USA > Ohio > Women of Ohio; a record of their achievements in the history of the state, Volume III > Part 19
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"Ben" Foraker and Julia Bundy grew up on farms separated by what would be a short motor trip today but parted then by the worst roads in the world. "Ben" was a reader. He burned down all the dip candles of his parents' home. He was also a student. He could not go to college as soon as he was ready for it, though. He went, instead, to war. And it was with all the lustre of a brilliant war record that the dashing young captain entered the "University" at Delaware the same year that Julia Bundy entered the "Female College." It was there that the two first met.
Romance throve at Delaware. It was there, Mrs. Foraker points out, that Rutherford B. Hayes met and became engaged to Lucy Webb, and it was there that Charles Warren Fairbanks, later vice president, met his wife-to-be, Cornelia Cole.
In 1877 "apprehensively" the female college and the university were united. But this was seven years after Captain Foraker and Julia Bundy were them- selves united. Their marriage took place Oct. 4, 1870, two years after Julia was graduated.
The wedding took place at the Bundy farm and was the grandest affair ever seen in the country round. There was not one huge wedding cake; there were two, sent from Portsmouth, 50 miles away. The bride's lingerie was trimmed with "real Val" lace, her carriage dress was of "dregs of wine" surah, her calling costume apple green silk-and there was a Chantilly lace sacque with angel sleeves.
Julia's parents were very well-to-do indeed, but her young lawyer husband had his way to make. Neither bride nor groom had the slightest doubt but that he would immediately do so. About this also Mrs. Foraker wrote with engaging candor. "Foraker's income that first year of our married life was exactly $400. The following year it rose to $1,100 and the next to $2,700. After that it was easy."
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After Foraker was appointed judge of the Superior Court, at Cincinnati, things did indeed go easier. And things went very happily, for Julia was now "rocking cradles." The first of their five children was Joseph Benson, Jr., a son in whom both father and mother took keen and continuous delight and satis- faction until the death of this beloved firstborn, in 1915. Three daughters, Florence, Louise and Julia, were the next successive additions to the family and finally came another son, Arthur St. Clair Foraker, whose early death brought their first experience of deep personal grief to the closely knit and strongly affectionate family.
It was undoubtedly Julia Bundy Foraker who made possible the strikingly successful career of her brilliant and tumultous husband. For one thing, Foraker was for a long time threatened with physical breakdown from overwork. It is believed to have been for this reason that his wife accompanied him constantly, even driving him to and from his Cincinnati law offices and to and from the Capitol while they lived in Washington.
Mrs. Foraker pays constant tribute to the fine intelligence, unwavering courage and unstinted effort of her husband. These are qualities that make for a successful life. But it is obvious that they must many times have failed of fruition had it, not been for team work such as bespeaks the same qualifications for the party of the second part.
Foraker became U. S. senator in 1897 and remained. "the Ohio influence" at Washington until his Senate service ended, in 1909. But between these dates and before and after, were epochal clashes and conflicts, within the party and without. To begin with, there was the famous clash with President Cleveland, when it was ordered by the then secretary of war that certain captured Confed- erate flags be returned. Many Union veterans in Ohio were dreadfully perturbed. Foraker sent out a reassuring-and red-flag-waving-telegram. "No rebel flags will be surrendered while I am governor." For this, Frances Cleveland, bride of the president, is said to have waited opportunity to publicly snub the governor of Ohio.
Then came the national Republican convention of 1888, at which Foraker is said to have kept his pledge as a Sherman delegate despite the fact that when matters seemed to have reached a deadlock he was asked-by powerful inside leaders-to accept nomination himself. Well, it turned out the way such things do. Foraker's adherence to his Sherman pledge threw the strength of Blaine- who had withdrawn his name-to the until then more or less dark horse. This was General Benjamin Harrison. So that is how he got to be president.
Another thing that happened to the Forakers in 1888 was the encampment, at Columbus, of the Grand Army of the Republic. There were 70,000 of them. Columbus became a tent city, it housed 200,000 visitors, and as for the governor's mansion-a rented house-it was packed for a week with everything from gov- ernors to major generals and all gradations of dignity, civilian and military, in between.
---
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This was the sort of thing in which Julia Foraker showed her metal. The dining room and the small library were the only rooms not filled with beds or cots. Approximately twenty persons came regularly to the table and there were always extras-who were quite as warmly welcomed.
