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Mayflower descendant

The Mayflower Love Children: Elinor, Jasper, Richard and Mary More

For centuries, historians thought the four young More children who arrived on the Mayflower were homeless orphans. Not until 1959 did a document surface that revealed the truth. They were the Mayflower love children, landed gentry descended from King Edward III and banished by their cuckolded father.

What kind of person tears four little children from their mother and puts them in the hands of strangers? Then sends them on a difficult, dangerous 3,000-mile voyage, to a likely death in a forbidding wilderness? That person even had them indentured as servants – including little four-year-old Mary.

The Mayflower

The short answer is an angry, bitter, self-righteous and well-connected Puritan. Samuel More, after banishing his children, would later cause the deaths of others in his charge.

The Mayflower Love Children

The story begins with Katherine More, the daughter of Jasper More, a Shropshire bailiff who built Larden Hall with his own hands.

Jane Small, Katherine More’s grandmother

Larden Hall sat on 1,000 acres of land, but Jasper More had no male heirs to inherit his property. His sons had died, and English law prohibited women from inheriting property. Jasper’s cousin, Richard More, was a respected parliamentarian who also owned an estate, Linley, in Shropshire, close to the Welsh border. And Richard had an unmarried son.

So Jasper and Richard made an arrangement. Katherine, 25, would marry Richard’s 17-year-old son, Samuel. Richard also paid Jasper 600 pounds for Larden Hall. Thus the estates would remain in More family hands.

But Katharine already had a partner closer to her own age, a yeoman farmer at Larden Hall named Jacob Blakeway. They later claimed they had a betrothal agreement.

Mayflower plaque in St. James Church in Shipton, Shropshire commemorating the More children baptism. courtesy of Phil Revell

But on February 4, 1610 (O.S.), Katherine More married Samuel More. Over the next six years they had four children: Elinor, or Ellen, baptized on May 24, 1612; Jasper, baptized Aug. 8, 1613; Richard, baptized Nov. 13,1614; and Mary, baptized April 16, 1616.

Court Battles

Samuel spent a great deal of time in London as secretary to Lord Edward Zouche, a family friend. Zouche was a diplomat and an investor with the Virginia Company. While Samuel was away, Katherine and Jacob did play—or so Samuel concluded. By 1616, he decided the More children looked a lot more like Jacob Blakeway than they looked like him. He accused Katherine of adultery.

Lord Edward Zouche

Katherine didn’t deny the accusation. She said Jacob Blakeway was her husband. She then tried to get an annulment from Samuel. But unfortunately for Katherine, the witnesses to their betrothal contract had died. Had they survived and testified, the Blakeway family could have lived happily ever after.

Custody Fight

Samuel, with his father’s help, went to court to cut the four children out of his will. Then he hatched a plan to get rid of them.

First, he sent the children to live with a tenant on his estate, out of the reach of their mother. Katherine tried and tried to get them back. She discovered the tenants’ cottage where Samuel had stashed them and went there to see them. According to court documents, she then tried to take them away. “[I]n a hail of murderous oaths, [she] did teare the clothes from their backes,” the record stated. However, she failed.

Between December 1619 and July 8, 1620, Katherine and Samuel took their custody battle to court 12 times. Unfortunately for Katherine, the ultimate decision rested with the Privy Council – and Samuel’s friend and employer, Lord Zouche, served as a privy counselor. And so, unsurprisingly, the Privy Council denied Katherine’s final appeal on July 8, 1620.

Human Trafficking

When Katherine’s appeal failed, Samuel had a cousin take the four little children to London. From there they’d be delivered to the group of Puritans who intended to establish a colony in the New World. Not coincidentally, Zouche had invested £100 in the Virginia Company, which financed the Mayflower’s voyage to North America.

In London, the More children stayed with the disreputable Thomas Weston, a merchant who dealt with the Pilgrims. Someone described him as “eager to reap quick profits from the New World, and not very scrupulous about the means.”

