The Lincoln Assassination Conspirators

On this day 165 years ago, four persons were hanged before an audience of approximately 3,000 people here in D.C. for their participation in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.  Lewis Thornton Powell, David Herold, George Atzerodt, and Mary Surratt were hanged at the Washington Arsenal shortly after 1:00pm on July 7, 1865. 

On the same night that an actor named John Wilkes Booth shot President Lincoln in the back of the head at Ford’s Theatre, the conspirators’ plot also included the assassinations of Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward.  Atzerodt was the intended assassin of  Johnson, and was found in a room in Johnson’s hotel with a revolver.  Powell attacked Seward, slashing him repeatedly with a knife.  Seward survived the attack, but his face was permanently disfigured.  Powell was later arrested at Mary Surratt’s boarding house.  Herold accompanied Powell and guided him to Seward’s house, but remained outside the house holding Powell’s horse.  Herold met Booth as they fled D.C., and was with Booth when Union troops tracked him down to a barn in Virginia.  Herold surrendered and was taken into custody while Booth temporarily maintained a standoff before being killed by Union troops.  

At trial, Atzerodt was convicted of Conspiracy to assassinate Vice President Andrew Johnson.  Powell was convicted of Conspiracy to assassinate Secretary of State William H. Seward.  Herold was convicted of Conspiracy and aiding John Wilkes Booth’s Escape.  And Mary Surratt was convicted of of Conspiracy.  

Four additional conspirators were tried by the military commission for the conspiracy that resulted in the murder of the 16th president.  The others were:  Samuel A. Mudd, who was convicted of Aiding Booth’s Escape; Michael O’Laughlen, and Samuel Arnold, who were convicted of Conspiracy to Kidnap the President, and;  Edman “Ned” Spangler, who was convicted of Aiding and Abetting Booth’s Escape.  Mudd, O’Laughlen and Arnold were sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor, while Spangler was sentenced to six years.  After being imprisoned at Fort Jefferson, near Key West, Florida, O’Laughlen died of yellow fever in 1867.  The remaining three were pardoned by President Johnson in 1869.

A ninth person, Mary Surratt’s son John Harrison Surratt, Jr., was also charged with Conspiracy.  He had escaped after the attacks in 1865.  but was captured in Egypt in 1867.  He had a civilian trial which ironically ended in what is referred to as a “hung jury.”  He then went on a public-speaking tour after his trial detailing his relationship with the other conspirators and arguing for his innocence.  

On this bike ride on this very hot day, I rode by Fort Lesley J. McNair, formerly known as The Washington Arsenal, where the hangings occurred.  While Fort McNair is closed to the public for security reasons, I rode by the (rebuilt) wall of the fort near where the hangings were carried out.  On the other side of the wall, where the gallows were located, there is now a tennis court.   

Historic photo obtained from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Statue of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

Statue of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

Outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence on Embassy Row, located at 1606 23rd Street, on the periphery of Sheridan Circle in northwest D.C.’s DuPont Circle neighborhood, stands a bronze statue of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.  Later, after my bike ride, I would find out that it is one of two statues on Embassy Row depicting Atatürk; the second being a fiberglass statue painted bronze that is located at the Turkish Embassy.  I will have to ride back to check out that one soon.  But in the meantime I wanted to look into who this man was that has two different statues.

A brass plaque located next to it gives some basic information about the Atatürk statue.  It reads:

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881 – 1038)
Founder and First President of the Republic of Turkey
The white stone building behind the statue, purchased under Atatürk
in 1936, served as the embassy of the Republic of Turkey
until 1989. It is now the embassy’s official residence.
The two capitals, Ankara and Washington, D.C. became sister
cities in October 2011.
Erected by the Atatürk Society of America on public space
generously granted by the District of Columbia. This statue
was dedicated on the 90th anniversary of the founding of the
Republic of Turkey, October 29, 20113.
Sculptor: Jeffery L. Hall

The statue created by Hall stands before a semicircular stone balustrade which bears a quotation from Atatürk: “Peace at Home / Peace in the World”.  The statue depicts Atatürk standing bare-headed in Western-style business dress of the 1930s, with a three-piece suit and necktie, pocket watch, and sporting wingtip shoes. He is holding the book entitled Nutuk, which translates as “The Speech,” in his left hand, with the title marked on the cover. The closed book is resting on his left hip, with one finger of the left hand marking his place, while he makes a pointing gesture with his right hand.  His tie is in the style that Atatürk wore, with American-style stripes.  And a military medal is emerging discreetly from behind his right lapel.

So it would seem that the very interesting statue that I encountered on this ride was installed by a private organization on public land, while the other statue was erected by the Republic of Turkey on the private grounds of their embassy.  But who was Mustafa Kemal Atatürk?

He was born Ali Rıza oğlu Mustafa, which means “Mustafa son of Ali Rıza,” to Ali Rıza Efendi, a militia officer, title deed clerk and lumber trader, and Zübeyde Hanım, sometime in the early part of 1881 in Salonika, Macedonia (now Thessaloniki, Greece).  As part of a Muslim family, his mother encouraged Atatürk to attend a religious school, which he did reluctantly but only for a brief period of time during his early years.  Later, at the direction of his father, he attended the Şemsi Efendi School, a private school with a more secular curriculum.  When he was only seven years old his father died.  So his mother wanted him to learn a trade.  However, on his own initiative and without consulting her, Atatürk instead applied to the Salonica Military School.  From there he would go on to enroll in the Monastir Military High School, and then the Ottoman Military Academy after that.  He would eventually graduate from the Ottoman Military College in Constantinople in 1905.  

