Hollywood Comes to Plattsburgh: The Filming of Janice Meredith

“Marion Davies Edition” of Janice Meredith

On February 26, 1924, readers of the Plattsburgh Sentinel opened their morning papers to find some exciting news: the movies were coming to town! Cosmopolitan Pictures, William Randolph Hearst’s film production company, had chosen Plattsburgh as the location for the filming of Janice Meredith, with Marion Davies in the title role. Two years earlier, Davies had appeared to great acclaim in When Knighthood Was in Flower, a romantic drama set in Tudor England and based on a bestselling book by Charles Major. Janice Meredith, a romantic drama set during the Revolutionary War and based on the 1899 bestseller by Paul Leicester Ford, seemed guaranteed to enjoy box-office success and to cement Davies’s reputation as the top female film star of the day. The setting would capitalize on a growing interest in American history as the sesquicentennial approached, and would allow the filmmakers to claim that the movie had educational as well as entertainment value.

Front page of the San Francisco Examiner, February 3, 1922,
reporting on the trial of Roscoe Arbuckle and the murder of
William Desmond Taylor

This was important, because in 1924, the American movie industry was struggling to recover its reputation after a series of recent scandals. These included the mysterious death of director William Desmond Taylor, the trials of actor Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle for the rape and manslaughter of actress Virginia Rappe, and the drug-related death of leading man Wallace Reid. Nationwide, there were calls for a boycott of Hollywood films, and there must have been many people in Plattsburgh who questioned the wisdom of inviting “motion picture people” of doubtful morals to their city. The Sentinel hoped to reassure concerned readers that Cosmopolitan Pictures was not like other film companies. It had, the paper reported on February 29, an “editorial policy of choosing historical plays to the exclusion of sex or questionable subjects....Their pictures are always received with enthusiasm by the most discriminating audiences.” The company also “maintain[s] an efficient research department whose duty it is to carefully plan and check every scene in order to picture it historically correct.” 

Less than two weeks later, carpenters were already putting the finishing touches on their version of the city of Trenton, which had been constructed near the rifle range at the Plattsburgh Barracks. A writer for the Daily Republican marveled at the realism of the set: “From a distance it is very hard for an onlooker to distinguish whether of not it is a reality.” In fact, what appeared to be buildings of brick and stone were “nothing more than heavy cardboard, molded and painted and nailed to the framework in such a way that the onlookers are led to believe that it is a reality.” Crews were also hard at work opening up the Saranac River so that it could play the role of the Delaware in a pivotal scene. The enlisted men of the 26th Infantry, stationed at the Plattsburgh Barracks, had been recruited to fill the roles of Continental, British, and Hessian soldiers, and would be joined by an additional 400 men from Fort Ethan Allen in Vermont.

Filming the Battle of Trenton at the Plattsburgh Barracks

By that time, many of the professional actors had arrived in Plattsburgh to begin filming some of the incidental scenes. Marion Davies herself arrived on March 10, along with her “secretaries, scenario editors and other staff men,” and took up residence at the Witherill Hotel. On the afternoon of March 13, Davies visited the barracks and was made Honorary Colonel of the regiment and reviewed a parade led by the regimental band. Meanwhile, cameramen were shooting scenes at the Booth estate on the Lake Shore Road. All of this activity was leading up to the day when the Battle of Trenton would be filmed, which happened on March 15. Marion Davies did not appear, but Joseph Kilgour—playing George Washington for the fourth time in his career—“took a prominent part in the battle scene and was mounted on a white charger.” Along with the soldiers, several wives of officers at the barracks took part in this scene.

By March 26, production had largely wrapped up and the Daily Press took this time to reflect upon the experience. If Cosmopolitan Pictures had hoped to change the attitudes of ordinary Americans toward the film industry, it certainly seemed to have succeeded in this case. “It is a matter of regret to everyone in Plattsburgh that the stay of these motion picture people has not been longer. It has been long enough, however, to give the residents of this city an insight to the type of men and women engaged in the industry and it may be said at once that this insight has revealed nothing that was not favorable to the artists and artisans connected with this great motion picture enterprise.” The writer of the editorial observed that people tended to think that they knew movie stars, because they read and heard so much about them, but now the people of Plattsburgh would be able to base their opinions on what they actually knew. They had seen that the cast and crew “conducted themselves as ladies and gentlemen at all times,” from the leading actors and actresses “down to the humblest workman.” They had attended “strictly to their own affairs” and done their jobs with “concentrated energy, enthusiasm and singleness of purpose.” 

