McMurray Family, Payne Family (Click for Family Tree)

Were these words a part of sermons, written in a newsletter for church members, or published in a magazine? We do not know, and do not even know for sure if these words are those of our Edward Biron Payne. It is highly likely they are his words though, because:

• He used the initials E. B. frequently,
• Lamoille, Vermont was only about 200 miles from Springfield, Massachusetts, where E. B. was living around 1880, and
• Newspapers would pick up snippets from other papers to fill their pages and sell copies in other cities.

More than anything else, as one who has studied Edward Biron Payne for many, many years, the words sound like his writing- they have the style seen in other published works, and echo much of his thinking that was refined in later years but still had the same basic premises. He was about 33 when this was published.

It seems that the two paragraphs may have been from different sermons or articles. Perhaps they were notes taken by a person who attended one of his sermons, and then shared with the newspaper. Alternatively, Rev. Payne may have submitted them himself. He was new to the area and may have already had an understanding of how to promote himself and his work, and gather a flock for his teaching.

“In the path of duty, you may rationally hope for permanent happiness.”

Edward Biron Payne believed that through work, one would fill their soul and find happiness. He was a Christian Socialist, but believed that we should not just take from the rich and hand to the poor- he felt that those who were blessed with riches should share their wealth, but it should be used to help the poor pull themselves up to eventually be self-sufficient. His founding of the short-lived Utopian-based Altruria Colony outside Santa Rosa, California, in the 1890s, put his beliefs of hard work and economic equality to the test.

“A man is to be pitied who is insensible to the beauties and ministrations of nature, to the teachings of literature, to the inspiration and charm of art. But the love of God is more to be considered than all these things, while, in a sense, it embraces them all, and carries with it an added richness in the appreciation of life’s deepest meanings, its joys and its sorrows.”

Rev. Payne wrote prose and poetry, and read probably about anything he could get, from practical farming to great and classic literature. He approached many topics in life from a ‘scientific,’ or very analytical and logical, point of view. (Consider the context, i.e. what science was like from his birth in 1847 until his death in 1923- the advances were considerable, and since then have been exponential.) We do not know for sure that E. B. was an art lover, but most likely he was, as he travelled in circles that included artists and critics, plus he may have helped choose illustrations for The Overland Monthly magazine, of which he was an editor for a number of years. His over-arching, deep faith made him see that while the love of God was more important than such worldly things, that love for God actually included all those beauties, and made them even richer with that understanding.

Sadly, the home of Edward and Ninetta (Wiley) [Eames] Payne was lost in the Great Berkeley Fire of 1923. His collection of manuscripts and other writings, as well as their books, became ash in the conflagration. We only have those items that were published, such as these, and some letters, to remember his beautiful words.

 

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1. “Religious,” Lamoille News, 27 October 1880, Hyde Park, Vermont, Vol. 4, No. 29, Whole No. 185, Page 2, Column 3, via Chronicling America, Library of Congress.
2. Edward B. Payne died soon after the fire- some say from a broken heart, although he had experienced some ill health, and was 76 years old. Ninetta was later, after his death, able to find a single manuscript copy of The Soul of Jack London that he had sent to a friend for review. This is the only book of his that has been published, but we do not know which are his words, and which are Ninetta’s. (She did write the introduction, but we do not know if she completed or edited the book prior to publication.) The book claims to be a communication with the late Jack London, to whom he was very close. At the time of the writing, Edward had just begun to think of spiritualism as a possibility, a slight opening of the door to the next world. That, however, is another story…

 

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Original content copyright 2013-2018 by Heritage Ramblings Blog and pmm.

Family history is meant to be shared, but the original content of this site may NOT be used for any commercial purposes unless explicit written permission is received from both the blog owner and author. Blogs or websites with ads and/or any income-generating components are included under “commercial purposes,” as are the large genealogy database websites. Sites that republish original HeritageRamblings.net content as their own are in violation of copyright as well, and use of full content is not permitted. 

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Labor Day officially became a federal holiday in the United States in 1894. “The Gilded Age” included the rise of big business, like the railroads and oil companies, but laborers fought- sometimes literally- for their rights in the workplace. Grover Cleveland signed the law to honor the work and contributions, both economic and for society, of the American laborer. Celebrated on the first Monday in September, ironically the holiday was a concession to appease the American worker after the government tried to break up a railroad strike but failed.

The Labor Day weekend is a good time to think about our ancestors and the work they did to help move our country and their own family forward.

