
Birth Control Advocate
Anti-War Activist
***Local Connection: Allapartus Road***

Did you know that Emma Goldman, famous anarchist, had a country home on Allapartus Road in the early 20^th century?

Do you even know who Emma Goldman was? Or what anarchy is? Don’t worry, most people I’ve tried to impress with this piece of Ossining history don’t know either.

Now, today, instead of being described as “The High Priestess of Anarchy,” Emma Goldman is more often thought of as a progressive feminist, an author, a magazine publisher, and an inspirational speaker. Her passionate advocacy for birth control, marriage reform, sexual freedom, worker’s rights, and vehement anti-war activism was extremely progressive for the time.

And in the 19th/early 20th centuries, Emma Goldman made headlines as “Red Emma” and “A Dangerous Woman.”

Believing that “Fighting injustice and exploitation is all that matters,” she tirelessly spoke out on behalf of the marginalized, the exploited and the oppressed.

Now, I have to delve into this anarchy thing before I go any further, because it’s essential to understanding what Emma Goldman was about.

Basically, anarchy (in the way that Goldman defined it) describes a society without any centralized authority. So, no rulers, government, laws — frankly, it’s a movement that I never found that interesting because it seems so irrational, so angry, and so violent. And perhaps it is on the surface, and violent acts have certainly been perpetrated in its name.

In 1893, when Goldman was imprisoned for “inciting to riot”, she gave a jailhouse interview to Nellie Bly, a reporter for The New York World, and explained why she was an anarchist and what she hoped to accomplish:

I am an Anarchist because I am an egotist. It pains me to see others suffer. I cannot bear it. Everything wrong, crime and sickness and all that, is the result of the system under which we live. Were there no money, and as a result, no capitalists, people would not be over-worked, starved and ill-housed, all of which makes them old before their time, diseases them and makes them criminals. To save a dollar the capitalists build their railroads poorly, and along comes a train, and loads of people are killed. What are their lives to him if by their sacrifice he has saved money?

In further researching this topic, I came upon this definition by the writer Rebecca Solnit: “Anarchists are idealists, believing human beings do not need authorities or the threat of violence to govern them, but are instead capable of governing themselves by cooperation, negotiation, and mutual aid.”^[1]

Between Goldman and Solnit’s explanations, on paper anarchism certainly seems like a utopian ideal but really – has there ever been such an idyllic civilization? Could it ever really exist? Did Emma Goldman meet any human beings? (Ooops, my cynicism is showing.)

But she truly believed this world was possible and pursued these ideals her entire life. And for all her fight and spirit and refusal to accept the status quo, Emma Goldman was a radical optimist, a passionate believer in the essential good of the human beings, if only the jackboot of authority could be lifted from their necks.

Born in 1869 in Popelon, Lithuania, Goldman emigrated to Rochester, New York in 1885. The first job she would find was working in a sweatshop sewing men’s overcoats at a wage of $2.50 per week. (She marked this as the beginning of her advocacy for worker’s rights.)

According to her 1931 memoir Living My Life, Goldman was radicalized after the 1886 Haymarket Affair bombing.

Soon after this, Goldman would meet and fall in love with Alexander Berkman, an equally fiery anarchist and activist. In 1892, in response to the strikes in Andrew Carnegie’s steel mills in Homestead, Pennsylvania where Pinkerton guards were brought in to quell the conflict with billy clubs and bullets, Berkman decided to follow the anarchist’s playbook, deploy “targeted violence,” and murder Carnegie’s right hand man Henry Clay Frick. (The idea was that this murder would inflame the masses, causing revolution to take place, thus toppling capitalism.)

Frick survived, and Berkman served 14 years in prison for attempted murder. Goldman was initially implicated, but there was no evidence with which to charge her. However, this incident would mark her as a violent, dangerous person, one the authorities would trail and watch closely.