Shortly after graduation, he was arrested by the police for his anti-monarchist activities.  This, along with Atatürk’s academic career, were principal factors that shaped him and provided a foundation that would lead to the military career and political accomplishments that would result in Atatürk being regarded as one of the most important national leaders of the 20th century.

Atatürk came to prominence for his role in securing the Ottoman Turkish victory at the Battle of Gallipoli during World War I.  Following the defeat and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, he led the Turkish National Movement, which resisted mainland Turkey’s partition among the victorious Allied powers.  Establishing a provisional government in the present-day Turkish capital Ankara, known in English at the time as Angora, he defeated the forces sent by the Allies, thus emerging victorious from what was later referred to as the Turkish War of Independence.  He subsequently proceeded to abolish the decrepit Ottoman Empire and proclaimed the foundation of the Turkish Republic in its place.  Atatürk became the first President of Turkey from 1923 until his death in 1938, and would be remembered as a leader who freed his people from being controlled by other countries and, later, for starting changes that founded the Turkish nation state based on social and economic nationalism.  Many even place him on the same level as is George Washington in America.

Atatürk’s life and accomplishments put him among good company in history.  And similarly, the statue is in good company in D.C. , fittingly standing among statues of such other prominent and transformative 20th-century national leaders as India’s Mahatma Gandhi,  which stands just a quarter mile to the east, and statues of Great Britain’s Sir Winston Churchill and South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, which stand facing each other from across Massachusetts Avenue approximately a mile to the west of Atatürk’s statue at Sheridan Circle.

    
[Click on the photos to view the full-size versions]

Gravesite of John Foster Dulles

Gravesite of John Foster Dulles

On this afternoon’s bike ride I ventured back over to Virginia to visit one of my favorite places to walk around – Arlington National Cemetery.  During this visit I happened to see the name John Foster Dulles on one of the large gravestones that stand out compared to the smaller and uniform sized markers that are most common there.  The name stood out to me because one of the two major airports in the D.C. area is Washington Dulles International Airport, and I wondered if it was named after him.  Other than that, I knew nothing about John Foster Dulles, nor about the origin of the local airport’s name.  So I decided to look further into later when I got home.

It turns out that the airport was, in fact, named after the man whose gravestone I encountered at the cemetery that simply reads, “Secretary of State 1953 – 1959.” (Which I found odd.  It did not even include the usual information, such as when he was born or when he died.)  So I knew that about him too.  But it turns out that there was more to the man than those two things.  He was also an American diplomat and politician who was a very important figure in the early years of the Cold War and world history.  

Born in D.C. on February 25, 1888, Dulles was one of five children and the eldest son born to Allen Macy Dulles, a Presbyterian minister, and his wife, Edith Foster Dulles.  His paternal grandfather, John Welsh Dulles, had been a Presbyterian missionary in India. And his maternal grandfather, John Watson Foster, was the 32nd Secretary of State under President Benjamin Harrison.  One of Dulles’s uncles, Robert Lansing, also was later appointed the 42nd Secretary of State during the Woodrow Wilson administration.  And Dulles himself eventually became the 52nd Secretary of State.  But I’m getting ahead of myself, so let’s go back.

Dulles was raised and went to public schools in Watertown, New York, before attending Princeton University, where he graduated as a member of Phi Beta Kappa in 1908.  He then returned here to D.C. to attend the George Washington University Law School.  After graduating, he moved to New York City to accept a position at the law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, where he specialized in international law. Dulles became a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell.  His younger brother, Allen Welsh Dulles, would later also become a partner at the firm before leaving to become the first civilian director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the same time Dulles became U.S. Secretary of State.  But again, I’m getting ahead of myself.  

After the outbreak of World War I, Dulles tried to join the United States Army but was rejected because of poor eyesight.  Instead, Dulles received an army commission as major on the War Industries Board.  During this time Dulles traveled throughout Central America under the guise of work for his former law firm, but he was really working with his Uncle Robert, then Secretary of State, to support anti-German sentiment in the region.  Although a Republican, Dulles would later serve under Democrat President Woodrow Wilson as legal consul for the United States’ delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, which resulted in the Treaty of Versailles to officially end World War I.  He also helped write the Dawes Plan, which alleviated Germany’s reparations after that war.

During and subsequent to World War II, Dulles helped prepare the United Nations charter at Dumbarton Oaks here in D.C., and in 1945 served as a senior adviser at the San Francisco United Nations conference. When it became apparent that a peace treaty with Japan could not be concluded with the participation of the Soviet Union, President Harry Truman and his secretary of state, Dean Acheson, decided not to call a peace conference to negotiate the treaty. Instead, they assigned to Dulles the difficult task of personally negotiating and concluding the treaty.  Dulles traveled to the capitals of many of the nations involved, and by 1951 he succeeded and the previously agreed to treaty was signed in San Francisco by Japan and 48 other nations.

During the course of his career Dulles also served as the foreign policy advisor on Thomas Dewey’s failed 1944 and 1948 presidential campaigns.  Subsequently, in 1949, Governor Dewey appointed Dulles to fill the vacancy caused by the illness and resignation of Senator Robert F. Wagner. Dulles served for four months before his defeat in a special election against Herbert H. Lehman.