Lobby Card for Janice Meredith

Normally, movies were not shown outside major cities until several months after their release. But since Plattsburgh had played such an important part in Janice Meredith, it was given the privilege of being the first place to show the film, less than two weeks after its premiere at the Cosmopolitan Theatre in New York. R.J. Henry, manager of the Clinton Theater, cancelled all other bookings for four days and put his orchestra to work rehearsing the musical score. To drum up additional interest in the film, “Mr. Henry is placing on display in his lobby and in several stores throughout the city photographic representations of many of the scenes in the picture, where they will be on view for the next week.” (He also had to quell rumors that moviegoers would be charged “New York prices” for the film, instead of the usual fifty cents.)

Ad for Janice Meredith from the Plattsburgh
Daily Republican, August 29, 1924

Janice Meredith received a rave review from the Daily Republican. Not only was it a marvelous piece of entertainment, anchored by a brilliant performance by Marion Davies, but it was filled with “the spirit of unmistakable and sincere Americanism” that produced “a frenzy of patriotism that was positively thrilling. Cheer after cheer followed each valorous deed of the Minute Men and each bold movement for freedom. One feels after seeing Janice Meredith one has seen the most enlightening picture of American history yet produced.” With responses like this, the motion picture industry must have felt it was on the right track toward repairing its reputation. Despite the acclaim her performance received, however, Marion Davies never quite reached the level of stardom she hoped for. If she’s remembered at all today, it’s probably as the aggressively untalented opera singer loosely based on her in Citizen Kane. You’ll have the opportunity to see Davies on screen and judge for yourself at our free showing of Janice Meredith this Thursday, September 19, starting at 7:00 p.m. The movie is approximately 2 and a half hours long; there will be an intermission and ample snacks will be provided!

Food Will Win the War: Recruiting an Army of Food Savers

The state and federal agencies formed to tackle the food problem during World War I approached the issue from the perspectives of both the producer and the consumer. As we saw in our last post, the New York State Food Commission developed a variety of resources to assist farmers in increasing their crop and livestock yields, including supplying improved seed, providing assistance in pest and disease management, and helping to address the farm labor shortage. These programs were largely successful, but they were only part of the solution. Americans would also have to fundamentally change the way they cooked and ate their daily meals.

U.S. Food Administration poster
urging Americans to save wheat for soldiers

Since women were responsible for purchasing and preparing almost all food consumed in the home, all food conservation programs targeted housewives. The U.S. Food Administration and the state food commissions aimed to persuade women that it was their patriotic duty to adopt wartime food-saving measures, such as wheatless and porkless days. As authorities continually emphasized, there was no shortage of food in the United States; it was a matter of substituting those foods that were not needed or suitable to send overseas with those that were. But Americans were accustomed to a diet that relied heavily upon meat and bread. Meat was easy to cook and it almost always tasted good; bread was cheap and accessible. Could people be persuaded that fish, eggs, and cheese were acceptable substitutes for pork and beef, and that bread made with corn, rye, oats, and barley just as good as that made from wheat?

A small army of women stepped forward to help the government with this difficult task. Since the late 19th century, (white, middle-class) women had been working to establish domestic science as a profession; they had been successful in starting domestic science and home economics departments at colleges and universities (including the New York State College of Agriculture in Ithaca) and sending their graduates forth into the world to work in high schools, settlement houses, and extension services. For many of them, World War I must have seemed like a godsend: finally they would have the opportunity to demonstrate to the wider world just how important their discipline was. The work that women did in the home affected their families, communities, and indeed, the nation—and it was essential that they do it right.

Cornell Home Economics Faculty, 1914.
Bertha Titsworth is standing at far right.

Home economists and experts in “scientific cookery” went to work preparing menus and recipes for wartime foods. Experimental kitchens were set up across the country to test bread recipes, hoping to find the perfect formula that would use less wheat but still be palatable and easy for the home baker to make. They figured out how to make desserts without sugar, introduced housewives to unfamiliar new ingredients like soybeans, and came up with creative ways to use leftovers. They also introduced Americans to the science of nutrition, explaining what kind of foods were necessary to good health and why. They provided assurance that the changes in diet encouraged by the Food Administration would do no harm, and in fact, eating more vegetables and less sugar would probably do everyone a lot of good. 

