Evening Star Newspaper, November 15, 1925, Page 101

Notes on the Flyleaf of a Book Assist Rambler in Hunting F THE SU NDAY STAR. WASHINGTON, D. acts! Further Research Is Productive of Information About the Van Ness Family, While Land BOOK that belonged Elbertina Van Ness, daughter of Marcia Burnes and John P. Van Ness, was brought to the Rambler's desk as he hegan to write this story. Perhaps it was given to Ann Elbertina by her mother, but that is a guess. In it is a bookmark which I assume to be that of John P. Van Ne On a blank leaf, written in a small runninz hand and in ink once black and now faded to light brown, is this: “Ann Elber tina Van Ness, May 27, 1818.” Below that line is written “This book Is now the property of Mary Elbertina King Kuehling, presented to me by Mrs. James Byrne 1874—M. Albertina Kinz Kuehling. The book, duodecimo. is bound in hrown calf with a scroll in gold leaf as a border. The paper time is sound and the print small but distinct. The book Is in Italian and the title page is: “Le Avventure di Telemaco--Di Francesco Salignac de Ia Mothe-Fenslon Nuova Edizion con un Discorso Sulla Poesiz ipica. Parizi Presso Bossange o Besso 1S07."- Surely vou see that this is the venture. the fortune or tha story of | Telemachus, son of Ulysses and Pe nelope, with a treatise on epic poetry, written by Francois Fenelon, trans- lated into Italian and printed at Parigi in 1307. It is a translation of a book that may not be in the library of every reader of tha rambles. That book .>s Aventures de Tele magque.” by the Catholic prelate Fene- lon. who died in 1715. He wrote Tele maque as a model for the education of Dprinces and the book displeased Louis XIV. Let me turn to the biography of Fenelon and pass this to vow “His mont celebrated work is ‘Les Aventures de Telemaque.’ It was carried off and published by a valer ewploved to transcribe the manuscript. On the ap pearance of this work Louis manifest ed displeasure toward Fenelon, con ceiving his historical romance to be « satire on his reign, and forbade the | completion of the printing. “Some malicious persons pretended, what Fenelon himself never thought | of. that the characters were thin dis- | | to Ann Masson Ruises of personages at the court. But there was nothing singular. apart from The suspicion referred to, in the King's displeasure. Fen:lon's liberal ide: as embodied in the book, that the King existed for his subjects and not they for him, were anathema to an abso. lute monarch. Nor was he ever daz. 7led by the veneer of splendor and | the military glories of the reign.” Writen on the fly-leaf of this book and in purple ink which has blotted | throuzh the fiber of the paper are some notes which the Rambler tran. scribes thus: “It is for the above Albertina Van Ness that Zebulon ahd Henrietta L. King's only daughter, ertina, is named—born October 19, 1843, in Georgetown, and who after. | ward married J. H. Kuehling. Ru.| dolph Alphonso King mal Nettie | Moore. M. Albertina John | Henry Kuehling August 24, 1573. Harry King married Lida Langley Oc- tober 20, 1870. Willlam Pratt King married Leah Kata Bowers July 15, 1880, On another Catalina Van the daughter Capt. Isaac Van Ness (continental?), officer with six of his brothers in the Revolutionary Army, was born Febr ary — in 1797, in Columbla Count éw York. She married Daniel Landon. Her daughter, Henrietta Landon, was born in Troy, N. Y., March 22, 1823, married on her sixteenth birthday to Zebulon Montgomery Pik> King in Georgetown, D. C. Their children were Rudolph Alpheus born January 8. 1842: Mar Albertina, born October 19, 1843: Norman Landon, born June 15, 1846; Harry, horn October 8. 1844: neis Landon, born October 19, 1850 Landon King, horn March 13, William Dean Prait, born June 16, 1857; John s Cliff, born Septem. her 25, 185 Ernestina, born August alina Van Ness died at Vernon Ooaks, near Mount Vernon, Fairfax County, at the home leaf is this: browned by | Records Recall Exciting Period in History. MASONIC TEMPLE AND POST OFFICE. of Albertina 16, 187 Is buried Cemetery. Zebulon Montgomery Pike King died May 1, 1881, and is buried at Congressional Cemetery, Washington, D. ¢ Kinz Kuehling, October in Conzressional * ok ok % ’I‘}m Rambler can tell you nothing of these people. but has done the best he can to transcribe the blotted and sometimes dificult writing on the otherwise blank pages of this book which belonzed to the dauzhter of Marcia Burnes. The Rambler recalls that about twenty years ago. and before these sketches were ziven the name ‘“rambles” he was writing stories of the people of