Dr. Mott is Dead

Here’s a little bit about an esteemed member of old New York society.  You can find his name on that most fascinating list of permanent New Yorkers.  Those interred at my favorite place in Brooklyn, The Green-Wood Cemetery.  There is sure to be another post about the history of this beautiful place.  For now, I would like to tell you the story of Dr. Valentine Mott.

Dr. Mott (1785-1865) was the preeminent surgeon of his day.  Trained at Columbia College, he then traveled to Europe where he spent three years perfecting his techniques. He went on to become Columbia College’s Chair of Surgery at the age of 24.  Following that post, he + several of his peers established Rutgers Medical College.

In his obituary, the New York Times recalls: “His position as a surgeon was second to no living professor, and challenged from the renowned Sir ASTLEY COOPER the remarkable eulogy: “He has performed more of the great operations than any man living, or that ever did live.”

The Medical profession had lost one of its most talented men. There is one additional, remarkable detail of this story.  That comes from exactly how Dr. Mott died.  On April 15, 1865 the good Doctor was due for a haircut.  While giving him a trim, his barber asked if he had heard the devastating news.  Dr. Mott replied that he had not.  The barber told Mott that President Lincoln had been mortally wounded by a bullet at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D. C. only the night before.

Upon hearing this news, Dr. Mott turned very pale + began to tremble, staggering to his bed.  After telling his wife the grave news, he began to grow weaker, experiencing terrible pain in his back. He would never again leave his bed.

Dr. Valentine Mott died eleven days later on April 26, 1865.  His official cause of death is recorded as “Mortification.”

A Graveyard, A Gallows + The Start of Greenwich Village

It’s Friday, + I simply cannot resist a good graveyard story.  Historians estimate that there are over 20,000 early New Yorkers buried in an unmarked cemetery in the heart of today’s Greenwich Village.  NYC friends, you know this spot as Washington Square Park.  Located right in the middle of NYU territory.

Before it became the City Park we know + love with its majestic arch designed by Stanford White + its tranquil fountain, (side note: the fountain, made of Graywackie stone is a transplant from Central Park at 59th Street.) Washington Square was a potter’s field; a graveyard for the unknown, indigent, criminal, or anyone requiring a hasty burial due to death by disease during an epidemic. There were plenty of those to go around. Four in all between the years of 1797 + 1803. Yellow Fever wiped out so many New Yorkers that after less than 30 years of use, the field could accept no more corpses.

It’s worth noting that the park’s proximity to the Bridewell workhouse + prison located at City Hall, necessitated construction of a public gallows in the early 19th Century. Officials preferred it placed close to the potter’s field for convenience.  The original gallows stood near to where the fountain is today.

At the time, It was a swampy no-man’s-land. It’s use suited everyone just fine.

Enter Mayor Philip Hone + his real estate development strategy.  That’s right, even multitudes of corpses could not stop the time-honored tradition of raising the rent. Hone set about designating the swamp as public space to generate interest in the neighborhood. His plan worked.   In 1827, what was to become Washington Square was declared a public space. Just in time to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

We all know you can’t have a park without great landscaping.  Once you have that, you have to build expensive housing around it.  Doing this raised property values by an estimated 240%. Bravo, Mayor Hone.

And so, Greenwich Village was born.  The next time you’re in town, or you natives are strolling through, give a little nod to the nearly forgotten world under foot.

Manhattan’s Oldest House

“Like a Great Dane or a terrace garden, a ghost is hard to maintain in New York.” (Well, according to the New York Times) as one reporter so eloquently put it when discussing the long-rumored possibility that the Morris-Jumel Mansion is haunted.

Manhattan’s oldest house, the mansion was commissioned in 1765 by Col. Roger Morris + his wife, Mary Philipse.  “Mount Morris” as it was dubbed, sat atop Manhattan’s highest point.  The couple’s sprawling, 130-acre estate stretched from river to river affording clear views from Harlem to Hudson as well New York Harbor, New Jersey + Connecticut.  New York had not yet become the city we know + love.  Most of its land remained undeveloped at this time.

This fantastic vantage point made the site ideal for George Washington + his men when he made the place his headquarters for five weeks in the fall of 1776.  Morris + Philipse promptly vacated the house at the start of the revolution.  (Their loyalty to the crown simply would not do at all in those days.) As the war went on, Washington was run out of town for a spell + the mansion became home to Hessians.   (You know, the stuff that headless horsemen are made of—German mercenary soldiers + allies to the British.)

Enter Stephen Jumel, a French sugar plantation owner fleeing unrest in Haiti who purchased the house in 1810.  He married Eliza Bowen, a member of the 18th-Century political inner-circle + an eccentric, unusual woman of her time.