Weston took the children to Philemon Powell, later convicted as a smuggler. Powell delivered them to the Pilgrims’ agents in London. They were then parceled out as indentured servants. Elinor, the oldest at eight, went to Edward Weston. Jasper, seven, belonged to John Carver, the first governor of Plymouth. Richard, six, and Mary, four, went to the household of William Brewster, the Pilgrims’ spiritual leader.

Pilgrims John Carver, William Bradford and Miles Standish at prayer during their voyage to North America. 1844 painting by Robert Walter Weir.

Unbeknownst to their mother, the Mayflower love children set sail on Sept. 16, 1620. To some, it seemed like a death sentence.

To Samuel, it seemed the right thing to do to what he called “a spurious brood.” He justified his cruelty by claiming “great blotts and blemishes may fall upon them” at home.

Death Sentence

The voyage to the New World took a miserable nine-and-a-half weeks. The Mayflower, about 80 feet long, was grossly overcrowded with 102 passengers and 30 crew, along with pigs and chickens. The passengers subsisted on hardtack, salt pork, pickles, dried meat, oatmeal and beer—even the children.

On good days, the passengers could leave the cramped, fetid cabins below to get fresh air on deck. But October brought few good days, as North Atlantic storms tossed the little ship. Seasickness plagued the passengers, and the stench of vomit joined the stinking slop buckets below deck.

Cabin of the Mayflower II.

The Mayflower anchored in Provincetown Harbor on Nov. 11, 1620. All the passengers had survived, except for William Butten, a servant who died three days before the Pilgrims sighted land.

But then others began to perish. It’s unclear exactly when the Mayflower love children began to succumb. Seven-year-old Jasper More probably died on Dec. 16 in Provincetown Harbor. Three others died during the weeks that the Mayflower lay anchored off Cape Cod.

Then in the terrible winter that followed, half the Mayflower voyagers perished. Scurvy had weakened many of them. That and other diseases carried them off, according to William Bradford.

Jasper’s older sister Elinor died in February. Mary, the youngest, died that winter as well, sometime before her fifth birthday.

Richard was the only one of the Mayflower love children to survive. He lived to a ripe old age, and his colorful life story is told in another post.

Why Those Two Girls?

Martyn Whittock, in Mayflower Lives, points out that 75 percent of the women, 36 percent of the boys and half the men died in Plymouth that winter. He notes that only two girls perished: Elinor and Mary, love children.

“That seems just too coincidental,” Whittock wrote. “One has a feeling that maybe, just maybe, one of the main reasons why Ellen and Mary More died was that they were not loved.”

Their mother in far-away England did love them. In 1622, Katherine More went to court again to find out what happened to her children. There she found out the terrible truth. Or at least part of it. She had no way of knowing that three of her children had died.

Of little Mary More, Whittock wrote,

[I]n the terrible upheavals and suffering that first disrupted, and then ended, the life of such a little girl we can see something of how a little innocent could get crushed between the turning iron wheels of legal and historical events; the determined actions of adults; and the cold ambitions of others.

Aftermath

In 1625, Samuel More married again. The next year, though, he had to get a royal pardon because, technically, he still had a living wife—Katherine.

The keep at Hopton Castle.

After that, Katherine More and Jacob Blakeway disappear from the historical record.

Samuel More, however, reappears again causing the death of others. During the English Civil War, Samuel More held Hopton Castle for the Parliamentarians. A Royalist force 500 strong stormed the castle, held by only 30 men. The Royalists offered to let the garrison surrender, but More refused. The Royalists massacred the Parliamentarians—all except Samuel More.

Anthony Wagner

In 1959, Jasper More went looking in his attic for old documents. His friend, genealogist Anthony Wagner, had suggested the search. More was a descendent of Richard More, the only Mayflower love child to survive to adulthood. More found the document of the 1622 court proceedings that tells the tragic tale of the Mayflower love children. Historians had their answer.

Need some new ideas for your Thanksgiving feast? How about trying something old — and authentic — from the New England Historical Society’s latest ebook. Available from Amazon (click here).

With thanks to Mayflower Lives: Pilgrims in a New World and the Early American Experience by Martyn Whittock.