After Dwight Eisenhower won the 1952 presidential election, he chose Dulles as Secretary of State. Throughout his tenure, Dulles favored a strategy of massive retaliation in response to Soviet aggression and concentrated on building and strengthening Cold War alliances, most prominently the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).  He was the architect of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, an anti-Communist defensive alliance between the U.S. and several nations in and near Southeast Asia.  He also initiated the Manila Conference in 1954, which resulted in the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) pact that united eight nations either located in Southeast Asia or with interests there in a neutral defense pact.  This treaty was followed in 1955 by the Baghdad Pact, later renamed the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) Pact, uniting the so-called northern tier countries of the Middle East – Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan – in a defense organization.  He was also instrumental in putting into final form the Austrian State Treaty in 1955, restoring Austria’s pre-1938 frontiers and forbidding a future union between Germany and Austria, as well as the Trieste Agreement, providing for partition of the free territory between Italy and Yugoslavia.

During his time as Secretary of State, Dulles along with his brother Alan, who had been appointed the Director of the CIA, helped instigate the 1953 Iranian coup d’état, which overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in favor of strengthening the monarchical rule of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.  

Dulles was also involved in the coup d’état in Guatemala in 1954, along with his former law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell.  At the time, the firm represented the United Fruit Company (UFC), which had major holdings in Guatemala. UFC used its lobbying power, through the firm and through other means, to convince President Dwight Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles, to depose the democratically elected President of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz.  

Around this same time Dulles advocated support of the French in their war against the Viet Minh in Indochina but rejected the Geneva Accords between France and the communists, instead supporting South Vietnam after the Geneva Conference in 1954.  This was an early prerequisite for the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, which resulted in The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia which lasted from November 1, 1955 to the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, during which time an estimated 47,434 American soldiers were killed.  

Three factors determined Dulles’ foreign policy.  They were his strong belief, as an international lawyer, in the value of treaties; his powerful personality, which often insisted on leading rather than following public opinion, and; his profound detestation of communism, which was in part based on his deep religious faith – and not necessarily in that order.  Of the three, passionate hostility to communism was the leitmotiv of his policy.  In fact, wherever he went, he carried with him Joseph Stalin’s book entitled “Problems of Leninism,” and impressed upon his aides the need to study it as a blueprint for conquest similar to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.  So perhaps one of most important aspects of Dulles’s legacy was his point of view on communism and the resultant influence and impact that viewpoint had on foreign policy and the spread of communism.  

As far as his personal life, Dulles married Janet Pomeroy Avery, granddaughter of Theodore M. Pomeroy, a former Congressman and Speaker of the House of Representatives, in 1912.  They had two sons and a daughter. Their older son John W. F. Dulles was a professor of history and specialist in Brazil at the University of Texas at Austin.  Their daughter, Lillias Dulles Hinshaw, became a Presbyterian minister.  And their other son, Avery Dulles, converted to Roman Catholicism, entered the Jesuit order, and became the first American theologian to be appointed a Cardinal. 

Dulles developed colon cancer in 1956, for which he was operated on after it had caused a bowel perforation.  He experienced abdominal pain at the end of 1958 and was again hospitalized, at which time he was diagnosed with diverticulitis.  In January of 1959, Dulles returned to work, but with more pain and declining health underwent abdominal surgery in February of that year at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, when the cancer’s recurrence became evident.  After recuperating from the surgery in Florida, Dulles returned to D.C. and resumed working while undergoing radiation therapy.  With further declining health and evidence of bone metastasis, he resigned from office on April 15, 1959. He died at Walter Reed just six weeks later, on May 24, 1959, at the age of 71.  Funeral services were held in Washington National Cathedral on May 27, 1959, and he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, where today I saw his gravestone.  

The Abraham Lincoln Statue at D.C. City Hall

The Abraham Lincoln Statue at Judiciary Square

Located in front of the old District of Columbia City Hall, now home to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, in the 400 block of Indiana Avenue in D.C.’s Judiciary Square neighborhood (MAP) stands a statue of Abraham Lincoln.  The statue depicts him standing, wearing a long coat with a bow tie and waistcoat. His left hand rests on a fasces while his right arm is by his side.  Lincoln’s partially open right hand points to the ground as he looks to his left.  Interestingly, the right hand was replaced at some point and the new one is considered too large to scale. Also, a sword or scroll previously hung by his right side, but is now missing.

The white marble statue was created by an Irish-American sculptor from D.C. named Lot Flannery, who coincidentally happened to not only know President Lincoln but was also present at Ford’s Theater on the night of his assassination. And on this bike ride I stopped by to see the statue.

Now, there are a number of statues of the 16th President in the national capital city. In fact, there are six different statues.  The most famous of which is Daniel Chester French’s depiction of the President sitting that is located inside The Lincoln Memorial.  Another example is Ivan Schwartz’s statue of President Lincoln standing next to a horse, presumably his favorite horse named Big Bob, that’s located on the grounds of President Lincoln’s Summer Cottage.  There is also Thomas Ball’s The Emancipation Memorial, also known as the Freedman’s Memorial, which has recently been deemed controversial by some activists and for which D.C. Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton has introduced legislation to remove, arguing that 19th-century memorial doesn’t do enough to honor slaves’ contribution to their own freedom.  But the marble statue I rode to see during this bike ride is the oldest Lincoln statue in existence.

The statue was dedicated on April 15,1868, on the third anniversary of President Lincoln’s death.  All of the city’s offices were closed at noon for the dedication, and all flags were flown at half-staff that day.  And an estimated 20,000 people, around 20% of Washington’s population at that time, attended the dedication.  Dignitaries at the unveiling ceremony included President Andrew Johnson and Generals Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman and Winfield Scott Hancock.  Supreme Court Justices and members of Congress were not in attendance, however, because President Johnson’s impeachment trial was taking place.  A Masonic ceremony, along with music and prayers, took place at the dedication before the main speech by Major General Benjamin Brown French. Following the speech, D.C. Mayor Richard Wallach introduced President Johnson, who uncovered the statue to a cheering crowd, followed by more music and a benediction to conclude the unveiling ceremony.

