USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Cambridge > Harvard College class of ninety-seven : fiftieth anniversary report, 1897 > Part 17
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His clubs include the Cosmos Club of Washington, D. C., Co- lumbia Club of Indianapolis, Peking Club of Peking, China, Ro- tary Club of Richmond, Indiana, of which he was president in 1940, Tourist Club of Richmond, of which he was president from 1944 to 1946, and Talk and Eat Club of Richmond.
* MURRAY WILDER DEWART
M URRAY WILDER DEWART died December 4, 1927, at Baltimore. The son of James Hartley and Mary (Day) Dewart, he was born February 14, 1874, at Chardon, Ohio, and came to Harvard from the St. Paul, Minnesota, High School. He stayed in college only one year, transferring to the University of Minnesota, from which he was graduated in 1897. For a short time he taught at the Pomfret School, then studied for the ministry at the General Theological Seminary in New York and at the Episcopal Theo- logical School in Cambridge, graduating from the latter in 1901. For the following two years, he was assistant rector at St. James Church, Roxbury, Massachusetts, and after his ordination he was rector there for ten years. In 1912 he became rector of the Church of the Epiphany in Winchester, Massachusetts, and in 1922 ac- cepted a call to Baltimore, where he was rector of the Christ Episcopal Church until his death. In 1916 he served as chaplain with the Massachusetts National Guard, when it was sent to the Mexican border, and he was a chaplain with the 101st Field Artil- lery, Yankee Division, in France during the first World War. Brig-
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adier-General John H. Sherburne spoke of him as "a living saint and always a Christian in all his actions."
He was survived by his wife, the former Submit Tewskbury Clarke, whom he married on April 30, 1906, at Manchester, New Hampshire, and their three children - Donald Day, born Febru- ary 12, 1907; Kenneth, born April 3, 1912; and Murray Wilder, Jr., born May 12, 1914.
EDMUND VICTOR DEXTER
E DMUND VICTOR DEXTER died October 25, 1924, at Bronxville, New York. The son of Edmund and Emma ( Rowcroft) Dex- ter, he was born August 30, 1874, at Cincinnati, and prepared for college at the Wilson and Kellogg School in New York. While in college, he sang in the University Glee Club and rowed on the Class crew during his junior and senior years. He took an A.B. with the Class and shortly thereafter entered the freight depart- ment of the Cincinnati, New Orleans & Texas Pacific Railway Company in Cincinnati. He advanced in that company and at- tracted the attention of its president, Samuel M. Felton, whom he followed in 1901 to the Chicago & Alton Railway Company. His headquarters were in Bloomington, Illinois, where he remained until 1903. During this period he met Louise Weldon Ewing, whom he married on November 21, 1903. After his appointment as purchasing agent of the railroad, he moved to Chicago. In 1908 he again followed Mr. Felton, this time to Mexico, where they were engaged in the management of the Mexico Central Railway. From 1909 to 1915 Dexter was manager of the railroad department of the Waters-Pierce Oil Company of St. Louis.
He was next engaged in the special work of organization and system in the office of the Secretary of State, State of Illinois, fol- lowing the sudden death of the incumbent of that office. In the fall of 1915 he joined the munitions department of the American Can Company, serving during the first World War with offices in Washington. After the Armistice he went to New York to take charge of the sale and disposal of the company's ammunition plants
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and equipment. After completing this task in 1921, he gave his time to managing the business affairs of members of his family.
WILLIAM ENDICOTT DEXTER
A' FTER graduation from Harvard," writes Cootie Dexter, "I at- tended the Harvard Law School until 1900. I was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1902. For a time I was in the Legal Department of the Boston Elevated Railway. After that I had an office for the practice of law at 70 State Street until 1904.
"On April 5, 1904, I was married to Mary Fitzhugh Lindsay in Boston. She died November 19, 1946, at Boston. She was the daughter of the late Dr. John S. Lindsay, rector of St. Paul's Church, Boston, and Caroline Lindsay, both formerly of Warren- ton, Virginia. I retired at the time of my marriage because of poor health.
"In 1907 I went to live at York Village, Maine, and a few years later bought a house there. For twenty summers I lived in this delightful Maine village. In 1927 I moved to Prides Crossing, Massachusetts, which has been my home ever since. Here I am much interested in raising vegetables and squabs for my own table, and we have greatly enjoyed the flower garden every summer. At the bottom of my place there is a pond containing goldfish and horned pout, among other fish, which has been a source of unusual interest to me.
