Vice Presidents We Don’t Hear Too Much About

It’s not easy to remember all the names of those who have impacted American history. Most of us know a few vice presidents who made their marks because of the way they came into office: Andrew Johnson, Theodore Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson all became presidents because of an assassination. Harry Truman took over for FDR when he passed away.

But looking at a couple of men who played second fiddle in the executive branch of the government can be interesting. They served in administrations early in the 20th Century. They weren’t from the same party, but they did balance their parties’ tickets. And they were both from Indiana.

Charles W. Fairbanks (1852-1918) and Thomas R. Marshall (1854-1925) are the two.

Fairbanks (indyencyclopedia.org)

Marshall (britannica.com/biography)

For the better part of four years, Theodore Roosevelt (“that —— cowboy!”) didn’t have a vice president. He believed he didn’t need one, a view much different than when he was in the office. Indeed, the “steamroller in trousers” had an extraordinary first term without a v.p.

In the next election, Indiana Senator Charles Fairbanks appeared on the Republican ticket with Roosevelt to please party conservatives. A native of Ohio, Fairbanks practiced law in Indianapolis for many years with cases involving the railroad industry. He had a major interest in the Indianapolis News. In 1904 the “hot tamale” (Roosevelt) and the “Indiana icicle” (Fairbanks) won the election in a landslide.

During the second Roosevelt term, Fairbanks wasn’t invited to cabinet meetings or consulted on decisions. He did preside over the Senate during the Pure Food and Drug Act hearings, which passed to benefit all Americans.

Republican William Howard Taft, chosen by his friend Roosevelt with James S. Sherman of New York as his vice president, won in 1908. Sherman died of Bright’s Disease just before the next election. Taft went on to serve in his preferred office, chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

(quotefancy.com)

Democrat Woodrow Wilson chose Thomas Marshall to run with him in 1912. Marshall, governor of Indiana, was known as “a liberal with the brakes on.” The election followed an uproar for the Republicans whose party bosses nominated Taft again. Theodore Roosevelt formed the new Progressive (“Bull Moose”) Party, splitting the voting public. Wilson won, Roosevelt came in second and Taft, third.

Like Fairbanks, Marshall did not attend cabinet meetings. This practice carried over to Wilson’s second term as he was in Europe for World War 1 peace talks. After the president had a stroke, Marshall was kept in the dark about his condition, which left Mrs. Wilson to make decisions for the country according to her husband’s wishes.

Marshall is known for his dry humor. While presiding over a debate about what the country needed, he said aside to a colleague, “What America needs is a good five-cent cigar.” He also stated once, “I was the Wilson administration’s spare tire – to be used only in case of emergency.” And when he left office, he quipped, “I don’t want to work. I don’t propose to work. I wouldn’t mind being vice president again.” At home he headed back to practicing law and writing books, including his autobiography.

By the time Marshall retired, Fairbanks was dead. He had been the Republican vice presidential candidate in 1916 with Charles Evans Hughes, but they narrowly lost. He is known for the skill he demonstrated in the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate, as evidenced by the city in Alaska which is named for him.

Leaving the topic, I will again quote Marshall: “Once there were two brothers. One ran away to sea; the other was elected vice president. And nothing was ever heard of either of them again.”

Maybe these two weren’t as inconsequential as it seems. Each helped his partner get elected, changing the course of the story of America.

Sources: pbs.org, in.gov, theodorerooseveltcenter.org, millercenter.org, and James H. Madison: Hoosiers: A New History of Indiana. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2014. If you’d like to read an excellent history of our state, start with this one.

The Presidents’ Plates

On a historical tour of part of the Wabash and Erie Canal, our group stopped at the preserved home of a prominent citizen. I spent most of the time there looking at the china cabinets. With my little bit of knowledge, I recognized flow blue, ironstone and transferware from the Nineteenth Century. There were many colors and patterns in the collection, and I began thinking of the dishes chosen by first families.

President Grant’s table service.

If you were fortunate enough to be a guest for dinner at the White House sometime in the past 200 years, you would have been eating from some pretty special plates. At first, the china used for visitors was a mixture of English and Chinese imports. Then, during President James Monroe’s administration, the first official presidential dinner service was ordered.

Caroline Harrison preferred Limoges.

In 1889 First Lady Caroline Harrison, who was a history buff, had the ambition to save for posterity the presidential china that’d been used. A few years later when William McKliney was president, a writer named Abby Baker researched it in great detail. She became involved in acquiring and preserving the place settings until her death in 1923.