Images: Mayflower cabin By Kenneth C. Zirkel – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57283684. Hopton Castle By Ostrich, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4360823. Mayflower plaque By Phil Revel, Shipton, Shropshire – https://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/6809987125, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18269228. This story was updated in 2022.

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John William Sterling, a Well-Respected Man With a Secret

John William Sterling was a corporate lawyer during the Gilded Age, a conservative, upper-class businessman, the kind of man the Kinks describe as “a well-respected man about town.”

John William Sterling

In 1911, his name and resume appeared in Distinguished successful Americans of our day. From it we learn he graduated with honors from Yale College and Columbia Law School. He advised railroad barons in building and dismantling railroads, and he served on the boards of nine large banks and gas companies. Appropriately for a man of his stature, he devoted his time to philanthropy—prestigious charities, the kind people noticed. Eminently clubbable, he belonged to the exclusive Metropolitan, Union and American Yacht clubs.

Like the Kinks’ well-respected man, John William Sterling lived in a world built around punctuality. A Wall Street Journal correspondent described him as, “almost taciturn, and excessively devoted to his profession. He sat before his desk every morning, not later than eight o’clock, and was usually the last one in the office to close the desk and go home.”

That same correspondent also noted he had an unusual relationship that was ‘often spoken of and commented upon.’ That relationship was with a cotton broker named James O. Bloss.

John William Sterling

He was born in Stratford, Conn., on May 12, 1844. His father, also John William Sterling, was captain of the Splendid, one of the largest clipper ships during the China Trade. His mother, Catherine Plant, belonged to a prominent Stratford family; her father, David, served as a U.S. congressman and as the state’s lieutenant governor. His parents both had ancestors who arrived on the Mayflower.

Sterling Homestead

He studied at Stratford Academy, where he probably knew another young man who would lead his entire life as a bachelor, James Buchanan Mitchell. Graduating as class valedictorian, he entered Yale as the Civil War broke out.

Jonathan Ned Katz, a historian of human sexuality, notes in an essay that Sterling slept with Mitchell at Yale. His journal in September-October 1862 records: “I slept with Jim Mitchell last night an.” Katz suggests they had an ongoing relationship, as Sterling and Mitchell both chose to attend Columbia Law School.

Sterling and classmate at Yale.

His sleeping with Jim Mitchell may not have aroused much comment, wrote Katz, or at least it didn’t arouse much suspicion about what went on.

At Yale, Sterling belonged to Skull and Bones. He graduated with honors from Yale in 1864 and then from Columbia Law School in 1867 as class valedictorian.

Soon after his admission to the bar that year, he met a young cotton broker about his own age, James O. Bloss. Bloss also came from an old New England family, though he grew up in Rochester, N.Y.

Three lines of poetry clipped from the New York Times and pasted into the back of his Commonplace Book suggest Sterling’s feelings toward the man he called “Blossy.”

Once more I give me body and soul to thee,
Who hast my soul for ever: cliff and sand
Recede, and heart to heart once more are we.

Algernon Charles Swinburne wrote those lines in his poem “In Guernsey / To Theodore Watts.”

In 1872 John William Sterling and James O. Bloss went house-hunting, and they settled on 21 West 25^th St. They would live together for nearly 50 years.

Partners

John William Sterling rocketed to the top of the then-burgeoning corporate world. He went to work as a clerk in a New York law firm and made partner in 1870. Three years later he had his name on the door as a partner in Shearman & Sterling. He advised another close friend, James Stillman, chairman of the board of National City Bank, then the nation’s largest. (Stillman’s great-grandson, Whit Stillman, is an Academy Award-nominated film director.)

Sterling also advised William Rockefeller, co-founder of Standard Oil and H.H. Rogers, whose firm merged with Standard Oil, as well as railroad tycoons Jay Gould and Jim Fisk.

He once said the ideal client is ‘a very wealthy man in very great trouble.’ His clients paid him handsomely for his advice, and he made a fortune.

The Sterling mansion, now a community center

In 1886, Sterling built a stately mansion, Sterling House, in Stratford, presumably a weekend house he shared with his sisters. Today the National Register of Historic Places lists the Sterling mansion, now the Sterling House Community Center.