Jefferson Springsteen was a mail carrier through the wilds of early Indiana, traveling for miles on horseback through spring freshets (full or flooding streams from snow melt), forest, and Indian villages. Samuel T. Beerbower, who would be a some-number-great uncle depending on your generation, was the Postmaster in Marion, Ohio, for many years. “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

Bad weather, gloom of night, ocean crossings in the mid 1800s, and the threat of disease or injury did not stay our minister, deacon, and missionary ancestors from their appointed rounds either- especially since the felt they were appointed by a higher power. We have quite a number of very spiritual men in the family. Henry Horn became a Methodist circuit rider after coming to America as a Hessian soldier, being captured by George Washington’s troops in Trenton, NJ, then taking an Oath of Allegiance to the United States, and serving in the Revolutionary Army. The family migrated from Virginia to the wilds of western Pennsylvania sometime between 1782 and 1786. A story is told of how he was riding home from a church meeting in the snow. The drifts piled up to the body of the horse, and they could barely proceed on, but Henry did, and was able to preach another day. He founded a church Pleasantville, Bedford Co., Pennsylvania that still stands, and has a congregation, even today. Edward B. Payne and his father, Joseph H. Payne, Kingsley A. Burnell and his brother Thomas Scott Burnell were all ministers, some with formal schooling, some without. Edward B. Payne gave up a lucrative pastorate because he thought the church members were wealthy and educated enough that they did not need him. He moved to a poor church in an industrial town, where he was needed much more, however, he may have acquired his tuberculosis there. He also risked his life, and that of his family, by sheltering a woman from the domestic violence of her husband, and he testified on her behalf.

Abraham Green was one of the best tailors in St. Louis, Missouri in the early 1900s, and many in the Broida family, such as John Broida and his son Phillip Broida, plus Phillip’s daughter Gertrude Broida Cooper, worked in the fine clothing industry.

Edgar Springsteen worked for the railroad, and was often gone from the family. Eleazer John “E.J.” Beerbower worked for the railroads making upholstered cars- he had been a buggy finisher previously, both highly skilled jobs.

The theater called a number of our collateral kin (not direct lines, but siblings to one of our ancestors): Max Broida was in vaudeville, and known in films as “Buster Brodie.” Elsie Janis, born Elsie Beerbower, was a comedienne, singer, child star in vaudeville, “Sweetheart of the A.E.F” as she entertained the troops overseas in World War I, and then she went on to write for films. Max Broida also did a stint in the circus, as did Jefferson Springsteen, who ran away from home as “a very small boy” to join the circus (per his obituary).

Collateral Lee family from Irthlingborough, England, included shoemakers, as that was the specialty of the town. They brought those skills to Illinois, and some of those tools have been handed down in the family- strange, unknown tools in an inherited tool chest turned out to be over 100 years old!

Will McMurray and his wife Lynette Payne McMurray owned a grocery store in Newton, Iowa. Ella V. Daniels Roberts sold eggs from her chickens, the butter she made from the cows she milked, and her delicious pies at the McMurray store. Franz Xavier Helbling and some of his brothers and sons were butchers in Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, and had their own stores.

Some of our ancestors kept hotels or taverns. Joseph Parsons (a Burnell ancestor) was issued a license to operate an ‘ordinary’ or “house of entertainment” in 1661 in Massachusetts, and Samuel Lenton Lee was listed as “Keeps hotel” and later as a saloon keeper in US Federal censuses. Jefferson Springsteen had a restaurant at the famous Fulton Market in Brooklyn, NY in the late 1840s.

Many of our family had multiple jobs. William Gerard Helbling (AKA Gerard William Helbling or “G.W.”) listed himself as working for a theater company, was an artist, then an undertaker, and finally a sign painter. George H. Alexander was artistic as well- he created paintings but also worked as a lighting designer to pay the bills.

Sometimes health problems forced a job change. Edward B. Payne was a Union soldier, librarian, and then a pastor until he was about 44 when his respiratory problems from tuberculosis forced him to resign the pulpit. For the rest of his life he did a little preaching, lecturing, and writing. He also became an editor for a number of publications including, “The Overland Monthly,” where he handed money over from his own pocket (per family story) to pay the young writer Jack London for his first published story. Edward B. Payne even founded a Utopian colony called Altruria in California! He and his second wife, Ninetta Wiley Eames Payne, later owned and conducted adult ‘summer camps’ that were intellectual as well as healthy physically while camping in the wild and wonderful northern California outdoors.