"My life up to now has been happy if uneventful, and I take much interest and satisfaction in my family and grandchildren."
Dexter, the son of George Dexter, '55, and Sarah Rogers Endi- cott, was born October 21, 1874, at Brookline, Massachusetts. He prepared at the Noble and Greenough School in Boston. He was with our Class four years and as an undergraduate was a member of the D.K.E. Society, Institute of 1770, and Hasty Pudding Club.
His two children are: Sarah Endicott ( Mrs. Howes Burton ), born September 9, 1905; and John Lindsay (married Elizabeth Anne Cassels), born August 31, 1911. There are four grandchildren. Dexter's son, John, '34, served as a major in the Army of the United States in World War II.
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Dexter is a member of the Somerset Club, Singing Beach Bath- ing Club, and a winter member of the Essex County Club, Man- chester. He is a former member of the Boston and New York Harvard Clubs, the Essex County Club, the Country Club, Brook- line, and Tennis and Racquet Club.
ARTHUR URBANE DILLEY
A PAGE out of an old book tacked to the wall of the Seaman's Bethel at Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts," writes Dilley, "ad- monishes patrons to mind their conversation. It says:
Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.
"How incontestably true! For a parallel syllogism recall the three mental strata of the Class at graduation: Phi Beta Kappa candles brightly burning on the frosted top, a layer of burnt crust on the bottom, and in between, the eggs, nuts, seedless raisins, baking powder, yeast and vanilla extract. In tribute to the intel- lectuals above and irresponsibles below, who, completely baked by professorial heat, transmitted needed steam to the heavy in- gredients, I disclose such events of fifty years as best demonstrate my personal indebtedness.
" 'I'll answer,' roommate Huntsman said, rising to open the door to someone knocking at 32 Hollis Hall. 'May we see Thoreau's room?' 'Delighted. Come in. Have a chair.' Who was this Tho- reau, sixty years ahead, whose flail threshed sufficient wheat to attract to his old bin two customers per week after his particular brand of bread? We not only looked him up but read his journal. One of his precepts we resolved to practice: 'With most men life is postponed to some trivial business.'
"I went to teach English at Taft, Huntsman to tutor the grand- sons of Jay Gould, both, according to our a priori judgment, non- trivial occupations. In Japan a fellow traveller said to me 'If the guide shows us another temple, I'll vomit.' So eventually was it for both of us practising preparatory school teaching. We regurgi-
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tated trivial nouns, verbs, subjects, and predicates, 'Hiawatha' and 'the Princess,' Merchant of Venice and the Vicar of Wakefield, and scaled the back fence.
"Examples of the fine arts worthy of the name had always fasci- nated me, but not until the Taft School days did I come intimately into contact with intelligent, fastidious collectors. Two masters concentrated on etchings, a third on Japanese prints, a fourth on old books and first editions. Stamps and coins each had an apolo- getic but tenacious votary. One art only, antique Oriental rugs, had unanimous approbation. When Mumford's book, published in 1900, became a school text, what course could the young Eng- lish master pursue? Put up a fight for British Wiltons and Axmin- sters? Even Thoreau, subjected to similar influence, would have succumbed at least to the literature of the art that made resplend- ent the courts of Babylon, Bagdad, Persepolis and Otesiphon; Cambuluc, Samarkand, Cairo and Damascus; Shapoor, Tabriz, Kasvin and Ispahan; Ghazni, Delhi, Agra and Constantinople. Not once but twice Thoreau wrote of Apollo serving King Admetus!
"Anyway, beginning in 1904, events moved fast. The august Boston Society of Architects needed a speaker at the annual din- ner and the art of Oriental rugs was current subject of discussion. Would I oblige? With misgiving, yes. My astonishment at the denouement still lingers. Whether the excellent wine, savory sauce, elegance of the art or revelation of spoken word, or com- bination of these excesses was the motivating cause, the ovation that followed created a career. The result was fifty-seven lectures, quite unsolicited, within two years, before the art and women's clubs of New England, and so insatiable was public interest that twenty-two years later the Jordan Marsh Company paid $2500 for two weeks of lecture service. This appreciation constituted an American renaissance of Oriental art.
"With 1914 came lectures in the New York area, including re- peated engagements at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Colum- bia University, New York University, New York School of Interior Decoration, and the Wilmington, Delaware, Society of the Fine Arts, plus single infiltrations at Pratt Institute, Cornell University, Vassar, Wells and Hunter Colleges.