Stephen Jumel died in 1832 following a carriage accident.  In 1833, Eliza married… yep,  you guessed it, AARON BURR.  They separated only four months later, after Eliza realized Burr was bleeding her dry with some unwise financial decisions.  Eliza lived out her days in the house.  She died in 1865.

The Morris-Jumel Mansion was purchased by the City of New York + preserved as a museum in 1904. Today, “Morris Hill” has become “Sugar Hill.” From its perch, the house bore witness to the great Harlem renaissance of the 1920’s.  Many well-known African American  artists, thinkers + athletes including Thurgood Marshall, Jackie Robinson + Duke Ellington called the neighborhood home.  The Jumel Terrace Historic District encompassing 160th Street remains a treasure trove of 19th Century architecture.

And now, ghosts.  Though the Mansion’s staff deny outright that there are any spirits in the house, there are two separate stories that have been widely reported.  In the 1960’s a group of school children with their teacher reported a woman in period dress shushing them from a second floor balcony saying, “My husband is very ill, you have to keep quiet.”  Thinking the woman an employee playing a part, the children moved to another part of the house.  Only realizing they may have seen a ghost after passing a mannequin dressed as Eliza Jumel.  Upon seeing it,  the children, all at once, exclaimed, “That’s her!  That’s her!”  Staff also report that groups of very young children often refuse to enter a certain part of the house, saying “bad things” are there.  Ghosts are not a modern phenomenon for the house.  In 1810, several people claimed they had seen the spirit of a Hessian soldier in a window, + Mary Bowen, Eliza Jumel’s step daughter refused to stay in the house alone.  Eliza Jumel herself reportedly negotiated a discount in the Mansion’s purchase price due to rumors that it was haunted.  In 2015, the mansion celebrates its 250th year.

17 Barrow Street

It’s true, there are many haunted places in New York City.  So many that it can be difficult to choose which one to profile.  BUT, since we are already on a roll with our dear friend Aaron Burr, let’s talk about his carriage house. His FORMER carriage house, which is now the site of one of the most popular, high-end restaurants in the West Village: One If By Land, Two If By Sea.

Built in 1767, the carriage house was purchased by then-New York-State-Attorney-General, Aaron Burr in 1794 as part of his Richmond Hill estate.  Following the complete destruction of his political career + impending exile to Europe, Burr sold the property to Mr. John Jacob Astor in 1804.  Astor then had the property moved to its present site at 17 Barrow Street in the heart of Manhattan’s West Village.

Over the centuries, the building evolved to take on several identities, first becoming a dormitory for firemen working in the adjacent firehouse. Then, in the 1890’s, it became a brothel.  For the last century, it has either been run as a bar or restaurant.  One If By Land, Two If By Sea was established by its current owners in 1971.

Though many would like to make connections between the carriage house, the ubiquitous Mr. Burr + his unfortunate daughter, Theodosia, no one can claim to have identified any of the building’s many other-worldly guests.

Staff claim to have seen everything from plates moving on their own, footsteps in the empty upper floor, chairs pulled from beneath seated patrons, cold spots + even a phantom gentleman seated at a table, who vanishes when a server tries to take his order.  There is one apparition that has appeared to many, always in exactly the same place:  a veiled woman, dressed in black, descending the restaurant’s main staircase.

No one can say for sure who haunts the place or why.  The building is almost 250 years old.  With such a lengthy history, it’s bound to attract more than one ghostly tenant.

Theodosia, Lost at Sea

The deathbed confessions of several pirates + the appearance of a mysterious oil portrait of her  in a small North Carolina town years after her disappearance notwithstanding, the fate of Theodosia Burr Alston remains one of our country’s great, 19th Century tragic mysteries.

Born to then-attorney + eventual murderous-Vice-President of the United States,  Aaron Burr + Theodosia Prevost in Albany, NY on June 21, 1783, Theodosia Burr, by all accounts, lived an extraordinary life.

Her father passionately believed in Theodosia’s right to equal education + found the typical, superficial training of women of the day to be repugnant.  He explained  his opinion to his equally educated wife like this:

“Cursed effects of fashionable education of which both sexes are advocates and yours the victims; if I could foresee that Theo would become a mere fashionable woman, with all the attendant frivolity and vacuity of mind, adorned with whatever grace and allurement, I would earnestly pray God to take her forthwith hence.”

