James R. Chilton (1808-1863) was the son of the immigrant George Chilton, and brother of George J. Chilton, direct line of my tree. He was not only involved in early photography (daguerrotype) with his brother Howard, he was a notable druggist in New York City, and manufactured proprietary medicines including “Dr. Chilton’s Fever and Ague Pills” which were sold in a small round wooden box by Comstock & Brother.
This letter was listed on eBay with the following description: James R. Chilton, M.D. (d.1863), analytical chemist and early photography buff. Dr. Chilton had a drugstore at 263 Broadway, New York City. A letter written by James R. Chilton to Professor Samuel St. John (science professor, proponent of natural history, and newspaper publisher. St. John was an original curator and secretary of the Cleveland Academy of Natural Sciences). In his letter, Chilton lists apparatus that he has sent St. John.The paper is folded, discolored/marked, and creased. There is a tear along the right edge, and by the seal.The letter comes from the archives of the noted Raab Collection.*
This is the marriage certificate of John Marshall Wilson and Mary Elizabeth Schaffer. They were married in New York City on August 29, 1877. The minister was C. P. Conner, and the witness was Elizabeth Conner. There are two spaces for photos, and there is some tape residue on the back side which indicates that there were once photos there but that they were removed.
John Marshall Wilson (1850-1921), father of William Schaffer Wilson, was born in Philadelphia, but spent most of his life in New York City.
Although he was a plasterer by trade, he was also an aspiring writer, and when he was 60 years old (and still plastering) he sent a manuscript of a short story called ‘The Ego of Kathryn’ to The Editor – A Journal of Information for Literary Workers in Ridgewood, NJ, under the pen name Marsh Wilson.
He received a response on June 6, 1911, signed “The Editor,” explaining that the manuscript was “appealing,” “but before you go to the expense of having the story type written we believe that it would be advisable for you to rewrite and put the manuscript into more salable shape.”
The advice began, “It is not advisable to intrude description or heavy narrative into a short story, especially in the opening lines. The introduction should plunge at once into the action and carry the reader into the center of the situation.”
The whole first page was marked “superfluous description” in the margin. [I like it, and think it’s the best part of the whole thing!]
This is a transcript from the original which I typed on a typewriter in the 1980s.
There is no evidence that it was rewritten.
He sent off the hand-written manuscript in June of 1911, and included his home address. I looked it up, and it appears to likely be the same building that still stands today.
In November of 1915, Lillian and her husband Wm. Wilson went on their honeymoon to the South, through Old Point Comfort, Va., Norfolk, Richmond, Henderson NC and Durham NC and then on to South Carolina. He was a traveling salesman who sold dry goods, and it was a working honeymoon for him. They were also there for her 26th birthday on November 30, 1915.
I’ve added some photos of the places they visited. These were not from her, but she did leave notes on each picture she took on the trip and if I come across those I’ll add them.
The day was mostbeautiful! The climate here is perfect, why when you breathe the air here, you feel like a new person, it puts new life in you, you stand up straight and feel as if you are going to fly away. We walked all around Fortress Monroe on this idealmorning and looked out over Chesapeake Bay. We walked all through the grounds of the fortress, saw the barracks, saw the large disappearing guns they use to protect this point, and where we walked we were on top of little homes. The smoke came from the chimneys alongside of us as we walked. We were right on the roofs of their homes and grass was growing there.
I never saw such a clean place in all my life. There wasn’t even a leaf lying on the ground. I stood under the Garrison flag and Billy was going to snap my picture there, but it was impossible to stand far enough away from the flag to get the picture as it is right at the edge of a hill. However, we snapped the flag and a part of the fort from Old. Point. We saw the famous Hotel Chamberlin and it’s very imposing. It’s the first building you see as you reach the Point. The houses here are the prettiest little houses I’ve ever seen, so clean and so cosy looking.
The Hotel Chamberlin at about the time period. It still stands today.
We left on a ferry that took us to Willoughby Spit, a point of land stretching out into the water with all summer cottages on it. There a trolley met us and took us to Norfolk (about an hour’s ride). It was a pretty ride all along this Point then into the village of Norfolk. We arrived here in daylight and so I was able to see the outskirts of the town.
