People Who Made Headlines and Faded Into Obscurity

Archive for the ‘American History’ Category

STEPHEN HOPKINS (1581 – 1644) Jamestown Colonist and Pilgrim on the Mayflower

In adventure, American History, Explorers, People from England, Sailing on February 24, 2011 at 11:00 AM

Stephen Hopkins

When the opportunity for freedom and independence brought settlers to the Jamestown colony, Stephen Hopkins, a merchant from Hampshire, England, missed the first two chances to go.  But, when the Virginia Company was looking for recruits a third time, Hopkins was ready.  At 28 years old, he left his pregnant wife, Mary, and three children to join the Third Supply expedition to the New World.  When a hurricane hit them and the colonists were forced to make a detour, Hopkins’ rebel spirit almost cost him his life.

When they set sail in May 1609, Hopkins was aboard the Sea Venture, the flagship vessel of seven ships. They were commissioned to bring desperately needed supplies and more settlers to the Jamestown colony.  He signed on as a servant who would receive free passage to the colony, lodging, food and ten shillings every three weeks to send back to his family in England.  After living in the New World for three years he would be free of his obligations to the investors and receive 30 acres in the colony.  Such an arrangement seemed like a small price to pay for someone as independent minded as Hopkins.

Onboard the ship, Hopkins was characterized as a loud mouth who quoted the Bible a lot.  Even though he was not especially religious, he was very knowledgeable of the Scriptures and became the clerk to the chaplain.  It was his duty to read the Bible verses during the Sunday church services.

A DISASTER AT SEA           On Monday, July 24, two months after leaving England, the expedition was only about a week away from their destination when a hurricane out of the south proved to be more than they could handle.  The seven ships were scattered like autumn leaves, and they lost track of each other.  The planks of the Sea Venture were held together by oakum, fibers from ropes wedged between the boards and covered with tar.  The seal did not hold, and through the leaks, the ship took on water.

For four days Hopkins and the other male passengers were pumping and bailing water.  It was estimated that they dumped 6, 400 gallons of water every hour, but that was not enough to keep them from sinking.  They also had to throw overboard half of their guns and a lot of their luggage, food and supplies.

Determination and hope were barely outlasting exhaustion and hunger, and most of the passengers were sinking into the resignation that they would die very soon at sea.  On Friday, July 28, their efforts were rewarded, however, and land was sighted.  Energy was renewed, and the ship was able to precariously run aground at Bermuda.  Miraculously, no one was killed or seriously injured in the storm.

SO CLOSE AND YET SO FAR            Landing at Bermuda turned out to be a happy accident.  There was plenty of food and since it was an uninhabited island, the castaways didn’t have to defend themselves against natives.  The worst that happened to most was getting sick from eating too many berries or drinking too much “bibby” made from the fermented fruit of the palmetto tree.

Despite the positive experience the castaways were having, the goal was still to get to Virginia.  The Sea Venture was destroyed in the storm, so they used whatever wood they could salvage and supplemented it with local cedar to build two boats to carry everyone on to Jamestown.

Hopkins, however, knew a good thing when he saw it.  He wanted to take advantage of the riches Bermuda offered and to colonize it.  He theorized that since they hadn’t made it to Jamestown they were no longer obligated to the Virginia Company.  Hopkins had to secretly try to enlist supporters because Sir Thomas Gates, who represented the Virginia Company as the incoming governor in Virginia, had already reminded the group that dissent would not be tolerated and that, traditionally, going against the commander’s orders was punishable by death.

Two men who entertained Hopkins’ proposal but then feared being associated with him reported the rebel to Gates.  Hopkins was tried on January 24, 1610 for mutiny.  After hearing condemning testimony against him, Hopkins had only one strategy to save himself.  He cried and begged that his life be spared for the sake of his family back in England.  He made such a dramatic plea that several men became sympathetic enough to hound Gates until he pardoned Hopkins.

YOU CAN GET THERE FROM HERE                On May 10, 1610, after nine months of relatively comfortable island living, Hopkins and the castaways set sail on two ships, Deliverance and Patience, for their original destination.  Both ships made it safely to Virginia, and they were greeted with good news: the other six ships in the original expedition had gone directly there, although the passengers were in very bad shape.