Wedgewood was Edith Roosevelts’ choice, after an Ohio manufacturer hesitated at the size of the order.

Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt ordered two cabinets made for china which had come back through auctions and donations. These were seen by White House visitors at the east end of the mansion. What was to be done with damaged pieces, though? There were plenty of those, which Mrs. R directed to be broken and scattered in the Potomac River. Mrs. Wilson oversaw the completion of the current China Room in 1917.

The Eisenhower’s service plates complemented previous designs.

During the Eisenhower era, new cabinets were made; Mamie’s service plates were rimmed with a wide gold band that could be used with any of the previous designs. Jacqueline Kennedy was instrumental in creating Public Law 87-286, which made the dishware “inalienable and property of the White House.”

The China Room in 1975. It was established during the First World War. (housebeautiful.com)

Today newlyweds don’t dwell mucn choosing good china for company. Many of my generation hang on to ours and the memories that gleaming cups, saucers, plates and a few goblets bring back. For Americans, presidential china does the same. We hope that it continues for a long, long time.

Unless otherwise noted the photos are from architecturaldigest.com. Information comes from that site and from whitehousehistory.org.

A First Lady Who Might Have Been

Jessie Benton Fremont (National Park Service)

Several blogs past I wrote about some “also rans” for United States President, which could lead to speculation of “what if” the loser had won. I overlooked at least one name, that of John Fremont. He isn’t well-known or taught much about in history classes, although his experience and leadership matched many of the time.

His wife, Jessie, most certainly would have been an impressive first lady.

Jessie Benton Fremont was the daughter of Thomas Hart Benton, (not to be confused with an artist of the same name) who is taught about in history classes. He was a senator from Missouri before the Civil War, an advocate for western expansion and an opponent of slavery in the territories, and he let his daughter tag along with him when he had business at the Capitol and Executive Mansion.

At 17, while attending school in Washington, she eloped with Lieutenant John C. Fremont, ten years older. There was a period of estrangement between the two generations but eventually the Fremonts and the Bentons reconciled, and John became active in exploring the West with Kit Carson. Jessie stayed home and wrote for newspapers, also becoming well-known.

Jesie held a salon of writers, artists and spiritual leaders when they lived in San Francisco in the early 1860s. (National Park Service)

John became a senator from California, and then received the nomination for President in 1856 from the new Republican Party. Unmarried opponent Buchanan did not have an asset like Jessie. Crowds called her name and sang a song about her to the tune of Yankee Doodle. But “Mr. Fremont,” as she called him, lost, unable to sway the southern states. A newspaperman said they all regretted that she would not be “Mrs. President.”

Parents of five children, two of whom died in infancy, they moved to St. Louis during the Civil War where John was in command of the Western Department. But he ended a declaration of martial law by freeing slaves held by rebels in Missouri, which preceded the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln was not happy. Even though Jessie traveled to Washington to plead the case with the President, he fired her husband. She also worked with the Soldier’s Relief Society and the Western Sanitation Commission which were accepted roles for a woman.

With husband, John C. Fremont. (www.calisphere.org)

The family came into hard times when John’s railroad speculations failed. After his death Jessie lived another twelve years, aided by a widow’s army pension and her narratives, which were as popular as ever.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

One can see why readers anticipated her articles:

I look up at the little water-color which is my résumé of that time of severance from all I held indispensable to happiness—it was made for me on the spot, and gives my tent under the tall cotton-woods, already browned and growing bare with the coming winter winds.
Mr. Fremont was to make a winter crossing of the mountains, and I went with him in to his starting-point, the Delaware Indian reservation on the frontier of Missouri, to return when he left, and remain at home in Washington until my time came to start in March. Of everything in the Centennial Exhibition, I think nothing interested me so much as the display made by Kansas. It seemed so few years since I had been there, when only a small settlement marked the steamboat landing where now Kansas City stands. Looking at its silk manufacturers, its produce of not only essentials, but luxuries, it was hard to realize the untracked prairie of my time, with only Indians and wolves for figures.

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My blog post receiving the most responses has been one about “little orange books” (subsequently with other covers) pubished by the Bobbs-Merrill Company. They were prevalent in elementary school libraries in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Many said these adapted biographies sparked a lifelong interest in history, as they did for me.

I remember reading Jessie Fremont’s story. One incident that stood out was when she befriended a girl at school whom everyone else shunned. That reflects the character of one who would have, by all accounts, been a knockout of a First Lady.