Knowing this, she still toured the country giving speeches, encouraging workers to “Demonstrate before the palaces of the rich; demand work. If they do not give you work, demand bread. If they deny you both, take bread.” It was after one such lecture that she was arrested and convicted for “inciting to riot.” She spent a year imprisoned on Blackwell’s (now Roosevelt) Island, New York working as an amateur nurse in the prison hospital and giving occasional interviews to sympathetic reporters.

After serving her term, she traveled to Europe for formal nursing and midwife training and would fall back on these skills throughout her life to support herself.

Ossining Connection

In 1905, a wealthy friend, Bolton Hall, purchased a small farm at the top of Allapartus Road (technically in New Castle, just outside the Ossining border) and gave it to Goldman.

Farmhouse on Allapartus Road, c. 1910 (now demolished)
Courtesy of Gareth Hougham

She would come to this little farmhouse to decompress, to cook, to garden and to write. As she described it “The house was old and shaky, and there was no water on the premises. But its rugged beauty and seclusion, and the gorgeous view from the hill, made up for what was lacking in comfort.”

Alexander Berkman would join her there after his release from prison. Though they would discover that their romantic relationship was irretrievably broken by their time apart, they would remain professional colleagues for many years.

It’s around this time that Goldman found her radical periodical Mother Earth. She would serve at various times as its publisher, head writer, and editor. She attracted many of the progressive/radical writers and artists of the time, such as Floyd Dell, Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton played her in the movie Reds), Man Ray, and Margaret Sanger.

(Fun Fact: Croton resident Max Eastman would found his socialist magazine The Masses in 1911 and employ some of the same writers and artists. And both magazines would be shuttered in 1917 by the US Government for violating the Espionage Act for their radical anti-war/anti-conscription stances.)

In addition to putting out her monthly periodical, Goldman spent the 1910s on lecture tours speaking on topics ranging from anarchism, birth control, homosexuality to pacifism:

1915 Lecture Handbill from Portland, Oregon
Courtesy of JWA.org

She would get arrested several more times for violating both the Comstock and Espionage acts – and this last one would cause her deportation to Russia in 1919, along with Alexander Berkman and around 200 others the US Government branded as communists/anarchists. She and Berkman would write the following pamphlet on Ellis Island as they awaited their boat to Russia:

Goldman died in Toronto in 1940 at the age of 70, after a series of strokes. However, even death could not silence her: Her body would be transported to Forest Park, Illinois to be buried near those who were executed for the Haymarket bombing.

Her final words, chiseled on her gravestone are: “Liberty will not descend to a people. A people must raise themselves to liberty.”

^[1] Solnit, Rebecca A Paradise Built in Hell, 2010

Ossining’s Connection to the Heisman Trophy

In procrastinating today, and you know I was taking it seriously because I got all the way into the sports section, I saw a story about Reggie Bush, former USC star player, who was just (April 2024) re-awarded his 2005 Heisman Trophy. (Long story short, in 2010, the NCAA decided that Bush had taken impermissible payments as a college athlete and he was forced to give up the award.)

Reggie Bush and his 2005 Heisman Trophy.
Photo courtesy Julie Jacobson/AP

But it made me think about Ossining’s connection to the Heisman Trophy.

I mean, did you know that the trophy was sculpted by Ossining artist Frank Eliscu?

No, this is absolutely true. Created in 1935 by the Downtown Athletic Club and named in honor of John Heisman, the club’s athletic director, the Heisman Trophy has been awarded every year to the Most Valuable College Player.

Now, I’m not exactly sure how 23-year-old Frank Eliscu landed this as his first commission, but he had graduated from the Pratt Institute a few years earlier, and apparently already had had a one-man show of his artwork, so perhaps that had something to do with it.

The story goes that Eliscu modeled the sculpture on his very buff high school friend, Ed Smith, who was a star NYU running back at the time. [Fun fact — Ed Smith had no idea he’d been so immortalized until 1982!]

Wikipedia tells me that Ed Smith demonstrates “the stiff-arm fend, a tactic employed by the ball-carrier in many forms of contact football” in his pose. But of course you all knew that.

But let’s unpack the Frank Eliscu story, because he is one of many important Ossingtonians who have flown under the radar (to use a cliche, sorry Mr. Gilligan!)