Mount Vernon | the Quakers of Woodliwn and others settled on lands that of Mount Vernon. In a thick wood off the road from the west gate of Mount Vernon to Woodlawn mansion and between the road and Dozue Creek he came upon a house in which a_ Kuehling family lived. e made photographs of the persons there and got their story. but the phot phs and the story are buried in the files of The Star. The bockmark in the old tome had been part BROOKLAND STREET SCENE. which T assume to he the Van Ness arms, is not illumined, but I can read for vou that in the escutcheon is a five-point star argent dexter chief and a star argent sinister chief. There is & pale or palette with bordure sable and the fess blanc contains an etoile d'argente. If the arms were illumined I might find markings d'or, gules, vert and azure, but I give it to vou as I saw it. There is a crest or cris above the chief which in early heraldry was a sign of uncommon honor, and this crest is a morion plumeu Below the chiet is a motto “Pro Deo et Nobilissima Patria Bata vorum” which is as plain to yvou as to me, but which I take the freedom to construe as “For God and the Most zenowned Country of Batavia. You have been told that the mother of Marcia Burnes Van Ness was Ann Wightt and that the farm of her an- cestors and on which she and her husband, David Burnes, were buried was part of the land called Inclosure, on which much of the town of Brook: land is built. ~You were shown last e G Sunday which Wightt the that wills and the deed hy form passed from John in 1807 through the Wightt Queen and krooks families and the men. Leighton and Pairo, who found ed Brookland in 1887 The Rambler has read the first grant to this land. which grant is in the Land Office at Annapolis. From tha: document I transcribe the following “Charles Etc. To all prsons to whome these presents shall come, eeting, in our Lord God Everlasting Know ve that Major Ninian Beale of Calvert County hath deed unto him 1503 Acres of land in our said Province being deed to the said Beale by vertue of two several warrants the one for 460 Acres beinz the remainder of a warr't of 500 acres renewed to the said Beale 15t day of —, 1687. the other for 2.000 Acres granted him the 4th day of September.” Then follows a long recital of the Conditions of Plan tation. The paper proceeds: “We Do therefors hereby grant him the said Major Ninian Beale all that tract of land called the Inclosure lye- ing in Charles County and on the | North side of the Fastern Branch of and | the Patomack, Beginning at a bounded | | the | just closed as ““a renegade Anglican | |P black oak the first bounded tree of | Turkey Thickett.” Then follows a re- | “ital of perches and degrees east, west, north and south. There are references | to bounded white oaks, black oaks and | red oaks and to points wheie In-| closure touches the lines of the tract Seaman’s Delight, and the lands of Coll. Soneols (?) Andrew Clark, Walter Thompson, and the land of a man whose name the Rambler cannot de- cipher, but which seems to be Hoysare. One side of Tnclosure touches “the last hounded tree of Duddington Mannor.” The area laid out for Inclosure is ziven as 1,503 acres. ok ok % OU will notice that in this zrant of the year 1687 Ninian Beall's name is spelled several times Ninean B-e-a-le. Nowhere in the papers is it spelled Beall and the writing of the name is distinct. The inference is that the clerk who wrote that document heard the name pronounced B-e-a-l-e and not B-el The Rambler found much of the writing hard to read and some of it undecipherable. ! dall-Coode disturbance. | clersyman. The scribe of 1687 was a good pen man. but his ars bene scribiendi is hard on the eves now. He wrote in Old English and half-Gothic charac ters. He was a man of age and per haps lived at St. Mary's City fifty vears when he wrote the grant to Inclosure. His was the iaw-clerk hand and perhaps he learned that stvle, let us say, in 1620 when the relgn of James I was five years from its end and Elizabeth: had heen dead but seventeen ve: As the Rambler puzzled over the faded and crooked characters he thought that the spirit of the old clerk might stray among he shelves and tables of the record room at Annapolis. Or, perhaps his spirit wanders in the groves and fields above Brome's Wharf. where St. Marys City was. When the old clerk wrote that grant Maryland was in confusion. Seven years had passed since the Fen Indian trou- bles perturbed the people and ignor ant or unscrupulous men used reli gion to make men hate their neigh bors. The pretension of Willlam Penn to a large part