The bad news was that on their arrival at Jamestown on May 23, the newcomers found that the population of settlers had been decimated by a devastating drought, famine and harsh winter, and they had been forced to resort to cannibalism for survival.  The food and supplies the Third Supply expedition was to bring were lost in the hurricane.

Gates acknowledged that the only chance they had for survival was to go back to England.  Just as they were abandoning Jamestown, help arrived.  Lord Delaware and his convoy of three ships brought enough food for a year.  Delaware became governor and rebuilt the settlement into a successful community.

Hopkins’ wife died in 1613, and he made his way back to his homeland some time after that to be greeted by the news and to learn that his children were orphans in the custody of the Church.  He reclaimed his family and moved to London where he worked as a tanner.  In February, 1618 Hopkins married Elizabeth Fisher and had a daughter at the end of the year.

HEADED BACK TO THE NEW WORLD             Once again an irresistible opportunity came knocking.  A group of Separatists were going to the New World to establish a community free of religious ties to the Church of England.  They were interested in settling near a more tolerant Dutch colony near the mouth of the Hudson River.  In order to increase their numbers, they recruited some whose ambition was more for the economic opportunities than for religious reasons.  Hopkins was the perfect candidate, especially with his previous experience in Jamestown, and he signed on as a “Stranger.”  This time he packed up his family to make the voyage with him on the Mayflower, leaving on September 6, 1620.

Hopkins’ party included his pregnant wife, three children and two servants.  Somewhere in the Atlantic the baby was born, and they named him Oceanus.

The journey was not as dangerous as the previous one, but it wasn’t a pleasure cruise either.  Elizabeth and children stayed in the dark gun deck in makeshift compartments.  Hopkins slept in a hammock wherever he could find a place to hang it.  They did encounter a couple of severe storms that drenched the passengers and their belongings and cracked a main beam of the ship.  Fortunately, some clever passengers were able to fix that and stop the leaking.

After 66 days at sea, on November 11 the Mayflower stopped in Provincetown, Massachusetts, north of their Hudson River destination.  There was a lot of discussion about whether they should continue on to find the Hudson or stay put.  Hopkins, despite almost being killed for his independent ideas in Bermuda, politicked for staying where they were so they would have less governing oversight and more freedom to do what they wanted.  He argued, again, that since they hadn’t reached their original destination they were exempt from obligation to their original agreement.

After much deliberation, Captain Jones made the safe decision, considering it was winter, to weigh anchor there.  Jones assembled Hopkins and the other male passengers into his cabin to determine how to proceed.  During that meeting it was decided that a set of laws was needed to unify the group and create a “civil body politic” for the good of the whole colony.  Hopkins was one of the 41 present to sign the document called the Mayflower Compact.

Because of his previous experience in the New World, Captain Miles Standish chose Hopkins and a few other men to explore the territory.  They were scouting for weeks to find a suitable location to establish their colony.  One morning they were attacked by Indians, and later they got caught in a storm that damaged their boat.  On December 11, 1620 they found “Thievish Harbor” where there was fresh water and no natives.  Five days later, the Mayflower landed there, and two weeks later they began construction on the common house, the first building of the Plymouth Plantation.  The settlers lived on the Mayflower until they could build houses for themselves.

Hopkins had one of the largest houses in the settlement.  It had the typical fenced garden, a barn, dairy, cowshed, and apple orchard.  There was enough space to accommodate the five children who were born after 1622.  He built the first wharf in Plymouth, a tavern, and a small store where Indians could trade beaver skins for English goods.

Having Hopkins in the community was a great asset.  He was adept at fishing and hunting, and because of his previous experience as a colonist, he acted as a liaison to the local Indians, often welcoming them into his own home to dine and even spend the night.  One native, Squanto, lived with the Hopkins family.  He had learned English when he was kidnapped by previous English explorers and taken to England for a while, and he was the sole survivor of his tribe which had been wiped out by disease brought to the New World by the foreigners.