All of this information was distributed in cookbooks, pamphlets, magazines, and newspapers, and at schools, women’s clubs, and county fairs. The Plattsburgh newspapers regularly published lists of new material on food conservation received by local public libraries, and ran columns of “Victory Menus.” Women in Clinton County also had many opportunities to learn directly from food experts. In July 1917, the Plattsburgh Sentinel reported that “women representing different sections of the county as well as the Grange and various women’s clubs” met at the Farm Bureau office in Plattsburgh “for the purpose of organizing a woman’s branch in farm bureau work as the result of the national campaign for thrift and economy.” Bertha E. Titsworth, extension specialist and faculty member from the department of home economics at Cornell, helped the women to develop the plan. Clinton County would be divided into 15 communities, with four demonstrations held each week. Meetings would be held in “Grange halls, churches or other public buildings,” and the demonstrations of cooking and preserving were to be done by a “trained lady specialist” provided by the state.

Advertisement from the Plattsburgh
Daily Republican for a bread mixer and
food grinder

Later that summer, the Plattsburgh Daily Republican printed an article (almost certainly based closely on a press release provided by the New York State Food Commission), reporting on the success of the “campaign for the enlistment of women in food conservation.” Thirty food conservation experts had been assigned to various parts of the state, “and they are not only advising housewives, but they are demonstrating conservation methods and enrolling women in the movement, with the result that a chain has been established in which the housewife in the remotest corner of the state is as active as those in the larger centers.” The offices of the home economics experts “have become bureaus of information for all questions pertaining to food and food conservation.” 

Not surprisingly, during the summer of 1917, most of the work being done related to methods of preserving fruits and vegetables for the winter. In our next post, we’ll look more at the canning craze of 1917-18 and the related war garden movement.





Sources:

“Food Conservation: Circular Letter Issued by the Conservation Department of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs,” Plattsburgh Sentinel, May 19, 1917.

“Food Saving in N.Y. State,” Plattsburgh Daily Republican, June 22, 1917.

“Women in Farm Bureau Work: County Organization Perfected at Meeting in This City,” Plattsburgh Sentinel, July 3, 1917.

“Women’s Aid in Food Campaign Now Being Sought in Every County of the State of New York,” Plattsburgh Daily Republican, August 14, 1917.

“Class in Cookery at Young Women’s League,” Plattsburgh Sentinel, October 9, 1917.

“Public Library Notes: New Books on Household Organization and Food Conservation,” Plattsburgh Sentinel, February 12, 1918.

“A Negro girl five Years old named Phillis”: Slavery in Northern New York

Detail of quilt made by Anna Moore Hubbell.
Textile ca. 1785-1800

This post begins with a return to an item from the Alice’s collection that I’ve discussed several times before, on the blog and on North Country Public Radio’s “Adirondack Attic.” The quilt made by Anna Moore Hubbell using a patriotic textile is truly one of the gems of the collection due to the unique nature of the object itself, as well as its connection to local history. Anna (1790-1861) was the daughter of Pliny Moore, one of the founders of the town of Champlain, and the wife of Julius C. Hubbell, a long-time prominent citizen and lawyer in Chazy. The quilt was donated to Alice T. Miner by Anna’s granddaughter Isabella Mygatt.

The textile that Anna Hubbell repurposed to make the quilt was originally part of the furnishings of Pliny Moore’s elegant residence in Champlain. In this post, I want to take a closer look at the residents of that household, which included not just Pliny Moore and his wife and seven children but an enslaved woman named Phillis. Although very little information about Phillis has entered into the official historical record, her life nonetheless opens a window into the often-neglected history of slavery in northern New York.

Map showing location of Kinderhook
and Champlain

First, let’s look at how and why Pliny Moore settled in Champlain. Moore was born in 1759 in Sheffield, Massachusetts. Like many 18th century families, the Moores made several moves in search of new prospects—first to Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and then to Spencertown, New York, near Kinderhook. During the Revolutionary War, Moore enlisted in a regiment commanded by Colonel Marinus Willett and earned a lieutenant’s commission. Moore’s Revolutionary War service would prove to be significant in a number of ways, not least of which was the fact that his second enlistment took place under a new law which offered land bounties for soldiers; as an officer he was entitled to receive 1,000 acres. As early as 1782, Moore began purchasing claims from fellow soldiers, or taking on the job of locating land on their behalf in exchange for a portion of their claims. Why, exactly, Moore was drawn to northern New York, remains unknown, but he began to formulate a project for a grant along the Canadian border in 1783.

