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Newport NH

Sarah Josepha Hale, the Little Lady From NH Who Started Thanksgiving

Growing up in Newport, N.H., Sarah Josepha Hale hardly seemed likely to move a president, build a monument or influence a generation of American women.

Sarah Josepha Hale

Born into modest circumstances, she rose to the editorship of a popular women’s magazine. From that influential perch she promoted the Christmas tree, the white wedding dress and the Thanksgiving dinner of turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie.

Sarah Josepha Hale wielded a powerful influence on domestic fashion and taste as a 19^th-century cross between Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey.

Sarah Josepha Hale

She was born Oct. 24, 1788 on a farm outside Newport, N.H., to Captain Gordon Buell and Martha Whittlesay Buell. Her parents believed in education for girls, and home-schooled Sarah.

Her father suffered from wounds inflicted during the American Revolution, which made farming difficult. In 1811, he bought a tavern on Main Street in Newport and called it The Rising Sun. Meanwhile, Sarah grew up and taught school.

The Rising Sun

She married David Hale, a lawyer, at the Rising Sun on the day before her 25th birthday. The couple had five children before David died nine years later. Sarah Josepha Hale wore black to mourn him for the rest of her life.

The year after her husband died, she published a book of poems with financial help from his Freemason Lodge. Four years later in 1827 she subsequently published a novel that dealt with slavery, called Northwood: Life North and South.

Thanksgiving

Back then, the United States had only two national holidays: Washington’s Birthday and Independence Day. Only New Englanders celebrated Thanksgiving, and each of the six states scheduled its own date to celebrate from October through January.

An 1859 fashion plate from Godey’s Lady’s Magazine

The success of Northwood: Life North and South got Sarah Josepha Hale the job as editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, the biggest women’s magazine before the Civil War.

She wrote editorial after editorial in her magazine urging Thanksgiving be celebrated as a national holiday. Finally President Abraham Lincoln acquiesced in 1863, thinking the holiday would help unify the nation after the Civil War. By then Sarah Josepha Hale was 74 years old.

But how to celebrate the new national holiday? Sarah Josepha Hale had the answer in one chapter of Northwood: Life North and South. It included a detailed description of a New England Thanksgiving dinner, which became a template for the rest of the country.

The Feast

She described a long table covered in a white damask tablecloth. Every child had a seat;”‘the more the better, it being considered an honor for a man to sit down to his Thanksgiving dinner surrounded by a large family.”

Roasted turkey, stuffed and basted, took center stage at the head of the table.

She then described an enormous amount of food: leg of pork, loin of mutton, sirloin of beef, vegetables, gravy, a goose, ducklings, pickles, preserves, a chicken pie – and the “celebrated’ pumpkin pie, an ‘indispensable part of a good and true Yankee Thanksgiving.” Every place had a wine glass and two tumblers, with a slice of wheat bread on top of an inverted tumbler. For desert they had plum pudding, custards, pie, cake, sweetmeats and fruits.

To drink, they had homemade mild spirits: currant wine, cider and ginger beer.

In deference to an English visitor, the family had coffee after the meal. Sarah Josepha Hale wrote approvingly of the innovation.

Sarah Josepha Hale subsequently lived for another 15 years after her great accomplishment.

She also wrote and edited children’s books. In 1850, Mary Had a Little Lamb appeared in Poems for Our Children.

Her many other achievements include dozens of other books. She helped with the founding of Vassar College, the restoration of Mount Vernon and the completion of the Bunker Hill Monument. She died on April 30, 1879.

Richards Free Library

Today, the Richards Free Library in Newport bestows the annual Sarah Josepha Hale Award on a New England writer. The first honoree was Robert Frost in 1956. Most recently, the 2021 award went to Sy Montgomery.

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).

This story last updated in 2022. Image of the Richards Free Library by By User:Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28959726.

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Six (And More) Mothers Who Left a Mark on History

Mothers have always had to balance competing demands, and some of those who did it best made history.

Mindful that Mother’s Day is around the corner, we bring you more than six New England mothers who left a mark on the region.

They include an African-American inventor from Connecticut, a Chinese-American laundress from Maine, a magazine editor from New Hampshire, a midwife from Vermont and a character from a widely-read book who was quite different from her popular image.