The statue has been removed and rededicated twice. The first rededication was in 1923 after a renovation of City Hall.  Some of the city’s residents and officials didn’t want the statue reinstalled after renovations were complete because the much larger and grander Lincoln Memorial was already under construction.  But following an outpouring of support from citizens and a veterans group named The Grand Army of the Republic, the decision was made to restore and rededicate the statue.  But by the time the decision was made the statue was missing. It was later found in crates behind the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.  On June 21, 1922, an Act of Congress authorized the rededication, which took place April 15, 1923, 55 years after the initial dedication.

The marble statue originally stood on an 18-foot high marble column.  Flannery explained, “I lived in gloom following the assassination and I resolved to place it so high that no assassin’s hand could ever again strike him down.” However, it was so high it was difficult to see and appreciate.  So when it was removed in 1918 for the city hall renovation, it was re-erected on an two-portion square and rectangular granite base for the rededication in 1923.

The second rededication took place on April 15, 2009, 144 years after the original dedication, after a three-year remodeling of the old City Hall.

The marble statue measures 7.3 feet high and 2.9 feet wide, while the granite base measures 6.4 feet high and 7 feet wide.  An inscription on the rear of the sculpture reads, “Lot Flannery, Sculptor.”  On the front of the base is an inscription that reads, “LINCOLN.”  An inscription on the lower portion of the rear of the base reads, “Frank G. Pierson, Architect.”  And on the upper portion of the rear of the base is an inscription that reads: 

“ABRAHAM LINCOLN
1809 – 1865
THIS STATVE WAS ERECTED
BY THE CITIZENS OF THE
DISTRICT OF COLVMBIA
APRIL 15, 1868
RE-ERECTED APRIL 15, 1923
VNDER ACT OF CONGRESS
JVNE 21, 1923”

The Grave of Brevet Captain John Kinney

The Grave of John Kinney

After my recent ride to The National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (NSDAR) headquarters building and learning that one of the things the DAR does is install markers at the graves of Revolutionary War veterans to indicate their service, I decided to ride by a cemetery to see a soldier’s grave and NSDAR marker. So on this ride I went to one of my favorite cemeteries in the city, Historic Congressional Cemetery, located at 1801 E Street (MAP), in the southeast portion of D.C.’s Capitol Hill Neighborhood.

During today’s visit to the cemetery I visited the grave of James Kinney. His thoroughly aged and weather-worn gravestone in barely legible engraving reads, “Major John Kinney, of New Jersey, an officer in the Army of the Revolution Died in this city July 17, 1832, aged 75 years.” And next to the gravestone was the brass marker placed there in 2009. Beneath the raised relief NSDAR logo on the marker it reads, “Revolutionary War Soldier John Kinney, Lieutenant, Third New Jersey Regiment, Born October 18, 1757 in Morristown, Morris County, New Jersey, Died July 17, 1832 in Washington, D.C., Marker Placed by the Judge Lynn Chapter, NSDAR, April 18, 2009.”

Very little is known about John Kinney. After attempting to research historical information about him, all I was able to discover was that he was born in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, British Colonial America, in 1751.  He married Phebe Arnold in Washington County, New Jersey on October 21, 1778, and they were the parents of at least 4 sons and 6 daughters, at least two of whom died in infancy.  And he died on July 17, 1832. He began his service in the Revolutionary War as an ensign in the 3rd Regiment of the New Jersey Line on July 29 to November 10, 1776. He was promoted to 1st Lieutenant on January 6, 1778. And resigned from service at the rank of Brevet Captain, still in in the 3rd Regiment New Jersey Line, on September 26, 1780.

Sadly, much like the vast majority of Revolutionary War soldiers, little else is known about John Kinney.  Who he was and his individual accomplishments are lost to history.  But he has and continues to be recognized, both personally and as a representative of others, as a hero who played a role in establishing America as a the free and independent nation that it continues to be to this day.

[Click on photos to view full size versions]

The First Person Buried at Arlington National Cemetery

Gravesite of Mary Randolph

The first person to be buried at what would become known as Arlington National Cemetery (MAP) was not a soldier.  It was not someone unknown, like those buried in the cemetery at the Tomb of the Unknowns or the Civil War Unknowns Memorial.  It was also not Robert E. Lee, who owned the house and surrounding property where the cemetery is now located.  The first person buried there was not even a man.  The first person to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery was a woman named Mary Randolph.  And after encountering her grave on this bike ride to the cemetery, I wanted to learn more about her.  

Mary Randolph was born on August 9, 1762, the oldest of 13 children born to Thomas Mann Randolph, Sr. and Anne Cary Randolph, one of the richest and most politically significant families in 18th century Virginia. Her father was orphaned at a young age and raised by Thomas Jefferson’s parents who were distant cousins. Her father also served in the Virginia House of Burgesses, the Revolutionary conventions of 1775 and 1776, and the Virginia state legislature. Anne Cary Randolph was the daughter of Archibald Cary, an important Virginia planter. Additionally, one of her brothers, Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., married Martha Jefferson, daughter of Thomas Jefferson, and became a Congressman and Governor of Virginia. And one of her sisters, Harriet, married Richard Shippey Hackley who became US Consul to Spain.  The Randolphs were also descendants of Thomas Rolfe and his wife, the legendary Pocahontas. 

