Mrs. Auerbach, Dog Lover

As an animal lover myself, I was especially delighted to learn that Beatrice Fox Auerbach was one as well, especially when it came to dogs! I discovered various references to different dogs who were in the Auerbach household interspersed throughout the collection.

One of my favorites is the American Kennel Club Registration Certificate for Mrs. Auerbach’s male cocker spaniel, Tarascon Auer Beige! But long before “Beige” became a member of the family, there was “Laddie.” This dog was made famous (so to speak) by his appearance alongside Mrs. Auerbach’s daughters, Georgette and Dorothy, in the Hartford Courant of February 27, 1921. And I have to at least mention another of Mrs. Auerbach’s cherished pets, “Beauty,” who was described in an article as “an audacious little pug.”

Mrs. Auerbach was not only a dog lover and owner. For many years, Beatrice Fox Auerbach was involved with the Governor’s Foot Guard Dog Show. For instance, the G. Fox & Co. special cup for the best in the working class was awarded to Prince Favoriet van der Konigstad, a Doberman Pinscher, during the first dog show in 1925. For twenty-two years, beginning in 1946, Mrs. Auerbach was the chief patron of the Foot Guard dog show and sponsored the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Trophy, awarded to the dog named Best in Show. Traditionally, Mrs. Auerbach personally awarded the coveted Auerbach Trophy to that Dog of dogs and her grandchildren were also often on hand to help with the presentation. In fact, for several years after her death, members of the Auerbach family continued to present the award named in her honor.

In addition to Beige’s registration certificate, we also have five programs from the Governor’s Foot Guard dog show, including one from the show’s silver anniversary year.

Gerson puts the ‘G’ in G. Fox & Company

I would be remiss if I didn’t spend at least one entry talking about the man who started it all, Gerson Fox. I hope I don’t bore you by sharing a little of his history here before I talk about one of my favorite items in the entire collection, Gerson’s account book.

Gerson Fox was born on December 14, 1811 in Germany. (While we know very little about his life prior to his arrival in Hartford, we do know that he had at least three siblings, but that’s best left for another story, I suppose.) I still haven’t been able to pinpoint what year he immigrated to the United States or determine when he arrived in Hartford, but it is likely considering the sources available that he was in Hartford by the mid-1830s. I also haven’t found a record of his marriage, but articles in the Hartford newspapers of 1873 seem to indicate that he married Hannah Bamberger in February of 1848. Their first child, a son named Leopold, was born in December of that year. Gerson and Hannah would have three other children: Moses, Emma, and Isaac. (There is some disagreement over whether that they had a second daughter and therefore five children in total, but I’ll spare you from that discussion as well.) Gerson Fox was also one of the founding members of Congregation Beth Israel in Hartford (now located in West Hartford) and served as their treasurer for a number of years. He died on August 22, 1880. His obituary in the Hartford Daily Times describes him as having “a pleasant and affable character, kind, even-tempered, gentle in his judgment, and just in his dealings to all, but to his friends most faithful, and to his family deeply affectionate.”

His account book may not reveal any of his “pleasant and affable character,” but it does shed some light on his business side. Unfortunately, he wrote a lot in German so much of it is hard for me to decipher, but the account book does show numerous rent payments as well as fees payed to various different people who were perhaps servants or employees in his store. One of the most interesting things about this account book, to me at least, is that it is first dated 1829/30 and continues until 1858, which means that this account book actually precedes the opening of G. Fox & Co! If only I had a greater understanding of 19th century German or knew someone who did! (Any volunteers out there willing and able to translate for me?) In any event, this account book promises to be a real treasure — its full potential has yet to be unearthed.

On a related topic, the CHS is also fortunate to have portraits of Gerson Fox and his wife, Hannah, in our museum collections. The family resemblance carries down even through Gerson’s and Hannah’s great-great grandchildren!

Adultery!

Conspiracy theories abound, it seems, even in the 1860s.

A new collection arrived last week, and the most fascinating documents in it were a transcript of a state Supreme Court case against Austin F. Williams who was accused of adultery, and his rebuttal. Both date from 1864. The transcript is hard to decipher, but includes testimony from Alfred Dorman, Laura Peck, Emily Dorman and Charles Peck. They all attested to seeing Williams walk up to a certain piece of land with a shawl over his arm. Some saw him spread hay in a clearing amid some trees. No one actually saw “the act” but testified to such things as hearing rustling, seeing a leg move up and down, and watching Williams button up his pantaloons implying something illicit had occurred. The jury deliberated for ten minutes and returned a verdict of not guilty.

Williams’ rebuttal, entitled “Popery in the Congl Church” indicates that this was the second attempt at ruining his reputation in Farmington. According to Williams, he had not attended his own church in Farmington for four Sunday’s in a row in order to hear another preacher (one Farmington did not call to fill the junior pastor’s position but whom Williams preferred) in a neighboring town. Evidently Williams was hauled before the Farmington Society’s discipline committee for trial. He was accused of schism with a charge of slander against the junior pastor added for good measure. He was found guilty and threatened with excommunication. Williams appealed to the Consociation, which overturned the church’s decision. That was when the adultery charges appeared.

What did Williams do to make people in Farmington despise him so much they tried to excommunicate him? All I could think of while reading the transcript and rebuttal was, how like the Salem witch trials. Was this more a social conflict than a religious one? Certainly worthy of far more research.