By 1890 he and Blossy moved uptown to 221 East 47^th St., where they had four servants. Eventually they moved to 912 Fifth Ave., overlooking Central Park.

Neuroticism

Sterling clearly valued his reputation as a man of means and prominence in society. And so as Katz points out, ‘his contravention of society’s marital standard, and, perhaps, its sexual proprieties, would have been a profound source of conflict and anxiety.’

His mother was said to be happy her son didn’t inherit his father’s love of the sea. Actually, he had more than a touch of hydrophobia. He had a ‘deep-rooted antipathy to the ocean,’ wrote John Anson Garver in a biographical sketch of Sterling. He didn’t even like to take ferries, and never traveled abroad.

Anson Phelps Stokes, secretary to Yale after 1899, recalled that Sterling wouldn’t go to bed until the housekeeper poked the closet with a stick and looked under the bed to make sure there were no burglars. He had iron bars on his bedroom window and an iron door with an electric lock he controlled with a button by his bedside. Bloss slept in the room with him and his valet in an adjoining bedroom.

In Harriman vs. Hill, author Larry Haeg describes Sterling as a chain-smoking, fast walker with a fear of public speaking and a penchant for scheduling meetings at odd minutes, like 3:17 p.m. He ate dinner in the same chair at the same table six nights a week at the Union Club.

He also locked his office at work and always paid for his investments in cash. That made him a very wealthy man.

A Strange Postscript

John William Sterling died suddenly in Canada on July 5, 1918. He left $18 million to Yale and the rest to Blossy, who he named as executor of his estate.

That caused a bit of trouble. Bloss died five months later, on Dec. 15, 1918, without having completely executed the will.

Further, Sterling had died before he could execute the will of another wealthy man, his friend James Stillman, who died March 15, 1918. And Stillman had been named executor of the estate of James Gordon Bennett, who died May 14, 1918.

The first three men who died left $75 million.

Eventually Yale got its money, the largest bequest to a university up to that time.

Sterling’s gift was used to build Yale’s Law School, the Divinity School quadrangle, a School of Medicine, the Hall of Graduate Studies and the Sterling Memorial Library. He also endowed the Sterling professorships, who have included such notables as William O. Douglas, Wilbur Cross, Harold Bloom, Edmund Morgan and Paul de Man.

With thanks to Jonathan Ned Katz, “An Understanding…Held Them Together“

NRHP: Sterling Homestead By Doug Kerr – https://www.flickr.com/photos/dougtone/6439034575/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44722867; Sterling House Community Center By Jerry Dougherty – http://public.fotki.com/GCDOUGHERTY/all-towns-and-cities/stratford-ct/stratfordsterlinghouse.html, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29522854. This story was updated in 2022.

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The Brahmin Rough Riders of New England

Some people believe that the Rough Riders were almost all cowboys from out West. After all, it had earned the nickname “The Cowboy Regiment.”

But that wasn’t entirely the case, as you shall see. Brahmins from New England with refined backgrounds also joined the Rough Riders.

Men from every New England state volunteered for Teddy Roosevelt’s U.S. 1^st Volunteer Cavalry, better known as the Rough Riders. Massachusetts had as many as 25. As a matter of fact, the actual commander of the unit, Leonard Wood, hailed from New Hampshire. Frederic Remington featured Woodbury Kane from Rhode Island in his famous painting of the immortal charge up San Juan Hill.

Col. Roosevelt and the Rough Riders on top of San Juan Hill.

Roosevelt had four recruiting stations out West, in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and the Oklahoma/Indian Territories. He had vast experience in the West and knew the cowboys already knew how to ride and shoot. But Roosevelt knew another target-rich area full of ready-for-action men: His wealthy, pedigreed friends throughout New York and New England.

Roosevelt put out the word. They responded in droves from polo clubs, boxing clubs, duck blinds, steeplechase courses, yacht clubs, Ivy League athletic fields and glee clubs. Many had graduated from Harvard.

