Last year I wrote a piece titles “Where The Sandstone Yawns,” about the mysterious happenings of Custer’s Black Hills Expedition. One of the main “characters” of the (non-fiction) story was William Ludlow. This same William Ludlow that served as the basis for Jim Harrison’s fictional character of the same name in Legends Of The Fall. This, then, is a conclusion to Ludlow’s story, which , I think, is heroic and fascinating as fiction—Shawn. William Ludlow... Read more
I had wanted to write about the Theosophical Society in the American South, and when thinking about what title I might choose, I remembered how strange the word “Dixie” was. For many years I had assumed the word was a reference to the Mason-Dixon Line, and those States below it. I was wrong. We find the real origin of the word in antebellum Louisiana, the Francophone colony which the United States purchased from the French in 1803. For a number... Read more
Henry B. Foulke.[1] Henry Bellerjeau Foulke (1856-1938) was a well-known Philadelphia real estate agent of 305 South Eleventh Street, who joined the Krishna Branch T.S. (Philadelphia) in December 1887.[2] He was a pronounced blonde, “handsome, sturdy, mannish-looking,” and tall.[3] Those who knew him in Philadelphia recalled the “admiration which his unusually attractive figure never failed to attract.”[4] Of his personal life, Foulke states that he “supported seven people for years.”[5] The eldest son of Richard and Mary Foulke (née Bellerjeau,)... Read more
In the previous post, we left off in 1891 with the rise of Theosophy in California, the Creation of the Pacific Coast Committee Of The Theosophical Society, the relationship between the Theosophists and the Nationalists, and the Lecture Bureau Scheme. We pick up two years later in San Francisco, the Headquarters of the Pacific Coast Committee. By 1893, San Francisco had two Branches of the Theosophical Society. The first was the Golden Gate T.S., led by Edward “Ned” Burroughs... Read more
As mentioned in a previous post, the first “Theosophical Society” in California began on October 12, 1885 by Anna Kimball and George Chainey (publishers of the proto-New Age journal, The Gnostic.)[1] Meetings were held at 112 McAllister Street in San Francisco, but the “branch” was both short-lived and unsanctioned by the American Board of Control (of Theosophy.)[2] The first official charter for a Branch in San Francisco was issued in 1885, and formed as the Golden Gate T.S. in... Read more
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
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