Frank Eliscu was born in 1912 in Washington Heights, NY and lived on West 178th Street with his parents, Charles and Florence Eliscu, who had immigrated from Romania, and two siblings. He attended George Washington High School, where he met the aforementioned Ed Smith, and went on to study at the Pratt Institute, graduating in 1931. After sculpting the Heisman Trophy, he apprenticed with sculptor Rudolph Evans, working with on various projects . Like the Thomas Jefferson statue for the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC. (!!)

At some point in the 1940s, he married his wife Mildred, and started studying for a teaching certificate at New York’s Teachers’ College. However, the war upended his plans and he left school in 1942 to serve in the US Army. They first had him working on camouflage and maps, but then transferred him to Valley Forge General Hospital where he worked for the plastic surgery department, modeling replacement features for wounded soldiers. He also invented some unique process to normalize the color of these plastic features and may have even patented it (more research to come!)

Discharged in 1945, Eliscu began teaching at what was then called the School of Industrial Art (today the High School of Art and Design) and taught there until 1970.

According to the 1950 US census, Eliscu lived at 195 Croton Dam Road with his wife Mildred and daughter Norma (OHS ’51) and is listed as a High School Teacher. In a 2001 Ossining High School memory book for the class of 1951, Norma is quoted as saying “though Dad became famous, in Ossining they were just Mr. and Mrs. Eliscu. They knew everyone, spoke with everyone and loved small-town life. I was not aware Dad was famous. He was just Dad who taught school and did some sculptures in the evening in his studio.”^[1]

Did some sculptures indeed!

According to his 1996 New York Times obituary, Eliscu designed “many larger bronze sculptures for banks and office buildings throughout New York in the 1960’s and 70’s. From 1962 to 1972 he designed the engravings for six glass works produced by Steuben.”

The New York Times obit continues: “He was the principal designer of the 1974 Inaugural medals for President Gerald R. Ford and Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller. President Ford later presented a bronze eagle, an enlarged three-dimensional version of the one on the Presidential medal, to Leonid I. Brezhnev, the Soviet leader.”

Courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum

In 1983, his sculpture “Falling Books” was installed above the entrance of the Library of Congress:

In 1967, Eliscu was invited to become a member of the National Academy of Design (and here’s another Ossining connection — the National Academy of Design was founded in 1826 with the help of Sparta son Frederick Agate.)

So there you go — Frank Eliscu, Ossining sculptor and creator of the Heisman Trophy:

Frank Eliscu with the Heisman Trophy
Courtesy of alchetron.com

^[1] “Ossining Remembered: 50+ Years Later . . . in the 21^st century” edited by Tom Schoonmaker, c. 2001

Upcoming Presentation on Alfred Agate and the US Exploring Expedition! Monday, 1/22/2024

Here’s a shameless plug for a presentation I’m doing in Tarrytown at the Shames JCC on Monday, January 22, 2024 @ 10am.

*Alfred Agate, believed to have been painted by his brother Frederick Agate c. 1838*
*Courtesy of the New York Historical Society*

From the Shames JCC website:

Alfred Agate was the illustrator for one of the most ambitious and largest scientific exploratory expeditions that you‘ve never heard of the US South Seas Exploring Expedition from 1838 – 1842 – an epic voyage that sailed to South America, the South Pacific, Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica, the West Coast of North America, the Philippines, and Indonesia. He was born in Sparta, now part of Ossining, and was a very successful portrait and miniature painter before he went to sea. In this image-packed talk, Ossining Town Historian Caroline Curvan presents a fascinating piece of little-known local history.

The Shames JCC is located at 371 S. Broadway, Tarrytown, NY 10591.

The Agates — Artists of Sparta. Video!!

Folks, it’s my first video presentation — this one is on Frederick, Alfred and Harriet Agate — artistic siblings who lived in Sparta (now part of Ossining) and were at the forefront of the development of an American style of art and approach to science. Check it out! They are fascinating people.