One Rough Rider, James McClintock, who hailed from California, said they were in it for the adventure.

The Rough Riders are the stuff of legend, having generated a movie, a television show and, of course, a President. They were, however, one of the shortest lived units in American military history. They only existed for four months and 13 days before they disbanded.

Rhode Island Rough Riders

Woodbury Kane, Newport;Joseph S. Stevens, Newport; Norman Maxwell, Newport; Charles Hatch, Newport; Joseph F. Flynn, Cranston.

Rough Rider Woodbury Kane

Woodbury Kane, a classmate of Teddy Roosevelt’s at Harvard, was born in Newport, a cousin of John Jacob Astor IV. A noted yachtsman, he belonged to the New York Yacht Club and served on the crew of the Columbia in the 1899 America’s Cup Race. He was also a noted big game hunter.

After graduation, he lived the life of a bon vivant in Newport and New York. In April 1898 he and other East Coast friends joined the U.S. 1^st Volunteer Cavalry.

After enlistment, he, William Tiffany and other East Coast friends donated two $7,500 Colt machine guns to the unit. When the unit expanded to a thousand men he received a lieutenant’s commission.

While serving in the Rough Riders he was always noted for being dressed to a T, no matter the conditions. While leading K Troop in the charge on San Juan Hill, he was wounded in the forearm. Kane was awarded a citation for gallantry and promoted to captain.

He spent the rest of his life living the life of a dandy until a heart attack cut him down at the age of 46. His obituary noted he left no children, but he did leave his beloved polo pony.

Vermont

Ira A. Hill, Grand Isle; Wallace Batchelder, Chester.

Wallace Batchelder graduated from Chester Academy in Chester, Vt., before enlisting in the Rough Riders. He later fought in the Philippines under General Wood. After his service he returned to Vermont, where he became a lawyer and chaired the state’s committee to elect Roosevelt President of the United States in 1904. He later broke with Roosevelt, who in 1912 sent him a telegram telling him not to support any candidate who didn’t support Roosevelt. Batchelder replied he wouldn’t support Roosevelt.

New Hampshire Rough Riders

Dudley S. Dean, Laconia; Walter F. Hickey, Nashua; Leonard Wood, Winchester.

Leonard Wood was the actual commander of the Rough Riders; Teddy Roosevelt was his second in command.

A descendant of four Mayflower passengers, he trained as a physician at Harvard Medical School. He served as a major general in the Army. When he came to command the U.S. 1^st Volunteer Cavalry in Cuba, he was a seasoned Indian fighter in the West and had already been awarded the Medal of Honor. After the Spanish-American War, he served as Governor-General of the Philippines and contended for the Republican nomination for President in 1920.

Dean was an All American football quarterback for Harvard from 1888 to 1890. He participated in the charge on San Juan Hill. That was not to be his last military adventure. During World War II, he served as a lieutenant colonel In the U.S. Army Air Force. He was the executive producer of the play Winged Victory, which ran from November 1943 to May 1944. He lived until the age of 79, passing away in 1950.

Dudley Dean, football star

Dudley’s son John H. Dean played football for Harvard too. At Harvard, he befriended Joseph P. Kennedy and they spent summers together at Cohassett, Mass.

Maine

Guy Muncie, Calais; Harrison J. Holt, Portland; Frederick C. Wesley, Bangor.

Harrison Holt graduated from Phillips Andover and Harvard. Upon his Harvard graduation in 1898 he enlisted with Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. After the war and some business ventures in Mexico he joined the New York Globe and Commercial Advertiser as a reporter. Later in life he wrote novels and detective stories, including The Calendared Isles, a Romance of Casco Bay (read it here) and Midnight at Mears House.

Connecticut

Edward C. Hall, Wallingford.

Unlike most of the Ivy League Rough Riders, Edward Hall graduated from Yale, not Harvard. Upon graduation in 1894, he went to work for Westinghouse and did a brief stint at a North Dakota ranch before enlisting with the Rough Riders. After the war he joined General Electric in Lynn, Mass., then transferred to the Schenectady office, where he died in 1912.

