VOLUME TWENTY SIX, NUMBER THREE
MARCH 2012
Love a-bloom in the Beaumont Room A radiant smile was Barbara Clothier’s response to her prize, one of 18 won by residents at the Valentine’s Day dinner dance presided over by Dining Services Director Rose-Marie Pringle in the Beaumont Room. Photo by Dining Supervisor Lee-Anna Lopez
INSIDE: Chef Mark makes his farewell, Page 3 More Valentines photos, Page 8
Four years of events commemorating the Civil War, 1861 to 1865, began with a Presidential proclamation on April 12, 2011, the 150th anniversary of the opening attack on Fort Sumter. This Sesquicentennial celebration fired the imagination of Beaumont resident Carol Allen. She built a recent “Timely Topics” session around an invitation to other residents to attend and tell the Civil War stories that have come down in their families. Following are some of the stories that emerged from that session.
A tale of two grandfathers By Hannah Henderson My family’s Civil War stories concern both my grandfathers. My paternal grandfather in 1862 joined up at age 14 (he lied about his age and his younger brother, age 11, joined as a drummer boy). The Bradley family had been farming in the Merrimac River Valley for
Family tragedy, Page 4 Brother vs. brother, Page 5 How a spider saved a life, Page 6
about 175 years, but by the time of the Civil War they had lost most of their land. My paternal grandfather, Leverett Bradley, joined up with a Massachusetts heavy artillery regiment; for the next two years he and his regiment sat in the trenches guarding Washington. In the spring of 1864, General Grant pulled all those troops out of the trenches to join his troops on the campaign to capture Richmond. It took them almost a year to do so; for the first three months there were non-stop battles with appalling casualties at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and North continued on page 2
Grandfathers . . . .
Reedville (a section of Milton, MA). After my family moved in with this grandfather in the mid-1930s, he and I became particularly close; perhaps because we were always the first down to breakfast. I learned from him and my mother that my great-grandfather and his wife were ardent abolitionists! Before the Civil War, my grandfather told me, his parents bought land in “Bleeding Kansas” to keep it a Free State when it joined the Union. He held onto it until 1837. In addition to supporting all kinds of efforts of the Abolitionists, his parents personally supported and invited the notorious John Brown to their house. My mother told me that my grandfather’s oldest sister (Lila Cabot Perry–the artist) remembered sitting on John Brown’s lap and pulling his beard. My grandfather also told me that during the Civil War when his father was not working at Massachusetts General Hospital, he’d go and work for the U.S. Sanitary Commission and in Army Hospitals for two weeks a month each year. I’m so fortunate that my grandfather taught me or told me so many family tales about the Civil War and the history of various family members in the period between the settlement of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth Plantation and the Civil War. Many times my siblings and I were taken to visit some of the places that were pertinent to family history. In 1960 or ’61 my father and I spent three days in Virginia and visited 17 battlefields. Most of them had battles fought over them twice–first in the Peninsula Campaign of 1862 and then in the Wilderness Campaign in 1864. It was as thrilling for me as it has been for those who have visited the Normandy battlefields commemorating the DDay landings in June 1944. When you know (or experience) family history, it helps understanding the history of that period in all its facets: political, sociological, economic, and religious. Since learning history truly from my mother’s knee, I have always loved the study of history.