Mary was born at Ampthill Plantation in Chesterfield County, Virginia, and grew up at Tuckahoe Plantation in Goochland County, Virginia. And as might be expected in a family of their wealth, her parents hired professional tutors to teach their children. So Mary learned reading, writing, and arithmetic, as well as domestic skills and proper household management practices, qualities expected of upper-class women of that time.

In December 1780, 18-year-old Mary married her first cousin once removed, David Meade Randolph, a Revolutionary War officer and tobacco planter. The newlyweds lived at Presquile, a 750-acre plantation that was part of the Randolph family’s extensive property in Chesterfield County, Virginia. Around 1795 President George Washington appointed her husband the U.S. Marshal of Virginia, and by 1798, she and her family had moved to Richmond. In Richmond they built a house they named “Moldavia”, a combination of Molly, a nickname for Mary, and David, where they settled in and Mary became a celebrated hostess and their home became a center of Federalist Party social activity.  However, David Randolph, as a member of the Federalist Party and an open critic of his second cousin Thomas Jefferson, would soon encounter hard times. After Jefferson’s election to the presidency, he removed David Randolph from office and the family’s fortunes declined.  

Within a few years, despite her husband’s subsequent employment with the Black Heth Coal Mines near Midlothian, Virginia, their family’s financial situation had become critical.  And in 1807 Mary stepped in so that her family could continue to enjoy their accustomed standard of living, an unorthodox step for an upper-class woman.  She opened a boardinghouse in Richmond.  While running the boardinghouse, she was listed on the census as the head of the household. But that was only because her husband was traveling in England on business for his new job.  During her time running the boarding house, Mary continued to enjoy some benefits of the family’s wealth, including an early version of a refrigerator. Mary also began compiling a cookbook during this time.

By 1819, the couple, in advancing years, gave up their boardinghouse and moved to D.C. to live with their one of their eight children, four of whom survived to adulthood.  While in D.C., Mary Randolph completed her cookbook and in 1824 published it. The cookbook was entitled “The Virginia House-Wife.”  And although neither she nor anyone else at that time could have known, it would become synonymous with fine cuisine in Virginia, and Mary’s biggest claim to fame.  

After its initial publication, which was an immediate success, The Virginia House-wife was republished an additional nineteen times before the outbreak of the Civil War. The book was 225 pages long, included nearly 500 recipes, and later versions even included sketches for the early version of a refrigerator that Mary had in her Richmond boardinghouse. Years later an author claimed that Mary invented the refrigerator and that her design was stolen and patented by a Yankee who stayed in her boardinghouse.  But that claim has never been proven. 

The Virginia House-Wife is considered the first regional American cookbook, and exhibited a uniquely Virginian style, featuring recipes for such Southern classics such as okra, sweet potatoes, biscuits, fried chicken, barbecue pork, and lemonade.  However, her occasional explanations of uniquely southern foods she anticipated an audience beyond her region.  And other recipes included in here cookbook were for dishes influenced at times by African, Native American, and European cooking, such as gazpacho, ropa vieja, polenta, macaroni, as well as six curry recipes, which were the first curry recipes published in the United States.  It also included a few recipes for specialties from other parts of the U.S., such as a recipe entitled “Dough Nuts – A Yankee Cake,” as well as the first ice cream recipe published by an American author.  

It should be noted, however, that The Virginia House-Wife was more than just a cookbook.  It was also an overall household guide,  In addition to recipes it also explained how to make such things as soap, starch, blacking and cologne.

After finding out about Mary Randolph and The Virginia House-wife, I checked and discovered that it is still in print.  I was surprised.  It’s been 196 years and it’s still available.  The hardback edition sells for $21.95.  But I also found the Kindle version, and it was available for free. So I downloaded it.  And I’m now looking forward to trying out some of the recipes.  However, to be honest, there are some recipes I don’t anticipate trying anytime soon, such as Knuckle of Veal, Soused Pig’s Feet in Ragout, and Grilled Calf’s Head.  

The epitaph on Mary’ Randolph’s gravestone reads:  
Sacred to the memory of
Mrs. Mary Randolph
her intrinsic worth needs no eulogium
The deceased was born
The 9th of August, 1762
at Amphill near Richmond, Virginia
and died the 23rd of January 1828
in Washington City
a victim to maternal love and duty

The historic marker sign next to her grave reads:  
Mary Randolph, wife of David Meade Randolph, and first person known to be buried at Arlington, was the eldest child of Thomas Mann and Ann Carey Randolph, of Tuckahoe, her maternal grandfather was Archibald Carey, of Ampthill; her paternal grandfather was William Randolph, of Tuckahoe. She was a direct descendant of Pocahontas: a cousin of Thomas Jefferson: of Mary Lee Fitzhugh Custis, wife of George Washington Parke Custis, the builder of Arlington House: and of Robert E. Lee. Her brother, Thomas Mann Randolph, Governor of Virginia 1819-1821, married Martha Jefferson, daughter of Thomas Jefferson. Her eldest son was William Beverley Randolph, through whom alone her line has descended. Her youngest son, Burwell Starke Randolph, when a midshipman in the U.S. Navy, fell from a mast and was crippled. Her devoted care of that injured son is said to have hastened her death, and would seem to explain her epitaph. 