Mothers of Invention

Sarah Boone

On May 15, 1809, Mary Dixon Kies of Killingly, Conn., won a patent for her technique of weaving silk thread into straw to make straw hats — becoming the first woman in the United States to receive a patent. President James Madison signed Kies’ patent, and First Lady Dolley Madison wrote to congratulate her.

The people of Connecticut have been unusually inventive ever since David Bushnell invented a submarine for George Washington called The Turtle. Connecticut women – 44 of them – were among the 5,578 Connecticut inventors who obtained U.S. patents in the century after the U.S. Patent Law was passed in 1790.

From 1876 through 1890, the U.S. Patent Office ranked Connecticut first in inventions per capita every year but three, when Connecticut came in second.

At the 1876 World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, the Connecticut Women’s Building featured 69 inventions by women, including Catherine Griswold’s skirt-supporting corset, Mary Ann Boughton’s cooking stove, Ann Harrison’s sleigh bells and Ellie Sperry’s check punch for banks.

Connecticut-born Eliza Murfey, a physician, took out at least 23 patents between 1870 and 1875 for railroad packings, used to lubricate rail-car axles to prevent derailments.

Sarah Boone, an African-American woman, received a U.S. government patent for an ironing board in 1892. She was born in Mississippi sometime around the end of the Civil War and moved to New Haven.

People had ironed on boards placed between two supports. Boone designed a hinged board with curved ends, making it possible to iron sleeves and dresses. She died in 1900, eight years after she obtained her patent.

Connecticut was still a leader in inventiveness in 2015, when it ranked eighth in the United States for total patents awarded.

Today you can see straw hats made by Mary Kies at the Bugbee Memorial Library in Killingly, Conn., as well as at the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford.

Mother of the Year

Toy Len Goon receiving the Maine Mother of the Year Award.

Toy Len Goon was born Sept. 21, 1891 in a mud brick hut to peasant farmers in Guangdong Province. It was a far cry from the White House, where she would meet First Lady Bess Truman.

As a child she did backbreaking farm chores until the family’s land could no longer support all six children. At 10, Toy Len was given to a wealthy merchant family, where she worked as a servant and babysitter. They treated her kindly. At 12 she went to a girls’ school to learn to be a good Chinese wife.

She married Dogon Goon, who had been working in a laundry in Portland, Maine. In 1917 he was arrested as an illegal resident. He had to pay $1,500 in bail and to serve in the armed forces during World War I to avoid deportation. He was wounded and returned an amputee.

He went back to China to marry Toy Len. When his new bride arrived in Portland, she spoke no English. She worked in the laundry with Dogon. Over the next 13 years, they had eight children.

She managed to save $500 for a down payment on a three-story building in which they lived and started their own laundry.

Dogon died of gangrene in 1952, and Toy Len was left with eight children ages three to 16. She kept the laundry going and made sure all her children got educations, refusing offers to put them in foster care. All did well academically.

In 1957, a local newspaper reported her son Carroll was a physician, Richard a businessman, Edward a research chemist, Albert a lawyer, Josephine a mother, Arthur, a Navy veteran, studying electrical engineering. Doris was a court reporter and Janet a college student

When asked how she did it, Toy Len Goon said, “If there is harmony in the family, there is good in the larder and peace in the country.”

Toy Len Goon was named Maine Mother of the Year in 1952 by the American Mothers Committee of the Golden Rule Foundation. Then she won the national competition.

There were political motives for selecting her. At the height of the Cold War, she represented the superiority of democracy over communism as a Chinese immigrant small business owner and mother.

The week she took off to receive her award was her only vacation. She visited the White House where she met First Lady Bess Truman, and she was honored with a parade in New York’s Chinatown.

Shortly after receiving the award, she moved to Lynn, Mass., to be closer to her children. She died at the age of 101 in 1993.

You can see Toy Len Goon’s former laundry at 615 Forest Ave. in Portland and, while you’re at it, take Mom to the Great Lost Bear nearby for dinner.

Mother Goose

Mary Goose tombstone

Mary Goose, buried in Boston’s Granary Burying Ground, is often called the Mother Goose whose nursery rhymes have entertained children for centuries.