The Agates – The Second in An Occasional Series of Ossining Historic Cemeteries Conservancy cleanings

So, if you know me at all or have attended any of my recent presentations, you’ll know I’ve become obsessed with the Agate family of artists who lived in the hamlet of Sparta in the 1800s. (Today Sparta is part of Ossining, NY.)

Today, I had the privilege of cleaning Harriet Agate Carmichael’s gravestone with the Ossining Historic Cemeteries Conservancy. It was the last cleaning event of the year and an absolutely gorgeous day for it.

Now, who are the Agate family of artists and why should you care?

Well, first, I think it’s all sorts of important to know about people who lived in your very town and contributed to the world in a meaningful and positive way (even if they lived decades, even centuries before you).

So, follow me down a rabbit hole that will take you to the farthest corners of the earth and to the beginnings of an American school of art.

Frederick (1803 – 1844) was a talented oil painter who helped found and run one of America’s first art schools, the National Academy of Design (NAD). He also likely taught his younger siblings Alfred and Harriet to paint. He would die young from tuberculosis and be buried in Sparta cemetery next to his sister Harriet (though his gravestone is currently missing.)

And here’s one of Frederick’s more famous paintings — a portrait of actor Edwin Forrest in the role of Chief Metamora from the John Augustus Stone play “The Last of the Wampanoags”:

Edwin Forrest in the Role of Metamora, c. 1832
Courtesy of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery

Alfred (1812 – 1846) would go on to study at NAD and exhibit paintings at their annual art show. He became a successful miniaturist and portrait painter before taking on what is arguably his most important role, that of illustrator on the US Exploring Expedition of 1838 – 1842 – one of the most ambitious and largest scientific expeditions of exploration that you‘ve never heard of.

^{King Kamehameha III of Hawaii by Alfred Agate c. 1840
Courtesy of the Naval History and Heritage Command}

And our Harriet (1817 – 1871) would also study at the National Academy of Design. In 1833, she would be one of the first women to show a painting at the Academy’s annual Art Exhibition. That painting was called “View of Sleepy Hollow,” and Historic Hudson Valley just happens to have a painting of the same name from about the same time, although they note that the painter is unknown.

View of Sleepy Hollow
Courtesy of Historic Hudson Valley

Could this possibly be by Harriet? Watch this space – I’m going to research this as far as I can!

We have only two other paintings by Harriet – likely from about the same time and likely from her days as a student.

Still Life by Harriet Agate
Courtesy of the Ossining Historical Society and Museum

Greek Scene at the Monument of Lysicrates by Harriet Agate
Courtesy of the Newark Art Museum

In about 1839 Harriet would marry Thomas J. Carmichael, a contractor for the Ossining portion of the Croton Aqueduct.

You’ve probably seen this aqueduct ventilator on Spring Street, near Park School. That’s Harriet’s husband!

They settled in Ossining, in the Agate family house at 2 Liberty Street:

*2 Liberty Street, still standing in 2023!*

Harriet would have several children then move to Wisconsin with her husband in 1846 to live on a farm. Sadly, Thomas would die there soon after they moved, in 1848, and after settling his estate, Harriet would move back to Sparta where she probably lived with her mother Hannah at 2 Liberty and then with her daughter Melodia Frederica Carmichael Foster in Brooklyn.

Harriet would die in 1871 in Brooklyn (at her daughter’s house) and, as we know, is buried in Sparta cemetery.

Her paintings and many of her brothers’ would be carefully kept in various family attics until 1959 when Harriet’s great grand-daughter, Melodia Carmichael Wood Ferguson, would discover them and donate them to the Ossining Historical Society. Some were in turn donated to the New York Historical Society and the Newark Art Museum. If you reach out to both places very nicely, they might permit you to view the paintings (which are not on display but are safely stored away. I did and they did!)

Here’s what her headstone looked like after the cleaning:

Grateful to the efforts of the Ossining Historic Cemeteries Conservancy for the opportunity to spend some time with Mrs. Harriet Ann Agate Carmichael today.