Matthew Alexander Henson Memorial

Matthew Alexander Henson Memorial

Robert Edwin Peary Sr. was an American explorer who made several expeditions to the Arctic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is best known for claiming to be the first expedition to reach the geographic North Pole.  But why mention Perry?  After all, the memorial I visited on this bike ride is dedicated to Matthew Alexander Henson.  Henson, also an American explorer, accompanied Peary on seven voyages to the Arctic, including the famous 1908-1909 expedition that claimed to have reached the geographic North Pole on April 6, 1909.  The expedition party consisted of Perry, Henson and four Inuit assistants.  And Henson said he was the first individual of their expedition party to reach the pole.

Henson was born in Nanjemoy, Charles County, Maryland, on August 8, 1866, to sharecropper parents who were free Black Americans before the Civil War.  He spent most of his early life here in D.C., but left school at the age of twelve when both of his parents died.  He then went to work as a cabin boy on a merchant ship, having been fascinated by stories of the sea.  He learned to to read, write and navigate while working on the ship.  But at the age of 18 he returned to D.C. and worked as a salesclerk at a hat shop. It was there that he met a customer named Robert Peary, who in 1887 hired him as a personal valet.

Their first Arctic expedition together was in 1891–92. Henson served as a navigator and craftsman, and was known as Peary’s “first man”. But it was during their 1908–09 expedition to Greenland, that Peary and Henson, along with four Inuit assistants, claimed to have been the first to reach the geographic North Pole.  In interviews, Henson identified as the first member of the party to reach the pole.

Henson achieved a level of fame from his participation in the expedition, and in 1912 he published a memoir entitled “A Negro Explorer at the North Pole”.  As he approached old age, his exploits received renewed attention, including being received at the White House by Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower.

Eighty years later, and decades after Henson’s death, a research paper by an English explorer named Wally Herbert claimed that their expedition records were unreliable, and indicated a that the men could have fallen 30–60 miles short of the pole due to navigational errors.  Nonetheless, Peary and Henson and the expedition has remained famous as one of the great explorations of history.

Henson died on March 9, 1955, at the age of 88, and was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York.  He was survived by his second wife Lucy Ross Henson. After her death in 1968, she was buried with him. But in 1988, both their bodies were moved and reintered during a commemoration ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.  And that is where I rode on this bike ride to see his memorial.

The memorial at his gravesite features an inset bronze plaque commemorating the North Pole discovery.  At the top sits a large bas-relief bust of Henson in Arctic gear.  Immediately below, an inscription describes his part in reaching the North Pole. And globes of the world, tilted with the Pole in view, sit at either side.  The central image, which was based on a photograph that Peary took at the Pole on April 6, 1909, shows Henson flanked by the four Inuit assistants with the U.S. flag flying behind them atop a mound of ice. The bottom panel on the memorial depicts dogsleds and dramatic ice floes, suggestive of the struggle that Henson, Peary and the Inuit sustained over many years to achieve their goal.  And on the opposite side, an inscription quotes Henson’s book, “A Negro Explorer at the North Pole.” It reads, “The lure of the Arctic is tugging at my heart. To me the trail is calling! The old trail. The trail that is always new.”

    
[Click on the thumbnails above to view the full size photos]

NOTE:  The monument in the background of the photo at the top is dedicated to Peary.  I will go back to visit it and write about him at some point in the future.

Grace Murray Hopper Park

Grace Murray Hopper Park

I rode over to Virginia during this daily bike ride, and during my ride I happened upon a small park tucked in among the massive apartment and office buildings of Crystal City.  It is located on South Joyce Street in Arlington (MAP), and named Grace Murray Hopper Park, who was a rear admiral in the United States Navy.  Finding a park named after a female rear admiral piqued my curiosity.  So I did some research to find out what I could about her when I got home.  And I found out that she was a very accomplished and interesting person.

Grace Brewster Murray was on December 9, 1906.  That same year, Xerox, a digital office machine brand, was founded in Rochester, New York. Albert Einstein had just published his “Theory of Relativity.”  And the Women’s Suffrage movement was soon to receive major-party support and worldwide attention. An era of scientific and social innovation and eruption was about to begin. Change was on the horizon. And Grace would eventually contribute greatly to that change.  

Grace was born in New York City, the eldest of three children born to Walter Fletcher Murray and Mary Campbell Van Horne. She attended private school at the Hartridge School in Plainfield, New Jersey. At the age of 16, Grace applied for early admission to Vassar College, but was initially rejected because her test scores in Latin were too low.  She reapplied the following year and was admitted.  She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar in 1928 with a bachelor’s degree with a double major in mathematics and physics. She then went on to earn a master’s degree in 1930, and a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1934, both from Yale University. Hopper began teaching mathematics at Vassar in 1931 and was promoted to associate professor ten years later.

She was married to New York University professor Vincent Foster Hopper from 1930 until their divorce in 1945. They did not have any children.  And she did not marry again, but chose to retain the surname of Hopper.  

The Navy had always played an important role in Grace’s family because her great-grandfather served in the Civil War as a Navy admiral.  And when World War II broke out while Grace was still teaching at Vassar, she attempted to enlist in the Navy.  But she was rejected because of her age of 34, her low weight, and the importance of her work as a mathematics professor.  Therefore, she continued to teach at Vassar and was promoted to the position of Associate Professor in 1941 – the year of the attack on Pearl Harbor.  Two years later Grace left Vassar to join the U.S. Naval Reserve, also known as WAVES.  But even for that she would need to get an exemption because she was 15 lbs. under the Navy’s minimum of 120 lbs.  But she received a waiver, and went on to graduate first in her class at the Naval Reserve school in Northampton, Massachusetts. 

