THE VIRUS TAKES A WOMAN MARINE (1918)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** In 2014, The Brownstone Detectives partnered with the New York City Parks Department to help celebrate the lives of the servicemembers of Bedford-Stuyvesant Heights who made the ultimate sacrifice during the Great War. We researched these heroes to locate pictures, stories, and their descendants to be brought together for a ceremony that dedicated a new “Victory and Peace” war memorial at Saratoga Park. This biography tells the story of one of those servicemembers. PROLOGUE In 1918, when the United States was fighting a war overseas, the country was also fighting a conflict back home – influenza. Just as people were dying in the the “Great War” to combat “the Hun,” Americans were succumbing back home to a virus that was leading to their deaths in hospitals. Much like with today’s coronavirus, there were still essential services then that needed to be continued. One of those services was recruiting for that overseas war. One of those recruiters was one of the first woman Marines. She lived on Macon Street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. She came down with influenza while on recruiting duty in Manhattan. And she became the first woman Marine buried with full military honors. This is her story. PVT. LILLIAN MAY BOGEN PATTERSON It would be a mistake […]
THE EFFECTS OF WAR ON BED-STUY (1918)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** During the brief period that the U.S. was engaged in WWI, the eastern section of Brooklyn’s Stuyvesant Heights section was decimated by its contribution of men to the war effort. Then, it was decimated a second time by the generous contribution it made of many of these mens’ lives. According to the honor rolls of the “Victory & Peace” memorial in Saratoga Park, approximately 105 men (and one woman) from the neighborhood made the ultimate sacrifice. There was a death on nearly every block of the district – often more. The MAP above shows with red pins the locations where some of these men lived – many of them who had left new wives, parents, and families waiting for them back home. The servicemembers, represented on this map by these red dots, never made it back home, though. Most were buried in American Cemeteries in France; some were re-buried here in the U.S. After the war, the Gold Star Mothers pilgrimages began to take place, as thousands of the mothers of these servicemembers made the government-sponsored trips to France in order to visit the last resting places of their children. Today, the specific memories of these citizens who grew up together, went to school together, played, learned, and competed together here […]
THE “7-SECOND MAN” OF BED-STUY (1918)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** The new “Victory and Peace” war memorial at Saratoga Park, located in the Stuyvesant East section of Brooklyn, was the subject of a public dedication on 10 September 2014. The Brownstone Detectives worked closely with the Parks Department by locating pictures, stories, and relatives of the Stuyvesant Heights men who gave their lives in the Great War. This biography is about one of those men. PRIVATE EDWARD J. BELL In 1920, as the “War to End All Wars” was still fresh on America’s collective conscious, American Legion posts were sprouting up everywhere. The trend existed for two reasons: to support the men who had come back from the front, and to memorialize those who never returned. Many of the posts were named after those who had made the ultimate sacrifice. The Edward J. Bell Post No. 790 had recently been formed to honor Edward Joseph “Eddie” Bell, a 25-year-old machine-gunner, and Purple Heart winner, who died in France on 16 August 1918, from the result of injuries sustained in combat. Born on 6 November 1892, Bell had lived with his father, his aunt and his grandparents at 735 Macon Street. Sometime around 1910, the tall, black-haired, and blue-eyed Bell had graduated from Commercial High School, and soon thereafter lost his father. […]
PVT. EDWIN RUOFF (A BEDSTUY HERO) (1918)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** In 2014, The Brownstone Detectives partnered with the New York City Parks Department to help celebrate the lives of the servicemembers of Bedford-Stuyvesant Heights who made the ultimate sacrifice during the Great War. We researched these heroes to locate pictures, stories, and their descendants to be brought together for a ceremony that dedicated a new “Victory and Peace” war memorial at Saratoga Park. This biography tells the story of one of those servicemembers. PVT. EDWIN V. RUOFF Before being drafted into the U.S. Army to fight in the Great War, Private Edwin V. Ruoff was a resident of Stuyvesant Heights where he lived at 193 Ralph Avenue. He was killed in an accidental bomb explosion on 3 June 1918 in France, when a supposedly harmless shell went off. The explosion, which took the lives of 45 soldiers in total, occurred when the company was drilling. It all started when one of the men discovered the “bomb or hand grenade” and “began fooling with it.” Then, “after tossing it about and whirling it around, he let it drop. As the missile hit the ground, there was a terrific explosion, the force of which threw almost every member of the company to the ground.” THE ARMY VISITS MRS. RUOFF According to the Brooklyn […]
