Mrs. Amidon's Memorial

Recently I had the chance to use the Library of Congress for the first time. Of course I went there to look at the little publication containing the Amidon memorial speeches. I thought I might find a soft pamphlet, but it turned out that I found a hard bound book that was very, very slim. Mounted in it for a frontispiece there was indeed a photograph of Margaret Amidon, as the newspaper article said, “affording a good remembrance of her pleasant, thoughtful face.” It’s a studio (Gardner) photo that shows the lady in a parlor setting, standing nearly in profile before a fireplace, with one foot raised onto the hearth fender. She has a notably large nose.

The frontispiece photograph of Margaret Amidon.

The opening selection in the little volume is Samuel AtLee’s eulogy for Mrs. Amidon. This eulogy forms the principal part of the book—almost the whole of it. From this material came the biographical excerpt printed in the newspapers at the time the book was issued. At the Library I was happy to read the entire piece at last. What follows is my transcription of it.

---

Memorial Address

on the

Life and Services

of

Mrs. Margaret Milburn-Amidon,

by Samuel Yorke AtLee

The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones;

So let it be with Caesar.

And so it was with Caesar: and so must it ever be with men whose only rule of action is their own predominance.

But it is not so with those in whose life have been manifested the love of God and the love of the neighbor.

The fragrance of their good deeds survives their sepulture and embalms their memory in the hearts of all who have admired, or been benefited by, their example.

In this latter category is the subject of this address.


Margaret Agnes, the daughter of George and Alice Milburn, was the fifth of seven children, and was born in Alexandria, Va., on the 21st day of January, 1827. Her father, George Milburn, a native of Dumfries, Scotland, came to this country when a boy, and settled in Alexandria. Her mother, Alice Milburn, was also a resident in Alexandria, and a descendant of an English family which came to Virginia soon after the Revolutionary War. Her parents were of the same name, but neither could trace any consanguinity between the families.

Margaret lost her mother soon after her sixth year, and she became fatherless five years afterwards. Meanwhile her father’s second marriage gave Margaret a new mother, so that, at his death, she did not consider herself an orphan.

Between this mother and herself there was always the most devoted affection. Named after her then aunt, at her baptism into the New Jerusalem—Swedenborgian—Church, Margaret learned to expect her caresses and to enjoy her love from her earliest remembrance until this earthly relationship was severed by her decease, on the 3d of December last, a period of nearly forty-three years.

Margaret was first placed under instruction in an infant school at four years of age. She learned rapidly, and comforted her mother in her last sickness, by her considerate filial assiduity, and by reading aloud to her from the New Testament at her bedside.

She was next a pupil of Mrs. Hunt; and, afterwards, of Mrs. Thompson, whose son, Mr. John E. Thompson, perpetuates the family usefulness, and has, for nearly twenty-five years, been a teacher in our public schools. Margaret and Mr. Thompson were thus schoolmates; and, in after life, occupied the same building as teachers for fifteen years. They were each emulous of the other, but their rivalry had no envy in it; and, not for an hour, in all that time, was their friendship interrupted.

Her last preceptor was Mr. Wilson, who became afterwards a teacher in our public schools, and was favorably known by many of our old citizens.

Soon after leaving Mr. W.’s school she opened a school herself. Young as she was at that time, about 16 years, she had the faculty of securing the respect of her pupils; and her love of order and gentle manners won their obedience and affection. Her success in her profession soon obtained general commendation, and by the advice of her friends she offered herself as a candidate for employment in our public schools.

She passed the examination before the Board of Trustees, and was elected in 1849 to the charge of a primary school in the fourth district. In this position she remained, enhancing her reputation, until her promotion, in 1854, to the grammar school of the same district, which she occupied until her decease.

In December, 1862, she was married to Mr. Hollis Amidon of this city, a gentleman who so truly appreciated her character that he never sought to dissuade her from a vocation that had become identified with her happiness.

She was not a teacher from any motive of self or desire of profit. She could at any time, by opening a private seminary, have secured a treble compensation for her labor; but she quietly put aside all such solicitations and persevered in her prescribed duty: for her labor was a labor of love. A friend of hers was once wishing aloud that she were rich enough to retire from the drudgery of teaching. She thanked him for his good will, but assured him that, no matter how rich she might be, she would continue to teach.

Engrossing as were her daily cares, she was not content to take her ease on the day of rest. She was attracted to the worship of God by the ministrations of Rev. Dr. Samson, and on the 4th of March, 1849, became a member of the Baptist Church.

She soon volunteered to take a charge in the Sunday school, and a class was accordingly assigned to her. How faithfully and conscientiously she fulfilled her duty let the tears of her little scholars attest! When her health began to fail, she was expostulated with by a friend, who urged that, weak as she was, it could no longer be her duty to exhaust her little strength with her Sunday class. She replied that she did not regard it a duty so much as a pleasure.

It was in May, 1868, that latent consumption began to manifest itself. But she struggled against the disease, and, with brief intervals of exhaustion, attended her school; but in about a year she was compelled to forego the labors she delighted in. The trustees, with considerate kindness, anticipated the usual time for holding her annual examination, and appointed the month of May for what was then to be her last performance of that duty. Her pallid face and panting utterance betrayed her waning life, and tears were seen on the cheeks of her pupils. She was exhorted to set out for a more genial climate, and a committee of the city authorities waited upon her, offering her a year’s leave of absence with continued salary. But she could not reconcile her conscience to the acceptance of the kind offer, and she calmly prepared for the inevitable result. Most solicitous friends ministered to her, and the Rev. Mr. Samson and the Rev. Mr. Fox imparted all the consolations of religion and of personal friendship.

She lingered without complaint until the third of last December, when she departed, calmly and humbly, but with a diffident trust that she might be received into one of the many mansions prepared by the Lord for those who love Him and obey His commandments.