Sources:

http://www.theatlantic.com, http://www.tile.loc.gov, http://www.civilwar.vt.edu, http://www.nps.gov, http://www.americanhistoryblog.org, http://www.historynet.com

The Atlantic piece is an excerpt from a book about the Fremonts, Imperfect Union, by Steve Inskeep, co-host of NPR’s Morning Edition.

Post-Office

In 1997 I was in a car with three other elementary school teachers on the way to a workshop in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We came to a traffic slowdown with lots of police cars and flashing lights, but there was no accident, so we figured someone important must be in town. They were. Later that night, we saw on the news that five living presidents: Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush had come to celebrate a building expansion of the Ford Museum. Had I known, I probably would have ditched the morning session of the workshop and gone to catch a glimpse of history.

Bush Sr., Reagan, Carter, Ford and Nixon at the opening of the Reagan Library in 1991. (National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution)

What do presidents do after leaving office?

George Washington, once a farmer, was always a farmer. In his brief retirement he daily inspected his land on horseback: crops including wheat and corn, and hemp for repairing fish nets. He had an impressive whiskey distillery which produced 11,000 gallons in 1799. Visitors to Mount Vernon from all over the world sought his advice on matters of state.

“There is nothing more pathetic in life than a former president,” John Quincy Adams once bluntly stated, but in his case we beg to differ. The second Adams president was elected to nine terms in the House of Representatives after he left office. He fought for years to repeal the gag rule for discussing slavery in Congress, finally succeeding in 1844. Four years later the “Old Man Eloquent” collapsed on the floor of the House and died shortly afterwards.

Theodore Roosevelt was not only a candidate four years after he left the presidency, but for the same office with a new party. In 1912 political bosses were successful in keeping him from the Republican nomination, so his follwers created the Progressive or “Bull Moose” Party. He got more votes than the Republican incumbent William Howard Taft, but less than professor Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Wilson went on to institute much of TR’s platform under his own titles.

Supreme Court Justice Taft. (National Park Service)

Taft had never wanted the presidency, anyway. One term was enough for him. “I don’t remember that I was ever president,” he once said, relishing his last years as a Supreme Court Justice of the United States.

“Sllent Cal,” President Calvin Coolidge, who often answered questions with just a few words, probably wrote more in print than he ever said aloud. He had a syndicated newspaper column after he held the office.

Herbert Hoover was an unlikely advisor to President Harry Truman, who asked him to reorganize the executive offices for better efficiency. Ronald Reagan was knighted by Queen Elizabeth – many Americans thought the title appropriate – and Barack Obama has turned to filmmaking in a wide variety of topics for Netflix.

At this writing President Carter is 97 years old. (Carter Center)

No one can argue that the post-presidential work of Jimmy Carter has not been far-reaching and long-lived, whatever you may think of him as chief executive. He has written 32 books, approaching Theodore Roosevelt’s record. The Carter Center is involved in conflict mediation with other countries. He and his wife, Rosalyn, volunteer one week a year with Habitat for Humanity, enabling poor families to own their own homes.

Fifteen years ago as I faced a small reading group around a U-shaped table, we read a short biography of Jimmy Carter, the children pretty amazed at what he was doing. They wrote to him (another lesson in writing), and he sent a letter back, answering their questions and encouraging them to be good citizens.

Who knows what Abraham Lincoln or John F. Kennedy might have done in later years. We remember their monumental efforts in office. But many of those before and after lived up to the faith Americans had in their collective character.

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Sources: http://www.whitehouse.gov, http://www.cartercenter.org, http://www.people.com, http://www.rd.com, http://www.mountvernon.org, http://www.history.com

Did You Know…

Or, who else likes movie trivia?

reelclassics.com

When I read in Parade Magazine that 27 pairs of pants were split during the making of 1961’s West Side Story, I began to think about other movie trivia I’d read or heard.

Did you know that Wilford Brimley was only two years older than Robert Redford, although Pop seemed ages beyond Roy Hobbs in The Natural?

Or that Judy Garland filmed the first few scenes of The Wizard of Oz wearing a long, curly blonde wig? Thank goodness those ribboned brunette pigtails replaced it.

Betty Hutton, in an interview with Robert Osborne, related that no one on the set of Annie Get Your Gun treated her nicely. And it seemed like such a happy cast.

In the classic 1936 version of A Christmas Carol, June Lockhart played one of the Cratchit children alongside her real parents, Gene and Kathleen Lockhart.

