Of African Methodists, Entomologists, and Iron Majors, Vol. IX

By David "Chet" Williamson Sneade

Educator Sarah Ella Wilson was born in Worcester in 1874. She taught in the Worcester School System for nearly 50 years. Her parents, George and Elizabeth (Allen) Wilson, were freed slaves from North Carolina. "The couple had been resettled in Worcester by Lucy and Sarah Chase, prominent abolitionists, following the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863," wrote William Coleman. Sarah Ella was named after Sarah Chase.

According to the Centennial Encyclopedia of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, it was Wilson's parents who "gave attention to Sarah Ella's early training in prayer, letters, art, music, and domestic science.

"After completing the grammar school course, she encountered and was graduated from the Classical High School; thence to the State Normal School of Worcester [now Worcester State University], from where she took her diploma with honors in delivering her thesis, The Child's Disappointment in Science."

Wilson was also a musician, who was "adept at the piano, as well as being efficient in vocal music, having studied technique, expression, and harmony with a celebrated composer, Prof. C.P. Morrison." It was said that her music students numbered in the hundreds.

The Wilson family portrait. Sarah stands, top row, center

Janette Thomas Greenwood in her book, First Fruits of Freedom: The Migration of Former Slaves and Their Search for Equality in Worcester, Massachusetts, noted that Wilson, after graduating from the Normal School, "subsequently became a beloved teacher in the city's public school and taught first grade for forty-nine years at Belmont Street Elementary School. One of the first African-Americans hired in the Worcester school system, Wilson was a pioneer, mentor, and role model to countless children, regardless of race or ethnicity."

Belmont Street School where Wilson taught for 49 years, local lore says she only missed one day. 

Coleman also noted that Wilson was a founding member of the Home for the Colored and Aged, "for which she served as auditor, publicity agent, and vice president, and was active in the Worcester Inter-racial Council, which worked to remove racial barriers to housing, employment, healthcare, and recreation."

For 25 years, Wilson was the treasurer of the Northeastern Federation of Colored Woman, a member of the Women's Service Club of the YWCA, and the National Association of Colored Women (NACW).

Wilson died in Worcester in 1955. She is buried in Hope Cemetery. For more, seek out Corrine Bostic's book, Onward and Upward, a poetic portrait of the celebrated educator.

Radio and television actor Charlie Cantor was born in Worcester in 1898. Sometimes credited as “Chas,” his given names was Charles Itzkowitz. His brother was also in show business, who took the screen name of Nat Cantor. He was not related to the more famous Eddie Cantor. His father was a local rabbi.

In the 1930s, ‘40s into the ‘50s, Charlie was best known for radio appearances. At one point, he did up to 40 shows a week. With the advent of television, Cantor migrated his talents to the small screen and beginning in the early ‘50s into the mid-‘60s, he could be seen on every major show. A partial list of his radio credits includes “The Fred Allen Show,” “The Jack Benny Show,” and “The Life of Riley.” He captivated listeners with such memorable characters as Clifton Finnegan on “Duffy’s Tavern,” and Logan Jerkfinkel on “Jack Benny,” a show in which he appeared 16 times.

According to Radio Spirits, at the height of his radio career, “Cantor was one of the medium’s most dependable second bananas. Like most people in the entertainment field, he had a little show business in his blood—he worked a little in vaudeville (where he did a blackface act) and as a song plugger during his school vacations (attending a number of New York institutions, finally obtaining a B.A. from NYU), and one of his hidden talents was a none-too-shabby proficiency playing barrelhouse piano.

"Upon graduation, he landed his first job as a shoe salesman— he was not going to be a starving artist, but rather a success in the business world. Sadly, his experience with big business left him flat broke, and so he turned to nightclub work, which ended up being his ticket to radio.”

Radio Spirits also noted that other programs Charlie Cantor’s resume include “Command Performance," "G.I. Journal," "Jubilee," "The Lux Radio Theatre," "Mail Call," "Orson Welles’ Radio Almanac," "The Radio Hall of Fame," "Request Performance," "The Revuers," and "Truth or Consequences."

"Radio was good to Charlie, and because he made such a good living emoting in front of a microphone, his movie appearances were infrequent. He did reprise his Clifton Finnegan role for the 1945 silver screen version of Duffy’s Tavern, and also graced the casts of Stop, You’re Killing Me (1952), The Great Imposter (1961), and That Funny Feeling (1965). Cantor made a successful transition to the small screen as radio faded. In addition to his appearances on The Jack Benny Program, he worked on the likes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, December Bride, The People’s Choice, and Harrigan and Son (with a recurring role as ‘Gimpy’).”

Charlie trying to sell lingerie to Jack Benny

His TV credits include roles on “The Ray Bolger Show,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “The Danny Thomas Show,” “The Red Skelton Show,” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” Ultimately, Cantor guest-starred on more than 30 shows. In 1965, he appeared as The Chief in Roadside, as Little Man on “That Funny Feeling, and The Old Man on “The Lucy Show.” His last role on TV was as Elwood on the show O.K. Crackerby!”