Massachusetts

Harry A. Curtis, Boston; Prescott H. Belknap, Brookline; John D. Hubbell, Boston; Rufus K. Thomas, Boston; Wellman H. Saunders, Salem; John P. Gardner, Boston; Guy H. Scull, Boston; Harry A. Davis, Boston; Francis B. Crowninshield, Marblehead; William H. Mitchell, Salem; Winslow Clark, Milton; Edward F. Donnelly, Boston; Michael F. Hogan; William T. James, Fitchburg; Arthur M. Leroy, Boston; Raymond Morse, Springfield; Edward A. O’Brien, Charlestown; William J. Tudor, Boston; Harry C. White, Somerville.

Francis Boardman Crowninshield, another Harvard graduate, went on to become a noted international yachtsman. He fought with Troop K of the Rough Riders and took part in the charge up San Juan Hill. In 1900, he married Louise DuPont from the famous chemical family. In 1911, he won the King of Spain’s Cup in Spain, now among his many trophies at the Eastern Yacht Club in Marblehead, Mass.

Rough Riders. Image courtesy New York Public Library.

About the author of this story: Leo Caisse of East Providence, R.I., passed away in 2020. He published the book, The Civilian Conservation Corps: A Guide to Their Works in Rhode Island. He also published a number of historical articles, including Ears On the World in America in World War II Magazine, October, 2017. Leo earned a B.A. and M.A. in American History from Providence College and he lived in East Providence, R.I.

This story updated in 2022.

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The USS Kearsarge Launched at Portsmouth to Slay the Alabama

In 1862, the Confederate Naval vessel CSS Alabama was the scourge of the seas. Just over a year into the Civil War the Confederacy had bought the ship in England. And the Union Navy had dispatched its own warship, the USS Kearsarge, to stop it.

Built in secrecy to avoid falling afoul of the British government’s official stance of neutrality, the Alabama was launched without cannon. Because the British couldn’t sell her as an armed vessel, the Confederacy to arm her. As soon as the ship entered international waters, the Confederate Navy outfitted her with eight cannon. Then it set her loose on a mission to capture as many merchant ships headed for America’s northern states as possible.

The Alabama may have exceeded the Confederates’ wildest expectations. Under the command of Capt. Raphael Semmes, she burned 65 ships, though never harmed their crew or passengers.

Under both power and sail, the ship could make 13 knots. Its captain and crew quickly made their impact on the war. Within a month of her commissioning, Alabama was cruising the shipping lanes east of the Azores, capturing and burning every American merchant vessel she encountered. Commissioned in July of 1862, she had destroyed 21 ships before the end of the year.

The Union Navy had taken notice of the Alabama. She had easily sunk a Union sidewheeler the USS Hatteras in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

The Battle of Kearsarge vs. Alabama by Edouard Manet, Philadelphia Museum of Art

The USS Kearsarge Receives her Orders

The Navy had constructed the USS Kearsarge at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in 1861 and sent her to sea in search of Confederate raiders.

New Hampshire newspaper publisher Henry McFarland claimed he had suggested naming the vessel for New Hampshire’s Mount Kearsarge to his friend, an assistant secretary of the Navy who summered in the Granite State. The assistant secretary would later say his own wife suggested the name.

USS Kearsarge

Either way, the USS Kearsage had been launched in 1862 and soon it was given a new mission: Capture or sink the Alabama. Capt. John Winslow, a Mayflower descendant, and a crew of sailors, many from New England, tackled their mission with gusto. From November 1862 to March 1863 the Kearsarge underwent some special modifications at ports in Spain.

The Kearsarge carried seven guns and under power and sail she could manage 11 knots. Though she might not seem quite a match for the Alabama, the Union Navy had taken notice of the awesome power of the Alabama. Steps were taken to strengthen Kearsarge. Along her sides, strategically placed to protect her engines, the Spanish shipyard installed three layers of chain armoring. And to disguise the battle armor, they constructed false wooden sides that sat atop the armor, painted black to match the hull.