of north and west Maryland was under discussion and in 1685 Penn’s claim was approved by the English privy council, pliant to James I1. who as Duke of York was | Penn’s patron. The revolt, the revo- | lution. have it vour own way, led the Nehemiel Blackistone, collector of roval customs, and John Coode, described in a book of reference I have A was* probably taking shape. William and Mary were pro ‘laimed King and Queen of England February 13, 1689. Lord Baltimore, then in’ England. sent a messenger to Maryland directing the council of the province to proclaim the new sovereigns. The messenger died on his way. The council refused to pro claim “the new soverelgns without | orders from Lord Baltimore. In July that vear Blackistone and Coode, at the head of the Protestant Assoctation, overthrew the proprietary govern- ment, called on the crown to admin- ster Marvland as a royal province, and the first royal governor. Sir Lionel Copley, came to Maryland in 1692. * ok ok % ERHAPS the old clerk of our grant to_Inclosure was full of trouble in 1787. Assuming that he was faith- ful to Lord Baltimore, he must have been perplexed by the outlook. He would lose his job. Enemies of the zovernment that had existed for fifty- three years were numerous and threat- eninz. No doubt he had his home in St. Marys City or near it, and over he site’ of his home plows and har- rows have passed everv Spring for two hundred years. The town of Providence, at the confluence of the Severn and the Chesapeake, would be the capital, and it became the capital. Fire spread through the near-desert ed city of St. Marvs. Decay followed flames and flames returned to lick up fragments left by decay. People living miles away hauled off debris to build homes, line wells and lay ick walks in gardens. Perhaps the old clerk of our grant staggered through his age and slumped down with broken spirit. The grant I have told of gives no hint as to who he was. Perhaps a moldy, crumbling bone of him lies fn an unmarked spot on the site of St. Marys City. Per- haps the old clerk was an ancestor of you who read this ramble. But what's the use of dreaming! This ramble is long enough and I be- lieve that with the small work I have done and the much greater work done by my friends in the composing room, stereotyping rooms, the press room. the circulation department and the business office. and by the forty or fifty other best writers on the| paper, You have got the worth of the nickel You gave up for this copy of The Sunday Star. But before you lay the paper on the floor for your wife to pick up I will spread this letter before you: ‘Nicollet Hotel, Minneapolis, Minn. “November 3. “Dear Rambler: First I want to let you know that my greatest pleas- ure in The Star has been derived from reading your rambles. Second, I wonder if some day when Clio sits on your desk again you would give her a pencil and tell her to write about the old Queen Chapel site, the grant. etc. T belleve St. Francis de Sales Church stands on the old site. “Gratefully vours, “FRANCIS FISKE." All right. Frank, I'm on my way. When T was in Annapolis I made a copy of the grant of 500 acres named Hadduck (now Haddock) Hills to Ben- Jamin Hadduck April 17, 1685. That became the Queen “tract. Dear old Tom Queen and his brothers, French and Forrest, who used to keep the clgar stands in the National, St. James and Metropolitan, were my friends. Tom told me years ago that he had 2 scrapbook full of matter about the Queen family and the Queen land. T will look it up. = e Honey Bath for Pearls. BATHS in newly gathered honey are recommended by a European gem expert to restore the lustre to pearls that have grown dull, says Popular Mechanics. Treatments of 48 hours at two-week intervals for a period of about six months are said to produce the most satisfactory results and the honey should be removed with alco- hol instead of water. An old colored woman was heard C., NOVEMBER 15, 1925— PART . Clark Collection Brings Fulfillment Of City’s Dream of Art Leadership Through Gift to Corcoran Gallery of Late Senator’s Collection, Valued at $3,000,000, American People Will Derive Benefits. ' BY WILLIAM S. ODLIN. ECENTLY the trustees of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, in thir city, accepted the terms of a clause in the wil of the late William A. Clark, tor mer United States Senator and Mon tana copper Croesus, whereby the gal lery will become the permanent de pository of his tollection of art treas ures, which author™ies appraise a $3,000,000. Thus is taken a mighty stride toward attainment of the Na tional