Her pupils loved her. The most insubordinate children could be subdued by her admonitions. This power in her character was strikingly exemplified when she took charge of the primary school. The boys of that school were notorious for their fierce contempt of all discipline. Her predecessor in charge of that school, Mr. Morrison, had exhausted in vain persuasion as well as command and he relinquished his authority in despair.

She must have had some misgivings, some inner tremblings, when she first stood at her official desk and looked down over the bold, impudent faces and saucy eyes scanning her countenance. The pause of two or three minutes, awaiting silence, wrought a change, however, in those impudent faces and saucy eyes. Her attitude of command and of entreaty subdued their insolence, and her glances of loving reproach propitiated the young insurgents. She addressed them in words warm from the heart. She told them what she had heard about their conduct. She reasoned with them like a mother, and expostulated with them like a sister. She appealed to them as young American gentlemen, whose gallantry would disdain to insult a woman, and who would, she knew, feel an indignity to their teacher as they would an insult to their mother or to their sisters.

The effect of this little speech was not “magical,” but it was natural. It proved the omnipotence of love. After some occasional turbulences, incident to all states of transition, the boys became respectful and obedient to their teacher and diligent in their studies, and, in a few months, no school was rated higher for proficiency and demeanor.

Five years later she was promoted to the district school, in which her classes were restricted to girls only. She now found her true position. Her pupils were as her daughters, and they responded to her solicitude like daughters. She watched over them as a parent, and many of them have thanked her with grateful tears for her timely and gentle warnings while they were passing through the temptations of hilarious, unthinking, impulsive youth.

I have been permitted to copy a portion of a letter written by one sister to another, both of whom had been her pupils:

“I need not tell you, dear sister, how deeply I mourn the loss of my dearest friend and counsellor, Mrs. Amidon—a friend to whom I owe more than ordinary love and affection, for it is to her I am indebted for whatever acquirements or ability I possess. How my heart is carried back to those happy hours passed in the schoolroom under the guidance of that gentle being!

“What a mighty influence she exerted over those committed to her charge—an influence which will guide and govern us in all our intercourse through life. Loved and cherished, her memory will ever be engraven on my heart, and though gone from among us she will never be forgotten.”

Few families in the southern part of Washington have been without a representative in Mrs. Amidon’s school; and many wives and mothers in this city acknowledge the good influence of her teaching, and perpetuate these good influences upon their children.

But, while love was the peculiar trait in Mrs. Amidon’s character, she was not one of these insipid, flaccid females who drawl out their vapid sentimentalities like exhausted victims of an unsympathizing and “ungushing” world. She had a clear judgement and reliable common sense. When she knew she was right this common sense enabled her to take the least offensive mode to effect her purposes. She had not that aggressive virtue that resents every excellence not possessed by itself. She had charity towards all and malice towards none. Her manners were cordial, and she enjoyed and encouraged decorous fun. Indeed it was a pleasure to shake hands with her, for her responsive grasp was an earnest of her frank and kindly nature.

I remember and incident which illustrated her firmness in what she considered her duty. The only incorrigible boy I ever knew her to have was dismissed by her from school.

The child’s mother complained to a trustee, who, without due consideration, signed an order for the boy’s readmission. Miss Milburn refused to take him back unless he would apologize before the school for his conduct. The trustee thereupon wrote a letter to Miss Milburn requiring her immediate obedience to his order, but Miss M. wrote to him so firm and sensible a reply that the trustee withdrew his order and acknowledged that he had been too hasty. The boy soon afterwards apologized and resumed his seat in the school, and was never afterwards insubordinate.

But Mrs. Amidon’s popularity amongst her pupils would not alone have suggested this public commemoration of her character. She is entitled to the gratitude of the public of this city for her influence in behalf of the public schools.

The public schools of Washington, although established, I think, about 1805, were little esteemed by “respectable” people twenty years ago. They were looked on as a kind of charity schools, and sensitive parents were unwilling to expose their children to the imputation of poverty. There was, however, always enough vitality in the institution to sustain it against unjust prejudice; and a few schools were creditably filled and well conducted. From ten to fifteen years ago the annual expenditure of the board of trustees did not exceed $20,000, a trifling proportion of the current outlay.

The grammar schools of the fourth district were, for many years, the only schools of that class in the city; and so high was their reputation that at the annual examination and distribution of premiums the rooms were crowded with visitors. The public schools rose higher every year in the general esteem, and many wishes were expressed that a high school should be provided for emulous scholars. But the corporate authorities were too timid to gratify these wishes. Mr. George W. Riggs, however, set an example, in 1860, to public spirited men by offering a gratuitous scholarship in Columbian College to the most accurate and proficient scholar. Dr. Gunton, Mr. Corcoran, the late Mr. Kendall, Mr. Davis, Mr. James C. McGuire, the college faculty, and Mr. Horatio King followed Mr. Riggs’ example; and now one or more meritorious youths are enabled every year to pursue the higher studies. Bills were introduced into the Councils in 1855, and were passed through the Common Council, to appoint a superintendent of public instruction, and to levy a tax for the support of the public schools, but legislative and executive scruples prevented their enactment. The present condition of the public schools is prosperous, and encourages us to believe that, despite all the controversies of the day, the institution may be preserved non-sectarian, perpetual, and indivisible.

No one in this city was more instrumental in attracting and fixing the public approbation to the public school system than Mrs. Amidon. Her girls were always neatly dressed, refined in demeanor, and proficient in their studies. Every one in her school loved her, and the sphere of harmony prevailing there delighted every visitor. A large number—forty-one—of the female teachers in our public schools have been educated by her; and the influences of her upright and pure character have thus been continued and extended, and will be perpetuated as long as good deeds are remembered and a good example is appreciated and followed. In this point of view the Rev. Mr. Samson did not at all exaggerate when, in his address at her funeral, he said, that “no one who ever died in this city has exercised a more general and beneficial influence on the morals of this community than Margaret Amidon.”