Other times, health problems- those of other people- are what gave our ancestors jobs:  Edward A. McMurray and his brother Herbert C. McMurray were both physicians, as was John H. O’Brien (a Helbling ancestor), who graduated from medical school in Dublin, Ireland, and came to America in 1832. He settled in western Pennsylvania, still wild and in the midst of a cholera epidemic that was also sweeping the nation; he had his work cut out for him. (It appears he did not get the same respect as other doctors because he was Irish, and this was pre-potato famine.) Lloyd Eugene “Gene” Lee and his father Samuel J. Lee owned a drugstore in St. Louis, as did Gene’s brother-in-law, Claude Aiken. Edith Roberts McMurray Luck worked as a nurse since she received a degree in biology in 1923.

We have had many soldiers who have helped protect our freedom, and we will honor some of those persons on Veterans Day.

We cannot forget the farmers, but they are too numerous to name them all! Even an urban family often had a large garden to supplement purchased groceries, but those who farmed on a larger scale included George Anthony Roberts, Robert Woodson Daniel, David Huston Hemphill, Amos Thomas, etc., etc. We even have a pecan farmer in the Lee family- William Hanford Aiken, in Waltham County, Mississippi, in the 1930s-40s.

We must also, “Remember the ladies” as Abigail Adams entreated her husband John Adams as he helped form our new nation. He/they did not, so 51% of the population-women- were not considered citizens except through their fathers or husbands. Many of these women, such as Lynette Payne McMurray, labored to get women the right to vote, equal pay, etc. (Lynette ‘walked the talk’ too- she was the first woman to ride a bicycle in Newton, Iowa! Not so easy when one thinks about the clothing involved.) Some men, like her father, Edward B. Payne, put their energy into the women’s suffrage movement as well. Many of our ancestors worked for the abolition movement too, including the Payne and Burnell families.

A woman worked beside her husband in many families, although she would get little credit for it. Who cooked the meals and cleaned the rooms for the Lee and Parsons innkeepers? Likely their wives, who also had to keep their own home clean, laundry washed, manage a garden and often livestock- many families kept chickens even if they didn’t have a farm. They raised and educated their many children too, sometimes 13 or more. Oh yes, let’s not forget that women truly ‘labored’ to bring all those children into the world that they had made from scratch. (Building a human from just two cells makes building a barn seem somewhat less impressive, doesn’t it?) Some of them even died from that labor.

Working alongside one’s husband could be frightening due to the dangers of the job. A noise in the Aiken family drugstore in St. Louis, Missouri in 1936 awoke Claude and Mildred Aiken since they lived in the back of the store. Claude look a gun and went into the store while Mildred called the police. Claude fired the gun high to frighten the intruder- Mildred must have been very scared if she was in the back, wondering who had fired the shot and if her husband was still alive. Thankfully he was, and the police were able to arrest the thief, who wanted to steal money to pay a lawyer to defend him in his three previous arrests for armed burglary and assault.

 

We applaud all of our ancestors who worked hard to support their family. Their work helped to make the US the largest economic power in the world, and a place immigrants would come to achieve their ‘American dream.’ We hope our generation, and the next, can labor to keep our country prosperous and strong.

 

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1. There are too many folks listed here to add references, but using the search box on the blog page can get you to any of the stories that have been posted about many of these persons. Of course, there is always more to come, so stay tuned!

 

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We would love to read your thoughts and comments about this post (see form below), and thank you for your time! All comments are moderated, however, due to the high intelligence and persistence of spammers/hackers who really should be putting their smarts to use for the public good instead of spamming our little blog.

 

Original content copyright 2013-2015 by Heritage Ramblings Blog and pmm.

Family history is meant to be shared, but the original content of this site may NOT be used for any commercial purposes unless explicit written permission is received from both the blog owner and author. Blogs or websites with ads and/or any income-generating components are included under “commercial purposes,” as are the large genealogy database websites. Sites that republish original HeritageRamblings.net content as their own are in violation of copyright as well, and use of full content is not permitted.

 

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Today is an apt day to begin exploring the topic of women’s suffrage on the blog: 137 years ago today, on 10 January 1878, what became the 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was introduced to Congress. It was the first legal step to enfranchising over 50% of the population, but took 72 years before passage in Congress and ratification by 36 states.

On 26 August 1920, the ratification was certified- our female ancestors finally had the right to vote in all elections throughout the United States of America.

