TEMPEST IN A COFFEE POT

          April 2006, David Templin, Chairman for Archives and later 2007-2009 club President, called me about a coffee set given to Ches Perry in 1916. He wondered if I had found anything about it in Ches’s Rotary file. Nothing!  In 2004, club President “Dick” McKay had asked me to research and write a biography of Ches, for our Centennial.  Ches had served forty-two years as the Rotary International General Secretary.  It resulted in THE ROTARY LIFE OF CHESLEY REYNOLDS PERRY published by the club. 

          David had found the crud encrusted set on a top shelf, when moving to our new headquarters in the Union League Club.  Member Alfred Koermer (seen below), Jeweler, underwrote the cost of cleaning.  TO CHESLEY R. PERRY FROM THE ROTARIANS PRESENT AT THE CONCLAVE OF SOUTHERN ROTARY CLUBS NEW ORLEANS JAN. 12 and 13 1916 showed up clearly.  New Orleans had joined Rotary in 1910.  By 1916, at least twenty-five clubs had organized below the Mason-Dixon Line. The sugar bowl and creamer sported Ches’s initials “CRP”.

          That same week Ches’s niece Alice Ledoux, 2004-2005 President of the Santa Ana, California Rotary club sent me a letter concerning a coffee set with a different description.  She and her mother Barbara Booth had found the set in Glencoe, Illinois, probably in the house Ches had occupied with his former wife Jessie Boothe Perry.  Only she in the family added an “e”. 

Alice as a young girl remembered “Aunt Jess as very fat lady with a moustache“.  Ches mentioned Jessie only three times in the files and the very interesting Booth family never.

          Alice remembered that the set had been given to Ches as a retirement gift.  That did not gibe, as he had left Glencoe before retiring.  She obviously could not read the inscription.  They may not have asked Chicago ROTARY member Herb Angster about it.  He had married Jessie’s sister Blanche.  Things got “curiouser and curiouser” as another Alice lamented.

          (Some Rotary information: Member Herb Angster, whom I knew in 1944 as very outgoing, Paul Harris, Ches Perry and A.L. White, second president, from the Chicago club plus Bradford Bullock (NY), Homer Wood (SF) and Dick Ferris (LA) made up the organizing committee for the 1910 National Convention.)

        I asked club President Evy Alsaker, if she would send a picture of our set to Alice.  I needed extra help.  A fall on the subway re-injured a 1942 war wound.  That left me piloting a wheelchair, which could not squeeze through the door into our relocated archives.  Alice, on seeing the picture, recognized the sets as one.

          On 19 April 2006 Evy and I presented the set to Ed Futa, General Secretary of  Rotary International, on permanent loan.  Also attending David Templin, Arol Augsburger, Alfred Koermer, Don Garner and probably two or three other unlogged members.  Member Angelo Loumbas handled the legal work for the “RI Deed of Gift”.

            Now, what happened to a three foot, silver bowling trophy donated by Charlie Newton member #18.  It still remained listed in 1966.

Titch, RI General Secretary Ed Futa, and Past RO President Evy Alsaker

Richard "Titch" Harrison (seated), LR David Templin, PP 2007-2008; Arol Augsburger, PP 2008-2009, Evy Alsaker, PP 2005-2006, Robert Hudson, R/O Foundation Trustee, Alfred Koermer (restored the tea set) and Don Garner, PP 2006-2007.

THE BOOTH FAMILY

          Alice’s grandfather Sherman Miller Booth II served as attorney for Frank Lloyd Wright.  Her father  Knox Booth  acted as executor of  Wright’s estate Ravine Bluffs in Glencoe.  But, the patriarch Sherman Miller Booth I, Alice’s Great Grandfather and Ches’s father-in-Law, rates several paragraphs.  He had attained sixty-two years when Sherman II was born.  Jessie, Ches Perry’s wife, had come along five years earlier. 