Vera Neumann — Textile Designer

Vera Neumann
1907 – 1993

Textile designer
***Local Connection: Smith-Robinson House/Printex Factory, 34 State Street***

Do you know who Vera Neumann was? Perhaps your mother or grandmother owned a Vera scarf? Or maybe you bought some Vera dish towels from Crate & Barrel, or a Vera dress from Target not too long ago? She’s an absolute legend in the world of textile design and her Printex printing plant was located right here in Ossining, at 34 State Street.

So settle in, tie a brightly hued scarf around your neck, and read on . . .

Born in 1907 in Stamford, CT, Vera was creative from the time she could hold a pencil. The story goes that her father nurtured her talent by taking her to the Metropolitan Museum of Art every Sunday, as well as hiring a sign painter to give her private drawing lessons. Vera went on to study at the Cooper Union and started out as a fashion illustrator and freelance painter of murals for children’s rooms. (Wouldn’t THAT have been a thing to grow up with on your wall!)

She married her husband George Neumann in the 1940s and they became the power couple of textile design. With her limitless imagination and his business acumen, they built a wildly successful and long-lived company. Their first commission was placements for the B. Altman department store, with Vera screenprinting the entire run on her dining room table. After that, it was a race to keep up with demand.

The post-World War II world complicated matters, as it was difficult to source fabrics. An oft-repeated story is that Vera came across a stash of silk parachutes in an army surplus store and began screen printing her whimsical, colorful, ever-changing designs on silk and so created her iconic line of scarves.

Outgrowing one studio after another, Vera and George settled in Ossining, buying the former Smith-Robinson House at 34 State Street and fitting it out for their Printex plant. (An 1810 Georgian mansion, it’s still standing today, barely, and is one of the few remaining buildings in Ossining built with prisoner-quarried Sing Sing marble.)

Department Store buyers visiting the Printex Plant, c. 1960s
Courtesy of the Ossining Historical Society and Museum

With their living space and office right next to the plant, Vera’s reputation and creativity thrived.

Vera and George Neumann in the design studio of Printex.
Photo by Gottscho-Schleisner, Inc. (1951),
Courtesy of the Library of Congress

The Living Room
Look at that shiny wood floor! And that fireplace!
Photo by Gottscho-Schleisner, Inc. (1951)
Courtesy of the Library of Congress

The printing plant
Photo by Gottscho-Schleisner, Inc. (1951)
Courtesy of the Library of Congress

The office suite of Printex
Photo by Gottscho-Schleisner, Inc. (1951)
Courtesy of the Library of Congress

How fabulous was this? River views and no commute? Wood floors and fireplaces? And just look at the Georgian decoration around those doorways! I wonder if any of it survives today?

The Printex company employed many Ossiningtonians. Dr. George Hill, their neighbor at 30 State Street, provided medical services to Printex employees. He also helped connect young people with jobs there. Local artist Donna Chambers was one of them, and the training and inspiration she received no doubt helped inspire her to become a professional artist who creates remarkable quilts and jewelry today.

And here’s just a tiny selection of Vera designs, from a 2015 exhibit at the Alexander Gray Gallery in New York:

If we were going to play six degrees of Vera Neumann, we can connect in one turn to President Harry S Truman and First Lady Bess Truman, who chose Vera’s Jack-in-the-Pulpit design (below) for the upholstery in the White House solarium.

Jack-in-the-Pulpit design – note, the shadows are part of the design. It is one of Vera’s most popular, in active use from 1952 to the mid-1980s

We can also connect to Marilyn Monroe. who famously wore nothing but a Vera scarf in her last photo shoot (with photographer Bert Stern.) Some might find the photos a bit raunchy, so be warned before you click here.

But one of the most admirable things about Vera Neumann is that she kept her price point low enough so anyone could own a Vera. While other designers charged upwards of $25 a scarf, Vera’s averaged from $2 – 10. (Remember inflation! $25 in the 1960s is about $250 today.) “I don’t believe only the wealthy deserve good design,” she said and meant it. And her inexhaustible creativity meant that the market was never saturated with the same thing, so even these “cheaper” scarves were always unique and special.