PVT. BUDD SOMERS (A BEDSTUY HERO) (1918)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** In 2014, The Brownstone Detectives partnered with the New York City Parks Department to help celebrate the lives of the servicemembers of Bedford-Stuyvesant Heights who made the ultimate sacrifice during the Great War. We researched these heroes to locate pictures, stories, and their descendants to be brought together for a ceremony that dedicated a new “Victory and Peace” war memorial at Saratoga Park. This biography tells the story of one of those servicemembers. PVT. BUDD RUSSELL SOMERS “Budd” Russell Somers was born in Owego, New York, near Binghamton, on 3 March 1891. His family moved to Pennsylvania at some point before the century was out. But, Somers would find himself back in Brooklyn sometime after 1910. A “tool maker” at the John Johnson & Company – at 37th Street and 3rd Avenue – Somers was a tall and slender man with grey eyes and chestnut hair. He had been courting Daisy Elizabeth Saxby when American involvement in the Great War became a reality, and so he did what many other young single men going off to war did – he married her. His marriage was the classic pre-war wedding, taking place less than five months before being “called up” in the draft. When that event occurred, on 10 October, Somers boarded […]
PVT. ARTHUR HOLDSWORTH (A BEDSTUY HERO)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** In 2014, The Brownstone Detectives partnered with the New York City Parks Department to help celebrate the lives of the servicemembers of Bedford-Stuyvesant Heights who made the ultimate sacrifice during the Great War. We researched these heroes to locate pictures, stories, and their descendants to be brought together for a ceremony that dedicated a new “Victory and Peace” war memorial at Saratoga Park. This biography tells the story of one of those servicemembers. PVT. ARTHUR VINCENT HOLDSWORTH Arthur Vincent Holdsworth looked for all the world like a little boy. Even after he had joined the Army and went to training at Camp Upton on Long Island, he could not escape the blush of youth. In the picture (right), Pvt. Holdsworth displays that youth, all too surely, along with his inexperience, and maybe just a bit of his great uncertainty for the future. He stands awkwardly erect outside of a barracks, proud in his new uniform, but looking like a schoolboy in his first set of Sunday clothes. Truth be told, he was still a boy yet – still an innocent. But he would mature quickly and, in a war that defined his age, die just as quickly. THE WAR In the grand scheme of things, Pvt. Arthur V. Holdsworth drew the […]
“PEACE” COMES TO STUYVESANT EAST (1921)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** In 2014, The Brownstone Detectives partnered with the New York City Parks Department to help celebrate the lives of the servicemembers of Bedford-Stuyvesant Heights who made the ultimate sacrifice during the Great War. We researched these heroes to locate pictures, stories, and their descendants to be brought together for a ceremony that dedicated a new “Victory and Peace” war memorial at Saratoga Park. ******************************************************************************************************************************** After nearly three years of mourning, Stuyvesant East was ready to remember its dead in a very public way. On 11 September 1921, after neighbors in the eastern section of Stuyvesant Heights had spent two years collecting the $6,000 necessary to defray the cost of a war memorial, the Victory and Peace statue was finally delivered to Saratoga Square. With great pomp and circumstance, amid a good deal of political speech-making and the delivery of grandiose eulogies and war veterans celebrating the war’s end, the 6-ton war memorial, sculpted by James Novelli, was unveiled at the Saratoga Avenue entrance to the Saratoga Square in front of more than 3,000 witnesses. “The eastern end of the park had been appropriately decorated with the monument draped in large American flags which at the presentation were dropped by two servicemembers presenting to view the ten-foot Milford granite memorial.” Revealed was […]