It is for these reasons that the regret at her decease is so profound and general; and arrangements have been made—and I am sure they will be successful—to erect a monument to her memory, pure, modest, and graceful as her own spirit.

Frankie Gunnell’s wife and children

At Washington DC the local government began in about 1874 to experiment with a system of birth certificates, using what was called the “Return of a Birth,” a short form to be filled in following every live birth by the attending doctor or midwife. Two of these early Returns report children—both of them boys—born in the District to Fanny Miller Gunnell and her husband Frankie Gunnell. Another child was probably born before the Returns system was in place, since the babies in the two documents are numbered Fanny’s second and third: a boy born in 1876, then another in 1881. The Returns do not record babies’ names.

The Returns do ask for the address of the mother. In one case Fanny was living in Southwest Washington, and in the other case in Northwest. Since the children were born in DC to a mother living at a local address, it seems almost certain that Frank and Fanny did live there more of less continuously in the years from 1872 or so through to 1881. This makes it that much more noteworthy that they are not in the 1880 Census enumeration, and downright strange that they are never even included in the DC directories published during those ten years. Exactly what their domestic situation was during this period there’s not much telling. On each Birth Return there’s a line for the father’s occupation, and it shows that Fanny in 1876 called Frankie a carpenter and in 1881 a mechanic. So much for the inexplicable Frankie Gunnell.

Recently and out of the blue I heard from a descendant of Frankie and Fanny. Thanks to some friendly correspondence with this distant cousin, I’ve been able to learn what later happened to Fanny and to the Gunnell children Violet, the first born, and Rosser, the boy born in 1876. (The boy born in 1881 was not heard of again.)

The Civil War seems to have scattered the Miller family, and two of Fanny’s older brothers had left Virginia and gone to live in Arkansas. Fanny made her way there. She met a peripatetic lawyer from Ohio named George Bushnell Denison. In 1885 at Conway near Little Rock Fanny and Denison were married. Subsequently Violet and Rosser Gunnell were called by the surname Denison, and Fanny referred to G.B. Denison as their father. The peripatetic lawyer moved on to Alabama, while Fanny and the children went to live, for unknown reasons, in Galveston, Texas. There Violet came of age and married a jeweler called Field, a Massachusetts man. The Fields had two daughters.

When the Spanish-American War came, Rosser Denison enlisted in the army and went off to the Philippines. He stayed on after the war, living at Zamboanga, where he married and raised a family. A large number of Rosser’s descendants (and thus Milburn descendants, as well) presently live in the Philippines.

Violet divorced the jeweler Field and promptly married a civil engineer called Morris who was about to leave Texas to take up a position with the city of Portland, Oregon. It’s around Portland and in the U.S. Northwest that Violet’s descendants, including my excellent correspondent, are living today.

Fanny, meanwhile, reached San Antonio where she married for the third time. Her new husband William Knight was yet another peripatetic lawyer, only this time from New Hampshire by way of West Virginia and Missouri. The Knights didn’t live together for long. After a few years Fanny took off, and continued to travel about the country visiting her kith and kin. So many changes of name and place! Finally, with her resources depleted, she wound up back at San Antonio in a rooming house. She died there in 1931 and was buried in the City Cemetery.

A story that circulated among Fanny’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren was that she had insisted that no one ever again say the name Frankie Gunnell. Well, that rule was obviously broken, but still nobody is able to say what became of Frankie. We’ll probably never know the rest of that story. He'll just remain a minor character, a footnote in the history of Spiritualism and stage illusions.

The Inexplicable Frankie Gunnell

Mary Ann Milburn Hinton and Henry D. Gunnell were married in 1854. Both of them had been widowed. They quickly had a child together called Franklin, the last child for both parents. Frankie was born in late 1854 or early 1855, making him right about the same age as his cousin T.W. Milburn. They lived only a few blocks from each other, T.W. on D Street and Frankie on G Street. But from an early age Frankie was markedly different from Tom Milburn.

Frankie Gunnell went on the stage. No, he didn’t perform as an actor—at least not any conventional one. He did magic in the mode of the Spiritualists. In the theater of Spiritualism the audience was invited to believe that the performer was a medium who was somehow in touch with invisible powers—spirits who nevertheless made themselves manifest in sight, sound, and deed. The medium was thereby demonstrating the existence of a Spirit world, and confirming for the spectators that there are “more things in heaven and earth” beyond what common understanding can reckon with.

Spiritualism was big news in the middle years of the nineteenth century, and Frankie got in toward the end of it’s great initial vogue. His public performances began at the latest in 1868, when Frankie could not have been older than thirteen. A report of his show, and how it was going over with the Washington DC audience, was published in New York by a correspondent to a French language newspaper. The writer recognized that Frankie was repeating a great deal of the spectacle developed fifteen years earlier by the much better known Davenport Brothers. These Brothers (who, like Frankie, began their public career when they were in their teens), had developed as their signature effect a trick with a large cabinet resembling a double armoire on a raised platform. The Brothers took seats in the cabinet across from each other. They were bound to their chairs, and the cabinet doors were shut. The audience would see mysterious hands emerge from small apertures in the doors. Musical instruments would sound, and bells would ring. When the doors were opened there were brothers, still tied up in their seats as they were before. Frankie’s version of the famous Cabinet manifestation was slightly different The French report notes that the cabinet doors burst open and Frankie proudly showed that he was no longer bound.