Squanto’s association with the colonists was mutually beneficial.  He made possible a visit by Woosamequin ‘Yellow Feather,’ the chief of the Wampanoag tribe.  Both the Wampanoag and the settlers feared another tribe, the Narragansetts, and needed allies.  With Hopkins acting as host, Governor Carver and the chief negotiated a peace treaty that guaranteed support in the case of attack, a compact that lasted for 50 years.

LAW MAKER AND BREAKER           Although loyal to King Charles I, the citizens of Plymouth created their own laws and local government.  Hopkins was elected as one of seven Council Assistants who served as advisors to the governor and ruled in judicial matters.  Being one to help create the laws did not make Hopkins a model citizen, however.  In June, 1636 he was found guilty of beating John Tisdale and fined £5.  As the owner of a tavern, he was responsible for the behavior of his patrons.  Several times he was fined for serving drink on Sunday, for permitting servants to drink and play shuffle board at his place, and for allowing his friends to get drunk.  He was also guilty of price gouging.  He had to pay £5 for selling wine, beer and liquor for exorbitant prices, and he tried to sell a mirror for 16 pence that could be bought somewhere else for nine pence.

One incident landed Hopkins in jail.  His indentured servant, Dorothy Temple, was pregnant by a man who had been hung for murder.  She was whipped for having a bastard child, but then she had nowhere to live.  The court ordered Hopkins, as her owner, to be responsible for her support for the duration of her contract.  Hopkins wanted to resolve the matter on his own terms without a court order, and he was found to be in contempt.  He spent four days in jail until John Holmes agreed to take Temple and her son to live with him for the payment of £3, relieving Hopkins of his obligation.

Hopkins again outlived his wife when Elizabeth died in 1640.  Four years later he prepared for his own passing.  He wrote his will on June 6, 1644 and died sometime shortly thereafter, although the exact date is not known.  He was 63 years old.  He was considered wealthy by local standards and bequeathed to his children his house, many animals and “moveable goods” such as books, rugs, flannel sheet, a frying pan, fire shovel, butter churn, two wheels, a cheese rack, scale and weights and four skins.

QUESTION:  Do you think it’s more important to stand up for what you believe at all cost or to find a way to compromise to fit into a group?

©2011 Debbie Foulkes all Rights Reserved

Sources:

Woodward, Hobson, A Brave Vessel, The True Tale of The Castaways Who Rescued Jamestown and Inspired Shakespeare’s The Tempest. New York: Viking, 2009.

Philbrick, Nathaniel, Mayflower, A Story of Courage, Community, and War. New York: Viking, 2006.

http://www.mccarterfamily.com/mccarterpage/stories/stephen_hopkins/intro.htm

http://www.mayflowerhistory.com/Passengers/StephenHopkins.php

http://pilgrimhopkins.com/site1/Newsletters/AC_su07.pdf

http://www.usconstitution.net/mayflower.html

http://www.mayflowerhistory.com/PrimarySources/MayflowerCompact.php

http://www.histarch.uiuc.edu/plymouth/ccflaw.html#Ic

http://www.mayflowerhistory.com/PrimarySources/WillsAndProbates/StephenHopkins.php

KATIE SANDWINA (1884 – 1952) Circus Strongwoman

In American History, Biography, Circus Performers, Female Athletes, Feminists, Vaudeville Acts, women on December 14, 2010 at 10:20 PM

Katie Sandwina

Catherine Brumbach (“Katie”) was born with everything she needed to succeed in life, and she grew to be a beautiful, strong woman, a really strong woman.  Her physical strength and beauty gave her an edge in a man’s world, making her the specimen of perfection. 

Brumbach was the second oldest of 15 children whose parents were circus performers.  Of Bavarian stock, Philippe, who was six feet six inches tall and weighed about 260 pounds with a 56 inch chest, and his wife, Johanna, whose biceps measured 15 inches, amazed European audiences with their feats of strength.  Three daughters inherited the strength and talent of their parents and joined the act very young. 

When she was two, Brumbach reportedly did hand stands on her father’s hands.  She was trained in gymnastics and then added weightlifting to her regime when she hit adolescence.  Brumbach wasn’t the strongest of her siblings, but her strength combined with her perfect proportions and natural beauty made her the main attraction.