REMEMBERING BROOKLYN’S UNDEAD (1922)
“Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” So reflected Mark Twain to a reporter with William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal in 1897, after the New York Herald had incorrectly reported that the famous writer had passed away while in London. While journalists are taught from their very first story to “trust but verify,” the U.S. military, though, has never fostered suffering compunction from such mistakes made. So it was when reports were being dispatched back to the U.S. during the First World War. While the adjutants of these military units, whence the reports originated, were doing their best to keep track of deaths and injuries, it can be imagined that quite a few names were inadvertently added to one or the other of the lists. After the Great War, accounts of American soldiers often surfaced, of their having previously been added to the list of the war dead, and then having shown up quite healthy – and with plans to continue living for many years to come. Such was the case with one Brooklyn man, Anthony Pentola, who, upon returning to the U.S. after fighting in the Great War, learned that not only had he been reported amongst the war dead, but that, he subsequently realized, his greatest and most substantial proof against the correctness of this report – his appearance one day in the War Department – was woefully insufficient in reversing the departments’s bureaucratic march toward its repeated lionization of him as an American patriot for […]
PICS FROM THE WWI MEMORIAL CEREMONY
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MATTHEW KARAS. Many thanks to so many people who supported the memorial service in Saratoga Park last Wednesday (10 September). In addition to those from the NYC Parks Department and the political representatives who spoke – Borough President Eric Adams and Councilwoman Darlene Mealy – the military was represented by Lt. Col. Joseph Davidson who came out from Fort Hamilton, and the chief historian for the History Channel/A+E Networks (also currently President Obama’s Commissioner on the World War One Centennial Commission) was on-hand to speak about the importance of renovating our old WWI memorials and honoring those who fought for our country. The Brownstone Detectives performed the historical study, researching the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines from the neighborhood who made the ultimate sacrifice almost 100 years ago during the Great War. And in the process, with just two weeks to do it in, The Brownstone Detectives further identified the descendants of many of the men on the honor rolls, three of whom attended the ceremony. And, Michael Lisnet, our great Macon Street neighbor, who helped us out by finding us a wonderful photographer, Matt Karas. Matt, whom we’d never even met or spoke to before, came out to take some wonderful pictures of the event for us. The pictures in this blog post all belong to him – and we thank him very much for his support. Enjoy these wonderful snapshots shared with us by Matthew Karas: Follow @BrownstoneDetec ———————————————————————————————————————– The Brownstone Detectives This story was composed […]
SARATOGA PARK WWI MEMORIAL IS TODAY
Today at noon, the World War I “Victory & Peace” Memorial in Brooklyn’s Saratoga Park will be unveiled and rededicated.All are welcome and invited to attend. Descendants of at least two of the men (who gave their lives in the Great War) will be in attendance, joined by Brooklyn Parks Commissioner Kevin Jeffrey, Borough President Eric Adams, Col. Joseph Davidson of the U.S. Army, and representatives of the George P. Davis Post No. 116 of the American Legion and Auxiliary. Here follows a list of the 105 men and one woman whose names appear on the honor rolls flanking the statue. They were all from the neighborhood. They all gave their lives in service to their country. George Albrecht William Banscher Edward J. Bell Harold Benson Harry S. Bowyer Edward C. Brennan Joseph A. Brunner Francis J. Buckley Arthur J. Burgh J. Edgar Burling Robert F. Carrie James C. Clark Jesus Clemente Joseph A. Collopy Hedley H. Cooper Frank E. Cortes Thomas Cross Leonard Dalton Frank E. Discher Frederick C. Dose John F. Dowd Elmer D. Edwards George H. Edwards Charles D. Elson Edgar H. Fessenden James E. Fitzpatrick John J. Fitzpatrick Frank A. Gaffney Anthony Galgano George E. Gilbert James T. Greene Evan F. Gustafson Walter C. Haeuser Frederick Haupt Thomas F. Herron Raymond D. Hill Frank E. Hillenbrand Charles S. Hilton Arthur V. Holdsworth Thomas B. Hurley James D. Irwin Gordon W. Johnson Arthur P. Jones James Keely Thomas A. Kehoe Arthur C. Kimber Alfred R. Kipling Louis […]