A number of appearances by Frankie Gunnell in DC are recorded in the newspapers during the next few years. His act also included a “Dark Séance” like the one that the Davenport Brothers did, and other bits of Spirit business. There was also a show done at the Gunnells’ house for selected local notables. (Such a private demonstration for special guests seems to have been de rigeur for Spiritualist acts of the period. I suppose it established the medium’s bona fides and promoted the act by gaining an association with prominent men and women.) It’s clear that Frankie traveled some outside of the District, performing at Baltimore at least (“a tip top medium”), and possibly in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. His youth was emphasized when he was mentioned in the news or in books, since people seemed to think the youth of the medium meant that he was incapable of humbug or duplicity.

from the Evening Star, March 19, 1869

In 1872 a newspaper mentioned with a wink that a certain “Professor Gunnelle” was amazing folks at a market fair in western Virginia. This suggests that Frankie was trying something new—a stage persona that sharply differed from his first “boy prodigy” appeal. Maybe the old version of the act was worn out in his hometown. Or perhaps the professional debunkers who lectured in the larger cities, caused business there to decline. In any case it was just about this time that he apparently got married to Miss Frances Miller of Salem, Virginia.

From this point on Frankie more or less disappears from view. His name comes up—his longer name: Franklin D. Gunnell—in the course of the 1875 Milburn property trial. His name appears once again in 1889 in the Washington Post notice of a transfer of property to his oldest half-sister. However, he’s not listed in DC directories during all this time, nor is he enumerated in the 1880 census or in later ones. The rest of his story belongs instead to Fanny Miller Gunnell.

They received the Amidon Medal

From the Evening Star of January 7, 1871:

Last evening the pupils of the Fourth District Schools gave a grand concert, at Lincoln Hall, to aid in erecting a monument in memory of Mrs. Margaret Amidon, (formerly teacher of the female grammar school, fourth district.) They were assisted by the pupils of the second district and former pupils of Mrs. Amidon. The hall was crowded, and the duetts, choruses, and piano solos were well rendered. The choruses were under the conductorship of Professor Daniel. Miss Rachel Garrett presided at the piano. About seventy-five young ladies were on the stage. During the evening the Amidon medal was presented by Mr. J. O. Wilson, superintendent of the public schools, to Miss Susie Howison, with an appropriate address, which was neatly responded to.

Miss Howison was approaching her twenty-first birthday and so was older by several years than the rest of the winners whom I've been able to identify. Most of the young women were around sixteen. I think Susie Howison (later married to James Ratcliffe of Loudoun County, Virginia) was honored for her achievements in “amiability and scholarship” for the previous year or years.

The “grand concert” was not a recurrent event, but a singular one that inaugurated the Amidon Prize. After Susie Howison, all subsequent winners were announced by the District of Columbia Trustees in a regular fashion, together with a number of other prizes and scholarships, at the end of the school year in June, after the examination of the schools. Here are the names of the winners I've been able to spot so far, drawn from newspaper items or from annual Trustees' reports.

1871	Kate Maxwell (became a teacher for a time)
1872	Martha Travis
1873	Isabelle Haliday
1875	Sarah C. Dulin
1878	Ella S. Cooke
1879	Eugenia Hilleary
1881	Marie Madeleine De Vote (died June 8, 1888)
1882	Rose Mary McCauley
1883	Carrie McLaughlin (1866-1949) wife of Harry Howser
1884	Mary Violet Petty (daughter of J.T. Petty)

Nothing about the Amidon Medal shows up in the Washington DC news or reports in the years after 1884. How did the medal come to be discontinued? Was there no longer a need to encourage girls to be schoolteachers by this means? Did the funds for the prize dry up?

It would be terrific to see one of these medals. I count at least twelve of them: the ones given to these eleven young women, and one more, in bronze, which was presented to the Trustees.

Mrs. Gunnell

Margaret Milburn Amidon was not the only family member to teach in the District’s public schools. Her older sister Mary Ann taught there, too, though she never became a celebrated figure like Mrs. Amidon. And unlike Margaret Amidon, Mary Ann only taught for a short span during the years when she was a widow.

Mary Ann was married in 1843 to Mr. Robert Hinton. The marriage was performed by Rev. Mr. Richard de Charms from Philadelphia, one of the leading lights among the Swedenborgians. About Mary Ann’s husband Hinton I know almost nothing save that he died in Nashville at the beginning of 1848. It would be nice to know what he was doing there. During their marriage Mary Ann gave birth to at least three children. Two of those died in infancy. The third, a girl called Violet, lived to the age of fifteen. (Violet Hinton’s obituary declared, strangely, that “though young, she was willing to die.” I presume this was a pious formula of the New Church.)

During the first part of the 1850s Mary Ann Hinton and her daughter Violet were living with the two Margarets in the Milburn house. This was the period when Mary Ann was a schoolteacher. Then in 1854 Mary Ann got married again, this time to an older man, a widower named Henry Gunnell. Mr. Gunnell came from Virginia and operated a wood and coal business across the street from the Milburns. He already had seven children from his previous marriage, and in fact was a grandfather. Nevertheless Henry and Mary Ann did have one child, their remarkable son Frankie Gunnell. Frankie will need to be the subject of a future post.

Mary Ann Gunnell died in 1870. She had survived an accident earlier in which she was run over by an omnibus car. The obituary does not say exactly what took her off, only that her death followed a painful illness of two weeks’ duration. She lies now in Congressional Cemetery. Violet Hinton is also buried there, but for some puzzling reason mother and daughter are not near one another.

After Mary Ann died Henry Gunnell married for the third time. All three of his wives were named Mary.

The afterlife of Margaret Milburn Amidon

It began with her funeral, held at the Milburn home on Virginia Avenue. Rev. Jabez Fox spoke a sermon. Mr. Fox, representing the Swedenborgian affiliation of Hollis Amidon and of old Mrs. Milburn, was only the short subject. There was a second divine engaged for the main feature, namely Rev. George Whitfield Samson, at that time the president of the Columbian College. He was also a pastor, had been Mrs. Amidon’s pastor, at the E Street Baptist Church, and something like a spiritual advisor to her. He delivered a eulogy full of heavy piety, extolling her virtues of honor, duty, faith, and public usefulness. With the additional presence of the choir from E Street Baptist singing hymns to open and close the ceremonies, the house must have been crowded.