In the 1950s, as their family grew, George and Vera decided to build their dream house, reaching out to the leading architect of the day, Marcel Breuer. On their plot of land at the top of Finney Farm Road in Croton, with magnificent views of the Hudson and beyond, Breuer’s modernist design is a triumph. Still standing, and recently restored, it was on the market in 2020 for $4.2 million. Take a look here and here.

Vera and George travelled widely and collected art – Alexander Calder (who briefly lived in Croton as a child) was a close friend, and the Neumann lawn was decorated with a large Calder sculpture, a gift from the artist.

In the 1960s, the company branched out into clothing and home textiles, and sales skyrocketed. Here are a few outfits I plucked off Ebay/Pinterest:

And here are some homegoods items:

George died in 1960 and Vera sold Printex in 1967, though she remained active as a designer and board member for decades.

Vera Neumann in her Ossining studio, c. 1974

She lived in her beautiful home with her dachsunds and cats, swimming daily in her indoor pool until 1981, when she moved in with her daughter in Ossining.

Vera Neumann died in 1993, designing to the end. An artist, a trendsetter, a savvy businesswoman, hers was certainly a life well-lived who brought joy to everyone who saw her designs. Check out more of her work here.

Edward Kemeys – Ossining Artist

Sometimes I think one could easily play Six Degrees of Ossining – mention any person or any place in the entire world and you could connect it back to Ossining (or Scarborough or Briarcliff) in less than six degrees.

First, for you runners out there, does this statue look familiar?

“Still Hunt” by Edward Kemeys
Central Park, NYC

If you’ve ever run a race in Central Park, you’ll be familiar with the steep hill, sometimes called “Cat Hill,” right after the Boathouse at about East 76^thStreet. It’s there, almost at the top, that you see this remarkably life-like panther crouched in the shadows on top of a rock to your left.

The story I’m about to share delighted me and I hope you’ll find it just as interesting.

But let’s set the stage first — those of you who are familiar with Ossining might know of Kemeys’ Cove. Today it’s a condo complex near the Jug Tavern and the Arcadian shopping mall. But back in the day, it was homestead of one of the first European settlers in the area. (Watch this space for a post about the pre-European people who lived here.)

Just after the Revolutionary War, William Kemeys, a wealthy shipowner from Scarborough, England left the mother country due to his lack of enthusiasm for the Church of England and the social constraints he suffered from because of that. He came to America looking for tolerance, acceptance and opportunity. Taking a brief foray up the North River (as the Hudson was called in those days), he found a delightful spot in which to settle: “There he built a long low ceilinged English House of red brick facing south on the cove and called the place Scarborough after the English town from whence he came. The house was still standing about 1870 until the property passed out of the hands of Edward Kemeys, the great grandson of William Kemeys and was demolished.”^[1]

Now, it’s this Edward Kemeys that concerns us here. Born in 1844 in Milledgeville, Georgia (“during a sojourn of his parents to the South”^[2]) to Abby Brenton Greene and William Kemeys. Abby sadly died soon after Edward’s birth, and he spent much of his childhood on the Kemeys homestead in Scarborough, with his grandparents Judge Edward Kemey and Gertrude Bleeker.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, our young Edward enlisted in the 65^th New York Volunteer Regiment, eventually attaining the rank of Captain of Artillery. Edward and the 65^th served nobly at many battles,^[3] Antietam and Gettysburg being perhaps the most well-known today.

After the war, Edward studied civil engineering and helped survey Central Park. But his heart wasn’t in it — he soon became interested in animal sculpture and went west to study animals (so the story goes) and then to London and Paris to learn how to sculpt.

Here’s a slightly more in-depth history on Kemeys and his work written by the NYC Parks Department^[4]

“Still Hunt” was by no means his only famous sculpture – if you’ve ever been to the Art Institute of Chicago, you’ve seen his handiwork — the two bronze lions at the entrance were sculpted by Kemeys.