            The patriarch graduated from Yale University in 1841.  Earlier, he  campaigned against the demon rum.  As a senior, he found another passion.  The Amistad slaves had come ashore in Connecticut the year before.  Booth’s professor Josiah Gibbs set up a program teaching the slaves English and Christianity. Sherman joined the professor at Yale , then continued later at Farmington, Connecticut.

            June 1841, the Amistad sailed from Havana, Cuba for Guyaba with 42 slaves. In July the slaves mutinied, killing the captain and the cook.  They put the owner in charge during the night., at which time he sailed east.  At dawn the slaves took over turning northerly.  With the longer summer days, the ship ended up near Long Island.  Spotted by the 10 gun Brigantine, U.S.S. Washington, a boarding party found a most improbable organization.  The navy ship took the Amistad into New Haven, Connecticut.

            The courts indited the slaves for murder.  Former President and Congressman John Quincy Adams and Roger Baldwin argued their case clear to the US Supreme Court.  The court ruled in their favor.  The survivors returned to Africa with missionaries in November 1941.

            Six years after the Amisted adventure, Sherman took over as editor of  the American Freeman in Prairieville, Wisconsin, near Milwaukee.  In general, the area did not often think about the slavery matter.  Booth spoke to a small but active  minority.           

His most interesting exploits took place in Milwaukee during the 1850 decade. 

            A run away slave from Missouri, with some noticeable Caucasian heritage,  named Joshua Glover had found employment at a mill in Racine, Wisconsin. Racine had a station on the Under ground  Railway.  An acquaintance of Glover snitched on him to the Federal authorities.  Using the 1893 the Fugitive Slave Act, as amended in 1850, his owner and two Federal  Marshalls showed up at Joshua’s shack March 1854.  They clubbed  and handcuffed Joshua, then hauled him off bleeding to the Milwaukee  jail twenty-five miles away.

            Sherman Miller Booth and his now named The Free Democrat saw a chance for action.   A concatenation of events from National fame though disaster to a presidential pardon became Booth‘s story..  A local judge issued a Writ of Habeas Corpus for Glover, which the marshals ignored.  Shortly, about a hundred men from Racine took a ship to Milwaukee.  The crowd picked up as the new comers marched toward jail in which Glover lay.  A myth arose that Booth rode a white horse on the Milwaukee streets shouting “Freemen to the rescue.“  Although active, he was not that flamboyant. The mob sprung Glover.   He went to Canada.  Booth went to jail.

            Pictures and much of the information came from an 1898  work LEADING EVENTS OF WISCONSINS HISTORY by Henry E. Legler.

            Booth asked and received a writ of Habeas Corpus from the Wisconsin Supreme Court.  It declared the Fugitive Slave Act unconstitutional.  The United States Supreme Court reversed the State Court decision.  One reference claimed the Freedom Men then sprung Booth.  This looks like another pretty myth.  Instead, he spent one month in the county jail, paid a $1000 fine and costs. 

            Piling it on, B.S. Garland sued and received another $1000 for the loss of the slave.  Although Booth became nationally known, he  went into bankruptcy.  Thenceforth, he moved to Chicago.  On his last day in office, President Buchanan pardoned him.  In thirteen years he suffered nineteen trials, twice fined, jailed three times and spent $35,000 on his defense.  Such were the wages of social protest.

            Sherman, the patriarch, had three families.  He first married  Margret Tufts.  She and their three offspring died young.  The second wife Mary Corss had three daughters.  One died very young, the other two became estranged from their father making up just seven years before his death. They moved to his Wisconsin farm. The third wife Augusta A. Smith  gave him five more.  This last group included Alice LeDoux’s grandfather Sherman Miller Booth II and Jessie Boothe, Ches Perry’s wife.  In the next generation came Alice’s father Knox Booth.  Alice’s daughter Laura LeDoux has followed her mother into Rotary as a member of the Naperville, Illinois Rotary club.

1 August 2008