Margaret Mitchell’s first title for Gone With the Wind was Another Day. That’s what Scarlett kept reminding herself tomorrow is.

There were three different geese that played mischievous “Samantha” in Friendly Persuasion (which I believe is Gary Cooper’s best movie).

Kym Karath, who played Gretl in The Sound of Music, was terrified of the water. When the rowboat capsized, Julie Andrews saved her.

Jimmy Stewart wore the same hat in all of his westerns. That sweat line was real.

Donald O’Connor was supposed to play the role of Phil Davis in White Christmas, but got sick when he was bitten by a bug from Francis the Talking Mule.

Do you have a “Did you know…” for me? I’ll wait to hear it!

Song and Dance Van

There are so many talented performers of the past. Some were featured widely in films and television shows; some were not. Bobby Van, a Ray Bolger-esque actor with scenes that are hard to forget, was one of the latter.

I recognized the second-to-the-last movie in our Prime Video queue the other night as one I’d seen a long time ago at the theatre. It was a remake of Lost Horizon — not the first attempt at the story of Shangri-La in the Himalaya Mountains ever produced, but I think the best, even though it sort of flopped in 1973.

It had a stellar cast: Peter Finch, Liv Ullmann, Olivia Hussey (who doomed every bride between 1968 and 1973 to wear a Juliet-style gown), Sally Kellerman, Michael York, George Kennedy (who appeared in every other picture made during his lifetime), Sir John Gielgud and the legendary Charles Boyer. The music and orchestrations were very good. One of the best numbers was “Question Me an Answer,” with Bobby Van.

According to IMDb, Van began his motion picture career in the 1950s in Small Town Girl. He continued with The Affairs of Dobie Gillis opposite Debbie Reynolds, and in Kiss Me Kate, he was part of a dance trio in tights with Bob Fosse and Tommy Rall (another underappreciated performer — watch the barn dance in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers for proof). He was in show business a long time. Nominated for a Tony in Broadway’s Dr. Jazz in 1975, he also worked as a night club entertainer, choreographer and game show host. He died fairly young — at age 51, in 1980, of brain cancer.

Lost Horizon was made twenty years after its time. Wars in the East (even though alluded to in the film), race problems and culture in general disinterested moviegoers from wanting to see a musical extravaganza. After watching The Godfather, the public looked for their entertainment thirst to be quenched by other blood-and-guts features.

Other songs in Lost Horizon by Burt Bacharach and Hal David are memorable. Minor chorded, charming “Share the Joy,” welcomed the displaced travelers. “The World is a Circle,” Kellerman and Hussey’s “The Things I will Not Miss,” and the creschendoing theme song were worthy of Oscar nominations. They didn’t get any. Bacharach was even quoted as saying he thought the movie would be the end of his musical career. The criticism didn’t make any difference to me, though. I bought an LP of the score and listened to it frequently for a long time.

Thanks to the medium he worked in and the technology we have to reproduce it in our living rooms, it’s still possible to see Bobby Van singing and dancing. Maybe the holidays would be a good time to check out Lost Horizon from 1973. I hope you will take me up on that.

Victor

American Philosophical Society photo

In the mid 1960’s David McCullough sat interviewing an elderly physician named Victor Heiser for his first book. A resident of 66th Street in New York City, Dr. Heiser was prolific in his profession. In 1902 he’d been named Director of Health in the Philippine Islands, attempting to eradicate malaria and leprosy among people living in very primitive conditions. He had swamps drained and water and sewer systems installed.

It has been estimated that he saved two million lives during his long career. Heiser began in public health, studying ways to keep immigrants from spreading infectious diseases. He had graduated from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia in 1897.

He funded his education with the sale of his parents’ property in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

An even more amazing part of his story is that Victor Heiser was the only one in his family, and one of the few in his town, to survive the horrific Johnstown Flood of 1889. He was sixteen that year. During a severe rainstorm at the end of May, his father asked him to go to the barn to free the horses from their stalls, afraid they would be drowned in the fast-rising water. Then high above Johnstown, the dam at Lake Conemaugh broke.

Johnstown Flood Museum

Victor heard a deafening noise and looked through the barn window at his house. He saw it lifted by the power of the flood and carried away. He survived by crawling on a piece of steel roof carried by the terrible dark water and dodging freight cars, debris, animals and people, “everyone dying around him. Every so often a familiar familiar face would flash by.”