Capital's cherished ambition of becoming ‘the esthetic as well as po litical metropolis of the United States. While the Capital will enjoy physical possession of the celebrated old paint ings, statuary, tapestries and other rare objects of art that make up ih great Clark collection. the gift i veally one to the Nation. Prima the importance and value of one museum's possessions are immeasur ably enhanced but there is a deeper significance ‘The Corcoran holds a nnique place in the affections of Americans. To a greater extent than any of th2 other great public galleries, If is trnly a na tional institution, for nearly every American, at some time in his life, visits the weat of his Federal Govern ment and few indeed who come to Washington fall to roam through the | beautiful templs of art that stands just over the'way from the White House Thus it can hardly be gainsaid that more people from more different parts of the country have scen the Corcoran | collection than have visited any other museum. The acquisition of the Clark collac tion by the Corcoran zallery event of natfonal significance this is how it came abont: Soon after his arrival in Washi ton many vears ago. 1o take his seat in the Senate, Willlam A. Clark wished to cash a check of rather large size Calling at the largest bank in the city the Riggs Nutional, he asked for the president, Charles C. Glover. Mr.Glover as out, and the quiet unassum ing man who had dug a vast tune out of the copper-impregns hills of Montana was not vet the c manding national figure he was des tined to become. He was personally quite unknown to the officials of the bank who were present and he was unidentified, the only assistance they could offer was to send his check through to New York, a loss of time Mr. Clark could not afford The rew Senator departed, when Mr. Glover returned, And and <oon and the trustees cast tion of the problem a plot building anot by 1 in nava tion fleet State the of i her he s posse: 1 officer commar during It chan wha ward, exist “CHARLOTTE CORDAY IN PRISON.” afterward, he learned of the incident. He gave instructions that Mr. Clark be found without delay. The bank president had never seem the copper magnate, but when he reached the Senator by telephone at his hotel he assured Mr. Clark that his check would be good forthwith at that bank for whatever amount the Senator cared to write. That was the beginning of a friend ship that was to bear interest for all artloving Americans. Mr. Glover, one of the few now living who knew intimately the founder of the Cor coran Gallery, Willam Wilson Cor- coran, was, as he still is at 79, presi dent of the institution. It is to his vision and business acumen that the gallery so largely owes triumphal realization of the aims of the founder. * kK K ! AS his acquaintance with Senator | Clark grew Mr. Glover discerned | in the Senator a deep and growing | sympathy with the work of the Cor- { coran. From its earliest days the gallery has fostered the development of American art as a primary ul?ju_‘(_ and in pursuit of this purpose it in- augurated nearly. 20 years ago a bi- ennial exhibition at which the paint- ings of mative artists, wherever they | might live, could be exhibited for prizes and for sale. i Through interest instilled by Mr. Glover, Senater Clark donates $1,000 ! toward the prizes for the first of these | exhibits, in 1907. Paintings then shown sold for a total of $49.000. all of which went to the artists. ‘1‘he! success of the innovation was so pro nounced that the Senator soon in creased his prize donation to $5,000 f and before his death he gave an en-| dowment fund of $100,000, the income | of which will perpetuate the Clark prizes. The first home of the Corcoran gal- lery was in the red brick and ‘hruv\m' stone structure of mid-Victorian as-| pect that still is standing at Pennsyl- vania avenue and Seventeenth street.l housing the United States Court nf| Claims and facing the State. Warand Navy Building. Taken over by the quartermaste department of the Army during the Civil War, it was not restored to the gallery trustees until 1869. It was opened to the pub- lic the following vear. Mr. Corcoran’s deed of gift conveyed the gallery to the public “to be used solely for the purpose of encouraging American genlus In the production of works pertaining to the fine arts. i There was included a $800,000 endow- ment fund and Mr. Corcoran's per- sonal art collection, valued at the then not Inconsiderable sum of $100,000. to say to a friend, “Why, yes'm, that thar little one of mine am de cawbon eopy of his father!