For three days, Soh Kwang-pom’s body laid in state at his residence at 2819 Fourteenth Street. On Sunday, August 15, 1897, promptly at 3:30 in the afternoon, his casket was placed in a hearse and taken to Lee’s undertaking establishment on Pennsylvania Avenue. There was a large crowd about the door of undertaker’s, and several police were necessary to keep the curiosity-seekers from crowding in. The casket was carried through the front room into the little chapel where the... Read more
Having left the American Legation in Constantinople in the capable hands of Lloyd C. Griscom on December 21, 1899, Oscar Straus did not feel any particular need for hurrying home to America.[1] He even made a few stops in Europe along the way. When the papers announced his arrival Vienna, however, he received a note requesting an appointment from a man whom he had read much about. So on December 28, 1899, a meeting was arranged.[2] Oscar S.... Read more
On May 11, 1905, their ship, the S.S. Grosser Kurfurst, arrived in New York, and they promptly made their way out West.[1] Emil and Minnie were previously living at Point Loma; according to Aimée, Emil had surrendered his money to Tingley, and she directed him “to go out and make some more…”[2] Emil subsequently went to Colorado to establish an irrigation project that was promised “to make a large section of arid land blossom like the rose.”[3] The project called... Read more
In Brussels, the Hargrove’s visited Dr. Leyds in Holland where Ernest received a commission from to ghostwrite Leyds’s book, The First Annexation of the Transvaal.[1] They then went to Brussels, where Leyds was living, to begin work on the manuscript.[2] On January 18, 1902, Leyds and members of the Boer delegation conferred at Scheveningen in preparation for peace talks at the Hague on January 20, 1902.[3] Ernest was likely one of the “Englishmen supposed to be officials of the British... Read more
Ernest and Aimée were only three days out at sea, en route to the Hawaiian Islands, when the “noise created by crashing steel,” frightened the passengers of the Sonoma. The upper-head of the ship’s high-pressure cylinder had burst inside the engine room, forcing the steamer to continue the Honolulu using only her starboard engine.[1] (The ship was saved by the efforts of Chief Engineer Little, a man that Ernest met during the tail-end of the Crusade in 1897.)[2] Within... Read more
A look at the October 4, 1900, edition of The New York Tribune might provide some insight into Ernest’s motivation for returning to America: Winston Spencer Churchill. Who has just been elected a member of Parliament, is to make a three months’ lecture tour in America. He opens in the ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria on December 12, the anniversary of the capture by the Boers. Mr. Churchill’s subject will be “London to Pretoria, via Ladysmith,” with the story... Read more
General Sir Redvers Buller And Staff Going On Board Dunottar Castle, October 14, 1899.[1] Ernest and Aimée returned to England where they would leave Southampton for the Cape Colony on the R.M.S. Dunnottar Castle, the same vessel as Sir Redvers Buller, the British Commander-in-Chief of the Boer War. A large, raucous crowd of people thronged the platforms at Waterloo Station, to see the Redvers Buller, and the British army, packed into the trains leaving for the Southampton Dock.... Read more
THE SOUTH AFRICAN SITUATION. Ernest Temple Hargrove. The history of South Africa is known, roughly, to most people. It does not provide agreeable reading for those who would like to believe that Great Britain is an exception to the rule, and that she, alone among nations, can do no wrong. “Truth is the strong thing,” however, and it is best in any case to tell the truth no matter what inferences we may see fit to draw from it;... Read more
Church of the Holy Apostles.[1] On January 17, 1899, Ernest and Aimée were married in the Church of the Holy Apostles in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen. Ernest told Reverend Brady E. Backus, who performed the rite, that “doubtless most of his friends would be greatly surprised that he should be married in a church, but that he had been brought up in the English Church and preferred to be married in its form.” It was reported that Emil... Read more
Towards the end of March 1898, Tingley issued a notice to the stockholders of the West Virginia Corporation, including Spencer and Ernest, which called for a stockholder meeting for April 9, 1898. The purpose, it was stated, was the election of directors. According to the Constitution of the Corporation, however, the directors could only be elected at a regular annual meeting, and the date for the annual meeting had already passed. This was to the first stockholders meeting since their... Read more
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