For several years, Pliny Moore traveled back and forth between Kinderhook and what would become Champlain, surveying land, laying out lots, building dams and sawmills. During this time he also married Martha Corbin and their first child, Noadiah, was born in 1788. In the spring of 1789, the family settled permanently in Champlain, which was now part of the newly-created Clinton County. Moore tried his hand at almost every kind of business that could be done in northern New York—timbering, making potash, milling, carding and fulling wool, maple sugaring, along with farming and livestock raising. He became an agent for John Jacob Astor and others, receiving furs coming into the United States from Canada, and served as postmaster for the town of Champlain and county court justice and later judge.

Pliny Moore’s home, as depicted in an 1869 publication

During this period, Moore maintained his connections to the southern part of the state, where many members of the Moore and Corbin families still lived. In 1793, he purchased a slave from Isaac Van Slyk of Kinderhook. The deed of sale simply describes her as “a Negro girl five Years old named Phillis”; Moore paid £14 (about $65) for her. Moore likely purchased Phillis with the idea that she could provide domestic assistance for his growing family, which by that time included three young children. Owning a slave was also a sign of status. Like many people who moved to frontier regions during this period, Moore was eager to find ways to demonstrate that he was nonetheless a man of gentility. The house he built in 1801, furnished with fashionable items like patriotic textiles, would be the ultimate symbol of refinement, but even before then, Moore was showing his neighbors he was a man of substance by purchasing a slave.

New Amsterdam, engraving ca. 1640

For five-year-old Phillis, moving 200 miles from her home in Kinderhook to the remote northern outpost of Champlain could only have been deeply traumatic. Although we don’t know anything about her life in Kinderhook, it seems safe to assume that she was taken away from her parents and perhaps siblings and other relatives. Her first language may have been Dutch. In the 18th century, New York State had the largest population of enslaved people in the north, and most of them were concentrated in the Hudson Valley, where the early Dutch settlers had established large landed estates. Phillis thus would have been leaving a place where she was part of a large and long-standing black community, and going to a part of the state where she was one of a small handful of people of color (the 1790 census counted only 33 nonwhite people in all of Clinton County) and would be the only enslaved person in the Moore household.

In 1799, New York passed a gradual emancipation act, which freed children born to enslaved mothers after July 4, 1799, though they would serve a period of indenture until the age of 28 (for men) or 25 (for women). Anyone already enslaved as of July 4, 1799 would be reclassified as a permanent indentured servant, but effectively was still a slave. In 1817 a new law was passed that would free those slaves born before July 4, 1799—but not until July 4, 1827. When, exactly, Phillis became free is not clear. In 1818, Pliny Moore wrote in his will, “I gave her her freedom many years since[. S]he has hitherto chosen to remain in my family as before her freedom.” However, the 1810 federal census recorded her as a slave in the Moore household. In a society where slavery was disappearing but still had no real place for people of color, “freedom” was a slippery concept.

There are no images of Phillis.
This drawing of a cook is by
Anne-Henriette-Marguerite de Neuvelle,
a French émigré who lived in
New York from 1807 to 1814.

How much difference it would have made to the material circumstances of Phillis’s life whether she was a slave, an indentured servant, or a free person of color, is a difficult question to answer. Moore framed Phillis’s decision to remain with the family as a choice, but her options were probably fairly limited, particularly because she had children to provide for. Moore stated in his will that Phillis had, in his opinion, “conducted vilely in lewdness & occasioned much trouble & expence with her children yet she has many good qualities is patient honest kind to all my family & much attached to them all.” He left her $10 per year, “as long as her conduct is virtuous,” and hoped that one his children would bring her to live with them after the death of Martha Moore.

Moore’s words raise as many questions as they answer. We can guess that her “vile” and “lewd” conduct was probably having children out of wedlock, but we don’t know for sure. How many children did Phillis have, when were they born, who was their father, and what happened to them? 

Moore believed that Phillis was “much attached” to his family, and she probably was—but again, she didn’t have a lot of choice, after being taken away from her own family at the age of five. Moore’s financial support was contingent upon Phillis’s good behavior, though it must be said that he used similar leverage on his own children, threatening to disinherit his son Royal, who had eloped with a “worthless Strumpet.” However, Moore also expected that his children would eventually become independent, whereas he assumed that Phillis would continue to be someone’s responsibility for the rest of her life.

Because everything we know about Phillis comes through the writing of Pliny Moore, she disappears from the historical record after his death in 1822. She probably continued to work for Martha Moore until Martha died in 1825, but what happened to her after that remains a mystery. As is so often the case when researching the lives of non-elite Americans, there are a lot of holes in our knowledge. Still, just acknowledging that Phillis was part of the Moore household and a member of the Champlain community helps to enrich our picture of life in northern New York in the early days of settlement. Pliny Moore is known today as a pioneer, but Phillis was, too. Her labor, and the labor of other men and women, enslaved and free, remembered and unremembered, was essential to the development of the North Country.