The tempo of Julia Foraker's life increased rapidly as her husband's responsibilities and his influence at the nation's capital grew. The Forakers accompanied the Benjamin Harrisons to Washington for Harrison's inaugura- tion. They were good friends, in spite of what must have been the striking contrast between Foraker's warm impetuosity, his wife's gay good humor and the Arctic temperament which seems to have been Harrison's outstanding characteristic.
Mrs. Foraker admits that "This benumbing frigidity (of Benjamin Harri- son) was what made him so good a friend to Cleveland in 1892. He had a trick of turning a Republican into a Democrat that was almost sleight of hand."
Foraker was defeated the first and the fourth time he was nominated for governor of Ohio. The two terms he served were "sandwiched" between. His wife took pains to be explicit about the fourth nomination. "He was not a candidate," she wrote. "He was voted in (the nomination). I felt, in the way that a woman flairs disaster, that it was a mistake."
Major Mckinley figured largely at this Ohio state convention. He was for Foraker's nomination. He moved to make it unanimous. But-there were, it seems, already wheels moving within wheels. What Mrs. Foraker believed to be a stop-Foraker movement was presently to be in full swing, with, she was equally convinced, Mark Hanna and William McKinley as prime movers.
"Personally," she wrote, "I regarded that defeat as the best thing that could happen. For some time Hanna had been moving heaven and earth to push McKinley toward the presidency. Had Governor Foraker been re-elected in 1889 he would undoubtedly have been in McKinley's way, whether he wanted to be or not and for the second time he would have been brushed by the wings of a presidential nomination.
From this point, a new motif, a note of warning and danger, is to be detected in the Foraker epic. It is barely a whisper. But, very gradually, it deepens and amplifies until its grim tragedy dominates. Not, however, for a long time. For succeeding years the life of Julia and her family radiates happiness and success.
Foraker nominated Mckinley for the high office of governor of Ohio in 1891 and for the presidency of the United States in 1896. And it would be Foraker who would nominate Mckinley for re-election in 1900. So when Presi- dent Mckinley entered the White House and Foraker the U. S. Senate in 1897, it was a natural circumstance that "Ohio was peculiarly entrenched in the Mckinley administration."
There probably never was a happier Washington hostess than Mrs. Foraker. Happy literally in her enjoyment of the charm, and sparkle, and movement, and
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distinction, and significance of life amid the notables. Happy figuratively in her understanding of and her facility in the art of entertaining. The little girl who had passed the biscuit at the Bundy farmhouse table had grown into a woman thoroughly accomplished in the ways of high society.
The Forakers built themselves a fine and commodious house on Sixteenth Street. The first dinner they gave there was for President and Mrs. Mckinley. Many brilliant functions followed in due order-dinners for diplomats, a recep- tion for William Howard Taft, just back from the Philippines-Foraker had appointed Taft to his first public service job, as successor to Judge Judson Harmon of the Superior Court of Cincinnati, back in 1887.
There were teas, dinner dances and parties without number for the three handsome daughters of the house, Florence, Louise and Julia Foraker. The Foraker girls made their debuts from the Sixteenth Street home and a little later the big ballroom of the house was the scene of a brilliant wedding -- that of Julia Foraker to Frances King Wainwright, of Philadelphia. On that day the U. S. Senate did not convene until 2 P. M .--- so the senators could go to the Foraker wedding.
Then came a new excitement-grim enough and grave enough, while it lasted. The Spanish American War. It was "The War" to Mrs. Foraker-as any mother can understand. Benson, oldest son of the Forakers, was on the staff of Gen. James E. Wade. Came, in late October, a telegram, "Benson has yellow fever." To recover from yellow fever was, in that day, a miracle.
Benson recovered, but not fully. His death in 1915 was indirectly due, his mother believed, to his desperate illness in 1898. "War," she wrote, "is yellow fever to us." Nor did Mrs. Foraker forget the sons of other mothers, in her anxiety about her own. She did a thousand things-one of the last in the name of that young Captain Gridley-"you may fire when ready, Gridley"-whose heroism everybody so loudly applauded and so quickly forgot. It took Mrs. Foraker lots of time and lots of effort to get a pension of $50 a month for Grid- ley's widow. But she got it. Then "Dear me," she wrote, "I wish I had asked for $100."