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Anna River; culminating in the horrible time at Cold Harbor where 14,000 men were killed. The Federal Army continued on to Petersburg, a town that held a crucial rail junction for the Confederates. Both sides were exhausted, and for the rest of the conflict, both armies dug trenches and fought trench warfare. Photographs of these trenches remind you of the trenches used by both the Allied and the German troops Hannah Henderson in World War I. Sometime during the winter of 1864-65, my grandfather was commissioned a lieutenant. After the war he had to enter high school! By working his way through Amherst College, he graduated and eventually ended up as an Episcopal minister. He died on the young side–barely 50–when my father was 14. My maternal grandfather, Godfrey Lowell Cabot, was born in late February 1861–just a few weeks before the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter. If you asked him about his earliest memories, he’d immediately say, “The photographs of my seven first cousins who were killed in the war.” He was “the baby” in a family of eight children. His father was a noted physician in Boston and a highly respected amateur ornithologist. He took my grandfather, age 4, to see the formal discharge of the Eastern Massachusetts regiments at
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Mary Graff Christine Johnson-Hall Louise Guthrie Jean Kirk Louise Hughes Kim Norrett Jennie Frankel Barbara O’Brien
Farewell to Chef Mark By Peter Binzen
Joe Fortenbaugh “It’s been a heck of a acknowledged that in journey for me,” Mark S. Beaumont’s start-up Robison said as he bid phase, dining service farewell to Beaumont was “a challenge.” He after 21 years as its said the first chef decidDirector of Food ed to leave after two Services and Executive years, and Robison Chef. was then recruited from His last day at the 225-room Diplomat Beaumont was Feb. 9. Hotel in Atlantic City, His new position is where he had been Executive Chef at Gulf executive chef. Coast Village, a retireHe was just over 30 ment community near years old, but had Fort Myers, Florida. He already worked in half a said that although Gulf dozen kitchens. His Coast Village is about grandfather, who emithe same size as grated from Italy in the Beaumont, “it can’t comPhoto by Louise Hughes 1930s, had opened a pete with Beaumont in restaurant in any way.” The place is Joan Roberts, head of Beaumont’s Dining Services Committee, toasts Chef “financially secure,” he Mark Robison at the reception honoring him on his departure after 21 years. Springfield, Delaware County. His father later said, but “their program needs some improvement.” That will be his job. He took over the restaurant and Robison worked there declined to go into more detail except to say that unlike after graduating from Archbishop Carroll High School Beaumont, which is uniquely owned and managed by its in 1977. He also waited tables at the General Wayne Inn. “I waited both the front and the back of the place,” residents, a corporation owns Gulf Coast Village. Chef Mark, 52, emphasized that he wasn’t leaving he recalled. In 1980 he married Teresa Varallo, who had been a Beaumont to make more money in Florida. In fact, he will be taking a slight reduction in salary, he said. But waitress at what is now Yang Ming in Bryn Mawr. When he expects Florida’s lower cost of living to make the her father opened Cousin’s Restaurant in Ocean City, Robison and his wife worked there. Mark was named move economically feasible. He and his wife, Teresa, had been talking for years Chef in 1981. A “pivotal point” in his career came in 1983 when he about eventually moving “somewhere south” for easier living. His younger brother, Matthew, is in Fort was hired by the Tropicana Casino in Atlantic City. “I Lauderdale, and his Uncle Anthony is in Boca Raton. was pie-eyed when I walked in,” he said. “The casino While the Robisons didn’t like Florida’s East Coast, the was going great.” The only certified master chef in Atlantic City at that Fort Myers area seemed ideal. But leaving Beaumont was a wrench. Joseph H. time was the Tropicana’s Vladimir Reitmaier. Besides Fortenbaugh III, Beaumont’s president, was a key fig- its master chef, the casino employed 23 other chefs ure in hiring Robison in November 1990, and has been and 380 cooks, dishwashers and other kitchen staff. a mentor ever since. Robison said that when he walked Robison worked in all of its facilities including the dininto Fortenbaugh’s office to submit his resignation, “I ner theater. His hours were long but the pay and workhad a knot in my