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"Next followed invasion of the middle states and west coast by invitation of the art museums of Cleveland, Dayton, Akron, De- troit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Muskegon, San Francisco, and Santa Barbara, the engagements concurrent with lectures ar- ranged by the Pond Bureau to moderate, I imagine, the impact of Ruth Draper, William Webster Ellsworth (ex-president of the Century Company ), Arthur Weigall (Egyptian archaeologist), Channing Pollock, the Honorable James M. Beck, and Upton Close.
"The great stores of the country, notably Marshall Field & Com- pany and Nahigian Bros. (Chicago), R. H. Macy & Company (New York), Strawbridge & Clothier (Philadelphia), Boggs & Buhl (Pittsburgh), Henry Morgan & Company ( Montreal), New- comb & Endicott (Detroit), John Shillito Company ( Cincinnati ), and Cartozian Bros. (Portland, Oregon), whose rug departments constituted heavy capital investments, quickly swung into line with irresistible inducements. The result was an unprecedented sales campaign that frequently involved three addresses a day, 11 A.M. and 3 P.M. in the store, and 8 P.M., by courtesy of the firm, before some local society.
"In 1931 Scribner published my Oriental Rugs and Carpets. It, too, achieved an unprecedented feat. It collected rug collectors, who, the following year organized the Hajji Baba Club, named after James Morier's rogue in the Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispa- han. Understanding of the club's activities is confined to readers familiar with this novel and the sequel, Nol Picaroon, that appeared as a profile in the New Yorker of September 2, 1939. In brief, for information of future collectors, discoveries made by club mem- bers so closely parallel the complexities of life unearthed by Samuel Pickwick, Esq., G.C.M.P.C., associated scientists, senti- mentalists, poets and sportsmen, as to resuscitate, among the percipient, belief in reincarnation.
"The faculty at Taft in 1900 had intense interest in nature, espe- cially birds and trees. When in jocund spring a bird landed in a Watertown tree, and its name and previous address, if obtainable, had been recorded, the next question was the name and previous habitat, if any, of the tree it landed in. My copy of Keeler's Our
1
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Native Trees, published in 1900, is margined with notes such as: 'Mountain Ash on road to the duck farm.'
"In 1927 I purchased land on Martha's Vineyard to indulge an ambition to grow the 'aristocrats among conifers.' I planted thou- sands, not hundreds, of Japanese trees in recognition of which enterprise the Japanese government in 1940 conferred on me the distinction of honorable guest in succession to Helen Keller, Henry Taft, Lyman Gage, George Eastman, President Schurman of Cor- nell, and other luminaries.
"Japan, then at war with China, was plotting war on us, its officials fomenting suspicion and arrest of foreigners, including honorable guest, whose hardest fought engagement occurred at Nanazu, August 9, 1940, where at precisely 3:20 P.M., within the railroad station and in the presence of hundreds of interested com- muters, he was captured simultaneously by five policemen.
" 'Your name, your wife's name, your father's name, your moth- er's name, ditto country, state, county, city or village, also the size of your hat, collar and shoes, and what do you claim to be doing here?
" 'Gentlemen, your enthusiastic welcome to Nunazu surpasses, as hero worship eclipses formal deference, the repeated salaams of your leading dendrologists assembled at Yokohama to honor my arrival via the gallant Asama Maru. Except for knowledge of the careers of Prince Shotoku, Emperor Shomu, and the great Shoguns Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Iyeyasu, my ego in August would blos- som like your best cherry tree in May. Nevertheless, I am travel- ling incognito, my appelation honorable guest. I plead guilty to coveting majestic Fuji, the Ise Daijingu Shrine, the Horyu-ji Mon- astery, the Kamakura Buddha, the paintings of Masanobu, Monto- nobu, Eitoku, and Santaku, the textiles of Kyoto, the old Chinese rugs in the Soso-in Treasury, the pines at Matsushima, your gar- dens, your women, your children, and your sukiyaki. In brief, I, like yourselves, am a very considerable detective. Is there a res- taurant nearby where we can confer and drink like brethren?'
"There was. With a guard on each side and two covering the rear, I marched behind the chief of police. At precisely 6:31 the opposing forces ceased fire, overcome by overindulgence in free
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hard cider purchased by honorable captive. Today when fifteen- foot Pinus Thunbergii leave Martha's Vineyard to replant Cape Cod, to bathe in its salt waters as joyfully as their ancestors bathe at Matsushima, I chuckle at remembrance of the chief's suspicion that honorable suspect was a second rich Zaccheus intent on climb- ing a tree to spy on Emperor.