Cantor died in Los Angeles in 1966.

Architect Wallace Kirkman Harrison was born in Worcester in 1895. A partial list of projects he was involved in includes the Rockefeller Center, The Corning Museum of Glass, The Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and the United Nations Headquarters.

A life-long student of architecture, Harrison studied at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, the Boston Architectural Club, and École des Beaux-Arts. In 1922, he was the recipient of the Rotch Taveling Scholarship, which allowed him to travel the world studying architecture. He used it to explore Europe and the Middle East.

Harrison’s first gigs in architecture were in the companies of McKim, Mead & White and later Bertram Grovesnor Goodhue. According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica (E.B.), Harrison formed a partnership with “J. André Fouilhoux in 1935 became Harrison, Fouilhoux, and Abramovitz in 1941. Harrison designed the Trylon and Perisphere theme centre at the New York World’s Fair (1939).”

In 1945, Harrison formed a partnership with Max Abramovitz, which E.B. says became “one of the largest architectural firms in the United States specializing in office buildings. Among his office buildings are the Alcoa Building, Pittsburgh, Pa. (1953), notable for its large aluminum panels cut by relatively small panels, and the Socony Mobil Building, New York City (1956). His First Presbyterian Church, Stamford, Conn., is considered an outstanding example of modern church design. Shaped like a fish, the interior is flooded with colored light from large expanses of stained glass.”

Caroline Rob Zaleski in her book, Long Island Modernism, noted that Harrison's major projects are “marked by straightforward planning and sensible functionalism, although his residential side-projects show more experimental flair. In 1931, Harrison established an 11-acre summer retreat in West Hills, New York, which was a very early example and workshop for the International Style in the United States, and a social and intellectual center of architecture, art, and politics.”

He died in New York City in 1981.

Entomologist and writer Edith Marion Patch was born in Worcester in 1876. She is considered the first “truly successful professional woman entomologist in the United States” and was the first female president of the Entomological Society of America.

Edith was the youngest of six children in the Patch family. "[She] became interested in nature after her family moved to a prairie property near Minneapolis, Minnesota when she was eight years old," says Danuta Bois. "She used the $25 prize she won for an essay on monarch butterflies to buy the scholarly Manual for the Study of Insects written by John Henry Comstock and illustrated by Anna Botsford Comstock.

"Patch attended the University of Minnesota where she studied English and won prizes for her sonnets. After graduating from college in 1901, she worked for two years as an English teacher but began looking for jobs in entomology (the study of insects). She was told repeatedly that entomology was no field for a woman until she was, finally, hired by Charles D. Woods at the University of Maine. He offered her no salary for a year until she could prove herself capable. Patch accepted the offer. She quickly showed herself a very capable entomologist and Woods awarded her a salary and a teaching position. In 1904, despite protests from sexist colleagues, he made her the head of the department. She remained in that position for the remainder of her professional life."

Bois also noted that while working at the University of Maine, Patch earned a master's degree and later a Ph.D. degree from Columbia University as a student of Comstock, who was so impressed with Patch's ideas that he incorporated her thesis for his book, Introduction to Entomology. She soon became a "recognized authority on aphids and researchers from all over the world started sending her their specimens. In 1930, she was elected president of the Entomological Society of America. One male colleague deplored the lateness of this appointment. He said in his letter, "The fact that you are not a man was the only excuse."

Ultimately, Patch was a storyteller. "As a scientist, she herself was drawn to investigate nature’s ever-unfolding story," says Mary Bird, member of the Friends of Edith Patch organization. "As a teacher, she realized that it is through story that each of us can find our own ways to connect with the living world around us and to make meaning of what we find there. She skillfully engaged her audiences, youth and adult, lay and scientific, in exploring and learning from nature’s stories.”

According to Bois, Patch published the Food Plant Catalogue of the Aphids, an exhaustive work and a major contribution to entomology. "She also published stories for children. She retired from the university in 1937. Her pension and royalties from her books gave her a comfortable retirement. However, following the death of her sister in the 1940's, Patch suffered from severe loneliness."

She died in Maine in 1954.

Football coach Frank Cavanaugh was born in Worcester in 1876. A College Football Hall of Fame inductee, he was "fortunate to live, let alone coach football," wrote Reid Oslin in his book, Tales from the Boston College Sideline: A Collection of the Greatest Eagles Stories Ever Told.

"A Dartmouth-educated lawyer, Cavanaugh found himself attracted to the game of football and wound up coaching at the University of Cincinnati, in a part-time capacity at Holy Cross, and at his alma mater (1911-1917) prior to the outbreak of World War I.

"When the conflict came, he enlisted as an artillery officer in the army's 26th Infantry -- still known as Massachusetts' own 'Yankee Division.' In the fall of 1918, he was with a headquarters unity in France during the Battle of San Mihiel when a German 210-millimeter shell exploded nearby. Shrapnel from the blast badly disfigured the right side of his face, his eyeball was dislodged from its socket." 

