30 Dec Ancestors Newsletter- December 30, 2023
Contents
- 1 ANCESTORS OF THE WHITE HOUSE BABY
- 2 ANCESTORS OF ONE OF GROVER’S OTHER CHILDREN
- 3 ANCESTORS ASK WOULD YOU NAME YOUR CHILD AFTER A MODERN U.S. PRESIDENT?
- 4 A FOUNDING FATHER NAMED NELSON WHO WASN’T AN ANCESTOR
- 5 THE LIBERTY BELL GOES FOR A RIDE WITH OUR ANCESTORS
- 6 WHICH ANCESTOR WAS THE FIRST RECIPIENT OF MEDICARE?
- 7 A DIFFERENT REASON FOR PRODUCT LOYALTY FROM OUR ANCESTORS
- 8 WHAT ABOUT YOUR ANCESTORS?
ANCESTORS OF THE WHITE HOUSE BABY
Esther Cleveland was born on September 9, 1893, in the White House, to the President of the United States, Grover Cleveland, and First Lady Frances Folsom. She remains the only child of a president to have been born there and was nicknamed “the White House baby” as a result.
In April 1896, she contracted measles when it spread through the White House, leading to a quarantine. Five years later, she contracted diphtheria.
She made her debut in 1912 and was rumored to be engaged to Randolph D. West shortly after (which was denied by her relatives).
On March 14, 1918, at Westminster Abbey, she married Captain William Sidney Bence Bosanquet (1883 – 1966) of the Coldstream Guards of the British Army. He had liaised with the US over steel production and was the son of Sir Albert Bosanquet, the Common Serjeant of London.
After WWII Bosanquet was the manager of Skinningrove Iron Works in East Cleveland, England. They lived in Kirkleatham Old Hall, now Kirkleatham Museum, on the outskirts of Redcar. They bought the whole building in 1930 after half of it was initially occupied by soldiers. Following his death, she returned to the United States and she sold the house to the local Council in 1970.
Mrs. Bosanquet, she was known locally in the 1940s and 1950s for her philanthropy. Esther bridged the divergent views of her mother’s opposition to suffrage, stemming from Frances Cleveland’s belief that women were not ready to vote, through to supporting her daughter who went to Somerville College, Oxford.
She was the mother of British philosopher Philippa Foot, who was a fellow at Oxford before holding several professorships in the States.
Philippa Foot clearly had a sense of liberation from early governess education to high academic success. She said that she learned nothing from home tuition in Kirkleatham. It was “the sort of milieu where there was a lot of hunting, shooting, and fishing, and where girls simply did not go to college.” Nevertheless, she had the subsequent financial support from Esther and William Bosanquet to go to school in Ascot and later to Oxford.
“Professor Philippa Foot: Philosopher regarded as being among the finest moral thinkers of the age”, headline of her obituary in the INDEPENDENT on 19 October 2010. Here’s a link to more on President Cleveland’s Great-Granddaughter Phillippa Foot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippa_Foot.
We mentioned Grover Cleveland in the last edition in reference to having the same ballot choices four years later https://gem.godaddy.com/p/62ad181 and then in November 2022, about him being the only president to be the only ex-president to run again and be elected https://gem.godaddy.com/s/92bb051 and a year earlier in November 2021, Cleveland being attacked for having a child out of wedlock (more on that below) https://gem.godaddy.com/s/7f0f131
ANCESTORS OF ONE OF GROVER’S OTHER CHILDREN
With attention being given to Joe Biden’s seventh grandchild, i recalled the story of Maria Halpin (photo) who became a nationally known figure during the 1884 presidential campaign. After Grover Cleveland became the Democratic nominee, it came to light that he had fathered an illegitimate child with her. The widow of Frederick Halpin and the mother of son Frederick Halpin, Jr. and daughter Ada, she was an experienced dressmaker and retail store salesclerk and department manager.
In September 1874 she gave birth to a son named Oscar Folsom Cleveland. He was placed in an orphanage and later adopted by Dr. James E. King and his wife Sarah. When the events came to light in 1884 Maria Halpin’s version indicated that Cleveland had forced himself on her, and later failed to make good on a promise to marry her. In a version generally accepted by historians, Maria Halpin had been intimate with more than one man, including Cleveland. Several of them were married, and as the only bachelor, Cleveland acknowledged paternity to protect them.
Maria later relocated to New Rochelle and was married twice more, first to James Albert Seacord, who died in 1894, and then to New Rochelle stove, furnace and hardware dealer Wallace Hunt, who survived her. Her daughter Ada died in 1882. Maria was survived by her son Frederick, Jr., who resided in Pennsylvania and was present at her death.