“Theo,” was among the most educated women in political society of the day. By the age of 12, She spoke Latin, French + German + read Greek. At age 14, following her mother’s untimely death, she became mistress of Aaron Burr’s estate at Richmond Hill, (which once stood in what is now the West Village of Manhattan at the corner of Varick + Charlton Streets.) As mistress, she helped to host the country’s  political elite. She went on to marry future South Carolina Governor, Joseph Alston in 1801, (just a few years shy of her father’s infamous duel with Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton in 1804, which left Hamilton dead +  ruined then-Vice President Burr’s political career) contributing in part to a number of years he spent in European exile.

But, back to THIS story.

Tragedy struck Theodosia once more in 1812 with the death of her only son at the tender age of ten. Grief-stricken, + longing to visit her newly-returned father, she boarded a ship called The Patriot bound for New York in December of that same year.

She was never heard from again.

Theories abound as to what really happened on the waters of the Atlantic over those few days in January of 1812.  The one fact that is known is the existence of  “The Nag’s Head Portrait” reportedly a portrait of Theodosia, which turned up in the possession of a Doctor in the small town of Elizabeth City, NC. The story of how this came to be was recounted in the public record in 1869.

A Dr. W. G. Pool told of visiting a patient of modest means in Cape Hatteras who had a valuable oil portrait of a striking young woman hung in her home.  This patient was very ill + recovered well, following Pool’s treatment.  Unable to pay the Doctor, she offered him the portrait he had so admired.  The patient claimed her first husband had taken it as part of the spoils from a ship he looted as a wrecker  when it washed ashore, empty during the war of 1812. Doctor Pool then researched the portrait. Several of Theodosia Burr’s relatives maintained it was her likeness.

Less verifiable, but no less widely reported are the deathbed confessions of several men claiming to have worked as pirates off the Carolina coast during the war of 1812.  They claim to have forced Theodosia to walk the the ship’s plank, recounting her stoic, final steps. Telling of how she, dressed in white, bravely raised her arms, proclaiming her last words “Vengeance is mine saith the Lord! I will repay!” before walking into the sea.

There is still another story, the combination of several other stories, where  a woman wanders the shores of the outer banks, suffering from amnesia + carrying a very fine portrait of herself. She is taken in by a family on Cape Hatteras.  It is this woman that Dr. Pool comes to treat.  Upon hearing her caretaker offer the portrait to the doctor as payment, she awakens from some kind of coma + screams, “It is mine, you cannot have it!” (That is one for the campfire.)

The fact remains, over 200 years have passed since her fateful voyage. To this day, no one really knows what happened to Theodosia Burr Alston.

 

The Fox Sisters

It all began with two mischievous little girls. Sisters, Maggie and Kate Fox, ages 14 + 11 came to their mother, Margaret + revealed an astonishing gift for communicating with the spirit world. It was March 31, 1848. Their small town of Hydesville, NY would never be the same.

Their gift was first demonstrated to a baffled neighbor. The two girls, snug in their bed, told of nightly visits from a spirit eager to communicate with them, answering questions through a series of “raps” on their bedroom wall.

Their mother began, “Count five raps.” The wall reverberated with the sound of five, sturdy knocks. She moved on to more advanced questions. “If you are an injured spirit, manifest it by three raps.” And so those present heard it verified that their visitor was indeed, injured.

News of this unnerving gift began to spread throughout Hydesville. Rumors circulated that the spirit could be that of a salesman who disappeared while going door-to-door, years before, never to be heard from again. (Word around town was that he had been murdered in the Fox farmhouse in 1843.)

Alarmed, the Fox family fled the house. Maggie + Kate were sent to Rochester to live with their older sister, Leah. News of their gift followed them. Soon, it was revealed that Leah, too had the gift. She was a medium who could communicate directly with spirits. Friends persuaded the sisters to demonstrate their abilities to the public. They rented a concert hall. 400 people attended, astounded by what they had witnessed: three charming girls, communicating directly with the great beyond.

Three stars were born. By 1850 the Fox sisters began their spiritual careers in earnest, holding their first sessions in Barnum’s Hotel in Manhattan. (Located at the corner of Maiden Lane + Broadway in today’s Financial District.)

People from all walks of life visited the Foxes. Even celebrities like Horace Greeley + James Fenimore Cooper couldn’t stay away. After a time, the sisters began to expand their audience. Leah, holding séances, Maggie + Kate embarking on a multi-city US tour.

Their “act” was received with equal parts skepticism + fascination. Skeptics scoffed at the authenticity of their claims, demanding examination of their clothing + requiring repeated changing of venues to try + catch them in their trickery. Believers clung desperately to the idea that the sisters could provide the opportunity to communicate with dear, departed loved ones. “The Spiritual Knockers From Rochester” as they became known, were on a roll.

Despite this split in public opinion, their mother, Margaret whole-heartedly believed in their abilities. She accompanied them to Manhattan to watch over them + to see to it that the girls made good matches. In time, Maggie, Kate + Leah each married. (Maggie, notably to the American, Arctic explorer Elisha Kent Kane.)