There’s a little bit of truth to the story – but just a little. The name ‘Mother Goose’ had been around since at least the 17^th and possibly the 10^th century in Europe.

In colonial Massachusetts, Mary Goose, born Mary Balston, married a wealthy landowner named Isaac Goose. They had 10 children. Mary died in 1690, and Isaac then married Elizabeth Foster of Charlestown, and they had six more children. They named one of their daughters ‘Elizabeth.’

In 1715, the younger Elizabeth Goose married a Boston printer named Thomas Fleet – by none other than Cotton Mather.

They had a son, which delighted Fleet’s mother-in-law. “Mother Goose, like all good grandmothers, was in ecstasies at the event; her joy was unbounded; she spent her whole time in the nursery, and in wandering about the house, pouring forth, in not the most melodious strains, the songs and ditties which she had learned in her younger days, greatly to the annoyance of the whole neighborhood–to Fleet in particular, who was a man fond of quiet. “

Fleet tried to quiet his mother-in-law, but failed. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, he decided, and in 1719 he published a book of nursery rhymes called Songs for the Nursery; or, Mother Goose’s Melodies for Children. It was a clever use of his mother-in-law’s name. In 1697, a French writer named Charles Perrault published a book called Contes de ma Mère L’Oye, or Tales of My Mother Goose.

By 1833, a copy of Fleet’s book survived and was republished as The Only True Mother Goose. A century later, Mary Goose was promoted as the real Mother Goose to attract tourists to the Granary Burying Ground — as if the graves of Paul Revere, John Hancock and Sam Adams weren’t enough.

The Granary Burying Ground is at Tremont & Bromfield Streets in Boston.

Mother of Thanksgiving

Sarah Josepha Hale

Sarah Josepha Hale, born Oct. 24, 1788, in Newport, N.H., influenced American fashion and taste as long-time editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, the biggest women’s magazine before the Civil War.

She’s been described as a cross between Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey. Sarah Josepha Hale made popular the Christmas tree, the white wedding dress and the Thanksgiving dinner of turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie.

We might not celebrate Thanksgiving at all were it not for her. Before the Civil War, there were only two national holidays: Washington’s Birthday and Independence Day. Thanksgiving was only celebrated in New England, and each of the six states scheduled its own date to celebrate from October through January. Hale wrote letters to five presidents and editorials in her magazine urging Thanksgiving be celebrated as a national holiday. Finally Abraham Lincoln acquiesced, thinking the holiday would help unify the nation after the Civil War.

Among her many accomplishments are the poem Mary Had a Little Lamb and dozens of books. She helped with the founding of Vassar College, the restoration of Mount Vernon and the completion of the Bunker Hill Monument. The Richards Free Library in Newport bestows the annual Sarah Josepha Hale Award on a New England writer. The first honoree was Robert Frost in 1956; poet Sharon Olds won it in 2016.

The Rising Sun Tavern, her father’s establishment and the site of her wedding, is located two houses north of the south Congregational Church in Newport, N.H. The Richards Free Library is at 58 N. Main St. in Newport. The New Hampshire Historical Society sells Sarah Josepha Hale bobblehead dolls online and at its museum store at 30 Park St. in Concord.

Mother of Industrial Psychology

Lillian Gilbreth

Lillian Gilbreth had 12 children, and two of them in 1948 wrote a book about her called Cheaper By the Dozen. The book described how she and her husband, Frank B. Gilbreth, used the time-and-motion principles they taught industrial clients to manage their large household.

She hated the book, which depicted her as a sweet, stay-at-home mom. She was anything but. Lillian Gilbreth was the prototypical working mom, balancing marriage, career and family.

It wasn’t easy to tell where the management company ended and family life began.

They turned their home near Brown University into a laboratory for motion study. The Gilbreths took photos of their children doing dishes to figure out how to do it faster. They spent a vacation on Nantucket finding the best way to pack soap for Lever Brothers.

The children listened to language lessons on the Victrola while taking baths, and learned Morse code after Frank painted the symbols on their walls and ceilings. He left funny messages in code for them to decipher.

Though Frank hadn’t gone to college, she held a doctorate from Brown. She was a pioneer in incorporating psychology in industrial planning and one of the most influential women in America.