The Kearsarge Hunts Alabama

For months, the Kearsarge scoured the Atlantic in search of the Alabama. But the elusive Alabama sailed the waters of South America and across to Africa, leaving a trail of devastation in her wake. By June of 1863, when the Alabama pulled into the French port of Cherbourg for much needed refitting, she had captured and destroyed 65 ships. She had boarded more than 450 ships and taken 2,000 prisoners over a period of 560 days.

When the officers of the Kearsarge learned the Alabama was in Cherbourg, they made their way to the port at best speed, arriving just three days after the Alabama. At the mouth of the port, the Kearsarge’s pursuit stopped abruptly. France was neutral in the war, and an attack on a ship in port would have been an unprovoked act of war.

CSS Alabama

The Kearsarge requested support from other Union naval vessels in blockading the Alabama in port. The commander of the Alabama made a snap decision. He would not be hemmed into the port while the Union Navy gathered strength. He quickly outfitted the Alabama to go to sea with the intention of engaging the Kearsarge.

Kearsarge at the Battle of Cherbourg

On June 19, the Alabama left port. The Kearsarge raced ahead of it to reach international waters to avoid a naval battle in French waters. Safely out to sea, the two vessels began to circle, each trying to gain an advantage.

From a range of 1,000 feet, the Alabama fired first. The Kearsarge waited until the ships got closer. On shore, spectators watched as the two ships fired hundreds of cannon shots at each other. The Alabama fired more than 370 shots at the Kearsarge, but the Kearsarge’s makeshift armor held. Though her hull bent under the barrage, it did not break.

The gun that sunk the Alabama

The Kearsarge fired far fewer shots, but her shots were accurate. When the smoke began to clear, the Alabama was sinking. The Kearsarge had blasted holes through the ship below the waterline, dooming the mighty Alabama.

The Alabama surrendered. Capt. Semmes dumped his sword into the ocean rather than face the indignity of surrendering it — an act considered dishonorable by some. One man was killed on the Kearsarge and two were injured. On the Confederate side, 19 men died. Some 70 men surrendered to the Kearsarge. Semmes managed to flee aboard on a passing British vessel and escape to England with about 40 of his men.

The crew of the Kearsarge were hailed as heroes back in New York. For their actions in the Battle of Cherbourg, 17 sailors received the medal of valor. The ship, meanwhile, would continue in service in various capacities up until 1894.

The Kearsarge commander, John Winslow, was promoted to commodore and then rear admiral, commanding the Pacific Squadron until his retirement in 1872. He died in Boston shortly thereafter.

Aftermath and Repercussions

The Alabama’s captain, Raphael Semmes, went on to teach Moral Philosophy at the Louisiana State Seminary, later Louisiana State University. He died in 1877 from complications of food poisoning after earing contaminated shrimp. The city of Semmes, Ala., was named after him.

Cartoon showing the US bullying Britain into paying the Alabama Claim

Britain had angered the United States by letting one of its shipyards build the Alabama. That led to a long legal challenge initially led led by American Minister Charles Francis Adams, the son and grandson of presidents. Known as the Alabama Claims, the U.S. demanded payment of damages for the destruction wrought by the Alabama and several other British-built Confederate raiders. In 1872, Britain settled with a payment of $15.5 million.

In 1984, a French Navy mine hunter discovered the wreck of the Alabama off Cherbourg. The archaeological investigation recovered several cannon. In 2002, a diving expedition recovered the ship’s bell along with cannon, tableware and ornamental commodes.

In Stamford, Conn., a cannon from the USS Kearsarge stood in West Park from 1901 until 1942. It was then hauled away as scrap during World War II.

Thanks to: Kearsarge Mountain and the Corvette Named for It by Henry MacFarland.