One of a pair of lions at the entrance of the Arts Institute of Chicago
sculpted by Edward Kemeys

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York also has a number of his works on display – this one, called “Mutual Surprise” is one of my favorites:

“Mutual Surprise” by Edward Kemeys
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Here’s a link to his New York Times obituary just because I like obituaries.

I still do wonder why Edward let the Kemey’s homestead go. Seems like it would be an idyllic spot for an artist.

But there you have it, from Ossining to Central Park to famous sculptor.

^[1] From a xeroxed history with no author information found at the Ossining Historical Society

^[2] From the same xeroxed history with no author information found at the Ossining Historical Society

^[3] See here for more: https://civilwarintheeast.com/us-regiments-batteries/new-york-infantry/65th-new-york/

^[4] https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/central-park/monuments/1506

The Home of Berta and Elmer Hader, Nyack, New York

Nyack, New York — Okay, so I didn’t run by here, but I DID bike by here, so that still seems in keeping with the theme of this blog.

I had the good fortune to be one of the first riders across the new Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge Bike/Walk path. (The path had officially opened the day before.)

Here’s a shot of it:

I rode from the Tarrytown side all the way over to the other side, and as I was biking through the picturesque town of Nyack, I remembered that Berta and Elmer Hader had lived here, so I needed to go find their house.

Who, I hear you asking, are Berta and Elmer Hader, and why should I care?

Well, they were popular and prolific children’s book writers and illustrators. A husband and wife team, they met in San Francisco in the teens, married, and moved to Nyack, New York, because they thought that to really make it they had to be near New York City. Over a period of some years, they built this glorious stone house perched high on the hill overlooking the Hudson. Big enough to accommodate many guests and their studio, they lived, worked and entertained here up until they died (Elmer in 1973, Berta in 1976)

Berta and Elmer Hader in their studio in Nyack, NY (Courtesy of Concordia University)

Here are some images of their work:

Here’s the cover of a book they wrote in 1944 about building their lovely stone house. (It even got a review in the New York Times):

Elmer also illustrated John Steinbeck’s first four novels – the story goes that Steinbeck saw the drawings for the book “Billy Butter” and was so impressed with it that he asked him to do the cover art for “The Grapes of Wrath.”

One of the things that strikes me about them, their work, and their house, is that it seems like they would have been magical parents. However, tragically, their only child, Hamilton, died at the age of two from meningitis. But Berta and Elmer soldiered on and brought joy to hundreds of thousands of children.

According to the research guide at the Concordia University Library, which houses an archive of their illustrations, the Haders once wrote this about their artistic philosophy:

“We write for children, not to preach, nor moralize, but to suggest that the world about them is a beautiful and pleasant place to live in, if they but take time out, to look. And perhaps in doing so, our young readers will develop an interest to save what is good of their world for others to enjoy.”

What a delightful and joyful way to approach the world, eh?

The Haders were active in their community, early supporters of the environmental movement, and committed pacifists (Elmer had served in WWI, though it’s unlikely he ever saw any action, leaving on a troopship for France as he did on November 10, 1918, the day before the Armistice.)

But I’m not going to lie – my interest in the Haders did not stem from books of theirs I read as a child. No, my interest in them comes by way of Laura Ingalls Wilder and “Little House in the Big Woods.”

That’s a whole other post unto itself, which I will take up at the proper time, but let’s just say that Berta flatted with Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter Rose in San Francisco in the late teens. It’s during this time that Berta met Elmer, a fellow artiste and a former vaudeville performer, and they all moved to New York to live in that epicenter of artistic poverty, Greenwich Village, in a converted stable at 31 Great Jones Street. (Well, I’m not sure Elmer lived with them there, but he was certainly in the picture by then.)

(Courtesy Google Maps Street View)

Berta married Elmer in 1919, and they moved to Nyack, New York. This is their wedding photo:

(Courtesy of Concordia University)

Berta and Elmer would spend the rest of their lives in their eyrie at 55 River Road, watching the sun rise over the Hudson, and happily writing and illustrating books together.

Ossining History on the Run

Local History Seen from a Runner's Perspective

Tag: Artists