Norfolk, Va.
Well, the car took us right to the Monticello Hotel, “the Waldorf Astoria of Norfolk” as one of Billy’s buyers called it. Gee it is some swell Hotel. You go into the lobby and you see men and women lounging around in swell leather chairs and sofas, great big rubber plants that look like palm trees standing around everywhere. Well, we had a lovely front room here (No. 256).
The Monticello Hotel. It burned down on New Year’s Day, 1918. It was rebuilt but eventually torn down in the 1970s.
In this town we spent Sunday. We saw the Confederate monument, also the very historical St. John’s Church [actually St. Paul’s] which was fired on by Lord Dunmore and we saw the shell that is still embedded in the wall.
There are a lot of big trees all around this church, which makes it look old and solitary looking, but the trees are all full of buds, and it seemed when we were there as if they all were trying to greet us by singing. I never heard such a loud noise (yet sweet noise) made by such little throats. I wonder do they sing like that all the time?
We took a ferry Sunday afternoon to Portsmouth, Va. to see the Navy yard and the interned German boats. Spent a pleasant afternoon, rode from the Navy Yard to the ferry in a jitney bus. Everything is jitney busses down here. From the ferry you could get a good view of Norfolk City and it looked like quite a city from the harbor – some skyscrapers were to be seen. We worked Norfolk, had dinner with Mrs. Edwards of Miller, Rhoads & Swartz [a Virginia dry goods chain]. She took us to Diggs, said it was nice but we didn’t like it much.
Monday night we left for Richmond – a long ride, about 3 or 4 hours. We had to change at Petersburg at 10:30 p.m. and wait a half hour in that awful town. Even the cop says it was awful due to the Dupont Powder factory opening at Hopewell. It brought thousands of men, the scum of the earth, there to work. The salary, $6 a day enticed them there even at the risk of their lives, the possibility of the powder factory being blown up at any minute by some German or anyone.
The Dupont Powder Co., 1915, the same year the journal was written!
While waiting in the station, the dirtiest I’ve ever seen, we saw specimens of the kind of men who had invaded that real nice town – a town of retired farmers. There were a lot of convicts sitting in the waiting room being transferred somewhere to work on the road (colored and white). They were chained together arms and legs so they couldn’t run away.
The train station still stands!
On my ride to Petersburg I rode on the first train that I had ever been on. All the railroads in the South have a colored and white car separate. Also, all waiting rooms are the same. The whites never mingle with the blacks. It seemed awful funny at first but I’ve got used to it now. Two fellows came into the waiting room while we were there and they looked like criminals, the type of men that work in the factory. The cop was busy driving the rumy(?) looking blacks and whites out of the station for the night.
We waited a half hour for our train and then went on to Richmond.
Richmond, Va.
We arrived in Richmond about midnight, found Murphy’s Hotel and room 971 which was reserved for us and went right up to it. It was on the top floor and didn’t we get a grand view all over the city. I was tempted several times to take a picture, a bird’s eye view, but there was always too much smoke curling from the chimneys, it would not make a clear picture.
Murphy’s Hotel was converted to offices, and then demolished in 2007.
Well, the next morning was my birthday and I certainly spent it in a fine big city and in a swell hotel. Billy was certainly good to me. He didn’t forget my birthday, he gave me a lovely pair of gloves, a lovely box of candy, and 3 lovely chrysanthemums, and 26 whacks. We dined with Mrs. King this day in the Murphy Hotel restaurant and we had some swell dinner. It was the first time I ever had candied yams which in Northern language means fried sweet potatoes. Gee they were grand, sorry I couldn’t eat more of them, didn’t like to see any of them go back, but I was a little afraid of getting sick. Had a very pleasant meal. Mrs. King was very nice.