'Thinking back, I wish Thoreau had defined trivial business. Not infrequently I suspect myself of having intensively practised it. Certainly few results are Thoreauesque. No second Burke or Wordsworth resulted from the teaching at Taft. For this disap- pointment Yale, of course, may be responsible. Despite ample instruction, public taste in Oriental rugs has gone decadant. Dur- ing the great depression, American culture was attacked by so many debilitating diseases - modern art, morbid plays, salacious novels, vile music, and related neuroses - the dear old lady seems permanently hospitalized. In consequence, I plan an old age de- voted to trees and whittling, which may prove to be Thoreau's secret formula for successful living."
Dilley, the son of Urbane and Lydia Ann (Weber) Dilley, was born August 23, 1873, at Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He prepared for college at the Harry Hillman Academy in Wilkes-Barre. He was with our Class four years and was graduated cum laude and received honorable mention in philosophy. He married Millicent Margaret Davis, June 27, 1900, at Auburn, Ohio. She died July 13, 1946. They had five children: Urbane, born April 6, 1905; Richard Davis, born November 26, 1907; Margaret, born September 13, 1909 (died January 25, 1911); Raymond Keith, born July 23, 1911; and Elizabeth Huntsman (Mrs. John S. Weygant), born May 28, 1915. There is one grandchild, Richard Davis Dilley, Jr., aged four. Dilley's son, Richard Davis Dilley, served in World War II.
Dilley is the author of a number of articles which have appeared in Country Life in America, House Beautiful, and In Doors And Out. He has written catalogues for the American Art Galleries, Anderson Gallery, and Carnegie Institute. He is a member of the Harvard Club of New York.
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+ ROLAND BURRAGE DIXON
R OLAND BURRAGE DIXON, professor of anthropology at Harvard, died December 19, 1934, at Harvard, Massachusetts. The son of Louis Seaver and Ellen Rebecca ( Burrage) Dixon, he was born November 6, 1875, at Worcester, Massachusetts, and prepared for college at Hopkinson's School. After receiving his A.B. cum laude, he entered the Graduate School, at the same time becoming an assistant in the department of anthropology. He took an A.M. in 1899 and a Ph.D. in 1900 and advanced in rank until he was ap- pointed a full professor in 1916. He was for many years chairman of his department and librarian and curator of ethnology at the Peabody Museum.
Dixon's studies took him to Siberia, Mongolia, Tibet, Java, Tas- mania, the Fiji Islands, and among the American Indians of the West Coast. He wrote numerous articles, and his three books, Oceanic Mythology, The Racial History of Man, and The Building of Cultures, are notable among anthropological literature. He was a member of several learned societies in this country and in Eu- rope and was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sci- ences and president of the American Anthropological Society and the American Folk-Lore Society. He was appointed ethnologist on the American Peace Commission, serving from December, 1918, to May, 1919. Among his colleagues he was a recognized leader in his field, and his friends valued the pleasant hours they spent at his bachelor establishment at "Zodyul," the beautiful house he built in Harvard, Massachusetts.
GOLDTHWAITE HIGGINSON DORR
I GOT off to a false start in the Law School after graduation," writes Dorr. "I didn't like it and left it to go out on the range in northwestern Nebraska. I came back from that for a cruise in the Caribbean on the Prairie in the Spanish-American War. That experience, and some years on the shelf resulting from it, had had a chastening effect, I found, when I went back to Law School at Columbia in 1901. I have since practised law in New York City,
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with some interludes. I joined the staff of the United States At- torney's office under Henry L. Stimson and served for six years as a prosecutor. In 1913 two Law School associates and I formed a firm, Rearick, Dorr & Travis, now Dorr, Hammond, Hand & Daw- son. Enough tough jobs, particularly in the railroad, anti-trust and financial fields, have come our way to make it interesting.
"From 1906 to 1913 I combined practice with teaching law at the Columbia Law School.
"During the first World War, I helped organize the War Trade Board and became assistant director of munitions in the War De- partment. At its end I spent a year in litigation for the govern- ment in the countries of northern Europe. Since then I have devoted a part of my time as vice-president of an engineering company whose research and technical work takes it widely around the world and into many industries.