JOINING THE FAMILY BUSINESS                      The Brumbach family were contract players in circuses all over Europe, and Brumbach’s star continued to rise.  When she was a teenager, her father offered 100 German marks to any man who would come on stage and beat her at wrestling.  She won every time, and one evening she got a prize she hadn’t expected.  Max Heymann, a five foot six inch acrobat who weighed about 160 pounds, was having a hard time getting his career off the ground.  He saw an opportunity for easy cash and sauntered confidently onto the stage.  Brumbach won the match handily, but he won her heart.  She was 16 and Heymann was 19, and two years later he joined the act permanently when they married.

While touring around Europe, the strongwoman and her fellow performers happened to briefly go to New York.  As a publicity stunt at the end of the act, she challenged anyone who dared to try to lift more weight than she did.  Eugen Sandow, the most famous bodybuilder of the time (click here for the profile of Eugen Sandow) happened to be in the audience.  No publicity manager could have ever conceived of a more perfect attraction.  They matched each other pound for pound until Brumbach lifted a 300 pound bar bell over her head.  As a stunned audience witnessed, Sandow could only raise it to his chest.  Brumbach proudly carried her victory with her everywhere by adopting the moniker “Sandwina,” a female derivative of Sandow.

JUST ANOTHER DAY AT THE OFFICE              Sandwina and Heymann and a couple of other men became “The Sandwinas.”  Early in the 20th century they came to America for a more extended commitment and performed with small vaudeville shows up and down the East coast.  A year later they were hired by the prestigious Orpheum Vaudeville Circuit and toured throughout the country.  Sandwina was billed as “Europe’s Queen of Strength and Beauty.”  She twisted iron bars into spirals and broke chains with her bare hands, juggled cannonballs and supported a 1,200-pound cannon on her shoulders.  She even lay on a bed of nails while volunteers used sledgehammers to hit an anvil balanced on her chest.

In 1909 while on tour with the Orpheum, the Heymanns had a baby, Teddy.  Being pregnant made Sandwina seem more feminine to some people, but she didn’t let it interfere with her career.  She performed two shows the night before her son was born.  This strapping child, who weighed 50 pounds at age two, was nicknamed “Superbaby” by the press.  During interviews, reporters asked Sandwina’s advice on the care and feeding of children so other kids could grow up to be equally robust and strong.

The Sandwinas went back to Europe for a while.  Holding her husband overhead had become a popular feat, and to add to that, for the finale Sandwina lifted three men.  John Ringling, one of the brothers who had recently bought the Barnum & Bailey circus, was on a scouting trip.  He signed Sandwina and Heymann and brought them back to the States in 1911.  They weren’t a featured act but instead had to perform simultaneously with four other strength acts, all competing for attention.  When reporters became curious about Sandwina, a press conference was arranged to move her into the spotlight.

THE PICTURE OF PERFECTION                          P.T. Barnum was once quoted as saying, “Without promotion something terrible happens…Nothing!”1 so meeting the press became an event.  At Madison Square Garden, where they were performing, over a dozen doctors were brought in to weigh and measure Sandwina publicly.  She was deemed to be the perfect female specimen.  She was five feet nine and three quarters inches tall and weighed 210 pounds.  Her chest was 44 inches, her waist was 29 inches, and her hips were 43 inches.  Her calf measured 16 inches and her flexed right bicep was 14 inches.  To enhance her appearance, especially in contrast to her husband, Sandwina always wore two-inch heels and piled her hair on top of her head to make her look taller.  When the measuring was finished Sandwina demonstrated her strength for the reporters.  First she lifted Heymann over her head with one hand, and then she lifted her husband and son, holding them both with only one arm.

For all her bulk, Sandwina was described as beautiful and feminine with supple curves and arms smooth enough to look good in a ball gown.  With her new status in the center ring, Sandwina was earning up to $1,500 a week.  Sandwina represented the perfect woman in many ways.  Besides her physical beauty, strength and charm, she was a working mother.  In 1912 she became the Vice President of the suffrage group at the Barnum & Bailey Circus.  Working with her husband and dominating him in the act made her seem all the more liberated.

In 1918 while the Heymann family was in Istanbul, a second son, Alfred, was born.  The story has been passed down that it happened during some civil unrest and Sandwina had to crawl under barbed wire to get herself to a hospital.  When she arrived, the hospital was full and she gave birth on the floor.