The following February saw two even larger memorials. At the first Margaret’s friend and champion Samuel Yorke AtLee gave an oration on her life and death to a crowd at the Seventh Street Presbyterian Church. Rev. Jabez Fox also appeared for this occasion. Various other trustees and dignitaries of the schools rose to speak about Mrs. Amidon, dwelling in particular on the elevation of the public schools which she accomplished by her own example and by means of her protégées, fifty-four of whom were said to have gone on to be teachers. Some few days later another gathering, this time of teachers specifically, listened to even more speeches commending Mrs. Amidon and building up the schools.

It’s interesting to note that although Margaret is shown in these speeches in relation to her school, her community, and her city, there isn’t much mention of her living family. Of course I can only go by what was afterwards told in the newspapers. Her parents are referred to and her stepmother, but Margaret Agnes is never called a beloved sister to her own sisters and brother, or said to be a dear aunt to her own nieces and nephew.

Mr. AtLee’s oration, the one from the principal memorial service in February, was in April issued as a pamphlet. At least two newspapers printed excerpts of the material, relating details of her childhood, teaching career, and marriage. (It’s from these excerpts, primarily, that I’ve learned so many details, or clarified them, about the Milburn family. There may be even more pertinent material included in the full printed work. I’ve not been able to see this yet, but there’s a copy in the Library of Congress according to their catalog. With the promise of a photograph as frontispiece!)

Over the summer of 1870 the school trustees considered a new plan for a prize to be given annually in Margaret Amidon’s honor. This was the “Amidon Medal,” a gold medallion designed by Goldsborough Bruff and struck by the Mint. The plan was underwritten by a published group of subscribers that included many of Margaret’s friends. (At least one family member contributed, her brother-in-law John Abell.) The trustees approved. The prize would be given to a girl from the Fourth District who was outstanding in the year for “amiability and scholarship” as judged by her teachers and fellows. There were a number of other awards and scholarships available to Washington students. This one was aimed to dignify specifically girls who might go on to become teachers (and several of the girls did), as well as to perpetuate Margaret Amidon’s name.

1871 began with a concert given by school pupils to raise money for some sort of Amidon monument. During the evening the first of the Amidon Medals was given out (to a Miss Susie Howison—really the 1870 medal). The concert was said to be a success, but I don’t know of any monument built from the funds raised. At the close of the school year the following June, the regular award for 1871 was made at the period of the yearly class examinations. Medals were given in this fashion year by year, continuing at least into the 1880s; after that time I’ve found no more mention of them.

1883 newspaper notice

It’s possible that whatever money was got from the 1871 concert was used instead to commission the portrait of Margaret Amidon that was mentioned in the newspaper in 1883. By that time there was a new school building that bore her name, and the painting, after being on public display, was placed in the school.

The Amidon School for the Fourth District stood originally at the corner of 6th and F Streets in southwest Washington. Used for seventy years or so, that original school is now gone, along with the entire neighborhood, obliterated in the middle of the last century as part of a vast renewal program carried out on Southwest DC. That former intersection 6th and F Streets would now lie in the traffic of a cross-town freeway. At some point around 1960 the Amidon school was reestablished on I Street. Amidon-Bowen is, I believe, the current official name, now that the school has combined with the former Bowen school, but the building today bears on its facade only the name Margaret M. Amidon. As recently as 2003 somebody dredged up details of Margaret Amidon’s life for a “ceremonial resolution” on behalf of the fifth grade class.

Alice Milburn Wood vs. Hollis Amidon

Let’s lay out the course of events leading to the 1875 lawsuit over lot number 11. There are just two pieces of information that I’m relying on here, the newspaper article that presented the case to the general public in May of 1875 and the abstract of the case published in the following year with the court records for the term.

Lot number 11 was just one piece of the estate of George Milburn. When he died in 1838, the everything was bequeathed to his children and their heirs. But the use of the property and the decisions on how and when to distribute it were invested in George’s widow Margaret for her lifetime. As the children did come of age and marry, provision was duly made for them. When the fourth and last child to marry, namely George’s middle daughter Margaret Agnes, did finally become the bride of Hollis Amidon, nearly everything in the estate had been disposed in accord with the will. Old Mrs. Milburn retained only one piece of property. That was lot 11, sometimes called more explicitly part of lot 11, at the corner of Virginia Avenue and Seventh Street SW. And on that lot stood the house where all three of them lived—had lived for over ten years. Hollis and Margaret Agnes made some kind of improvements to the property. Old Mrs. Milburn then, in November 1866, turned over the whole, both the land and the house, to Margaret and Hollis Amidon, to be Margaret’s portion as George’s heir, and in consideration of her own—old Mrs. Milburn’s—need to be looked after in her later years.

We don’t know what the reaction by the rest of the family was to any of this business up to this point. But when Margaret Amidon died “intestate and without issue” in December of 1869, someone in the family put it to Amidon that he could not expect to have title to the land, since that belonged to George’s heirs by rights, and Mrs. Milburn lacked any power to deliver it to anyone else; that whatever contract appeared in the 1866 deed, it was void with respect to Hollis Amidon. But nothing else happened, it seems. In the 1870 census, Hollis's name appears on the record at the top spot in the household, with old Mrs. Milburn next, keeping house for everyone; and then follows the usual assortment of boarders.