David McCullough used his interview many years later for his first book, The Johnstown Flood (Simon & Schuster 1968), chronicling the disaster minute by minute. He was motivated to write about it when he saw a display of photographs at the Library of Congress.

washingtonpost.com

An estimated 3,000 people died in the flood days before the pictures were taken. The bursting of the dam was linked to neglect by members of a wealthy conservation club above the town, which never accepted responsibility for it. Some bodies were never found; many rest in a cemetery with a public memorial. Victor Heiser joined his parents there 83 years later, a few days after his 99th birthday. A true victor for the people, if there ever was one.

The Washingtons in New York

Everybody thinks of George and Martha Washington living graciously at their Mount Vernon country home. But while he was President, they had to live in northern cities. Especially interesting is their time in Yankee New York.

Library of Congress

The first presidential mansion was the three-story home above on Cherry Street in New York City, which had a population at the time of 33,000.

University of Southern Florida

The next year, they moved to Broadway Street to a home where there were two drawing rooms for hosting weekly “levees.”

Martha Washington was ill at the time of the first inauguration in April of 1789, staying behind in Virginia. Apparently George dined alone that evening but attended the ball and enjoyed dancing the minuet. Soon his wife and grandchildren, Nellie and Washy, joined him. Congress bought new mahogany furniture for the house.

Business of state was conducted at the Fraunces Tavern, where George was assembling the first Cabinet: Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State; Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury; and Henry Knox, Secretary of War. Our first President signed the Bill of Rights here. Ironically, the Fraunces was the site where, a dozen years before during the war, an attempt was made on the general’s life. One account is that a young girl found out about some poisoned peas on his plate and threw them out the window.

But in 1789 both George and the new government were up and running. He held public receptions on Tuesday afternoons while Martha had hers at 8 p.m. on Fridays. at which they liked to serve lemonade and ice cream.

Although George enjoyed taking walks in Battery Park, he also rode in a carriage pulled by six horses. He often went to the theatre.

Many of Martha’s peers had compliments for her. She was affable, gentle and benevolent. Unlike some that followed, she didn’t act as an intermediary between factions or gather and disseminate information, said Cokie Roberts, herself a daughter of two politicians. “I could never keep quiet as she does,” Abigail Adams revealed in a letter to a friend.

George, Martha and their grandchildren Washy and Nellie. mountvernon.org

In 1790 the family moved to Philadelphia, where they and their servants spent the remaining seven years of two terms in office.

“Our dwellings in New York and Philadelphia were not home, only a sojourn,” the relieved first lady said when she returned to Mount Vernon, and added that she was content to be “an old-fashioned Virginia housekeeper.”

Sadly, the retirement did not last long. George Washington passed away on December 14, 1799, just before the dawn of a new century. The previous one had been hallmarked on this side of the Atlantic by his great efforts.

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I had fun researching this one! Facts come from Cokie Roberts’ book Ladies of Liberty (2008), John Kaminsky’s book Founders on the Founders (2008), smithsonianmag.com, nyhistory.org, ushistory.org, washingtonpost.com, mountvernon.org, frauncestavernmuseum.org, and phillymag.com.

What George Washington Said (and How He Said It)

Five years ago I wondered in this blog what George Washington might have sounded like. More recently I found a book called The Founders on the Founders (John P. Kaminski, editor; University Press 2008) with some fascinating letters by people who talked with him.

Charles Willson Peale, the painter, recalled a visit to Mount Vernon in December of 1773:

Several young gentlemen…and myself were engaged in pitching the bar, one of the athletic sports common in those days, when suddenly the colonel appeared among us. He requested to be shown the pegs that marked the bounds of our efforts; then, smiling and without putting off his coat, he held out his hand for the missile…the bar whizzed through the air, striking the ground far, very far, beyond our utmost limits. We were indeed amazed, as we stood around, all stripped to the buff, with shirt sleeves rolled up, and having thought ourselves very clever fellows, while the colonel, on retiring, pleasantly observed, “When you beat my pitch, young gentlemen, I’ll try again.”

Chevalier de La Luzerne in a letter, March 29, 1783:

After a war of eight years, during which he has scarcely left his army, and has never take any repose, he has received the news of the peace with the greatest joy. It made him shed tears, and he said it was the happiest hour of his life.