When The Sandwinas retired from the Barnum & Bailey Circus they continued to do what they loved.  For a while in the 1930s they worked with the WPA circus, and then in the 1940s they opened a cafe/bar in Queens, New York.  Occasionally when a customer asked, Sandwina would bend an iron bar or break a horseshoe after serving their drink.

In 1952 Sandwina died of cancer, and after 52 years of marriage, The Sandwinas split up.

QUESTION:  If you could join the circus, what kind of act would you want to do?

 ©2010 Debbie Foulkes All Rights Reserved

 Sources:

http://www.starkcenter.org/research/igh/articles/igh10.1.4.pdf

http://thehumanmarvels.com/?p=878

http://www.starkcenter.org/research/igh/articles/igh9.2.4.pdf

http://www.aafla.org/SportsLibrary/IGH/IGH0106/IGH0106d.pdf

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1067134/index.htm

1http://thinkexist.com/quotes/p.t._barnum/

DR. WILLIAM MINOR (1834 -1920) Insane Doctor Who Contributed to the Oxford English Dictionary

In American History, Biography, Doctors, Mental health, U.S. Army, Writers on November 8, 2010 at 8:48 PM

William Minor

William Minor had a split personality.  He was a doctor whose hobbies included playing flute and painting.  His contribution to the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary was immeasurable.  But internally he suffered from paranoia, which determined the course of his adult life.

Minor’s parents were Americans descended from early settlers in New England, but in 1834 they went to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) as missionaries, representing a Scottish Presbyterian group called Covenanters.  His mother died when he was three, and his father remarried another young missionary woman.  The mission school gave Minor and his siblings an excellent education, and he had the opportunity to learn several languages.

When Minor was 13, he started having “lascivious thoughts” toward the exotic native girls.  He never acted on his impulses, but it was so difficult for him to reconcile these urges with his religious upbringing that he was plagued with guilt.  His parents sent him back to the United States and the responsibility of his uncle, Alfred, in New Haven, Connecticut.

SERVING HIS COUNTRY                          Minor graduated from Yale Medical School in 1863.  With the Civil War going strong, he joined the Union Army as a surgeon and served at the Knight Hospital in New Haven.  He didn’t like the isolation of the hospital and requested to be sent to battle.  Eventually he got his wish and was sent to Northern Virginia where he first encountered the filth of a field hospital and excruciating pain of soldiers suffering from gangrene.  His friends described him as a sensitive man who loved to paint, play the flute and read books, and the battlefield was not an easy place for a man with such artistic sensibilities.

Through a supposed change in orders, in May 1864 Minor ended up in Orange County, Virginia, the site of the Battle of the Wilderness.  In addition to the extreme casualties of battle, desertion was a huge problem.  More than 5,000 soldiers were deserting each month, depleting the ranks of the army.  The punishment for deserters was painful humiliation through branding the letter D on his hip or cheek.  It fell to Dr. Minor to inflict the punishment on one young soldier who ran away during battle.  Minor took the hot iron out of the coals and reluctantly seared the face of the errant young man.  Minor was so affected by that experience that he believed the soldier would somehow seek him out to exact revenge.

Minor was transferred to the L’Overture Hospital in Alexandria where he distinguished himself and received a promotion to assistant surgeon in the U.S. Army.  He moved to Governor’s Island, New York where he treated cholera patients.  It was here that Minor began to exhibit signs of paranoia and promiscuous behavior.  He started carrying a Colt .38 and spent every night with prostitutes which resulted in his contracting venereal disease.  On one occasion he made a failed attempt to cure himself injecting white Rhine wine into his urethra.

Minor became engaged to a young woman from New York.  Since none of his friends ever met her, it was assumed that she was some kind of entertainer.  Ironically, it was her mother who pressured her daughter to call off the engagement, which she did, leaving Minor bitter.  His resentment intensified when the Army relocated him away from the temptations of the city to Fort Barrancas, Florida, an obvious demotion.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT                      In 1868 Minor was diagnosed as “delusional” and was considered a suicide and homicide risk.  He was willingly admitted to the Government Hospital for the Insane in Washington, D.C. (known as St. Elizabeth’s Hospital) and officially retired from the U.S. Army.