Grace was commissioned a lieutenant and was assigned to the Bureau of Ordnance’s Computation Project at Harvard University, where she worked on Mark I, the first large-scale automatic calculator and a precursor of electronic computers. After the war, she remained at the Harvard Computation Lab for four years as a civilian research fellow. In 1949, she joined the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, where she helped to develop the UNIVAC I, the first general-purpose electronic computer. Throughout her postwar career in academia and private industry, Hopper retained her naval commission.

Grace initially retired from the Navy in 1966. However, one year later, she was recalled to active duty for a six-month period that turned into an indefinite assignment directing the Navy Programming Languages Group in the Navy’s Office of Information System Planning, standardizing computing languages.  She retired again in 1971, but was once again asked to return to active duty in 1972.  She was promoted to Captain in 1973, and finally Commodore (later renamed Rear Admiral), the highest peacetime military rank possible, by Presidential appointment by President Ronald Reagan in 1983.  She remained on active duty for several years beyond mandatory retirement by special approval of Congress.  In 1986, when Rear Adm. Hopper retired for the third and final time from the Navy at the age of 79, she was the oldest officer on active U.S. naval duty.  

Following her retirement from the Navy, she was hired by Digital Equipment Corporation.  She proposed in jest that she would be willing to accept a position which made her available on alternating Thursdays to be exhibited at their museum of computing as a pioneer, in exchange for a generous salary and unlimited expense account. Instead, she was hired as a full-time senior consultant. In this position, Grace represented the company at industry forums, serving on various industry committees, along with other obligations.  She retained that position until her death.  She died at home in her sleep of natural causes at at age 85 in 1992.  At the time of her death she was a resident of River House Apartments, which is adjacent to the park named in her honor.  

Throughout her career she was a computer pioneer, and she came to be known as “Amazing Grace” for her groundbreaking achievements. Some of her achievements and other interesting facts about this amazing woman include:

• Grace was an especially curious child. At the age of seven, her mother discovered she had been dismantling alarm clocks to figure out their inner workings. She had taken apart seven clocks before her mother intervened and limited her to a single clock to tinker with.
• The clock in Rear Admiral Dr. Grace Hopper’s office ran counterclockwise.
• After a moth infiltrated the circuits of Mark I, she coined the term bug to refer to unexplained computer failures.
• The famous quotation “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission” is often attributed to her. 
• A minor planet discovered by Eleanor Helin is named “5773 Hopper” in her honor. 
• Women at Microsoft Corporation formed an employee group called Hoppers and established a scholarship in her honor.
• During her lifetime, Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities across the world.
• Hopper College, one of the residential colleges of Yale University, was named after her.  
• She was awarded The Data Processing Management Association’s Inaugural “Man-of-the-Year” Award.  
• She was awarded The National Medal of Technology.
• The U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Hopper was named for her. 
• Also named after her is he Cray XE6 “Hopper” supercomputer at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center.  
• The U.S. Naval Academy also owns a Cray XC-30 supercomputer named “Grace,” hosted at the University of Maryland-College Park. 
• Hopper was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the highest non-combat decoration awarded by the Department of Defense.
• She was interred with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery. 
• On November 22, 2016, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.

    

         
[Click on the thumbnails above to view the full size photos]

Statue of Taras Shevchenko

Statue of Taras Shevchenko

In addition to numerous statues that pay homage to famous Americans, D.C. is also home to many that honor foreign heroes.  Some examples I’ve already visited are well-known, such as The Nelson Mandela Statue in Front of the South African Embassy and the Statue of Sir Winston Churchill.  Many others are less well-known, such as the Statue of Crown Princess Märtha, the Statue of Elefthérios Venizélos, and the Statue of Brigadier General Thaddeus Kościuszko.  But I haven’t yet visited many of the city’s hundreds, if not thousands of these statues.  And I think I better start prioritizing them during my bike rides so I can see them before angry mobs of rioters eventually tear them all down.

On this bike ride, I saw one of these statues that I hadn’t visited before – the Taras Shevchenko Memorial, which is located in the 2200 block of P Street (MAP) in northwest D.C.’s DuPont Circle neighborhood.  It is the 83rd statue to be profiled in this blog.

Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko was a Ukrainian poet, writer, artist, public and political figure, as well as folklorist and ethnographer.  His literary heritage is regarded to be the foundation of modern Ukrainian literature and, to a large extent, the modern Ukrainian language. Shevchenko is also known for many masterpieces as a painter and an illustrator.

The idea of a U.S. monument honoring Shevchenko began with the American Shevchenko Society, founded in 1898. The society did not achieve its goal of erecting a monument, but the idea did not die out, and many Ukrainian-Americans continued to pursue the creation of a Shevchenko monument.

The inscriptions on the memorial best describe the man and the reasons for the statue.  The inscription on north face of statue base reads:

Dedicated to the Liberation, Freedom and Independence of all Captive Nations

This monument of Taras Shevchenko, 19th century Ukrainian poet and fighter for the independence of Ukraine and the freedom of all mankind, who under foreign Russian imperialist tyranny and colonial rule appealed for “The New and Righteous Law of Washington,” was unveiled on June 27, 1964. This historic event commemorated the 150th anniversary of Shevchenko’s birth. The memorial was authorized by the 86th Congress of the United States of America on August 31, 1960, and signed into Public Law 86-749 by Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th President of the United States of America on September 13, 1960. The statue was erected by Americans of Ukrainian ancestry and friends.

And an inscription on reverse face of the relief sculpture of Prometheus reads:

“…Our soul shall never perish. Freedom knows no dying.
And the greedy cannot harvest
fields where seas are lying.”

“Cannot bind the living Spirit
nor the living Word.
“Cannot smirch the sacred glory
of Th’Almighty Lord.”