Sources:

Pliny Moore’s papers, including documents related to the life of Phillis, are part of the McLellan Collection, Special Collections, Feinberg Library, SUNY Plattsburgh.

Information about the life of Pliny Moore and his family comes from Allan S. Everest, Pliny Moore: North Country Pioneer of Champlain, New York (Clinton County Historical Association, 1990).

An excellent overview of the history of slavery in New York is Slavery in New York, a book edited by Ira Berlin and Leslie M. Harris, and published in conjunction with an exhibit of the same name held at the New-York Historical Society in 2005.

New York State History Month: Silas Arnold’s War of 1812 Musket

Silas Arnold’s musket on the right

As I was planning my blog posts for New York State History Month, I wanted to make sure that I covered a range of time periods and experiences with the three items I chose. Ending with the musket used in the War of 1812 by Silas Arnold of Keeseville seemed like the perfect conclusion. We’d have items worn overseas during World War I (Loren Bundy’s uniform) and items collected in Washington, D.C. and Virginia during the Civil War (Charles Moore’s photographs), and then finally an item used right here in Clinton County during the Battle of Plattsburgh: an 1804 Springfield Model 1795 flintlock musket with bayonet.

However, when I began to research the history of the musket, I found that things were not quite what they seemed. First, I wanted to know more about Silas Arnold himself. A quick search revealed that Arnold was born on May 4, 1801, which would have made him just thirteen years old at the time of the Battle of Plattsburgh on September 11, 1814. Of course, boys in their teens did participate in the battle—the students from Plattsburgh Academy who formed Aikin’s Rifle Company or Aikin’s Volunteers. But there’s no indication that Silas Arnold was part of this group; he was not one of the seventeen young men presented a rifle by the U.S. House of Representatives in 1826.

Engraved plate from rifle presented to Martin Ai(t)kin

The second thing I learned about Silas Arnold that made me question his participation in the Battle of Plattsburgh was his Quaker background. It isn’t entirely clear whether the Arnold family were formal members of the Society of Friends, but Silas’s parents, Elisha and Mary Arnold, were buried in the Quaker Union cemetery in Peru. Silas’s obituary notes that he had “inherit[ed] to a large degree some of the best of the principles of the Friends, among whom he was born, and his early years passed.” Pacifism is a key element of Quaker belief, and neither Elisha nor Silas Arnold are listed among the men of Peru who served in battle, as recorded in the History of Clinton and Franklin Counties. 

Silas Arnold House, Main Street, Keeseville

Perhaps the strongest evidence against Silas Arnold having fought in the Battle of Plattsburgh is that his obituaries do not mention it. When he died in January 1879, both the Essex County Republican and the Plattsburgh Republican published lengthy accounts of Arnold’s life, which seems to have been pleasantly uneventful. Of his early years, the Essex County Republican said only that he “passed his boyhood and youth upon the farm, and engaged in the business pursuits of his father.” Elisha Arnold had discovered a bed of iron ore on a tract of land between Peru and Schuyler Falls, the income from which gave Silas a comfortable start in life. In 1840, he moved to Keeseville with his wife, Gulielma (daughter of Richard Keese, another early Quaker settler), son Elias, and daughter Mary Anna. Here he continued in business and became president of the Essex County Bank and a trustee of the Keeseville Academy. He purchased a home that had been built around 1820 by Dr. Caleb Barton and had it remodeled in the fashionable Greek Revival style by local architects Seneca and Isaac Perry. 

According to the Plattsburgh Republican, “He was a genial and kindly man, and had a vast deal of quiet humor.... He possessed a singularly even temperament, and though resolute, his voice was never raised in anger nor his pulse quickened by excitement.” In his later years, his greatest pleasure was to spend time in the Adirondacks, camping and fishing on Saranac Lake. His life was not without trouble—his beloved daughter Mary Anna died in 1862 at the age of 29, shortly after her marriage to Winslow C. Watson, Jr., and he lost his wife in 1875. The picture of Silas Arnold that emerges from these accounts that of a devoted husband and father, a respected and prosperous citizen—but not a soldier.

