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.
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
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.
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.
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.
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| 1883 newspaper notice |
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.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
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.
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.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Cogee tells a joke
Cogee Milburn liked to tell jokes. If I remember she even wanted to tell one during her taped interview in 1983. Here’s a joke that she used to tell with delight. I’m sure she repeated this one to me several times, but these aren’t her words exactly, only my recollection.
“A farmer was out working in his fields. Here comes his little boy, calling to him, “Daddy, Mama says to come in right quick, ’cause the preacher’s coming by for a visit!” The farmer asked his boy which preacher was coming, but the boy didn’t know. So the farmer said, “I’ve got to stay and work here longer. You run back, and if it’s the Catholic then hide the whiskey jug. If it’s the Methodist, make sure you hide the that jar with the money in it. But if it’s the Baptist preacher, you just sit on Mama’s lap till I come home.”
“A farmer was out working in his fields. Here comes his little boy, calling to him, “Daddy, Mama says to come in right quick, ’cause the preacher’s coming by for a visit!” The farmer asked his boy which preacher was coming, but the boy didn’t know. So the farmer said, “I’ve got to stay and work here longer. You run back, and if it’s the Catholic then hide the whiskey jug. If it’s the Methodist, make sure you hide the that jar with the money in it. But if it’s the Baptist preacher, you just sit on Mama’s lap till I come home.”
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