Images: The gun that sank the Alabama By Internet Archive Book Images – https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14576197040/Source book page: https://archive.org/stream/photographichist06mill/photographichist06mill#page/n308/mode/1up, No restrictions, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43879541. Battle of Kearsarge and Alabama By Édouard Manet – 1. From en.wiki2. The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1757414. Painting of Alabama By Rear Admiral J. W. Schmidt [1] – From the US Navy's Naval Historical Center. Originally from en.wikipedia; description page is (was) here;uploaded onto en.wiki 03:11, 14 November 2004 by McMullen 740×571 (59,800 bytes; Painting of CSS Alabama), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1338854,

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Erle Stanley Gardner and His Fiction Factory

Before Erle Stanley Gardner created the fictional lawyer Perry Mason, he lived the part of a pugnacious defense attorney. He represented the downtrodden and often-exploited Chinese and Mexican immigrants flooding into California in the early 1900s. And before that, he scrapped his way through a childhood spent in an Oregon mining camp. But it all started in 1889 in Malden, Mass.

Erle Stanley Gardner

By the time he passed away in 1970, Gardner had created what he called his ‘fiction factory’ that had turned out 80-plus Perry Mason novels (including several that hadn’t yet been published) and the character had been successfully adapted for film, radio and television.

Erle Stanley Gardner

Gardner’s work habits were legendary. Rising well before dawn, he would begin the day by dictating new novels for several hours. A staff of typists would transcribe the recordings and he would spend the remainder of the day revising and preparing his manuscripts to send to the publisher.

Despite the never ending appetite for the Mason stories, Gardner had to develop other serial characters to fill his time. Doug Selby, a fictional district attorney, was one recurring character and the detecting duo of Bertha Cool and Donald Lam made the core of another series that Gardner churned out under the pseudonym A.A. Fair.

At his peak, the New York Times estimated that Gardner novels were selling at a pace of 2,000 an hour, round the clock, 365 days a year.

Go West, Young Man

Yet writing was very much a second career for Gardner. His childhood in Massachusetts lasted just 10 years. His father, a mining engineer, moved the family to the West Coast and found work in Oregon. Gardner became a boxer as a young man, and got tossed from high school for fighting. But his father Charles wanted Gardner to become a lawyer.

Gardner put in a short stint at an Indiana law school. But had to flee back to the West Coast after a fistfight with a professor put him in hot water. By 1911, however, he had passed the California bar exam and was hustling for work. Most of his clients came from the Chinese and Mexican communities. Gardner made a good living showing up the police in and around Oxnard, Calif., when they tried to hang a loosely-investigated case on an unsuspecting immigrant.

For two decades Gardner made a name for himself defending the underdog. All the while, his writing took more and more time. But he was hardly an overnight success as an author. His early effort, Nellie’s Naughty Nighty, was pure titillating pulp, written for one of the short-story magazines popular in that era.

His mother, Gardner said, was disgusted and declined to read his work. Though Gardner loved the California desert more than any place, he was always fond of his Massachusetts childhood. He would recall for interviewers that his mother, Grace (Waugh) Gardner, had roots that went back to the Mayflower. And his own talent for writing first started developing as a youngster in New England.

Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) and Della Street (Barbara Hale) in “The Case of the Corresponding Corpse” (1958)

Finally, Perry

It would be 400-plus stories, novels, and articles later that the first Mason novel, The Case of the Velvet Claws, would be published in 1933 and launch Gardner’s enduring character.

The story, and the crusading attorney, were a smash. At this point, Gardner gave up his law practice, already a very small part of his work. He wanted to focus entirely on his writing. In 1935 he separated from his wife of more than 20 years (with whom he had a daughter). He admitted he wasn’t cut out for family life. For the next 35 years Gardner worked nonstop at his fiction factory until he passed away in 1970.

Perry Mason producer Gail Patrick Jackson (left) and Erle Stanley Gardner speak with Hollywood columnist Norma Lee Browning during filming of the last Perry Mason episode, “The Case of the Final Fade-Out” (1966).

Though the critics were frequently harsh in their analysis of his work, Gardner said it never bothered him. He wrote to make himself money, he said, and to provide a diversion for his world-weary readers. If he could help them take their minds off their troubles enough to let them drift off to a good night’s sleep, he had done his job well.

This story was updated in 2022.

Images: Gardner with Jackson and Browning By Self scan of original black-and-white glossy photograph by Louis Wolf, Chicago Tribune, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46686445.

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