™ In the passage of time, acquisitions to the collection made apparent the necessity of expanding the gallery, is forgotten hut not events were to prove. Mr. trust has lon: and ed a fe A PAINTING LOUIS MULLER. IN THE !illfll]()R AN SAL erased | Glover ees Mr on the ‘THE GRAND about for The gallery north that 150 ound between h \ 50-foof ssion of cer EY wded o Union the wa that between the a = sine Coreoran the zone 1o d cause of BY LERY OF ART. w Coreoran's d Appros of the warrior hehalf old 1ot ain distine hetween there a solu owned the ind owned strip Ty kading the dmiral his re had which CHARL) whose bitterness was h, hed by gallery tly re fused to sell his land at any price and thus tion Alt garded Mr. acqu York permit bearing hough Glover ire a d avenue some abandonment site as nothing expansion of an the name of his of the of the « less than found the gallery esivable tract at and Seventeenth trustees institu foe. re iginal sacrilege,” could New street jequate for 1he needs & the gallery then and for vears to come. The ground bought for $200.000 and upon it reared for $523,000 the present sal lery, which. experts assert, could not be built today for less than $2.000,000 rnest Flagg designed the structure and 2 brilliant assemblage. headed b President and Mrs. Cleveland. atiend ed Jpening reception Fehruary that would he many ko W effect of “HE the quite unanticipated Corcoran’s for of the Corcoran Gallery Art 1o size and importance perhaps undreamed of by its founder “The stipulation of the Clark will was that the trustees aceepting his collection bind them selves to provide proper and adequate housing for it unit. ' This the trusteex of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, to which the collection first was offered, were not able 1o do. Proffer of the gift then went io the Corcoran Had the Corcoran Gallery moved when it encountered the ad miral’s refusal to sell ground tha would permit its growth on the orig inal site. it viriually certain tha | the Clark collection never would have gone o Washington. As things turned out, however, the gallery has. adjoining its present building. ample ground for a new wing, exclusively housinz the Clark treasures, and friends of the institution have pledged the funds needed for construction of the addition. - The Clark collection will not be cn tirely a stranger to Washington and art lovers all over the country who visit the Corcoran Gallery. For = period of more than three years about million dollars’ worth of the late Senator’s collection was on view the Corcoran through Mr. Clark’s deep interest in the institution. With the entire Clark cellection in stalled in the new wing. the treas house of the Corcoran will attain far eater comprehensiveness than it hitherto has had. While some of the very finest examples of artistic achievement are to be seen within its walls, the trustees have not specialized particularly in the acqui ion of old masters, their selection running more to outstanding works of American painters and sculptors This deflciency will now be obliter ated. for in the Clark collection there are canvases from the brushes Rembrandt Titilan. Raphael Van Dyck. Hobbema, Terberg. Sir Joshua Reynolds. Gainshorough Raebn Constable. Rousseau, Daubigny. Diaz Millet and Fortuny. together with a representative range of the works of Corot. Cazin and Monticelli Examples of ancient Egyptian and Etruscan art are in the collection. and there are Gothic. Gobelin and Beau vais tapestries and rare Majolica, Faience and Old Delft ware. There is the unmatchable stained glass of the 13th century glaziers and ex amples of classic period furniture. Unique among such collections is one completely furnished room of the | Louis XV period that measures 40 {by 25 feer. The celling of it is a painting by Fragoaard. Also there are the Boutet de Monvel panels, de. picting the life of Joan of Are, and implacability of foe was to pave the was zrowth is at “LAST DAYS OF NAPOLEON 1” BY VINCENZO VELA, CORCORAN GALLERY OF ART, e STAIRW \-\ OF THE CORCORAN CALLERY OF ART fine old oriental rugs and laces round out the collection There can here be made no more than fragmentary and random re ference to some of the outstanding objects which are already to be seen at the Corcoran. There is “The Wood Gatherers,” signed bv -Corot on his deathbed: Inness and Redfield land scapes: Gari Melcher's ternity A Washington. Chases. Sar gents. Weirs and portraits of numer- historical figures find places among the finest examples of every period in the development of Ameri in art from the age of Benjamin West down to the