Now the strident string vibrates more audibly. It is the discord of clashing political ambitions. It seems that Mark Hanna, old friend and for a time, solicitous friend of the Foraker family, has finally become solicitous on his own account. He discloses his secret ambition. He has been, of course, the power behind the throne. But he wants to emerge. He wants, in short, to be senator.
But John Sherman is, at the time, the other Ohio senator.
Too bad! Could President Mckinley be expected to say no to his great benefactor ? Unthinkable. Sherman must resign. But Sherman does not want to resign. He is old, he knows how to serve in the field he has served so long. But he does not want to be secretary of state, the glittering job that is offered him. He knows it's a job he is not fit for. But it's willy nilly, so eventually he yields. When the Spanish American War breaks out, he promptly resigns. Too old.
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There was still a hitch in the senatorial appointment after Sherman's resignation. Governor Bushnell, of Ohio, must name his successor. And Hanna, it seems, had opposed Bushnell's nomination for governor.
So Foraker's help was needed-and summoned. "Hanna was fond of pro- nouncing my husband dead when 'Forakerism' blocked his plans," said Mrs. Foraker. "Now he besought him to throw himself into the breach and speed the glacier-like Bushnell."
Governor Bushnell did finally appoint Mark Hanna-but he certainly took his time-as was also but natural.
The tragedy of McKinley's assassination is dealt with in moving terms by Mrs. Foraker. But she could not resist a particularly deft and telling paragraph.
She quotes a certain old comrade of Mckinley's. "He was the purest man that ever lived," sobbed the old soldier. "Often I've heard him say, 'Boys, if there's any dirty work to be done-do it, but don't tell me.' "
Now comes the Roosevelt administration-and the "Brownsville affair." And now one hears, no longer afar off but throbbing in the eardrums, the sounds of that epic battle of which Julia, Bundy Foraker was not only close up observer but also candid reporter.
Theodore Roosevelt and Joseph Benson Foraker had first met at the Re- publican National Convention of 1884. They liked each other promptly-became friends. Final conflict between two such fiery natures was, perhaps, inevitable. But it would surely have seemed most illogical-on both sides-for many mutually cooperative years. Well, what will be, will be.
A negro battalion, the 25th U. S. Infantry-was accused of having "shot up" Brownsville, Texas, one night when stationed there.
Roosevelt accepted as convincing and convicting evidence which Foraker believed to be prejudiced and inconclusive. The astute Ohio attorney set himself to gather the facts in the case-a vast array, which he many times endeavored to present. He could not get the president to acquiesce in a hearing such as he believed any soldier, white or black, entitled to. But Roosevelt was himself quite convinced as to the battalion's guilt. Why drag out the matter? So the 25th Infantry Battalion was dishonorably discharged.
Only that did not end the matter. Mrs. Foraker's presentation of the affair is detailed, lengthy and obviously based on her personal viewpoint-but none the less interesting, if for no other reason than the tragic climax to which it leads.
This climax was-the "Standard Oil Letters." These letters had been stolen from Foraker's files and sold, according to Mrs. Foraker, to a sensational newspaper syndicate. They were interpreted, when made public in screaming headlines, as showing that while serving in the U. S. Senate, Foraker had been secretly employed by the Standard Oil Company.
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When the "story" broke, the whole Foraker family leaped to instant action and Foraker was able to produce promptly other letters showing that his legal work for the Standard Oil Company was over and done with before any Federal action against the company was foreseen or prepared. The letters also dealt specifically with one check-for $50,000. This had been earmarked, according to letters produced by Foraker, for-ironic incident-the purchase of a news- paper to combat Hanna's opposition to nomination of Roosevelt for the presidency.
But fate was now dealing her cards fast and furiously. No human effort could have changed the all too human outcome. Whatever may have been the ultimate facts of the case, newspaper readers devour accusation, care little for refutation.
Fully 80 per cent of all "big news' is destructive. This is the fault of no special individual. It is the fault of human nature. We are made, sadly enough, like that.
Besides, for Mrs. Foraker, the real tragedy seems not to have been the charges alleged against her husband but the acceptance of the charges by those on whose support she believed her husband had good right to depend.