stomach. It was hard to get the words ing conditions were good. “It was a tremendous learning experience,” he said of his six years at the out.” “This has been more than a job for me,” the chef Tropicana. When his father-in-law opened Cousin’s Country said. “For 21 years I’ve been able to pursue my passion in a great environment. What makes Beaumont so House in Bargaintown, New Jersey, Robison worked special is that you get to know the residents. What their there part-time while temporarily remaining at the casino. wants and needs are. I really love Beaumont.” In 1988, the owner of Atlantic City’s Diplomat Hotel Dining Services are a very important element in the marketing of retirement communities, and Beaumont is hired him as executive chef. “It was the hardest job I known for the high quality of its program. That was not ever had,” Robison said. “We averaged 85 percent always the case, however. continued on page 4 3
A family tragedy By Jean Erdman
I only know the bare outlines of this story. It happened on Aug. 3, 1863, on the Beckham family plantation on the Mississippi River just outside Union City, Tennessee. My great-grandfather, A.F. Beckham, then 38, ran the plantation. His household included nine other people: his wife, Mary (née Watson), then 36; his father, Ben Beckham Sr., 76 (that was quite old for those days), and his seven children. There were three sons: my grandfather, Ben Beckham, 13; his little brother, Dan, 5, and Richard, 3. The four girls were Laura, Jean Erdman 15; Kate, 11; Sally, 9, and Rowena, 4. On this day, Aug. 3, my grandfather was in school. His mother had taken Dan and had gone to the next county to visit her mother. To get there and back in those days was an all-day journey. So the other five children were at home with their father and grandfather and were probably playing or napping at the time of this event. At some point during the day, a Federal troop of African-American soldiers marched onto the plantation. I have never heard the sequence of events. But when they arrived and found there were slaves, freed but still living and working there by choice, they became wildly infuriated and shot and killed my great-grandfather and his father right on the spot. They then took the children down to the river and started throwing them in one by one at the deepest place. Laura, the 15-year-old, dived in to try to save the little ones from drowning. As soon as she dragged one child back to shore, the soldiers threw it right back again.
And this went on and on until all four little children were dead. Laura either drowned from exhaustion or the soldiers finally shot her. Seven Beckhams were brutally murdered on that day. The news must have traveled fast! Someone rushed to school and said, “Ben Beckham! Come home at once. Your entire family at the plantation has been murdered!” Several years ago a friend was in Union City. On his first Sunday there he went to church. As he left, he was welcomed at the door by a church member who asked him if he knew anyone in town. “Only someone who grew up here and left when she married—Kate Watson Beckham Trippett. “We remember her well! Her father’s family was murdered during the Civil War. Out of a family of nine, only three were left. Ben at 13 had to stop school and take care of his mother and little brother. I’ll drive you out to the very plantation where this horrible tragedy occurred.” When Ben grew up and had children of his own, he named his daughter Kate-Watson; Kate, after the sister
Chef Mark . . . .
As this issue went to press, Beaumont administrators were still interviewing the most promising of 120 applicants for the very large vacancy Mark leaves behind. Meanwhile, Sous-Chefs Barry Hill and Michael Santangelo were carrying on, as were the super waiters and waitresses who work under the estimable RoseMarie Pringle, Director of Dining Services. They seem to know all of Beaumont’s residents by name and food preferences. The Robisons, who have two grown sons, are not cutting ties to this area entirely. They will be renting, not selling, their home in Havertown. They will also be renting their home in Florida. “We want to see how it goes,” said Mark. “You never know until you get there.”
“The story of the war needs retelling because it helped to shape the future of the human race.” —Bruce Catton, Civil War historian he loved so much, and Watson, after his mother’s maiden name. And with an endearing touch of whimsy, for the rest of his life, whenever he saw a redbird, he always said that was Sally coming back to him. I am told that this event of Aug. 3, 1863, is recorded in the Library of Congress.