“My dear Friend”

Last week, I wrote about the friendship between Beatrice Fox Auerbach and Eleanor Roosevelt, as evidenced through their correspondence. I thought it might be fun this week to include a sample letter from the collection.

Here are the scanned images of a letter Mrs. Roosevelt wrote to Mrs. Auerbach on June 17, 1960:

If you have trouble reading her handwriting, you are not alone. It took three of us to decipher the line Mrs. Roosevelt scribbled at the bottom of the letter and we were only able to do it after comparing this letter with other examples of Mrs. R’s handwriting! We think it is in reference to her raincoat and says, “It is green + not elegant!” (Also, in case it’s not clear, on the first page, the word ‘leaving’ is replaced with the word ‘bringing.’)

This letter is typical of much of the correspondence between the two women. I chose this letter specifically because it offers a neat glimpse into the personality of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Happy Birthday, Beatrice!

Beatrice Fox Auerbach was born on July 7, 1887, which means today is her 120th birthday!

I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of an appropriate (and fun!) way to commemorate the occasion. I started wondering how she had celebrated her birthdays and realized that the collection doesn’t really offer any glimpses into that aspect of her life. I can tell you how her father, Moses, spent his birthdays (at least those towards the end of his life) because, as a leader in the Hartford business world, his birthdays were considered important enough to be written up in the newspapers. But times had changed by the time Mrs. Auerbach was president of G. Fox & Co. and events like birthdays were no longer considered newsworthy.

On the other hand, I know that her employees marked the occasion of her birthday by bestowing gifts (often handmade) upon her. In fact, we have a few of the items they created in our collection. Some of the gifts the G. Fox employees made are really quite neat. My favorite is a hand-drawn “storybook” that tells the tale of how Mrs. Auerbach became president of G. Fox & Co.

In the absence of any brilliant ideas on my part, I have decided to commemorate the occasion with a small pictorial tribute. I hope that, despite her aversion to personal publicity, Mrs. Auerbach would approve.

Happy Birthday, Mrs. Auerbach!

This photograph shows Mrs. Auerbach as she is perhaps best remembered.

In this photograph, probably taken on one of the family’s many cruises, Beatrice Fox is on the far right. Her parents, Theresa and Moses, are on her right and her sister, Fannie, is sitting in the foreground.

This last photograph is actually the front cover of Mrs. Auerbach’s 1966 Christmas card, which shows her surrounded by her entire family, including all 12 grandchildren!

Missionary to Hawaii, Amos Cooke

A collection we have had for a while but has never been fully processed consists primarily of letters from missionary Amos Starr Cooke and his wife Juliette to Amos’s sister Mary Keeler Seeley of Danbury, Conn. The letters from Hawaii start in 1837 and the last one is dated 1854, although Amos did not die until 1871. I found several of his commentaries very interesting. Evidently, the mission school in which Amos taught was financially supported by the Hawaiian King and his chiefs, not strictly by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). While he missed his family in Connecticut, Amos insisted he would stay in Hawaii to do his duty, but also because he had heard that missionaries were not always welcomed when they returned home. That brought to mind how many returning veterans feel, regardless of the conflict in which they served. So is being a missionary akin to being in combat??

In March 1845 Amos noted that the King ceded the Hawaiian island to England. According to Amos, the King “was forced to do so by the exorbitant demands of the acting consul, Alexander Simpson.” That same year (1845) there was an outbreak of influenza; in 1848 measles killed thousands of natives; in 1853 smallpox panicked the residents bringing business to a stand still. In his letters of 1850 he complained that native servants were demanding too high wages and also that they generally were lazy. His wife Juliette was a bit more outspoken about religion. She asserted that once natives became Catholic, they were “forbidden to speak with their former missionaries and avoid them, and if spoken to, answer not and remain as if they heard them not.”

I am sure there is a lot more to be gleaned from these letters, particularly about religious revivals in Connecticut and the education of native children in Hawaii. Now that they are arranged more coherently, I hope they get used for some fascinating research.

Hartford’s “First Lady” and the First Lady of the World

In many articles I’ve read about Beatrice Fox Auerbach, she has been nicknamed Hartford’s “First Lady,” probably because of her positive impact on its community. For similar reasons, Eleanor Roosevelt has been dubbed the “First Lady of the World.” And between 1946 and 1962 these two “First Ladies” corresponded with one another.

Their early correspondence is quite formal, as one would expect from people who are not well-acquainted with one another. Initially, they write to each other almost exclusively about establishing meeting times. These meetings all seem to center around the recently formed Service Bureau for Woman’s Organizations. (It was renamed in 1970 to the Service Bureau for Connecticut Organizations). In April 1946, Mrs. Roosevelt was a speaker at one of the Service Bureau’s first sponsored events and the correspondence between her and Mrs. Auerbach begins shortly after this event.

It is clear, after reading their correspondence, that the two women developed a genuine affection for one another as their involvement with the Service Bureau and other humanitarian causes continued to bring them into contact. While never completely losing an element of formality, the letters do become increasingly warm, friendly and somewhat more intimate.

These letters are extremely delightful in tone and content. The correspondence is especially noteworthy because it reveals a different side of Mrs. Auerbach that does not appear elsewhere in the collection.