A. G. Fletcher’s notes regarding his donation

So where did this story originate? It seems to have started with the person who donated the musket to Alice T. Miner: A. G. Fletcher of Keeseville. A note in the museum’s files, written by Fletcher, states “Flint Lock Musket—carried in Battle of Plattsburgh by Arnold given to me by Silas Arnold Keeseville N.Y.” At the same time, he also donated a “Flint Lock Pistol same age & given by Arnold.” Was this a case of misunderstanding on Fletcher’s part? Did Silas Arnold give him a musket and pistol that had been used in the Battle of Plattsburgh, but by someone else? Did Fletcher believe that associating these items with Silas Arnold enhanced their value? Any early-19th century firearm would be of historical interest; one used in the region’s most significant military engagement would be even more so; and if it were used by a prominent local citizen, even better.

Muskets of this type were used during the War of 1812, so it’s not impossible that this one was in fact used during the Battle of Plattsburgh. Beyond that, we may never know for sure, unless additional information comes to light (and if you know anything, please contact us!). As it stands now, the musket, along with the pistol, serves as a cautionary tale about uncritically accepting the stories that come attached to so many historical relics. These stories may not necessarily be unreliable, but they do need to be verified using other sources.

This story brings us to the official end of New York State History Month for 2016, but we will continue to highlight the people and events of our region throughout the rest of the year, and into 2017!


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New York State History Month: Charles Moore’s Civil War Photographs

Carte de visite of Charles Moore,
taken at Gates’ Studio, Plattsburgh

In our last New York State History Month post, we looked at the uniform worn by Chazy native Loren S. Bundy during his World War I military service. This week, we travel back to the 19th century and a collection of photographs assembled during the Civil War by Lieutenant Charles F. Moore (1843-1877). You may be familiar with the letters Charles wrote to his family during the war, which are on display at the museum and are featured on our website. The 108 photos that were donated with the letters give us a more complete picture of his wartime experience.

These small photos, each about 2.5” x 4”, were known as cartes de visite because they were the same size as calling or visiting cards, and they were wildly popular in the 1860s among both soldiers and civilians. Originally, the photographs would have been stored in an album designed especially for the display of cartes de visite, like the one seen here from the Alice’s collection. In these albums, American collectors during the Civil War mingled photos of relatives and politicians, friends and generals. These albums were not just books of personal memories; they were documents that allowed people to construct their own narratives of the war and, in the north especially, they became vehicles for the expression of national identity.

Carte de visite album. Andrew Johnson on the left,
Tom Thumb’s wedding on the right.

The carte de visite format was patented in 1854 by Parisian photographer André-Adolphe-Eugène Disderi. By using a sliding plate holder and a camera with four lenses, eight negatives could be taken on a single 8” x 10” glass plate. That allowed eight prints to be made every time the negative was printed, making it a more economical form of photography. Mounted on card and without the bulky frames or glass of ambrotypes and daguerrotypes, cartes could easily be sent through the mail and exchanged. Cartes de visite were introduced in the United States in the summer of 1859, and their popularity was given a tremendous boost by the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, as soldiers and their families posed for portraits prior to separation.

Lt. Col. Frank Palmer

Charles Moore wrote to his father less than a week after the attack on Fort Sumter that he was planning to enlist, saying “I never can stay here and see those stars and stripes dragged in the dust by a band of traitors.” A month later, in May 1861, he was sworn in as Quartermaster Sergeant in the 16th Regiment, New York Infantry. Many local men were also in the 16th New York, including Frank Palmer, Charles’s brother Pliny, and his cousin Royal Corbin. Moore was discharged from the 16th Infantry in December 1861 and there is a break in his letters. They pick up again in June of 1863, at which point he had joined the 16th New York Cavalry, where he would remain for the duration of the war. For most of his service, he was stationed in Washington, D.C. and northern Virginia.

Moore came from a family with strong ties to the north country and its military history. His father, Amasa Corbin Moore, was the son of Pliny Moore, one of the founders of Champlain, and his mother, Charlotte Mooers, was the daughter of General Benjamin Mooers, commander of the New York Militia at the Battle of Plattsburgh. He proudly wrote to his mother to tell her how he had been introduced to the colonel of his regiment: “Mr. Charles F. Moore of Troy, son of Col. A. C. Moore of Plattsburgh and grandson of General Benjamin Mooers who commanded the Battle of Plattsburgh. Very good, don’t you think so?”