I received four nice birthday cards here, one from Ma, Roland, Helen & Pop W. It made me happy to receive them. It showed I was not forgotten. Billy worked the town this day. I met some of his buyers and I wrote a lot of cards, also a letter to my Ma. I went out in the afternoon alone while Bill was working and saw a lot of sights, this town being just fullof historical spots. I saw the Capitol and all the State Buildings and all the monuments in the Capitol Park. Washington Equestrian Monument, Henry Clay, Stonewall Jackson, Wm. Smith Governor of Virginia, and two others. I saw also the old Bell Tower and walked all around and saw the hospitals and colleges and the Monumental Church – White House of the Confederacy and many other interesting buildings. I took a picture of the Equestrian Monument and got back to the hotel just about dark.
The next morning Billy and I went out together and he took my picture in front of Stonewall Jackson’s Monument and standing near the propeller shaft of the famous Merrimac, and I snapped him under the tree in front of the White House of the Confederacy. Then we had to hustle back to the hotel, get dinner and off to the railroad station for the next town, Henderson, NC.
The propeller shaft from the Merrimac
Henderson N.C.
Well didn’t we have an interesting ride through the country from Richmond to Henderson. We got talking to a man who sat in front of us and he told us lots of things. What a lot of huts we passed, all log cabins cemented together by clay or something and all the little pickininies standing in the doorways. And there were bales of cotton lying in front of many of the houses wxxxxx their crops for the season I suppose, this is allowed to lay out for months they say and it is not harmed by the weather. I was wishing I could take a picture of a scene like that. Now and then we passed a solitary grave in the middle of a field, no fence around it just a slab to mark the place. I suppose the cemetery is too many miles away and this is where they bury their dead.
We passed cotton fields, tobacco fields, and peanut fields but the season is all too late for these things. Now and then you pass a field with cotton on it but that’s all. The tobacco has all been picked and in the houses dry. We saw some of these little tobacco houses (little log huts) and the peanuts have all been picked. They grow under the ground like potatoes, you know. All the houses through this country have no foundations or cellars. They are built on brick posts a couple feet off the ground I wonder why this is. And nobody seems to care much for paint down here, not 1/10 of the houses are painted except of course in the heart of the cities. Well we arrived in Henderson in due time after a lovely ride but we were certainly unprepared for the come-down we were to get.
Imagine after coming from the Monticello and Murphy Hotels, swell beyond a doubt, and by cities like Norfolk and Richmond to get off in a little one horse town like Henderson and have to go to an old two story old fashioned hotel like the Vance 100. Well we could hardly get over it, our hearts were broke and yet the Vance wasn’t so awful bad it was only because we had come from such awful swell hotels.
Henderson, North Carolina
And such a little bit of a town with just a couple blocks with just a couple blocks of the main street and a couple little department stores. The Post Office was the only decent building in the whole town. Well we made up our minds we’d get out of this place as soon as we could, so Billy worked the town that evening. I had supper at the hotel (the colored waiter put my sugar and milk in my tea. It got me nervous – such attention). We decided to get up at 6 o’clock the next morning – get the first train out of the town for Durham. This we did and at pitch dark the next morning we were getting ready for breakfast.
The Vance Hotel Henderson, NC
Well the railroad station was only across the street and so we were there in a jiffy.
Well of all the come-downs! You ought to see the dinky little train we had to take. Why it looked as if it was 150 years old. We could not go in it right away. It was so full of smoke, the man was in there making a coal fire. Can you imagine it! It was a train with no steam heat, and in the corner stood an old rusty stove. The seats were all broken down and I never saw such a shabby looking train in all my life. Well we waited so long for the smoke to go out that we finally had to go in, the Jim Crow came to ride for there was no smoke in there. So we have to say we rode in a Jim Crow car to Durham. Well, the ride was very interesting. I certainly do enjoy daylight riding where you can see all this strange country. What straight tall trees they have down here. Acres and acres of trees so tall and perfectly straight, not a bend in them. They grow quite a lot of corn down here but it has all been picked of course. They tell us they sometimes turn the hogs loose in fields of sweet potatoes or peanuts when they are plentiful or of not the best quality. Just think of that. Sweet potatoes or yams as they call them here seem to be very plentiful. Well we passed through that terrible city of Petersburg to get to Durham.