In 1871, Minor was released, and he visited friends and family before boarding a ship to London, hoping that a change of scenery would cure him.  He settled in Lambeth, an area in south London that afforded him “easy access to easy women.”  Minor’s paranoia followed him across the pond.  He believed people were breaking into his room while he slept.  One freezing cold winter night before dawn, Minor shot and killed George Merrett who was on his way to work.  Minor thought Merrett was an intruder, but later admitted he shot the wrong man.  During the trial, the full scope of Minor’s mental illness came out, and he was committed to the Asylum for the Criminally Insane in Broadmoor.

Minor’s life at Broadmoor was very comfortable.  His status as a surgeon was respected, and he was given two adjacent rooms, one for sleeping and one for him to paint, play the flute and read.  Because of his pension from the U.S. Army, Minor was allowed to buy steak, wine, brandy, newspapers and antiquarian books for his collection.  He hired other inmates to perform chores for him.  By day he enjoyed the freedom to stroll around the grounds and do what he wanted to, but at night, his delusions persisted.  Even though he blocked the door with furniture, he believed that intruders poisoned or abused him and defaced his books.

Minor felt truly sorry for his crime, and after almost ten years of institutionalization he asked permission to pay some restitution to Merrett’s widow, Eliza.  She agreed to accept some money from her husband’s killer, and she visited Minor at Broadmoor.  In fact, the two got on well enough that for a while she made monthly visits, delivering to the inmate books she bought on his behalf.

A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY                       In one of these bundles of books, Minor saw a notice from the editor, James Murray, asking for volunteers to help create the first Oxford English Dictionary (OED).  Volunteers collected words from their reading to be included in the dictionary and submitted them with quotes from the books illustrating their meaning.  This was the perfect occupation for an intelligent, educated bibliophile with lots of time on his hands, and it provided for him a connection to the outside world.

The doctor set about this task with voracious energy, meticulously copying words and quotations from volumes of books.  He started working in tandem with the editor in Oxford, writing him to find out which letter he was working on and then searching through his papers to send him words starting with that letter. Minor and Murray corresponded regularly, and the first time Murray visited Minor at Broadmoor, he was shocked to discover that Minor was an inmate and not a staff doctor.  The editor and the volunteer met together many times over the years and developed a friendship based on a mutual love of reading and words.  Occasionally Minor would offer a story about his nighttime tribulations, bringing Murray into understanding of his mental state. 

Over the course of 20 years, Minor made an incomparable contribution to the writing of the OED.  Murray called his efforts “enormous,” acknowledging that within a two year period, Minor supplied at least 12,000 quotations.

After 30 years in Broadmoor, Minor had been there longer than any other patient.  His nightly torments, during which claimed to have uncontrollable sexual relations with thousands of women, never abated.  He saw himself as a vile sinner in the eyes of God.

On December 3, 1902, when Minor was 68 years old, he wrote a note asking for the Medical Officer.  One of the perks Minor enjoyed was to have a pen knife, and he had used it in an act of penance to cut off his penis.

Two years after his self mutilation, Minor became increasingly sicker.  He was 76 years old when he was given permission to return to America to live out his last days.  His brother, Alfred, went to England to escort him on the journey.  Murray and his wife went to Broadmoor to say goodbye in person, and to give Minor six unpublished volumes of the OED to take with him. 

Dr. Minor returned to the Government Hospital for the insane in Washington, D.C.  During the nine years he lived there he was diagnosed as having schizophrenia, a term that only came into usage in 1912.  In 1919, Minor’s nephew successfully petitioned to have his uncle moved to a hospital for the elderly insane in Hartford, Connecticut called The Retreat.  Less than a year later, Minor died of pneumonia in his sleep.

QUESTION:  What is your favorite word?  Why?

©2010 Debbie Foulkes All Rights Reserved

Sources:

Winchester, Simon, The Professor and the Madman, A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary. New York: HarperCollins, 1998.

http://www.berkshirerecordoffice.org.uk/documents/William_Chester_Minor.pdf

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