Reverse of carte de visite

The photographs assembled by Charles Moore are typical of carte de visite collections of the Civil War era. Not surprisingly, there are many photos of Abraham Lincoln and Union generals—McClellan, Halleck, Scott, Butler, as well as lesser-known figures like Erasmus Keyes and Israel Richardson. There are politicians like Andrew Johnson and Schuyler Colfax, and celebrities like Kit Carson and Ram Singh II, the Rajah of Jaipur. Cartes de visite of this type were sold by all photography studios, and cost about twenty-five cents. A number of the photos in Moore’s collection have stamps on the back indicating that the prints were made from negatives in Matthew Brady’s National Portrait Gallery. Brady sold his catalog of portrait negatives to the E. and L. Anthony company in 1861, and by 1862, they were producing 3,200 cartes de visite per day.

W. H. Walling, 16th NY Volunteers.
Moore recorded that Walling “captured
the Rebel flag from the parapet of
Ft. Fisher,” a Confederate stronghold
in North Carolina.

The majority of the photographs, however, seem to be of men that Charles Moore knew personally, either fellow soldiers in the 16th New York or other military acquaintances. Many of them are signed and bear the messages “Respectfully” or “Yours Truly.” By exchanging photographs, soldiers strengthened the bonds of friendship and brotherhood. Photos served as reminders of absent friends, and memorials to those who had died. They reminded men of why they were fighting–for loved ones at home, and for their comrades on the field.

After the war, Charles Moore returned to Troy, where he was a clerk in an insurance office. Eventually he went into partnership as an insurance broker with A. G. Peck; later he went into the real estate brokerage business and engaged in some very successful land speculation. But in November 1877, the shocking news that Moore had committed suicide reached his hometown. The newspaper report in the Troy Whig, reprinted in the Plattsburgh Sentinel, attributed Moore’s suicide to a “miasmatic fever” which, “together with overwork, doubtless caused temporary mental derangement.” It’s impossible to say now whether Moore had any kind of long-term mental health issues as a result of his combat experience, but recent research has shown that some Civil War veterans did exhibit symptoms that we would now identify as signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. At the time, however, these problems were labeled as “melancholia” or “mania”–or not acknowledged at all.

Charles Moore’s photograph collection gives a human face to the sometimes abstract image of war. And his life reminds us that even when soldiers return home, their stories don’t always have a happy ending. 


Sources:

Andrea L. Volpe, “The Cartes de Visite Craze,” New York Times (August 6, 2013).

Christa Holm Vogelius, “Family Albums of War: Carte de Visite Collections in the Civil War Era,” Common-place Vol. 16 no. 1 (Fall 2015).

“A Brief History of the Carte de Visite,” American Museum of Photography. Part of the online exhibit Small Worlds: The Art of the Carte de Visite.

Tony Horwitz, “Did Civil War Soldiers Have PTSD?” Smithsonian Magazine (January 2015).

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New York State History Month: Loren Bundy’s World War I Uniform

Each November, we mark New York State History Month with a series of blog posts on items from the Alice’s collection that have a connection to the state. In 2014, we looked at early-19th century transferware depicting scenes from locations in New York State, and in 2015, our theme was items made in New York. This year, we will be featuring items associated with the military service of three New York men.

The Bundys’ cottage in Chazy
Photo from Miner Institute Archives

We begin with a uniform worn by Loren S. Bundy of Chazy during World War I. The son of Leon and Kate Bundy, Loren was born in Vermont in 1896. Around 1910, the family moved to Chazy, where Leon Bundy became the head of the construction department at Heart’s Delight Farm. Loren Bundy (then working as a bookkeeper in Hudson Falls, NY) registered for the draft in 1917 and was inducted into the army at Plattsburgh in September of that year. He then went to Camp Devens in Massachusetts for training, and arrived in France in late July 1918—just a little over three months before the end of the war. He returned to the United States in June 1919. 

Coat, breeches, puttees, and overseas cap

Service coat. Red chevron indicates honorable
discharge; lower chevron is for overseas service.

The basic components of the uniform issued to Loren Bundy and other men who served in the US Army during World War I had been developed in the early 20th century in response to changing needs and conditions that had become evident during the Spanish-American War. New materials—khaki cotton for summer and olive drab wool for winter—were introduced as well as new styles of clothing. The museum holds four pieces of Bundy’s uniform: a khaki service coat or blouse, olive drab breeches, puttees (strips of cloth that were wrapped around the lower legs), and an overseas cap. The complete uniform also would have included a shirt, campaign hat (worn in the United States but replaced in France by the overseas cap), steel helmet, trench coat, and hobnailed shoes. In addition, Bundy would have carried a haversack to hold his tent, blanket, canteen, mess kit, entrenching tool (i.e., a shovel) and other equipment. He also would have been issued a gas mask in its own bag.