We arrived in Durham about 10am quite a good xxxxx town. Then Billy decided he had better go on to Burlington right away to work that town and then come back to Durham. So he went on to Burlington on a train that left right away and I went up to the Malbourne Hotel, Room 300 and got a room. Well while B was gone I walked around the town, it was a glorious day and then I did a lot of writing. Then at 6:15 I went down to the station to meet B but the train was 50 minutes late. Well at last he came and then we had supper at the hotel and then we did the town.
The Malbourne Hotel was razed in 1966.
Well what do you think the next morning I opened Bill’s sample xxxx for him, I liked the job, one salesman thought I was a female drummer. Well Billy sold his customer and then we got out of that town at 3p.m. We took a jitney bus to Raleigh 26 miles away and we certainly did enjoy our ride. There was two other men in the bus and they furnished the comedy for us all the way. Gee how we laughed at them. They were kidding the driver, his name was xxxx. We passed by cotton fields and the driver stopped and George got out and picked me a bunch of cotton.
Here the journal ends. There were still some empty pages in the notebook, so I don’t know why she stopped. Except for the fact that she was writing so many postcards and letters, she may have burned out!
Lillian kept a record of the photos she took, and also of postcards, letters, and I think little gifts she picked up for friends and family on her travels. By this we know that they went on from here to:
Raleigh, Wilmington, Charlotte, Spartanburg SC, Asheville, Greenville, Columbia, and Charleston.
While you lie there in bed “as snug as a bug in a rug,” here am I at 53rd St. Station, longing to do likewise. But I have a selfish interest for staying – 12 hours 7 days for as then xxxx they make a gladpayday. At present I am “very truly yours.”
Did Will give you a glad surprise when he brought mother to spend a couple of days with you? I wish she could have stayed longer but a mother’s instinct always reaches out and draws her home to her baby. So. The picture of big and little Mary Schaffer (inclusive) is very good.
I wish it had been focused a little nearer, so the figures would have been slightly larger so to bring their features in relief. The baby is a darling little thing. She has Grandpapa’s heart. Perhaps
there may be something in the subconscious mind for this – she looks like grandmother, you know. Mother Wilson flatters me. She tells me she sees something in our boy that looks like me. About the eyes she says, and in some of his ways. He’s a bright boy all right, and Grandpop’s proud of him.
Has near Jerusalem been evacuated yet?
Has Ikey and Mosey and Solly come back here to take a profit from another drive on Sheldrake? I will long remember the delightful trip Will gave us through the Catskills. by the way, I wish I could have some influence on
Will’s future. Now he is in the heyday of youth, prosperous in a way (?) with no setback apparent. A wife and babies and a home for them. But the future is necessarily obscure so contingency shoud be discounted by thrift.
(N,B, see the lexicon) ?
In other words, it’s rough to be caught out in a drenching rain without the shelter of an umbrella. I might add, from experience, the slang phrase “You know it is yourself.”
I hope your sojourn up there “among the hills” will be beneficial. It is a lovely country. The Jews twice never realize a more seductive Jerusalem. xxxxx off the
boarding house keeper. No one of them seems to care for money. It’s a glorious place that’ll make a Jew forget “to take a profit.”
Mother Wilson is as well as usual. She is gradually creeping out the dirt I made for her but she’s emerging.
Now to conclude – last but not least. Kiss yourself and the kiddies for me.
With Love,
Pop
This is not the photo referenced in the letter, but it does show Mary Elizabeth Schaffer Wilson (big Mary) holding baby Dorothy Hazel Wilson (little Mary because they looked alike).
William Schaffer Wilson on the left, young John Marshall Wilson (his son referenced in the letter), Mary Elizabeth Schaffer Wilson holding baby Dorothy, and John Marshall Wilson who wrote the letter on the right.
Ann Henry Corbett was born June 17,1831 in Wakefield, Yorkshire, England. At 19 she was living with her mother Sarah Henry who was on “parish relief.” Ann was working as a household servant.
Chilton Wilson Archives 