She is credited with developing the modern kitchen, conceiving the ‘work triangle’ and inventing the foot pedal trash can, refrigerator door shelves and wall light switches.

Frank and Lillian Gilbreth ran an industrial psychology consulting firm, headquartered in Providence from 1912-19.

Frank died in 1924, but Lillian continued the company until her retirement in 1968, just before she turned 90.

You can still see the New England Butt Company building at 304 Pearl St., where the Gilbreths pioneered the first process flow charts and micromotion studies, or Brown University, where Lillian obtained her PhD in Applied Management. The family lived a half block from Brown, first at 71, then at 77 Brown Street. The Gilbreths’ Nantucket cottage, which had two buglights on the property, was on the extension of Hulbert Avenue behind the Jetties Beach tennis courts.

Mother Myrick

Taconic Mountains

Mother Myrick is both a 3,290-foot-high mountain and a candy store in Vermont. Not much is known today about the original Mother Myrick, but in the late 18^th century she was well respected by the locals.

Mother Myrick lived in Beartown, a now-abandoned settlement on the mountainside. She was a skilled midwife and healer, much like Maine’s Martha Ballard. She had many patients, according to local lore, which is how the mountain was named after her.

Mother Myrick Mountain, part of the Taconic Range, rises to the west of Manchester, Vt. It is covered with a stand of a rich natural hardwood forest, part of the Equinox Highlands.

Mother Myrick’s Confectionery is located nearby in Manchester Center. It began as a small fudge shop in 1977, selling buttercrunch toffee, caramels and chocolates. Today Mother Myrick’s makes cakes, tarts and breads. They offer free shipping for Mother’s Day on their signature Lemon Lulu Cake and Spring Celebration Bread.

Mother Myrick’s Confectionery is at at 4367 Main Street in Manchester Center, Vt.

Images: Mother Goose gravestone By Swampyank at en.wikipedia – Own workTransferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by User:Mutter Erde using CommonsHelper., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4904213

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Austin Corbin, New Hampshire Robber Baron – ‘We do not like the Jews…’ (Pt. 2)

The following is the second in a two-part series. To read the first part, click here.

In July of 1879, Austin Corbin put pen to paper to spell out his thoughts. As he addressed a delicate matter, he didn’t want any confusion about where he stood. “We do not like the Jews as a class,” he wrote.

That began his formal attempts to prevent Jews from visiting his new hotel on Coney Island. By this point, Corbin was the president of the Long Island Railroad and the Manhattan Beach Railway and Hotel. He got both positions, not surprisingly, through theft and corruption.

Corbin first took interest in Long Island shortly after returning from the Midwest and establishing his New York banking firm. (We wrote about it in the first installment of this series.) A doctor advised the sea air would benefit his sickly child. So while visiting what is now Coney Island, he saw the opportunity to build an oceanfront resort at Manhattan Beach inthe Town of Gravesend.

Gravesend had poor management, but there were property claims to all the beach land – just not terribly well-defined claims. Corbin had a solution. He hired the town’s corrupt surveyor. Then he had him buy parcels by hook or by crook. Some he bought, others he just needed to survey out of existence.

Coney Island

In the 1870s, Coney Island had an unsavory reputation, populated by muggers, gamblers and petty thieves. Boss Tweed, the corrupt political leader of New York’s Tammany Hall political machine, had turned it into a mess. Though Tweed was exiled from power by 1877, the power of Tammany persisted. One of its minor operators, John McKane, ran Gravesend when Corbin took an interest. Corbin almost certainly proceeded with McKane’s blessing.

Once Corbin had title to the Manhattan Beach properties, he constructed the Manhattan Beach Hotel, opening it in 1877. And it was grand: 108,000 square feet, 250 rooms, with a veranda 30-feet wide and 600-plus feet long. President Ulysses S. Grant helped cut the ribbon on the hotel at ceremonies on July 4. Over its 25-year life it would host musicians such as John Philip Sousa and Victor Herbert, along with wealthy and famous New Yorkers of the day.

Corbin tightly controlled access to its grounds and beaches. He retained the Pinkerton guards, as he had in the Pennsylvania mines. They patrolled the property and kept out undesirables from the less ritzy end of the beach. Visitors were subject to search and inspection before entering.