The son adopted by Dr. King, James E. King, Jr. (below) also became a physician, and was a prominent gynecologist in Buffalo and Professor of Medicine at the University of Buffalo.
ANCESTORS ASK WOULD YOU NAME YOUR CHILD AFTER A MODERN U.S. PRESIDENT?
I come across a lot of people named for presidents. The ones I seem to encounter the most are George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Grover Cleveland referenced above.
My mom had a second cousin named Stanley Calvin Coolidge Gillham (his high school picture above), who was named after the president at the time of his birth. I met Stanley when he was about 84, and he had recently fathered with his 50-year younger bride a young child, with another one way on the way in addition to his four older children.
Anyways, I am glad that family tradition stopped with Stanley since I was born on Dwight Eisenhower’s birthday while he was president.
Reporters will tell us that were in a unique period of polarization, however I have not heard of anyone naming their baby boys Barack or Donald in great waves.
I tried to see if I could find more on which presidents names were most popular. Since middle names were not commonly recorded in census records, it is difficult to know how many men were named after presidents, but it’s reasonable to assume some names like Grover represented Cleveland (even though his first name was Stephen), and Woodrow represented Wilson (even though his first name was Thomas). Here is a link to a study of trends of names like Franklin that while common before and after presidents Franklin Pierce and Roosevelt had spikes while they were presidents.
I also found this article, that was written by five really bored Polish professors in 2015, who thought to study the “Naming of Boys after U.S. Presidents in 20th Century”, that does some serious analysis of the phenomena along with names of other celebrity names and song names.
http://przyrbwn.icm.edu.pl/APP/PDF/129/a129z5p26.pdf
A FOUNDING FATHER NAMED NELSON WHO WASN’T AN ANCESTOR
While not my ancestor, he was a founding father who carried my surname.
Thomas Nelson Jr. (1738 – 1789) was a Founding Father of the United States, a Revolutionary War general, a Continental Congress member, and a Virginia planter. In addition to serving many terms in the Virginia General Assembly, he twice represented Virginia in Congress, where he signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Fellow Virginia legislators elected him to serve as the commonwealth’s governor in 1781, the same year he fought as a brigadier general in the siege of Yorktown, the war’s final battle.
According to legend, he urged General George Washington (or, in some versions, Marquis de Lafayette) to fire on his own home, the Nelson House, where General Cornwallis had his headquarters in Yorktown, offering five guineas to the first man to hit his house.
Nelson was the grandson of Thomas “Scotch Tom” Nelson, an immigrant from Cumberland, England, who was an early pioneer at Yorktown. Nelson Jr. was born in 1738 in Yorktown; his parents were Elizabeth Carter Burwell (daughter of Robert “King” Carter and widow of Nathaniel Burwell) and William Nelson, a colony leader who briefly served as governor. Nelson was the third cousin of the first U.S. President and fellow Founding Father George Washington through his paternal great-great-grandfather, George Reade. However, it is unknown whether they knew they were related.
THE LIBERTY BELL GOES FOR A RIDE WITH OUR ANCESTORS
After Washington’s defeat at the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777, the revolutionary capital of Philadelphia was defenseless, and the city prepared for what was seen as an inevitable British Army attack. Bells could easily be recast into munitions, and locals feared the Liberty Bell and other bells would meet this fate.
The bell was hastily taken down from the tower in September 1777, and sent by heavily guarded wagon train to Bethlehem and then to the Zion German Reformed Church in Northampton Town (present-day Allentown, Pennsylvania), where it was hidden under the church floor boards during the British occupation of Philadelphia. The bell remained hidden in Allentown for nine months until its return to Philadelphia in June 1778, following the British retreat from Philadelphia on June 18, 1778.
Upon the bell’s return to Philadelphia, the steeple of the State House was in poor condition and was subsequently torn down and restored. The bell was placed in storage until 1785 when it was again mounted for ringing.
WHICH ANCESTOR WAS THE FIRST RECIPIENT OF MEDICARE?
In July 1965, under the leadership of President Lyndon Johnson, Congress enacted Medicare under Title XVIII of the Social Security Act to provide health insurance to people aged 65 and older, regardless of income or medical history. Johnson signed the Social Security Amendments of 1965 into law on July 30, 1965, at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri. Former President Harry S. Truman and his wife, former First Lady Bess Truman became the first recipients of the program.