"The crisis of the great depression in 1933 brought me, as coun- sel for the cotton textile industry, into participation in the novel experiment of framing and administering the first code under the N.R.A., and a rather grim experience with an industry-wide strike that followed it. In 1934 the illness and death of my partner, Walker D. Hines, took me to Turkey for six months to complete an economic survey for the government of that country which he had undertaken.
"Remembering what war inevitably meant, I cannot forget the feeling of almost physical nausea that I had in 1939 when World War II broke. That we had as house guests at the time a young English nephew from Harrow and a young German student pointed it up. Yet it had seemed to me that war was bound to come and that we were bound to do our part in it, if we could prepare in time. After we went in, a long, close, personal association with Mr. Stimson inevitably drew me down to Washington as a special assistant to him. I had a chance to be of some use in getting the lessons of the last war as to supply applied in the Army reorgani- zation of 1942. After that I worked primarily on man-power mat- ters, trying to get the same principles of selection for service recognized on the home front as we applied to those sent to fight. We almost succeeded three times. We never did devote our full
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power to the war, but what bothered us most was what we felt to be a moral defeat for the country in its failing to rise to the con- ception of giving the fullest support to those we selected to fight. England, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand did it better. Fail- ing a universal service act, it meant the resort to indirection and to expedients, some of them rather sleazy, to get the result of compulsory selection without the name. Toward the end I also worked a good deal on the preparation of what was to come after the guns were silent and saw the rise and fall of the stupid and pernicious proposal of Morgenthau to drown out the coal mines and pastoralize Germany.
"Shortly before the end of the war, I finally got overseas and on the loose in a small airplane for a few days in Germany. It was my crowning irresponsibility and made up for a lot of the inevitable frustrations of Pentagon life.
"I went back to my firm in September, 1945. I have still been something of a vagrant, for in the interval I have had a diversion across Mexico and two flights overseas for the Secretary of War. The first was as his alternate on the Cabinet Committee on Pales- tine for negotiations last July with the British government in London. The results were abortive, but vitally interesting. The second was a recent swing through Displaced Persons Camps in Germany and Austria - perhaps my most poignant experience in human relations. This gave me a keen feeling of what a marvelous substance even the uprooted human being is made of and what he can take and still preserve a fundamental strength and decency and cheerful spirit.
"My seemingly greatest imprudence, but, as the event has proved, my wisest action, was in marrying a mere girl when a year out of Law School on a law clerk's pay and with no prospects, and proceeding to produce two sons and a daughter. They, their keen interest in every aspect of life and the outdoors, in which we have canoed and sailed and camped together, to say nothing of the grandchildren, have been the real warp and woof of my life.
"I can also say, though somewhat wryly, that I was fortunate in being laid by the heels by the Spanish War to an extent that the doctors confided in my family that I would never be able to earn
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a living. I once compared notes with Dan Willard, then eighty- two and president of the B & O, who had had a similar experience. We agreed that it was an inestimable advantage to have learned at the start to expect nothing out of life. Then life itself and the varied experiences that inevitably come with it are pure gold.
"If I have any special philosophy, it is that looking back over their past million years and what they now necessarily carry with them of their ancestors, human animals are pretty good. We should be very patient with them - ourselves included."
Dorr, the son of John Van Nostrand and Nancy Maynard (Hig- ginson ) Dorr, was born October 21, 1876, at Newark, New Jersey. He prepared at Milton Academy, and received his A.B. magna cum laude at our graduation and an LL.B. from Columbia in 1904. As an undergraduate he was a member of the Harvard Memorial Society, Government Club, Phi Beta Kappa, Junta, and Forum.
Dorr married Virginia Elbert, September 18, 1905, at Sunapee, New Hampshire. Their children are: Russell Higginson, born January 17, 1907; John Van Nostrand, 2d, born May 16, 1910; and Katharine Goldthwaite (Mrs. Clark), born May 15, 1916. There are four grandchildren. Russell received his A.B. with the Harvard Class of 1929, and John was graduated with 1932. Russell served in World War II.
In addition to his other offices, Dorr served as consultant for the Newfoundland Government on Economic Survey. He is the au- thor of Economic Report on Turkey, which consisted of four vol- umes printed in Turkish. He holds a Battle Medal from the Spanish- American War, a Distinguished Service Medal from World War I, and a Presidential Medal for Merit from World War II. He served as chairman of the Board of the American Society for Prehistoric Research. He is a member of the Bar Association, Century Asso- ciation, and Harvard Club.
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