And only two years after the hotel opened, Corbin tried to bar all Jewish patrons.

Austin Corbin, Bigot

Anti-Semitism was hardly unheard of at that time, but it was not uncontroversial. The prior summer, hotel operator and judge Henry Hilton (no relation to the Hilton hotels of today) made headlines. He refused to admit a Jewish patron to his Saratoga Springs Grand Union Hotel. Corbin’s similar stance resulted in a Puck cartoon featuring him and Hilton churlishly harassing a Jewish caricature.

For what it’s worth, Corbin’s bigotry was not confined to anti-Semitism. He made headlines again in the later years of his life for barring a Chinese passenger from the cabin on one of his ferries. While it doesn’t seem to have been a major element in his life, Corbin did take his point of view seriously. He served as a founding member in the short-lived, but ominously named, American Society for the Suppression of the Jews.

Controversy aside, the Manhattan Beach Hotel prospered and Corbin set his sights on establishing a second hotel on the ocean: The Oriental. He turned to Tammany gangster John McKane again for assistance. Despite ongoing scandals, the Tammany machine was difficult to topple. The same interests controlled both Democrats and Republicans (very much like today), and both parties embraced Tammany. Tammany thrived by demanding kickbacks for government contracts, licenses and favors. But it would faithfully deliver on promises – taxpayers and the public be damned. Though Tammany started as a Democratic apparatus, it took money from anyone, regardless of affiliation.

Sodom by the Sea

McKane, while successful in cleaning out the lesser criminals from Coney Island, was not successful in improving the overall image of the island. Under his control, it became known as ‘Sodom by the Sea.’ Home to three racetracks, it was a destination for pleasure-seekers of all sorts. Eventually McKane would be sentenced to prison for his corruption, but in the 1870s he was still the boss of Gravesend. McKane advised Corbin that he could acquire from the town the property on which to build his second hotel through a simple town meeting vote, which McKane could deliver for a price.

On the night of the town meeting, Corbin and McKane packed the town hall with his guards and employees, blockaded Corbin’s opponents from entering the building, and voted him the land to build the hotel on for $1,500, roughly one one-hundredth of what it was worth. The controversial land grab would be the subject of lawsuits and legislative investigations, but Corbin and his friends beat back every challenge and the Oriental opened its doors, as planned, in 1880. This time President Rutherford B. Hayes was guest of honor.

Port Plans

The illegal tactics Corbin used in acquiring the land were part of the pattern of his life. In 1880, he gained control of the Long Island Railroad, bringing it out of bankruptcy. As its president for 16 years, he expanded it dramatically, with little regard for the property rights of those who stood in his way.

The most notorious case involved the theft of lands owned by the Montaukett Indian Tribe by Arthur Benson, a friend and business partner of Corbin’s. Benson successfully strong-armed the Native Americans off their land at Montauk, and partnered with Corbin to build resorts, housing and a shipping terminal at the tip of Long Island.

Corbin’s hope was that trans-Atlantic passengers would arrive at Montauk and use his railroad to reach New York, a full day faster than they could on a ship. The ill-conceived plans were flawed in many ways, most significantly by the fact that the proposed port at Montauk was too shallow to serve as the competition that Corbin envisioned for New York Harbor.

Nevertheless, Corbin was on the verge of winning Congressional approval for a duty-free port at the time of his death. Had not repeated lawsuits by the Montauketts over the tactics used to get control of their land slowed the developments, Corbin’s plans might have moved further. Nevertheless, his port plans provide the punctuation mark at the end of his railroading career.

Plantation Economics

Perhaps one of the oddest business ventures Corbin undertook was operating an Arkansas plantation. How did a New Hampshire Yankee wind up running a southern plantation? No surprise, it was politics and land speculation that took Corbin down this road.

In 1869, John C. Calhoun, grandson of the South Carolina senator of the same name, acquired Sunnyside Plantation in Chicot County, Ark., with Corbin’s backing. In the post-Civil War period, Calhoun had become convinced there was a lot of money to be made operating plantations using former slaves as a labor force. His business model worked once, and so he and his brother Patrick looked to replicate the success.