A DIFFERENT REASON FOR PRODUCT LOYALTY FROM OUR ANCESTORS
Bonne Maman is a French brand of jam, marmalade, compotes, desserts, cakes, and biscuits owned by Andros. It is Andros’s leading brand.
The Bonne Maman brand was created by Andros in 1971 as a mass-produced product with a homemade feel, with a handwritten-style label, gingham-patterned (“Vichy motif”) lid, and a name meaning “granny.”
Andros promotes Bonne Maman jams as made with “five simple ingredients that could be found in your kitchen” without high fructose corn syrup, additives, or preservatives.
In February 2021, a story circulated on social media that the brand’s owners saved Jews during the Holocaust, but there is no good evidence for this, and the company has declined to comment.
I followed this up on Snopes, and here are some excerpts from their investigation:
When this story first went viral, some readers pointed out that the Bonne Maman brand was created in 1971, and, therefore, the story must be false. Others pointed out that the manufacturing company Andros, which owns the Bonne Maman brand, was only founded in 1959, supposedly showing again that this story couldn’t be true.
While it’s true that Bonne Maman did not exist in any official capacity until after World War II, the founders of Andros, Jean Gervoson and Pierre Chapoulart, can trace the history of their business back to the French village of Biars-sur-Cère during the Second World War.
Gervoson was born in 1920, and shortly after the war, he married Suzanne Chapoulart, the sister of his future business partner. The Chapoulart family lived in the village of Biars-sur-Cère, where they owned a fruit and nut business. In the 1950s, Gervoson started to package and sell his father-in-law’s unsold plums as jams, a business that would eventually evolve into the Bonne Maman brand. While it’s unclear, the Chapoulart family has been selling fruits and nuts in this small village since the 1910s.
Pierre Roche-Bayard, who will remain the group’s general manager until the mid-1990s, works on the packaging. He designs the cover in a gingham pattern, reminiscent of his family’s farm curtains. He writes a label on the pen holder, taking care of the total and thin lines of the letters. The flagship product is launched. And almost 50 years later, the pot hasn’t changed!
The Jewish Standard also mentioned Bonne Maman in an article published in 2016 about the atrocities that took place in the German city of Worms during the Holocaust and the people who escaped them. Holocaust survivor Eric Mayer told the publication that at one point during the war, he escaped Worms and ended up in the village where Bonne Maman preserves come from:
Meanwhile, Moritz and Irma Mayer worried about their children in prewar Germany and decided to get them out. “My brother, Fred, my sister, Ruth, and I ended up in a village in Alsace, with much older cousins, and later, still with the cousins, in a town in Burgundy, then in Vichy for a year and a half. We were expelled from Vichy in July 1941 because we were foreign Jews and ended up in southern France,” Mr. Mayer said. His mother, who stayed in Worms, was deported to Belzec and was gassed there in 1942. (His brother died ten years ago, and his sister, whose last name was Rothschild, died about a year and a half ago, he added.) “We were strangers to everyone in this village, Biars sur Cere, which then had about 800 people; it’s where Bonne Maman preserves come from.
“I was a courier for the French Resistance from November 1942 until August 1944, at the liberation of southern France.”
“You have to understand what it was like then,” Mr. Mayer said. “There were posters on the walls from the Nazis and the collaborators, and they said that if you are found to help a Jew, a freemason, a communist, a socialist, or a pervert, you will be shot on sight.” Despite the great danger that helping the Mayers and other Jewish children put the villagers, they still kept the children safe. “I have an inordinate feeling of indebtedness to them that I can never repay, even if I live to be the age of Moses,” Mr. Mayer added.
We can’t say for sure if these families were personally involved in aiding Jewish people who were seeking refuge during the Holocaust. We have been unable to find any articles, interviews, or company statements touting this historic act. (The French outlet Capital noted in 2009 that “[in 40 years] Jean Gervoson had never granted the slightest interview.) When we contacted Bonne Maman, they told us the company does not comment on personal matters.
A spokesperson said: “Bonne Maman is privately owned by Andros, a family-owned French company located in Biars-sur-Cere, France. The family prefers to maintain privacy and does not comment on inquiries about personal matters.”
The founders of Bonne Maman can trace the roots of their business back to this small village in France. Biars-sur-Cère had a population of less than 800 people during World War II, and as this family owned and operated its business during this time, the claim seems at least possible.
WHAT ABOUT YOUR ANCESTORS?
Reach out to Dancestors Genealogy genealogists to research, discover, and preserve your family history. No one is getting any younger, and stories disappear from memory every year and eventually from our potential ability to find them. Paper gets thrown in the trash; books survive! So do not hesitate and call me @ 214-914-3598.