 

[Click on the thumbnails above to view the full size photos]

NOTE:  A second Ukrainian monument was approved by the U.S. Congress in 2006.  The monument honors the millions of Ukrainians who died as a result of the 1932–1933 Holodomor, a famine-genocide caused by the Soviet Union.  The memorial site is located on a triangular lot on Massachusetts Avenue near Union Station.  On December 2, 2008, a dedication ceremony was held at the future site for the Holodomor Memorial, with Ukraine’s then-First Lady Kateryna Yushchenko among the speakers.  Formally dedicated on November 7, 2015, it is also the second memorial in D.C. to honor victims of Communism, the other being the Victims of Communism Memorial, also located near Union Station.

Colonel Justice Marion Chambers

Colonel Justice Marion Chambers

In 1990, the United States Congress designated March 25th of each year as National Medal of Honor Day, which is dedicated to all Medal of Honor recipients.  And during today’s lunchtime bike ride to Arlington National Cemetery (MAP), and in observance of today’s designation, I chose to stop and pay my respects at the grave of a Medal of Honor recipient named Justice M. Chambers.

Justice Marion “Jumping Joe” Chambers was born at Huntington, West Virginia, February 2, 1908.  He grew up and went to school there, completing three years at Marshall College before leaving Huntington for D.C.   He then attended George Washington University and National University, where he obtained his law degree.

In 1930, following the completion of two years enlistment in the Naval Reserve, Chambers joined the Marine Corps Reserve as a private.  He was commissioned two years later, and continued his studies toward promotion.  He was a major, attending summer camp, when Washington’s 5th Battalion was called up in 1940 to aid in the war effort.

He served with honor and distinction until a fateful day almost five years later when, on February 19, 1945, Chambers commanded the 3rd Assault Battalion Landing Team, 25th Marines, 4th Marine Division, in the Iwo Jima landing.  His sector was beneath high ground from which heavy enemy fire raked the whole landing beach. Capture of the high ground was considered essential to the success of the operations. It is an established fact that had it not been done, it would have constituted a most serious threat to subsequent operations.

The 3rd Battalion lost more than half its officers and nearly one-half its enlisted strength on D-Day.  But, according to the citation that would accompany his medal, it was by “fearless disregard for his own life” and leading his depleted battalion “by example rather than command” that Chambers won the key heights and anchored the right flank of the Marines’ position.

On the fourth day, directing the Marines’ first rocket barrage and exposed to the enemy’s main line of resistance, Chambers and his men fell under enemy machine-gun fire.  Chambers was hit, and his wounds were so serious that he was medically retired.  And because he had been specially commended for performance of duty in combat, he was promoted to the rank of colonel.

Chambers had been recommended for the award on April 7, 1945, following his evacuation, seriously wounded, from Iwo Jima.  However, he initially received the Navy Cross for his actions.  But upon re-examination of the original recommendation with additional evidence, his award was upgraded to the Medal of Honor a few years later.  Presentation of the Medal of Honor was made at the White House by President Harry S. Truman on November 1, 1950.  (Later that same day, two Puerto Rican nationalists attempted to assassinate Truman across the street at Blair House. )

Chambers retired from the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve January 1, 1946. After his retirement, he served as staff advisor for the Senate Armed Services Committee. Chambers was appointed in 1962 by President John F. Kennedy to the post of deputy director of the Office of Emergency Planning, where he served with distinction until his retirement. He died on July 29, 1982.

The citation accompanying Chambers’ Medal of Honor reads:

“For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as commanding officer of the 3d Assault Battalion Landing Team, 25th Marines, 4th Marine Division, in action against enemy Japanese forces on Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands, from 19 to 22 February 1945. Under a furious barrage of enemy machinegun and small-arms fire from the commanding cliffs on the right, Colonedl Chambers (then Lt. Col.) landed immediately after the initial assault waves of his battalion on D-day to find the momentum of the assault threatened by heavy casualties from withering Japanese artillery, mortar rocket, machinegun, and rifle fire. Exposed to relentless hostile fire, he coolly reorganized his battle-weary men, inspiring them to heroic efforts by his own valor and leading them in an attack on the critical, impregnable high ground from which the enemy was pouring an increasing volume of fire directly onto troops ashore as well as amphibious craft in succeeding waves. Constantly in the front lines encouraging his men to push forward against the enemy’s savage resistance, Colonel Chambers led the 8-hour battle to carry the flanking ridge top and reduce the enemy’s fields of aimed fire, thus protecting the vital foothold gained. In constant defiance of hostile fire while reconnoitering the entire regimental combat team zone of action, he maintained contact with adjacent units and forwarded vital information to the regimental commander. His zealous fighting spirit undiminished despite terrific casualties and the loss of most of his key officers, he again reorganized his troops for renewed attack against the enemy’s main line of resistance and was directing the fire of the rocket platoon when he fell, critically wounded. Evacuated under heavy Japanese fire, Colonel Chambers, by forceful leadership, courage, and fortitude in the face of staggering odds, was directly instrumental in insuring the success of subsequent operations of the 5th Amphibious Corps on Iwo Jima, thereby sustaining and enhancing the finest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.”

Note:  In addition to the Medal of Honor, Silver Star Medal and Legion of Merit with Combat “V,” Col Chambers’ decorations and medals include the Purple Heart Medal with two gold stars, Presidential Unit Citation with three bronze stars, Organized Marine Corps Reserve Medal with two stars, American Defense Service Medal, American Campaign Medal, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with one silver star (denoting five campaigns), and the World War II Victory Medal.