Sunnyside, however, was never a great success. The Calhouns owed substantial debts to their backers. Their system of paying for labor through sharecropping and tenant-farmer relationships, as well as traditional wages, was effective enough. But there was nothing they could do about the vagaries of agriculture. Creditors expected payment, regardless of whether the crop was a good one or the market price for the crop was weak.

Bison at Corbin Park from the 1908 Annual Report of the American Bison Society

Prison Labor

After several reorganizations, the property finally reverted to Austin Corbin in 1886. The Calhouns concluded that the path to easy money lay not in the hard work of farming, but in New York, so they extracted what profits they could from their properties and set out for the city.

At the start, the project was a bust for Austin Corbin. The African American populace that had been willing to work with Calhoun balked at working for skinflint Corbin. In addition, the farming economy was depressed. So for several years, the bulk of the plantation properties went unused. By the early 1890s, however, Austin Corbin found the cheap labor he wanted: Prison inmates. Arkansas’ legislature employed a system of leasing prisoners to farms, and later it agreed to a sharecropping arrangement with Corbin, further insulating him from the risks of farming.

Why did Austin Corbin win such a favorable arrangement from the government? Railroads. With his usual grandiosity, Corbin established a tiny rail system to bring his cotton from the field to his gin. And he stationed his personal steamboat, the “Austin Corbin” on Lake Chicot, where it impressed the residents. Most importantly, he the charmed the Arkansans with his plans to build a railroad that would both serve the local needs and add a much needed east-west line to the state.

Prince Ruspoli

But Austin Corbin had an even more profitable scheme in mind. He struck a bargain with the mayor of Rome, a socialite-loving gadabout known as Prince Ruspoli. For a fee Ruspoli would recruit struggling Italian peasants to come to America and send them overseas to the U.S., where Corbin would fleece them. He charged them inflated prices for everything from boat passage to the tools and equipment they would need to work the land assigned to them when they arrived. If they made it 20 years, they would own their plot.

After some political tap dancing to get around the laws that made it illegal to bring foreign contract labor to the country, Corbin put his plan in motion in 1895. The plan did manage to establish some pockets of Italian-Americans in Arkansas, but did not accomplish one of his central goals – directing Italian immigration away from New York and toward the center of the country.

Returning to New Hampshire

By now it will come as no surprise to learn how Austin Corbin accumulated his 20,000-acre park in New Hampshire. Corbin and Benson started his collection of exotic animals on land he acquired on Long Island. It was part zoo, part hunting preserve, part animal-breeding operation. By the late 1880s, however, Corbin decided he needed more room and began looking to his native New Hampshire for land. In 1889, his agents began acquiring struggling farms and assembling his acreage in the depressed region. The few who held out had their land blocked in on all sides, and Corbin persuaded the towns to stop maintaining their roads. They eventually sold.

He then began stocking the park with a wide variety of deer, elk, bison, and wild boar. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of animals that Corbin imported were dead within a year because they were not suited to the climate and conditions. But some of the herd lived on, and the park was a popular stop for Corbin’s wealthy and famous friends who would visit for a day or two of shooting.

Austin Corbin Suffers Setbacks

By this point, Austin Corbin was still an energetic man. Toward the end of his career he suffered some setbacks. He lost control of the New England Railroad, and failed to buy the New Hampshire Railroad. And on a broader scale he was widely reviled. The satirical magazine Puck in 1890 highlighted him again, this time among a pack of his wealthy colleagues bidding to buy the United States presidency and vice presidency.

Nevertheless, Corbin still pursuing his schemes well into the 1890s: his seaport, his plantation and his railroad expansions. He scoffed at the notion he might retire right up until June 4, 1896. On that day, while riding in a carriage on his expansive New Hampshire estate, he popped open an umbrella to shade himself from the sun. But he spooked his horses. They bolted and dumped him eight feet onto a rock wall that cracked open his head. The carriage driver died quickly. Corbin survived another six hours, as his family and physicians made their way to Newport. Naturally they took private trains, arriving in time to watch him expire.

After Austin

Austin Corbin’s death was a shock. At just 68, few expected to be rid of him anytime soon. The newspapers of the day recounted his business successes.