In November of 1874 old Mrs. Margaret Milburn died. The following January Amidon registered the property in his own name. Straight away Alice Milburn Wood and her husband complained to the Court. The deed should be cancelled, since it was improper, and there should be a “partition.” I suppose that to mean a separate consideration of the house, which the Woods appear to have recognized as Amidon’s now, from the land which they believed was by right due to them. Who else took their side? The newspaper account of the suit names Violet Abell, George Milburn’s youngest daughter, as a defendant along with her husband. I can only think that this is a mistake. The only way, it seems to me, that Violet and her husband could ever be involved was as fellow Milburn heirs with an interest in the property. Surely they must have counted among the plaintiffs? The published abstract does not help to clarify who lined up with whom. It does include an “et al.” for Amidon, but I can’t imagine who those others could be or, indeed, why there should have been anyone else in his corner.

However this may be, Amidon, for his part, filed a “demurrer” to say that the Woods’ suit raised only invalid points and ought to be dismissed. The Court agreed. George Milburn’s will was consulted and found to give to old Mrs. Milburn all the discretionary power she needed to look after her own interests, so that she could give up the house and the land to the Amidons with the understanding that they would continue to look after her, while at the same time making this final distribution of George Milburn’s estate as a marriage portion for Margaret Agnes. It was all made so explicit by the language of the will and of the 1866 transfer that it’s hard to see how the Woods or their counsel thought they had the slightest chance to prevail.

So that was that. Alice Wood didn’t live too much longer, as we’ve already heard. Hollis Amidon got married one more time, his third wife being a widow lady from Vermont. The couple went to live in a new house clear on the other side of town. Amidon was eighty-two when he died in 1889, and the newspaper obituary mentioned his widow, but got his lady from Vermont confused with Margaret Agnes Milburn.

• • •

Why didn’t Mrs. Milburn marry Amidon? That’s one thing I can’t figure. Would she have lost control of her remaining property and income if that had happened? It just seems so much more likely that those two were the natural couple—compatible, near in age, close in religious experience. I suppose it is possible that there was some ardor between Amidon and Margaret Agnes. However, the brief mention of the Amidons’ union that we’ll get to hear in the eulogy for Margaret Milburn Amidon does nothing to convince me.

One other question comes to mind due to that description of Mrs. Amidon being “intestate and without issue.” Recall that she had tuberculosis and knew for a long time—perhaps years—that she was dying. How is it that she never made a will? I wonder about that.

Mrs. Margaret Milburn and Miss Margaret Milburn at home

If you go to Washington DC, and you make your way to the corner of 7th and D Streets in the small southwestern quadrant of the city, and you look toward the northwest, there in your view will be a large, sandy-colored office building of a vague, shapeless shape. Ignore this office building, and instead pay attention to the city block it rests on, the triangular block bounded by 7th, D, and Virginia Avenue. This block is called “Square 464” in the city property books, despite its triangular boundary. All the lots in this “Square 464” were once owned by Thomas William Milburn’s grandfather, Mr. George Milburn, who “established the Milburn home” at the eastern end of the block.

George died some years before TW was born. But George’s widow Margaret was still living here into the 1870s, in a house on the western corner of the block at Virginia and 7th.

Mrs. Margaret Milburn was George’s second wife. George’s first wife and the mother of his children was Alice, who died in 1833. Margaret was actually Alice’s younger sister, and thus she was aunt as well as stepmother to the children. George married Margaret three years after Alice died, probably in order to provide for her, and certainly so that she could look after his children when George was gone, portioning out to each one some of the remaining property.

George’s daughters Mary Ann and Violet and his son Thomas—TW’s father—got married in the 1840s. (I don’t know what parts of the property they may have received. Thomas and his family had an address some blocks west of here for many years. Violet and her husband did build here along Virginia Avenue, and their daughters lived there still in the ’80s.) That left George’s unmarried middle daughter Margaret Agnes at home with her aunt. A serious and pious schoolteacher, Miss Milburn remained single for nearly two decades. Meanwhile old Mrs. Milburn took in boarders.

We actually know a little something about Mrs. Margaret Milburn beyond what the census tells. Judge Job Barnard in 1920 offered to the Columbia Historical Society a short account of the formation of the Swedenborgian church in DC. He tells how Mrs. Margaret Milburn’s aunt Mary Arnott, was shunned by her church due to her early interest in Swedenborg’s doctrines, and how Margaret went on to be one of the founding members of the Swedenborgian society. Barnard’s paper continues with how the society grew from the meetings of those in the District who were interested in Swedenborg, rather like a little club, to a regular denomination with an official charter, a church building to meet in, and hired clergy. (Judge Barnard was himself one of the members of the church.)

It’s also clear from Barnard’s paper that some of Mrs. Milburn’s boarders were themselves adherents to the Swedenborgian Church. I’d like to know whether Margaret Milburn pressed information about the church into the hands of her boarders, or whether persons with a prior interest in Swedenborg’s New Jerusalem found Mrs. Milburn and found her home convenient. At any rate there was one particular boarder in the Milburn household we must take note of: an older fellow called Hollis Amidon, a widower from New York. For more than a decade Mrs. Milburn kept house with her niece Miss Margaret A. Milburn and Mr. Hollis Amidon.

Miss Milburn was teaching school. She began her career at about the age of sixteen when she opened her own private school. The Washington public schools were just then starting to come into their own as an institution acceptable to a broad public. Margaret was soon hired by the Trustees to teach in the public schools in the Fourth District, which is to say in that same neighborhood where she lived. She became an extremely well-regarded teacher, commended for her keen skill in interesting her pupils individually in the schoolwork, prompting their genuine engagement rather than merely teaching by rote. Evidently she was highly dedicated to her efforts with her students, and a kind of warm enthusiasm for her shows up in the Trustee reports and in the newspaper accounts of the annual examinations.

