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FROM THE ARCHIVES
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2022
ISSUE # 861
MORE WINTER READING CHOICES
NEW YORK ALMANACK
The Grimkes: The Legacy of
Slavery in an American Family
December 11, 2022 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment
Sarah and Angelina Grimke are revered figures in American history, famous for rejecting their privileged lives on a plantation in South Carolina to become firebrand activists in the North. Yet retellings of their epic story have long obscured their Black relatives.
In The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family (Liveright, 2022), Kerri Greenidge presents a parallel narrative, shifting the focus from the white abolitionist sisters to the Black Grimkes and deepening our understanding of the long struggle for racial and gender equality.
Greenidge’s narrative centers on the Black women of the family, from the brilliant intellectual and reformer Charlotte Forten, to Angelina Weld Grimke, who channeled the family’s past into pathbreaking modernist literature during the Harlem Renaissance. In a grand saga that spans the eighteenth century to the twentieth and stretches from Boston and beyond, Greenidge reclaims the Black Grimkes as complex, often conflicted individuals shadowed by their origins.
South Bronx Rising
December 10, 2022 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment
A new edition of South Bronx Rising: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of an American City (Fordham University Press, 2022) by Jill Jonnes with foreword by Nilka Martell chronicles the ongoing revival of the South Bronx, thirty-five years after this landmark of urban history first captured the rise, fall, and rebirth of a once-thriving New York City borough — ravaged in the 1970s and ’80s by disinvestment and fires, then heroically revived and rebuilt in the 1990s by community activists.
Though now globally renowned as the birthplace of hip-hop, the South Bronx remains one of America’s poorest urban congressional districts. In this new edition, Jonnes’ looks at the present generation of activists who are transforming their communities with the arts and greening, notably the restoration of the Bronx River. For better or worse, real estate investors have noticed, setting off new gentrification struggles.
Jill Jonnes holds an M.S. from Columbia Journalism School and a Ph.D. in American History from Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World; Conquering Gotham: Building Penn Station and Its Tunnels; and Urban Forests: A Natural History of Trees and People in the American Cityscape.
Death By Fire And Ice: The
Steamboat Lexington Calamity
November 13, 2022 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment
In January 1840 the steamboat Lexington left Manhattan bound for Stonington, Connecticut, at four o’clock in the afternoon on a bitterly cold day carrying an estimated one hundred forty-seven passengers and crew and a cargo of, among other things, baled cotton.
After making her way up an ice-encrusted East River and into Long Island Sound, she caught fire off Eaton’s Neck on Long Island’s north shore at approximately seven o’clock. The fire quickly ignited the cotton stowed on board.
With the crew unable to extinguish the fire, the blaze burned through the ship’s wheel and tiller ropes, rendering the ship unmanageable. Soon after, the engine died, and the blazing ship drifted aimlessly in the Sound away from shore with the prevailing wind and current.
As the night wore on, the temperature plummeted, reaching nineteen degrees below zero. With no hope of rescue on the dark horizon, the forlorn passengers and crew faced a dreadful decision: remain on board and perish in the searing flames or jump overboard and succumb within minutes to the Sound’s icy waters.
By three o’clock in the morning the grisly ordeal was over for all but one passenger and three members of the crew — the only ones who survived. The tragedy remains the worst maritime disaster in the history of Long Island Sound.
Within days, the city of New York‘s Coroner convened an inquest to determine the cause of the disaster. After two weeks of testimony, reported daily in the press, the inquest jury concluded that the Lexington had been permitted to operate on the Sound “at the imminent risk of the lives and property” of its passengers, and that, had the crew acted appropriately, the fire could have been extinguished and a large portion, if not all, of the passengers saved.
The public’s reaction to the verdict was scathing: the press charged that the members of the board of directors of the Transportation Company, which had purchased the Lexington from Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1839 (he had the boat constructed in 1835), were guilty of murder and should be indicted. Calls were immediately made for Congress to enact legislation to improve passenger safety on steamboats.
Death by Fire and Ice: The Steamboat Lexington Calamity (US Naval Institute Press, 2022) tells the little-known story of the sinking of the Lexington.
The book explores the ongoing debate in Congress during the nineteenth century over its power to regulate steamboat safety; and it examines the balance Congress struck between the need to insulate the nation’s shipping industry from ruinous liability for lost cargo, while at the same time greatly enhancing passenger safety on the nation’s steamboats.
Author Brian O’Conner graduated, magna cum laude, from St. John’s University in 1974, with a BA in Government and Politics. He attended St. John’s School of Law, where he served as Publications Editor of the Law Review, graduating with a JD in 1977 and starting a legal career serving as a Law Clerk to a judge on the New York Court of Appeals. In 1979, he joined Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP as an Associate in the Litigation department, became a Partner in 1987 and the firm’s General Counsel in 2017. He is now retired and lives in Northport, NY, on Eaton’s Neck, which plays a prominent role in the story of the Lexington’s sinking.
This book by Tracy Horn is available at the RIHS Visitor Center Kiosk.
Ten Days in a Madhouse, a continuing best seller available at the RIHS Visitor Center kiosk
Following Nellie Bly is available at the RIHS Visitor Center Kiosk
Iconic New York Coloring Book is available at the RIHS Visitor Center Kiosk
For 19 years our best-selling book of Roosevelt Island history, available at the RIHS Visitor Center kiosk
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
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ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM
WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
The family of Dr. Herman Bauer, the Executive Director of CIty Hospital, in front of Blackwell House. They lived on the island until City Hospital relocated to Elmhurst in 1955.
Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Sources
NEW YORK ALMANACK
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
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