Teddy Roosevelt in New Hampshire at Corbin Park in 1902

His estate, however, soon got tangled in litigation. His wife’s one-time maid, Mathilda Nelson, sued the estate in October 1896. Apparently Corbin’s mistress, she claimed he was a “frequent visitor” to her apartments. She said he had promised to provide $50,000 for her.

The estate lawyers claimed Nelson was trying to blackmail them. The Brooklyn Eagle chastised Nelson, who they described as a pretty blonde Swede, in an article headlined: An Affliction of Millionaires. “Women of a certain class seem to delight in notoriety of this kind. They will proclaim that they had irregular relations with rich men and make claims upon the property which was left.” The estate settled an unspecified amount on Nelson to resolve the matter. Four years later, Nelson committed suicide.

Corbin Family Infighting

More significantly, Austin Corbin’s daughter, Anna Corbin Borrowe, also sued the estate. She had been on the outs with the family because they didn’t approve of her marriage. In 1898, the estate executors made a filing showing that the estate worth $1.6 million after settling Corbin’s debts. But initially its value was placed at $4.9 million. Where had all the money gone, she wanted to know?

So she sued her mother, brother and brother-in-law. Borrowe directed her charges largely at her brother-in-law, Corbin Edgell. She claimed he had squandered more than $200,000 on the Sunnyside Plantation. She also charged he had not properly managed the Corbin Park property in New Hampshire. Finally, she claimed, he had sold off stock in the Long Island Railroad and other interests at a bargain price in an effort to further his own interests. She ultimately could not prove malfeasance, but the suit was costly. By the time the case was settled in 1904, the value of the estate had plummeted further to just $290,000. At least that’s what the Corbins told the tax collectors.

Not So Sunny

Sunnyside Plantation suffered badly after Corbin’s death. None of his children took interest in the property. Promised improvements to the irrigation system were never completed, and the Italian immigrant laborers were beset with malaria, as a result. Disillusioned by the unfair treatment and illness, many simply moved on. Within a few years, the plantation was a wreck. The planned railroad, of course, was never built until others developed it years later.

In 1906, the corporation that owned the Manhattan Beach Hotel stopped making payments on its $5 million mortgage. It went for $3.5 million at auction, and operated for several more years until 1910. The Legislature that year banned racing on Coney Island.

The Manhattan Beach was unceremoniously torn down in 1911, its owners assuring that the Oriental was strong and would continue operating. The Oriental then went the way of the Manhattan Beach in 1916. In 2007, residents of Corbin Avenue on Coney Island successfully petitioned to strike Austin Corbin’s name from the history of their street. In an attempt to sweep away the stain of Corbin’s anti-Semitism, the city declared it renamed the street in honor of revolutionary war hero Margaret Corbin (no relation).

Since Corbin’s time at the helm of the Long Island Railroad, it returned once more to bankruptcy in 1949. Then the state took it over in 1966. The Pennsylvania and Reading Railroad, which came to symbolize the speculative bubble that caused the 1893 financial panic, continued its up-and-down history until 1976. Then the last of its rail assets, known then as the Reading Railroad, were sold to Conrail. It lives on as a space on Monopoly boards, and its shell corporation went through a rebirth as a movie theater chain.

Corbin Park

Corbin Park remains a non-profit wildlife preserve used for hunting by its members. In 1902, Teddy Roosevelt visited. Other famous guests included presidents Grover Cleveland, Herbert Hoover and Woodrow Wilson. Yankee Joe DiMaggio (you know they weren’t Red Sox fans) showed up, and sp. of course, did financiers including Jay Gould, Cornelius Vanderbilt and J.P. Morgan.

In 1908, the Corbin family furnished the National Park Service with buffaloes from the park to help repopulate the species in the western states. The Corbin family retained control over the park until 1944, when it transferred the property to a group that included Mortimer Proctor of the Vermont Proctor political dynasty.

It is one of two Corbin Parks in the U.S. today. Spokane, Wash,, also has a Corbin Park named for Daniel Chase Corbin, Austin’s brother. A railroad magnate in his own right, equally prosperous, though perhaps a bit less venal. He married his Swedish maid. Daniel’s Spokane home, the Corbin House, still stands today. It very nearly disappeared, however, since Corbin’s widow in 1921 plotted to burn it down in an insurance scam that went wrong. But that’s another Corbin story for another day.

This story last updated in 2022.

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