By Kane’s urging, Maggie Fox left the family business + converted to Catholicism, promising to give it up for good. A decade of questionable fame had begun to take its toll on her. Following Kane’s untimely death in 1857, Maggie began to drink.

Kate, on the other hand, dove headlong into refining her craft. Going so far as to claim to make contact with the spirit of Benjamin Franklin, she developed carnival style dramatics, learning to “simultaneously” translate messages from the beyond, speaking one message while writing another. The unending deception eventually drove Kate to drink, too.

Tensions grew among the Foxes. Leah began to publicly criticize Kate. Maggie was tired of lying. On October 21, 1888 after 40 years of fame by sleight of hand, Maggie took the stage at The New York Academy of Music. She confessed to the 2,000 people in attendance: their act had been a sham. Maggie removed her shoes + demonstrated how they had done it all those years.

They were only little girls when they started. They learned to crack their toes + other joints to simulate the “knockings.” They could do this imperceptibly, the sound carried well, the phenomenon was portable. It was Leah Fox who had exploited them. Once in the public eye, they could not turn back.

Within five years of Maggie’s confession, the three Fox sisters were dead. They died in poverty.

Curiously, the Fox Farmhouse in Hydesville was demolished in 1904. Inside the wall of that fateful, tiny bedroom lay the skeleton of a man believed to be the missing traveling salesman.

The Witch of Staten Island

”This woman may, possibly, escape. For they manage these matters wretchedly in New York.” — (Then Reporter) Edgar Allan Poe: June, 1844.

(This story is not for the faint of heart.)

It all began on Christmas night, 1843 in Graniteville, then a small village on Staten Island. Two young boys coming home from a skating party that evening noticed smoke pouring from the home of  George Houseman, the brother of a woman named Polly Bodine. Police were called. Once inside the house, they discovered the grizzly murders of George’s wife Emeline Houseman and their infant daughter, Ann Eliza. Emeline’s throat was cut + both arms broken, her skull crushed + Eliza very bad indeed.

It was quickly determined that several items had been taken from the home including several pieces of silverware (engraved with the letters EH) + a watch among other things, the fire having been set to conceal the murders.

In the 1840’s, most Staten Islanders were fishermen + George Houseman was no exception. While he was away at sea, his sister Polly stayed with his wife + daughter to keep them company. By all accounts the family was a happy one + Emmeline + Polly were good friends.

Polly had gained a reputation at the time. She was separated from her husband, Andrew. She + her two children moved back home with her parents, across the street from George + Emeline’s home. (side note, the original site of the Houseman home is today the parking lot of a Perkins Restaurant, not far from the MLK Expressway.) Polly had been visiting with her parents at their home at the time the fire was set. In addition to her marital woes, it was known that she had taken to seeing George Waite, a Manhattan pharmacist + her son’s employer. Bodine + Waite were not married + Polly was pregnant at the time the murders were committed–a scandal in its own right in 1843.

Due to Polly’s reputation, suspicion quickly turned to her; she had been seen drinking gin on the Thompkinsville Ferry (a predecessor of today’s Staten Island Ferry) the day after the murders + was reported to have pawned several pieces of silverware engraved with Emeline’s initials shortly thereafter. Though she had her own money, many said that robbery was the motive + Polly was the murderer. By New Year’s Day of 1844 she was in the Richmond County jail. The press seized the case + made it a sensation. Polly gave birth to a stillborn child just three days after her arrest. The press used this fact as “confirmation” of her guilt. PT Barnum famously called her, “That Most Wicked and Wretched Woman,” even going so far as to have a wax tableau made showing Polly, posed as if committing the murders, for his museum.

The trial, begun in June of 1844, was a circus. Extra ferries were ordered to allow for large numbers of spectators to attend. Reporters were brought in from around the country to cover it. (Among them Mr. Edgar Allan Poe of Pennsylvania.)

Charges against Polly included murder + arson. The strong doubts of a single juror resulted in a hung jury for the first trial.  A second trial yielded a guilty verdict, which was overturned. A third trial, held in Newburgh, away from the media circus, found her innocent.

Polly Bodine lived out her days as a recluse in Staten Island, until her death on May 27,1892 at the age of 82.

The murders remain unsolved to this day.

Some Staten Islanders have reported seeing the apparition of a woman in antiquated clothing carrying an infant near the site of the gravesites of Emeline + Ann Eliza Houseman in Staten Island’s Fairview Cemetery.

It should be noted that upon re-examining the case, several historians are of the opinion that Polly was guilty as charged. She is also buried in Fairview Cemetery.