James McHenry in a letter of December 23, 1783:

Today…the General at a public audience made a deposit of his commission, and in a pathetic (emotional) manner took leave of Congress. It was a solemn and affecting spectacle, such a one as history does not present. The spectators all wept, and there was hardly a member of Congress who did not drop tears. The General’s hand which held the address shook as he read it. But when he commended the interests of his dearest country to Almighty God, and those who had the superintendence of them to his holy keeping, his voice faltered and sunk… After the pause which was necessary for him to recover himself, he proceeded to say in the most penetrating manner, “Having now finished the work assigned me I retire from the great theater of action, and bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission and take my leave of all the employments of public life.”

National Portrait Gallery (npg.si.edu)

Fisher Ames to George Richards Minot, May 1789:

I was present (at the inauguration of Washington) in the pew with the President, and I must assure you that…I still think of him with more veneration than for any other person. He addressed the two Houses in the Senate chamber; it was a very touching scene, and quite of the solemn kind. His aspect grave, almost to sadness, his modesty, actually shaking; his voice deep, a little tremulous, and so low as to call for close attention…

Abigail Adams to Mary Cranch, January 1790:

If he (Washington) was not really one of the best intentioned men in the world he might be a very dangerous one. He is polite with dignity, affable without familiarity, distant without haughtiness, grave without austerity, modest, wise and good.

Julian Ursyn Niemcewiz, May 1798:

He held out his hand to me and shook mine. We went into the parlor: I sat down beside him; I was moved, speechless…He began by questioning me about General Kosciusko…”How long are you in this country?” — “Eight months” — “How do you like it?” –I am happy, Sir, to see in America those blessings which I was so ardently wishing for in my own country.” He bowed his head with a modest air and said to me, “I wished always to your country well and that with all my heart.” He uttered these last words with feeling.

And this letter, which Washington wrote to his wife, Martha, at the beginning of the War for Independence, reveals much. It is rare because she burned most of their correspondence before she died.

My Dearest, I am now set down to write to you on a subject which fills me with inexpressible concern…that it is necessary for me to proceed to Boston to take upon me the command of (the Army). You may believe me my dear Patcy, when I assure you in the most solemn manner, that, so far from seeking this appointment, I have used every endeavor in my power to avoid it... As it has been a kind of destiny that has thrown me upon this service, I shall hope that my undertaking of it is designed to answer some good purpose… I shall rely therefore, confidently, on that Providence which has heretofore preserved and been bountiful to me, not doubting but that I shall return safe to you in the fall. My happiness will flow, from the uneasiness I know you will feel from being left alone—I therefore beg of you to summon your whole fortitude and resolution, and pass your time as agreeable as possible–nothing will give me so much sincere satisfaction as to hear this, and to hear it from your own pen.

He has been gone for 220 years. During his lifetime he was greatly revered, and the passing of time should not dim the virtues he showed his contemporaries: patience, honesty, courage, steadiness, sensitivity, politeness. As Benjamin Rush wrote, He seems to be one of those illustrious heroes whom Providence raises up once in three or four hundred years to save a nation from ruin.

George Washington’s Horse

What do you know about the horse George Washington rode? In paintings we usually see a majestic white animal complementing the general’s stature, hair and blue and gold uniform. Washington was reported to be a superb equestrian, an athlete like Tom Brady or Wayne Gretsky would be to us. But the the actual steed? Its name? Its height? How long it lived?

Washington actually used two horses during the American Revolution: Nelson, shown above, and Blueskin, shown below. Nelson was George Washington’s preferred mount in battle because he was less skittish than part-Arabian Blueskin.

Then, as now, horses were at their best when cared for by farriers, blacksmiths and veterinarians. We can know one of those who took care of Nelson and Blueskin, because a descendant is in possession of original letters and documents.

Kenneth Clarke, who lives in Ohio, had often heard family stories about an ancestor’s connections to George Washington. During the American Revolution Clarke’s fifth great-grandfather, Simeon Prior, shod Washington’s horse and served as the general’s bodyguard. Clarke’s elderly relative left him papers over 200 years old describing some very early history of our country.

Clarke reveals much in his recent book, Wolves and Flax. The title comes from the fact that the Prior family, Simeon and Katharine and several children, had to raise flax instead of wool in the wilderness of Cuyahoga Falls for their livelihood. Too many wolves destroyed the sheep.

Historians, writers and history buffs are always ready to investigate a previously unknown primary source. If you are in this group, I suggest getting a copy of the book.

Nelson and Blueskin lived out their days at Mount Vernon, never having to work after the war. The chestnut-colored Nelson, who was 16 hands tall and died at 27, always came running when he heard Washington’s call. Just like us when we find that there is new information about the Father of our Country.

You can read more on Kenneth Clarke’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/wolvesandflax