Foraker and Roosevelt had become, virtually, open enemies. So the presi- dents condemnation, while rousing anger, could not really wound. "Mr. Roose- velt and Mr. Foraker were oddly alike in natural fearlessness, independence of thought and utter inability to yield," she wrote. "Were it to be lived all over again, I'm afraid everything would happen just as it did."
It was the failure of William Howard Taft, whom, it seems, Foraker had consistently and most advantageously befriended, to rally to her husband's defense or give him a vote of confidence, that really wounded Mrs. Foraker so deeply.
But not to the death. By no means. Julia Bundy Foraker was never really vanquished. Life could not do that to her. She was too good a fighter. She had plenty of moral courage and philosophy. She proved this in her widowhood and old age, shortly before her death.
"I've enjoyed my long journey. After high waves and buffettings, happily we find ourselves at last, safe on a smooth white beach, covered with lovely shells."
FRANKIE MURRAY FREESE
FRANKIE MURRAY FREESE, lifelong resident of Galion, was the first woman sheriff of Crawford County. She became matron of the Crawford County Jail in January, 1923, when her husband, Ira Freese, was elected sheriff. At the time of the latter's death in a railroad crossing accident in 1924 she was appointed sheriff and served to January 5, 1925.
Notwithstanding the stern responsibilities of her job, Mrs. Freese was a woman whose interests were centered in the home and with the exception
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of the time she served the county in this manly capacity, she confined her efforts to her family.
She was the mother of four children, Mildred of Bucyrus, Norbert, U.S.N., Billy L., of Galion, and Gerald J. of Pittsburgh.
Mrs. Freese was born in Galion in 1887 and died in 1936.
MRS. JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD
MRS. JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD (Lucretia Randolph Garfield), wife of the twentieth president of the United States, met her future husband when she was a school teacher at Chester, Ohio' and he was attending Geauga Seminary there.
There was probably little of what we now term "collegiate" about either of them. James Garfield's father died when James was one of four small children left for the widow to support. In the forepart of this history is told his mother's struggle-and his own-that he might gain an education.
At Geauga he worked his way, carpentering, harvesting, teaching-any- thing honest that would pay for his schooling. Lucretia Randolph knew all about this sort of struggle. She was willing to wait as long as waiting was necessary.
Their patience was rewarded when the still youthful Garfield was made president of Hiram College in 1857. They were married in 1858 at Lucretia's home, Hudson, Ohio.
The next year Garfield was admitted to the bar. Things were going wonderfully. He was elected, the very same year, to the Ohio Senate.
But clouds were gathering-and in 1861 they burst into the Civil War. Mrs. Garfield shared her husband's feeling-he must help defend the Union. But when he was sent as a lieutenant-colonel of the Forty-Second Ohio volunteers to join General Buell in Kentucky, it was not easy to conceal her fear from the children. But Lucretia managed, somehow-and her hus- band came back from the war a major general. He had been elected to Con- gress the year before so now Lucretia Garfield and her husband went to Washington and practically stayed there. For Garfield was re-elected eight times to Congress and in 1880 was elected president.
A year and a few months after Garfield was dead-shot by a disap- pointed office seeker-and Lucretia Garfield was not only widowed but left with all too scanty means to rear their children.
According to Henry Howe it was Cyrus W. Field of Atlantic cable fame, who met the situation. He started a subscription which totalled $360,000 in just a few days. Then they stopped it, for Lucretia Garfield could now maintain comfortably and even beautifully, the Garfield home "Lawnfield" near Mentor, Ohio. She built in her husband's memory, a stone addition to the frame structure in order to house his books-the books he devoured as a child, the books he studied so hard, the books he read so appreciatively- the books he loved so well.
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LAURA DOW GEBBY
LAURA DOW GEBBY, of Bellefontaine, is secretary to L. T. Marshall in Washington, D. C. She has long been interested in politics and has com- prehensive knowledge of political situations and of the vital questions and issues of the day, but her activities are not confined to this line as she is well known as an organist of talent and is prominently connected with club and charitable organizations.