Bundy would have learned how to use all this equipment, as well as his weapons, during training at Camp Devens in eastern Massachusetts. Established in 1917, Camp Devens was the primary training center for the northeast region during World War I—over 100,000 men were trained there, and another 150,000 passed through when the camp became a separation center in 1918. Camp Devens was the home of the 76th Division, made up of troops drafted mainly from New England; the division consisted of two infantry brigades, one field artillery brigade, engineers regiments, signal battalions, field hospital units, and Loren Bundy’s unit, the 301st Supply Train. He was assigned to Company B, under the command of Lieutenant John L. Fox.

Souvenir postcard folder from Camp Devens

Sylvester Benjamin Butler, a captain in the 301st, kept a scrapbook of his WWI experiences, and his family has put some of his letters and other mementos online, giving us a glimpse into life at Camp Devens and in France. (Butler also did his officer’s training at Plattsburgh.) Upon their arrival in France, the 301st was stationed in the village of St. Armand-Montrond. Butler wrote of it, “All the houses are of stone or cement, & those not right in town are of one story only beside the attic. They seem located in such higglety-pigglety fashion, which the prevalence of high walls only serves to accentuate. The people are most cordial and welcome the American troops into their homes & buildings. The men are all trying hard to get the language. We fortunately have quite a few French speakers. The little French children are delightful; they are all learning the American salute and they do like to be noticed.” Censorship regulations prevented him from describing the unit’s military activities,  but as he reminded his mother, “I don’t want you to forget if I write all about people & scenery & white cows that I’m not on a Cook’s Tour or an Agricultural Experimentation Board.”

Loren Bundy’s overseas cap with MTC insignia

Butler reported that in March 1919, part of Company B had been “sent up to Vendonne [Vendôme] on special duty as a MTC detachment with the 6th Cavalry.” The MTC, or Motor Transport Corps, was established in August 1918 to procure, record, and maintain all motorized transport for the armed forces. Loren Bundy must have been part of this group, because the insignia on his collar and overseas cap is the winged helmet of the MTC, rather than the “T” of the Artillery and Supply Trains.

By the summer of 1919, Loren Bundy and many of his fellow Clinton County servicemen were back in New York. Tucked into the pocket of his uniform was the ticket for a “Mother’s Seat” at the county’s Welcome Home Celebration, issued to Kate Bundy. This extravaganza, held in Plattsburgh on August 5, deserves a post of its own. It started with a parade in which more than 1500 returned Clinton County soldiers, marines, and sailors marched, along with Civil War and Spanish-American War veterans. They were followed by some three dozen floats constructed by towns, businesses, and organizations, which depicted everything from a Red Cross tent to a model of a NC-4 airplane large enough to hold the entire Lynch-Bourdeau Orchestra.

Advertisement from the Adirondack Record
August 1, 1919

The parade ended at the Normal School campus, where everyone assembled and local lawyer Charles J. Vert gave an address. Afterwards, the “doughboys” were served a turkey dinner, and then the crowd shifted to the barracks, where spectators had the opportunity to see several boxing and wrestling matches, as well as a baseball game between the Post team and Port Henry. In the evening, there were two concerts in downtown Plattsburgh, followed by a fireworks display and finally dancing on Clinton Street until midnight. As the Daily Press concluded its coverage, “THUS ENDED A PERFECT DAY.”

For Loren Bundy, life seemed to return to normal after the excitement of the Welcome Home Celebration. He went to live in Poughkeepsie and married Violet Mandeville, a teacher originally from Lockport, NY, and they had a son, Leon Meade Bundy. In 1931 the family returned to Clinton County, eventually settling in Plattsburgh, where Loren worked as a teller for the Plattsburgh National Bank for thirty years. In 1942, he once again registered for the draft, though at the age of 46 he was unlikely to be called into service. This time, it was his son who joined the US Navy. Loren died in 1974 at the age of 77; he and Violet are buried in Riverview Cemetery in Chazy.

Although the United States’ involvement in World War I was relatively brief, it had a lasting effect on the men who served in the military. New York sent more soldiers to fight in WWI than any other state; New Yorkers represented about 10% of all US troops. Then there were the thousands of New Yorkers who worked as nurses, as members of voluntary associations, and at home on the farms and in the factories. The many new agencies created within the federal government to address the demands of wartime would change Americans’ relationship with the state; the suffrage movement received new impetus from the involvement of women in the war; and the Great Migration of African-Americans from the south to the urban centers of the north would produce new cultural and political movements. New York State—from the city to small towns like Chazy—would play an important role in all of these changes.