Then in December 1862 Miss Margaret A. Milburn wed Mr. Hollis Amidon. She, who had not up until then seemed to be interested in getting married, wed the man twenty years her senior—Amidon was actually old Mrs. Milburn’s age—with whom she had been living for years. Very little really changed. Mrs. Amidon kept working as a schoolteacher in the Fourth District, and she and Amidon continued to live with old Mrs. Milburn in the same house where they had been so long.

The lot, or partial lot, where the house stood was the last piece of George Milburn’s “Square 464”  property left to bestow on one of his children. Mrs. Milburn was getting on in years and thinking of her old age, and so she arranged for its transfer to the Amidons. But all was not secure. Margaret Amidon was ill with tuberculosis. (Maybe she knew this, or suspected it, at the time she married.) She died in 1869, remaining with her beloved pupils until close to the end. Mrs. Milburn didn’t outlive her by many years: she died in 1874. Hollis Amidon, Milburn-less, undertook to put his wife’s property (“lot number 11”) directly in his own name. This was the situation to which some others in the family objected in the courts.

Thomas William Milburn’s “Vicissitudes”

Besides his “Texas letter,” one other piece of Thomas W. Milburn’s writing has survived and turned up again after seventy years. Late in his life TW put down on paper a set of anecdotes, a little clutch of incidents from his childhood and youth in Washington. He calls them vicissitudes, a word he must have chosen to be a little too fancy, like a stage wink. The three pages of his “Vicissitudes letter” were mailed to Mrs. G.F. Carlisle, and introduced by a sort of bread-and-butter cover letter. The whole thing was found in an envelope with a 1943 cancellation.

The memoir content was certainly written two years earlier, in about August of 1941, and seems from the language of its apologetic last paragraph to have been conceived as though talking to some specific person, not to The World or to Posterity. Why then the two-year gap between the writing and the mailing? And, since the letter was actually sent off to Mrs. Carlisle, how did it come back into possession of the Milburn family, so that we have it now?

To answer that last question I’ll have to guess and say that Mrs. Carlisle simply returned it to the family when TW died in 1944. Seems reasonable. As for the first question, about the gap, I just don’t know. I can’t come up with a good explanation.

TW’s “Vicissitudes Letter” is short enough that I will print the whole content here, and after it mention a little point of interest to me.

Some of the Early Vicissitudes in a Long Life.

To have been born, in Washington D.C., in the 1850’s. was my first V.

Three years after birth, while meandering along, back of the stalls of a lot of big mules, upon my Uncle’s Maryland farm and being led to the slaughter by a little slave girl, at least one mule saw an opportunity for revenge against the white race and kicked me in the middle and against the barn door. In some manner, the dead boy survived a long buggy trip to W. and after the third day he returned to life, thanks to that sweet drug – Niter.

A couple of years later, this same colored nurse permitted this same near angel to crawl from bed, while enjoying a high fever and to roll down the kitchen roof, to the walk below, which, I suspect, caused the fever to drop to a reasonable figure —

So, we get to the beginning of our Civil War – Washington was in as much confusion then as now, in 1941 – but there was a Patriot in the White House. Lee’s army was just across the mile wide Potomac, in Virginia. The Northern Army, mostly, had come to W. to save the city and I stared daily at the troops, officers, cannon and at the killing upon the streets, of many distempered horses. The streets were all unpaved and muddy, except between the double car tracks, in all parts of W., which were cobble stoned – in fact there were no paved streets – that I remember until U. S. Grant’s inauguration, when Penna. Ave. was paved, from Capitol to White House, with pine blocks, laid upon boards, which lasted until they floated away – Cement and bitulithic were practically unknown.

I grew up or down in South Washington – It was then known as the “Island[”] – V-shaped by the Potomac on one side – Eastern Branch of same, upon the other and a canal, upon the N. and S.E. sides entirely separating it from Northern & Eastern W.

This canal began at Harper’s Ferry, ran to Georgetown parallel, all the way, with the Potomac – At G. there were flour & meal mills. The canal kept on going – crossed down back of the Executive Mansion and from 15th street to the Botanical Gardens it paralleled Penna. Ave. one block South, thence south east to empty into the Eastern Branch.

This canal has been filled in but not before its great attraction nearly got me. Skating upon its ice one day, an air hole suddenly engulfed me and when they pulled me out I was a stiff mass of mud and ice[.]

Not long after this, while under a bridge my boy friends shoved me into deep water, knowing that I couldn’t swim – that and the next act were cruel acts.

I was growing up and trying to impress females. Sunday School time was the most impersive [impressive] place, so one Sunday, dressed in a white duck suit, I lined up at the curb with a muddy pool behind me – Something suggestive must have been seen in that duck suit because the boys ganged up on me and over I went into the mud — Did I put up a fight – no. I ran 8 blocks to the river[,] jumped in with all that finery and walked home and sneaked into other clothing –

I have to omit some other escapades, such as taking the School Trustee’s horse for a ride, so, at 17 I landed 3 or 4 jobs, finally stuck to telegraphy and in 1875, at 20½, came to Texas but my vicissitudes don’t end yet this “I” story must end, as I am 86⁷⁄₁₂ths and sleepy.

T. W. M.

There is a PDF of the letter available which includes the cover letter and envelope.

“My Uncle’s Maryland farm.” In a chronicle that makes no mention of any of TW’s immediate family, who was this off-stage uncle? On TW's mother’s side there was no family, or none that I know of. On his father’s side TW had three aunts. The oldest was Mary Ann. Her first husband, Mr. Hinton, was long dead by 1858, the purported year of the mule incident. Mary Ann’s second husband, Mr. Gunnell, has no connection with Maryland that I know, but came from Virginia, and his family is always associated in that direction. TW’s middle aunt was Margaret, who was not married at the time, nor for some years more. Last there was the youngest aunt, Violet. Her first husband, Mr. Williams, in 1858 was recently deceased. He might have had some property in Maryland since Violet held a sale of his slaves in December of 1858 at Hughesville in Charles County. Violet did marry for the second time in October of 1859 to Mr. Abell, who was without question a Maryland farmer. The Abell property was located at Scotch Neck near Hollywood, in St. Mary’s County. That’s almost sixty miles from Washington—long for a buggy ride. Perhaps TW simply made a mistake, and the mule incident took place when he was four or five years old rather than when he was only three. Of course there is, as ever, the great likelihood that there are persons and places that I simply don’t know about yet.