It is a simple, short amendment:

Amendment XIX

1) The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

2) Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

 

Getting to this point, however, was not simple, nor was it short. The beginning of the national movement for women’s rights, including the right to vote, began long before the amendment was introduced at our nation’s Capitol. The Seneca Falls Convention in July, 1848 discussed the “…social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman.” Sadly, none of the original activists of that time period, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Susan B. Anthony, lived to see the fruits of their labors, nor ever legally cast their vote in an election.

Women- and men too- worked diligently through the years after 1848 to educate the public, Congress, and even the President of the United States that women should have the right to vote. Their work left us letters and banners, ribbons and buttons, and a wide variety of artifacts that were used to promote their political agenda. I would like to share some of these artifacts  through this blog topic.

None of these items have been passed down in our family that I know of, but our ancestors had to be aware of the women’s suffrage movement- I wonder which side they were on?

“Votes for Women Pinback”

This pin was commissioned by the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in the early 1900s to stimulate interest in the cause and start what we now would call, “a national conversation.” We know that this design was in use by at least 1912, when Rosalie Livingston Jonas campaigned for women’s rights across Nassau County, New York with a pony and cart. She sold these buttons, suffrage literature, cake, and tea, and was accompanied by Elizabeth Freeman, an American who had been jailed with British women protesting for the vote in London.

These simple black-on-gold buttons were given out or sold for a penny (or sometimes a nickel) to help fund the movement across New York and other states. Lapel pins were definitely effective in promoting their message- in 1917 women in New York gained the right to vote in state elections after one million of these buttons were handed out. (Of course, it took a lot more than just a button…)

Bastian Brothers Company in Rochester, New York manufactured this particular pin; Whitehead and Hoag were the other manufacturers commissioned by the NAWSA. Additionally, local companies may have produced similar pins for other groups, and sometimes the groups had the paper on the reverse printed with their name.

This pin is only about 5/8″ in diameter and made from celluloid, a ‘new’ material first used for political campaign buttons in 1876. The image was printed on the celluloid initially, but it proved too brittle to be useful. The process was perfected 15-20 years later when the image was printed on paper, covered with celluloid, and the button attached  to a metal support with pin. Millions of political campaign, advertising, and other pins were made with this process for many years, as it produced colorful and inexpensive  buttons.

Buttons like this, or ones similar, were probably worn by our ancestor Edward B. Payne and his second wife Ninetta Wiley Eames Payne. They both worked for the women’s suffrage movement in California, especially around 1896. California’s women lost that referendum, but the suffrage bill was passed in 1911, making California the sixth and largest state to give women the right to vote. A little gold button was probably a part of that success.

 

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1) “Our Documents- 19th Amendment to the Constitution:” http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=63

2) Remember ‘Schoolhouse Rock’ and “How a Bill Becomes a Law”?  See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Otbml6WIQPo and “The Constitution” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzAJyK0ovo8. Passing and ratifying an amendment to our Constitution is a bit more complicated, but these videos are a fun blast from the past.

3) See also my post “The Anniversary of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Birth” at http://heritageramblings.net/2014/11/12/the-anniversary-of-elizabeth-cady-stantons-birth/

4) “The Seneca Falls Convention” on the National Portrait Gallery/Smithsonian website: http://www.npg.si.edu/col/seneca/senfalls1.htm

5) The Bastian Brothers Company began in 1895 and is still in business today making advertising novelties. See their website at http://www.bastiancompany.com/about.shtml.

6) Kenneth Florey, Women’s Suffrage Memorabilia: an illustrated historical study. (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2013) 31-34.

 

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We would love to read your thoughts and comments about this post (see form below), and thank you for your time! All comments are moderated, however, due to the high intelligence and persistence of spammers/hackers who really should be putting their smarts to use for the public good instead of spamming our little blog.

 

Copyright 2013-2015 by Heritage Ramblings Blog and pmm.

Family history is meant to be shared, but the original content of this site may NOT be used for any commercial purposes unless explicit written permission is received from both the blog owner and author. Blogs or websites with ads and/or any income-generating components are included under “commercial purposes,” as are the large genealogy database websites. Sites that republish original HeritageRamblings.net content as their own are in violation of copyright as well, and use of full content is not permitted.

 

Descendants and researchers MAY download images and posts to share with their families, and use the information on their family trees or in family history books with a small number of reprints. Please make sure to credit and cite the information properly.

 

Please contact us if you have any questions about copyright of our blog material.