Mrs. Gebby is a daughter of Judge Duncan and Margaret (Gregg) Dow, the former a native of Ohio, while the mother, who was born in Pennsylvania, came to Ohio with her parents, her father being a civil engineer with the Big Four Railroad when the line was being built through Bellefontaine. Judge Dow was a stalwart Republican and an outstanding figure in the ranks of the party. He was the author of the "Dow law," was a member of the house of representatives and of the state senate and was serving as a member of the board of pardons at the time of his death in 1912. His widow long survived him, passing away in 1930.
Their daughter, Laura Dow, was born in Bellefontaine and after master- ing the work of the grades entered high school from which she was gradu- ated. She next attended Monmouth College, of Monmouth, Illinois, where she pursued the entire conservatory course, becoming an organist of note. She has been organist in Bellefontaine churches to a considerable extent and her love of music is one of the strong interests of her life. After completing her college course in 1895 she returned to Bellefontaine and was married here to Mr. Gebby in 1902. They became the parents of two sons and a daugh- ter, but Duncan died in young manhood and Roger died from an operation just after he had been admitted to practice at the Ohio bar. The daughter, Marian, born in Bellefontaine and graduated from the high school, then studied for a time at Smith College and later was graduated from Wittenberg College, where she majored in business administration. She afterward served as secretary of the Ohio legislature for three years and was receptionist for John Bricker, the present governor.
Mrs. Gebby fills the position of secretary to L. T. Marshall in Washing- ton, D. C. She was chairman of the state central committee for about ten years and was county chairman of the Liberty Loan drives in the World War period. She has aided largely in the work of the Presbyterian church and taught a class in the Sunday school for twenty-five years. She is a member of federated clubs and charity organizations and is constantly extending a helping hand when she can assist a fellow traveler on life's journey. She has done her part to further progress along various lines of general uplift and improvement, her interests centering in those channels through which flows the greatest good to the greatest number.
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GRACE G. GLASCOTT
GRACE G. GLASCOTT, who since 1934 has continuously occupied gov- ernmental position and in July, 1938, by presidential appointment became director of the state of Ohio for the National Emergency Council, with office in Cleveland, was born in Buffalo, New York, August 25, 1896, her parents being Ormond Skinner and Jessie Helen (Allyn) Glascott. The father was born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada and was descended from English ancestry whose coat of arms is still available. The mother's ancestry dates back in direct line to the Hon. Mathew Allyn, who with his wife, Margaret Wyatt, left Devonshire, England, in 1636 and settled in Windsor, Connecticut. Mrs. Edith Allyn Dyer, an aunt of Miss Glascott, established the right of mem- bership in the Daughters of the American Revolution by right of lineal descent from Pelatiah Allyn, who was born in Barkhamsted, Connecticut, and who fought in the war for American independence.
Miss Glascott spent her girlhood prior to 1913 in Buffalo and Rochester, New York, in Bellevue, Pennsylvania, and Columbus, Ohio, and attended the grade schools of the first two cities, the high schools in Bellevue and Columbus and the Shaw high school of East Cleveland, Ohio, where she was graduated in June, 1915. She is also a graduate of the Spencerian College of Cleveland, having completed a business course in 1919.
For the past twenty-seven years Miss Glascott has been a resident of Cleveland, where she has been active in connection with various business enterprises, as well as in public office. From 1916 to 1918, she served the Osborn Manufacturing Company in a clerical capacity and in 1919-20 was private secretary to the sales manager of the Neale-Phypers Company. She was private secretary to the insurance manager of the American Finance Company in 1920-21, was private secretary from 1921 to 1923 to Benedict Crowell, president of the Rosiclare Mining Company and from 1923 to 1933 was executive secretary to Benedict Crowell, chairman of the board of the Crowell & Little Construction Company and its president, Bascom Little. In 1933-4 with the Ohio, Michigan and Panhandle of West Virginia bituminous coal code authorities, she was executive secretary to the presidential mem- ber, Benedict Crowell and executive secretary to the Ohio Coal Code Author- ity. Miss Glascott, from 1934 to 1937 served as administrative assistant in charge of public relations for the National Emergency Council, and in November, of the latter year, became associated with the Social Security Board as administrative assistant to the regional director of Region 5, in which capacity she continued until July 1, 1938, when by presidential appoint- ment she took over the administration of the National Emergency Council as director for the state of Ohio. In this position she is supervising all pub- lic relation activities, is making radio talks, speeches and newspaper re- leases, makes contacts with labor, industry and state and federal agencies.
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