present-day winners of the Clark prizes and Corcoran medals. WY specimens of china Stuart * ki ANY generation are aware of the fact that Samuel F. B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph, was an artist of more than amateur ability. Perhaps his most ambitious undertaking with the brush. a scene in the chamber of the United States House of Representatives. dated 1822, hangs in the Corcoran. Many months the inventor-artist devoted to this can vas. which required the painting of 80 individual portraits. Among the sculptures are not less than 108 signed bronzes of Antoine Louis Barve and that striking work of early American genius. “The Greek, Slave.” by Hiram Powers. which elicited fervid lines from the pen of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Augustus Saint Gaudens is represented, as are the leading cotemporary American sculptors, ineluding Paul Manship and H. A. McNe: A recent acquisition by “the Corcoran is Daniel Chester French's masterpiece, “The Sons of God Saw the Daughters of Men That They Were Fair.” In carrving out the founder. the Corcora tain a free day at the gallery ment is nearly men and women William Wilson Corcoran standing American of his born in Georgetown, D. C.. December 27. 1798, After an early business failure with his brothers in George- town, he became, in 1840, the bank- ing partner of George W. Riggs, the firm later growing into the great Riggs National Bank of today. When fortune began to smile upon Corcoran his first act was to dishurse $46,000 in payment of debts involved in his early bankruptey, although he had been granted an absolute discharge of his obligations. A man of this not wishes of the trustees main «nd night art school in_which the enroll s 400 ambitious voung an out™ time, was forcefulness of character. Corcoran determined that his firm should take up the entire | Mexican War bond issue. a venture in which Riggs did not concur. This left Corcoran in possession of $12. 000,000 worth of Government 6 per cents in the midst of a falling market. He went to London. and so disposed of his holdings that the foundation of his large fortune was made secure. Corcoran early evinced an inters in the arts that abided with |throughout his days, which were many. for he lived to the age of 80 His was the first American collection of importance, and a guiding influence in his life was the determination that his art treasures and his wealth should foster development of an Amer |ican school of art that would take | rank with those of the Old World | of great While the opening of the Corcoran llery antedated the establishment of | the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and | the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. those institutions were { created by reason of the demands and encouragement of the respective com munities. In the case of the Corcoran, the benefactor was considerably in ad vance of his community, which only In recent vears really caught up with | the spirit of the founder of a_gallery which seographically is Washing ton’s, but which in a larger sense is | the cherished possession of the Amer- :an people. iCopyright. Carbon. Melted. [HE longsoughtafter process of melting carbon. whose Iack has stood in the way of the manufacture of | gennine diamonds, has been discovered by a group of German chemists, Drs Alterthum, Fehse and Pirani, accord ing to Science Magazin: Carbon has been wone of the most heat-resistant substances known and for that reason it has been used in arc lights and car bon filament lamps where a powerful current sent through this substance found such resistance that it raised it | to_white heat without melting. But the existence of diamonds which |are pure crystallized carbon tantalized | chemists for vears, because it proved | that at some time in the past carbon had been -in a molten state before it formed the transparent eight-faced dia mond crystal. Graphite has been known for a long time and can be made artificially, but unlike the dia- mond. it is softer, opaque and forms six-faced crystals. Dr. Alterthum and his co-worker heated a graphite cylinder about 5 inches in length, and an inch and a half in diameter, the thickened ends of which were sent in copper elec- trodes, by means of an electric cur- rent. 'The varfous temperatures at- tained were measured at the middle of | the cylinder through an opening. It | was definitely 'determined that some | degree of melting actually occurred within the bore of the carbon cylinder, and the melting point was determimed as about 5,300 degrees Fahrenkeit. 19250