OohRah

And now we need to figure out who Mr. Rankin is.....

It seems that Jane Parker is living with her mother.... That might give me a clue as to who she is, as I am doubting my assumption that she is Russell's sister.

I am going to assume that Karolyn is graduating from college, not high school given how much traveling and running around she is doing; seems too much for a highschooler.

I asked the folks at Syracuse University what these Corpse and Coffin things were; I got an answer, but I can't claim that I understood it:

These organization were different class societies. The Corpse & Coffin was a Junior Society founded at Syracuse University in 1889. The Skull & Serpent was a Sophomore Society founded in 1902.

What is a class society?

I went to New York City on Friday to get some marriage, birth and death certificates from the NYC Municipal Archives. I was successful and will eventually share, but I had an opportunity to walk to 60 Wall Street to see where Herb worked. As we can assume, it looks nothing like it did in 1917, though the address still exists. Now it is the Deutsche Bank building. I chatted up the guard at the entrance and he indicated that the current enormous tower was built in the 1960s by, he believed, Banker's Trust. According to Deutsche Bank's web site, they acquired Banker's Trust in 1999 making Deutsche Bank a real mover and shaker in the US. So, our connection remains with the address 60 Wall Street.

Huntington is a town on the northern side of Long Island about an hour from Penn Station. Clearly by the Federal Census record I have noted, there are large estates there - and people who work on those estates....

Investigating further we learn from their web site:

History: The Town is located at the western end of Suffolk County adjacent to the Nassau-Suffolk County boundary. It is approximately 40 miles from Manhattan and 40 miles from Riverhead, the Suffolk County seat. The History of Huntington is closely associated with the early development of the American colonies. The community was originally settled in 1653, well within the lifetime of the earliest New England colonist. In the beginning, water-borne transportation gave life to the community. The natural harbors offered ready access to the farmlands of the Long Island interior. The harbor was the setting for the early Huntington community which became the focal point for the movement of agricultural products into the commerce of the colonies. Although agriculture was its mainstay and water-borne transportation its lifeline for two centuries, in later years the whaling industry and expanded manufacturing activity broadened the local economy and gave impetus to the expansion of the harbor communities of Cold Spring Harbor, Huntington, and Northport.

By the early twentieth century thousands of acres of productive farmland were laying fallow because the land had been appropriated for large estates. Marshall Field, Robert DeForest, Otto Kahn, Charles Gould, August Heckscher, George McKesson Brown, Walter Jennings, Roland Conklin and many others extended Long Island’s Gold Coast into Huntington. The middle class was also attracted to Huntington. Summer bungalow communities developed along the shores of Centerport Harbor, Huntington Bay and Huntington Harbor during the 1920s.

From 1920 to 1930, Huntington’s population increased 84% from 13,893 to 25,582. Huntington village began to take shape with one large building project after another along New York Avenue: The Palace Theatre in 1917, the Huntington Theatre and Huntington Office Building in 1927, The Huntington Mortgage Building in 1928 and the Hotel Huntington in 1929.

I can imagine that Herb, Charlie and Grace stopped to watch the construction of the Palace Theater when they went to visit Aunt/Mom Ida.

Thursday – date unknown, May 1917
Dear Family,

I’m glad you’ve told me just how you feel about the question of my enlisting. I’ve thought it over very carefully and I won’t enlist for a month or two yet.

And now I’ll try to answer all your questions about the different branches of the service.

I think the marines – from what I’ve seen of them – are a mighty fine bunch of men. I’ve talked with several Marine Corps recruiting sergeants and they certainly are men to be admired – husky brown and yet very well bred + courteous and seemingly pretty well educated. If I do decide that I really should enlist I want to be with some men who have seen service and have been under fire. Most of the marines have. And the marine officers are all well-seasoned men who will know how to look after the men under them. That’s my objection to the National Guard and the Mosquito fleet. They’re too blamed amateurish – and it will go awfully hard with amateurs if there’s any fighting.

I’ve quite given up all hope of Plattsburgh. I think I was turned down on account of my youth – Fike says most of the men up there are twenty-eight or over. I’m confident that Mr. Rankin would intercede for me if he could but it’s a strictly military matter and he would have no influence.

I was up to see Jane last night. She says she enjoys working. She doesn’t have to work but there isn’t enough work around a small apartment to keep her and her mother both busy.

This place Charlie has in mind is in Hasbrouk Heights, New Jersey. They still expect to go down to Huntingdon for a while I think but they want to get a house if they can and have it all ready when they want to come back. Someone has an option on the place to buy it until June 15th but the owner told them he didn’t think the party would take it.

I was thinking of coming home in a couple of weeks but Karolyn wants me to come up June 12th because she graduates then.

Love to all,
Herbert