I do know that TW’s brother George died, according to the papers, at Vineyard Farm, located in Charles County, Maryland. If that’s the same farm as the one with the stalls of big mules it must have seemed like a place of doom.

End of the family in DC

What became of the Milburn household after Thomas William Milburn set off for Texas? His father, Mr. Thomas Milburn the carpenter, had died in 1872. TW's little sister Eva, the youngest of the children, had died in 1874 when just a schoolgirl. And the rest of them?

TW’s older sister Alice was married and not living at home any more. Before her marriage she had been—like a number of women in the Milburn line—a schoolteacher. For five years she had taught in the Fourth District schools around where they were living, first primary school, then secondary. In October of 1870 she resigned her post, and married John R. Wood. Mr Wood, a Virginian, was a river boat pilot. The Woods moved to a house of their own a few blocks further south. They apparently tried to start a family (this is not clear to me), but never got very far. Alice took sick with a “lingering illness” and died in the summer of 1877. Her husband stuck around Washington. He was now a boat captain taking day-trippers and pleasure-seekers on excursions to, say, Leonardtown down on the Maryland shore. I’m sorry to say I don’t yet know what happened to him, nor where he ended up.

TW's sister Ada was just out of secondary school when she married in January of 1876. Her husband George Kleindenst came from Washington, from the neighborhood, so they had likely known each other for years. Right away they started their large family. Suddenly in 1880 George headed to Texas, following his brother-in-law to San Antonio, and Ada and the children came and joined him there.

Mrs. Pamelia Milburn, TW’s mother, decided to remarry, a few months after Ada wed George. Pamelia's second husband was Mr James H. Granger of Washington. Granger was another carpenter. He was a little bit older than Pamelia, and had been married twice before, with a grown son. For a time the Grangers stayed in Southwest DC, but in the coming decade they wound up moving out to the suburbs south of the Eastern Branch. All of Pamelia’s own children were either dead or living far away.

TW’s mother Pamelia

There will be more about Pamelia Granger in another post, and more about Ada Kleindenst when we get back to Texas.

Thomas W. Milburn and family in Washington DC

Thomas William Milburn came from Washington, DC, where he was born on 20 January 1855. He was the son of another Thomas Milburn and his wife Pamelia Sawyer. At home TW had an older sister called Alice, born about 1848. He should have had an older brother George, but that boy died the year before TW was born. We know about George from the notice run on 6 July 1854 in a District newspaper,

On Sunday, the 2d instant, at Vineyard Farm, Charles County, (Md.) George W., aged 17 months, only son of Thomas and Pamel[i]a Milburn, of this city. 

Another sister was born in 1858 or 1859 (there is some difficulty settling on the year) and was named Ada Violet. Two more babies, born during the time of the Civil War, we know only from their graves in the family plot in Congressional Cemetery, where they were buried with no given names recorded. And then one more child, the youngest sister, called Eva, born in 1866. She brings the Milburn family up to its largest number, the four children shown in the census of 1870, Alice, Thomas, Ada, and Eva.

TW’s father, Mr. Thomas Milburn, was described in his census records as a carpenter. That term evidently was applied to the occupation we might call contractor  or builder. Although Mr. Thomas Milburn is very little mentioned in the newspapers, there is one article, reporting estimates submitted for constructing “the new asylum,” which shows him turning in a $34,950 bid. Now, which building might this have been? I’ve never found any asylum in the city to match the date of construction and the architect talked about in the article. The Milburn bid was not, by the way, either the highest or the lowest of the ones recorded. Mr. Milburn seems to have done well enough at his business. He is mentioned in another article carrying $170 in gold on him, which he lost to a pickpocket! In addition to getting on with his business he was a member of both the Odd Fellows and the Masons, and he was elected Commissioner of his city ward (the Seventh). He was evidently a pleasant enough fellow of the common sort, well enough liked, but there isn’t so much to tell about him.

One possibly interesting thing, to me, is the appearance starting in 1869 of advertisements for the partnership of Angus & Milburn. Mr. Angus worked in Northwest Washington. Our Milburns lived and worked in the Seventh Ward, which is to say Southwest Washington. I think the early signs of the decline of that latter part of the city must have already been felt in the 1850s with the coming of the railroad. The B&O eventually crossed through Southwest, in fact right beside the Milburn home. A nuisance of itself, what with the noise, soot, and embers, the train also changed a small scale residential and commercial neighborhood into a more industrial one. Then, after the Civil War was ended, the population of the area started to grow dense from newcomers to the city. So when Mr. Thomas Milburn found a partner in Job Winans Angus, a very well respected builder who flourished in a far more illustrious quadrant of the city, that alliance might have begun a transition to a better established business, in a prosperous and expansive locale.

from an 1869 directory

Mr. Thomas Milburn died in 1872. He was just 48 years old. The paper says it was “after a lingering illness.” Perhaps that was tuberculosis—quite common. And Mr. Milburn’s death was not the only loss happening for the family. Mr. Milburn’s sister Margaret died in 1869 (definitely tubercular), his sister Mary Ann in 1870. In 1874 his little daughter Eva, TW’s sister, went to her grave in May; and old Mrs. Milburn, Mr. Milburn’s aunt, who had been the guardian of the family property, died in November. The following spring the family split into opponents in a lawsuit over some of the property, and TW joined up with the Signal Corps bound for Texas.