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room occupancy and $4.5 million in annual revenue. We did a lot of banquets. It was a busy property.” One day in 1990 he saw an advertisement in The Philadelphia Inquirer for executive chef in a retirement community. The community was Beaumont. He sent in his resumé and was interviewed twice before being offered the position. “It was a little unnerving,” he said. “They were not happy with the dining program. We went through the staff. There had to be a total regearing of the department.” Fortenbaugh said that Robison “brought with him the knowledge, experience and attitude to develop Beaumont’s food service staff into a quality team.” 4
When it was brother against brother By Fytie Drayton
Thomas Drayton and Percival Drayton were born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1809 and 1812 respectively. Their father, William, a lawyer, moved to Philadelphia in the 1840s as he opposed Nullification. Thomas graduated from the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, in 1833. Percival became a midshipman and was appointed a Lieutenant in 1838 after studying at Newport and New York. (The U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, was not founded until 1845.) When the war started, Thomas was recalled to service in the Confederate Army as a Brigadier General. Percival, who had stayed in the U.S. Navy, had the rank of Commander. Of interest, the brothers corresponded during the years of the war. Some of their papers are at the Pennsylvania Historical Society as well as in South Carolina and the U.S. Naval Museum. The war began in April, 1861. In September, 1861, the brothers faced off at the Battle of Port Royal, S.C. General Thomas was in command of Confederate military operations at Port Royal. Commander Percival was in charge of the Union Gunboat “Pocahontas.” The battle was won by the Navy, giving the Union its first southern port of the war. Thomas subsequently fought in the battles of Manassas, Antietam and others. Percival was promoted to Captain in 1862. He then served as the commander of the Union Navy flagship “Hartford,” part of the West Gulf Blockading Fleet, under the command of Admiral David Farragut. In 1864, the fleet was ordered to attack and capture the city of Mobile, Alabama. On entering Mobile Bay, after safely passing two garrisons, the lookout called out “Torpedoes!” (They were small floating canisters
Photo by Louise Hughes Fytie (left) and Cynthia Drayton, residents who married brothers, display Capt. Percival Drayton’s Naval hat, gold braid and dress epaulets, Civil War relics that have come down in the Drayton family.
filled with explosives.) Admiral Farragut then famously ordered, “DAMN THE TORPEDOES, CAPTAIN DRAYTON, AHEAD FULL SPEED!” Mobile was successfully taken by the Union Navy and the Union troops on land. After the fighting, Thomas returned to Charleston and Georgia and became a civic leader. He died in 1891. Captain Percival was stationed at Naval Headquarters in Washington, D.C. He died in August, 1865.
Stories remembered by Frank Manlove
Margie Manlove
By Margie Manlove When my husband was a little boy, around 1920, he lived in Oxford, Pennsylvania, just north of the MasonDixon Line. A Captain Clark who had served in the Union Army in the Civil War lived next door and spun yarns which Frank remembers. In one story, Captain Clark and his men were cleaning up after a battle. They found a dead man in a shed. Captain Clark ordered two of his men to pick up the corpse and bring it out of the shed. One man picked him up by the head and the 5
other by the feet. As they lifted him, he sank in the middle emitting a loud “Augh-h-h.” The two men dropped the body and ran off. In another story, Captain Clark told how the Union soldiers delighted in tearing up rebel railroad tracks. They would make a big bonfire of the railroad ties and put the rails on it until they were red hot. They then took the red hot ties and wrapped them around trees. When in a Richmond museum (on a Beaumont trip) I saw a tree with a railroad tie wrapped around it. The southerners called them Yankee neckties.
How a spider saved a human life and maybe its own
Elizabeth Severinghaus Warner
By Elizabeth Severinghaus Warner My grandfather was a Methodist circuit-riding minister who lived in Tennessee. He rode his Tennessee walking horse from church to church each Sunday to preach. My grandfather’s grandfather fought with the Union. He was with the army at Gettysburg, but in the fighting got separated from his company. The rebels were aware of the presence of Union soldiers in their midst, and gave chase. Severinghaus quickly jumped down into a window well, went through the open win-
dow and hid in the cellar. He watched a spider spin a web across the window. Later the Confederates saw the open window in the window well and discussed whether or not a Yankee could be hiding in the cellar. Looking at the open window, a Confederate soldier said, “Look–there’s a full spider web! He can’t be there–he would have broken the web!” So they left. Severinghaus told his grandson the story and said, “I will never ever kill a spider again! One saved my life.” The grandson was my grandfather, who told me this story when I was about 10 or 11.
Gov. Curtin: a distinguished Pennsylvanian By James Winsor
tion of the first Union military training militia. More than 300,000 men were drilled there during the four-year war. Curtin became a close friend and confidant of President Lincoln. The governor arranged for the national cemetery at Gettysburg and sat with Lincoln when he delivered his famous Gettysburg Address. Three days after the James Winsor Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, Lincoln called for militia to protect the nation’s capital. Gov. Curtin called five militia companies and they were the first to arrive in Washington, thus the name “The First Defenders.” Gov. Curtin was well respected by the troops and after the war it was well known that he could be relied upon to help the veterans get their due respect and pensions if they were in need of them. One of his most significant accomplishments was the formation of agencies to provide support for wounded soldiers and a state-funded Orphan’s School to aid and educate children of the military men who died for the Union cause. In his later years, Governor Curtin, as he was fondly referred to in his home town, could be seen sitting in the public square relating his many stories to his friends. He died at his home with his family.
“Andy” Curtin was born in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania. His parents were Roland Curtin Sr., a wealthy Irishborn iron manufacturer from County Clare, and June (Gregg) Curtin, daughter of U.S. Senator Andrew Gregg. He was a tall, handsome man who was well liked and could debate with the best of men. He was my
Governor Curtin called five militia companies and they were the first to arrive in Washington, thus the name “The First Defenders.” great-great grandfather on my grandmother’s side of the family. After studying and practicing law, and serving as Pennsylvania’s Superintendent of Public Schools, Curtin switched politics from the Whig Party to the Republican Party and successfully ran for Governor of Pennsylvania. During the Civil War, he organized the Pennsylvania reserves into combat units and oversaw the construcIN MEMORIAM Helen Stephens – January 20 Josephine Bull – January 29 Frank Borden – February 2 Lillian Sussman – February 8 Members of the Beaumont Community extend deepest sympathy to their families and friends.
All photographs accompanying Civil War stories by Louise Hughes. 6
Remembering a great-grandfather By Jane Garrison
army as the Federals fought their way east through Mississippi. It was extremely hot and humid, and the only fresh water the troops had came from watermelons they found in the fields. His company was fighting in the vicinity of Tupelo, Mississippi, where they were responsible for capturing and protecting a vital rail line. His duties there were cut short when he was captured by the rebel cavalry under the command of General Nathan Bedford Forrest. General Forrest was the most feared cavalry leader in the South. General Sherman wanted him killed even if doing so broke the Federal treasury and cost 10,000 lives. In 1865, at the end of the war, Abram was exchanged for a young rebel prisoner. He returned to New York City, where he married, raised a family, and was employed as a policeman. Later he joined the Grand Army of the Republic. In 1885 he was a member of the honor guard at the dedication of Grant’s Tomb. He died peacefully in 1939 at the age of 93 years.
The name was Abram Vosburgh. He was born in 1846 in New York City to descendants of Dutch immigrants. He was my great-grandfather on my mother’s side. When he was very young, the family moved west to Illinois. Due to his longevity, I knew him when I was a child. He told me that as a boy he met Abraham Lincoln when he was campaigning for the Presidential nomination. “He told me to be a good lad and obey my parents,” my Jane Garrison great-grandfather recalled. In 1862, at age 16, he left home to enlist in the Union Army. He was assigned to Company K, 119 Illinois Infantry. As a young private, he did not carry a weapon but served as a drummer boy and flag man. In July, 1864, he was part of General Sherman’s
A snowy day in February
Photo by Ann Louise Strong
Rare shrubbery in front of Hannah Henderson’s villa at 15 Pond Lane got a scenic frosting one morning and Ann Louise Strong was there (from next door) with her camera to catch it before it melted.
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Valentine’s Day all day long When Trip Coordinator Louise Hughes (middle row, left) plans an event, even Beaumont’s gargoyles join the fun. This one overlooked Louise herself, presiding over Valentine pastries, and Ed Rosen sitting with Mary Schnabel (below) at the morning’s Coffee Social; among dancers in the evening were Peggy and Bruce Mainwaring and Carolyn Langfitt with grandson Frank. Photos by Dot Maass, Louise Hughes, Kim Norrett and Lee-Anna Lopez.
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