This was three weeks before the end of the war. "With an iron will and strong physical condition," wrote Jack Falla, "Cavanaugh endured a period of recuperation and extensive reconstructive surgery that enabled him to return to the United States and his football coaching career with an assortment of military medals and a new nickname: 'The Iron Major.'"

Although he coached at a host of colleges, Cavanaugh's greatest successes happened at Boston College, where according to Oslin, the coach helped to develop the BC program into a nationally respected powerhouse. So much so, that in 1943 Hollywood's RKO Studios released a film about his life. Appropriately called, The Iron Major, it starred Pat O'Brien in the lead role. "Part of the movie was filmed at the Liggett Estate, now O'Connell Hall on Boston College's upper campus. Action footage from several BC games was woven into the film."

Cavanaugh himself only played one year of college ball. He was an end at Dartmouth from 1896 to 1897. Coaching was his calling. Locally, he held positions at Holy Cross (1903-1905) and Worcester Academy (1909-1910). The bulk of his career was spent at BC (1919-1926) and Fordham (1927-1932). His overall record was 148 wins, 50 losses, and 18 ties.

According to Oslin, "The Iron Major" died penniless, blind, and bitter. "He warned fellow coach and former player Joe McKenney to 'Get out of coaching while you can. The end of every coaching career is a disaster.'"

He died in Marshfield, MA in 1933. He was 57.

Author Annie Russell Marble was born in Worcester in 1864. In the 1920s, she was best known as the book critic for the Worcester Sunday Telegram from 1920 to 1929. A prolific writer herself, Marble produced a shelf full of books, including her first, Books that Nourish Us, which was published in 1900. She also authored Thoreau: His Home, Friends and Books, Pageant: Heroines of Literature, The Nobel Prize Winners in History, The Women Who Came in the Mayflower, among others. Her last was From 'Prentice to Patron: The Life Story of Isaiah Thomas.

Her books were mainly studies of American historical figures, New England Transcendentalists, and local authors. Her given name was Annie Maria Russell. Her father was Isaiah Dunster Russell. Her mother was Marion Nancy (Wentworth) Russell. The family lived at 11 Charleston Street and Annie was a student at Worcester High School before heading to Smith College where she received her BA and MA. Ten years later, she married Charles Marble, a successful businessman and co-owner of the textile firm, Curtis & Marble Machine Company. By the way, the couple went to high school together.

Marble’s early efforts in the writing game were of historical copy for almanacs, calendars, and magazine articles in local trades. In 1897, she edited and wrote the introduction to On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic History by Thomas Carlyle.

The American Antiquarian Society Manuscript Collection has a file on the author. Its description reads: “This collection consists of 54 brief notes and letters written from 1888 to 1929 by various literary figures to Mrs. Marble. The correspondence contains brief notes of greeting, permission to include published verses in forthcoming publications, regrets, and acceptances of lecture invitation, and several brief autobiographical notes.”

Among the correspondents were Willa Catha, Julia Ward Howe, Jane Goodwin Austin, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. The collection notes continue with “Mrs. Marble compiled this collection mainly for its autograph value and for the insight it provided for ‘students of the chirography [penmanship], psychology, and personality.” It then lists all of the people to whom she wrote letters that the society has collected.

Marble is sometimes grouped with the New England Transcendentalist because of her association to Higginson, Thoreau, and others of the movement. She also wrote pieces on Ralph Waldo Emerson and Louisa May Alcott. Her book on Thoreau was reviewed in a 1902 copy of Literary World: “Mrs. Marble writes as a critical admirer, that is to say, she worships with discrimination. Her volume affords an interesting view of the Concord and its life of two generations ago, with Thoreau as its central figure; a scene somewhat faded, but not without features of historic permanence, biographic vividity [sic], and personal charm.”

Marble died in Worcester in 1936.

Zero Mostel, Thomajan, Tommy Cook, and Jack Palance in Panic in the Streets

Actor Edward "Guy" Thomajan was born in Worcester in 1919. Looking up the expression "character actor" in the dictionary and chances are you'll run into a mug shot of Thomajan. He was a guy guy and people called him Guy. He was known for his bit parts in such classic films as Panic in the Streets, On the Waterfront, and East Of Eden.

He worked opposite some of the greatest actors of his generation but died alone in the woods of Northern Florida in a home that he built.

"The diminutive Thomajan had a scrappy personality and salty vocabulary, but he could switch from crusty curmudgeon to charming gentleman in a matter of seconds," said Mark Hinson. "Around his friends, he enjoyed telling colorful tales of his days working on Broadway and in Hollywood with such famous figures as James Dean, Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Shelley Winters, Audrey Hepburn, Paul Muni, and legendary director Elia Kazan."

He was the son of Armenian immigrants who, according to The Tallahassee Democrat, "began developing his street-tough persona as a kid after his family relocated to a rough-and-tumble neighborhood in Brooklyn."

United Press International reported that Thomajan was a veteran of World War II, who after the war, "served as stage manager for Elia Kazan's landmark Tennessee Williams productions on Broadway, Camino Real, Sweet Bird of Youth, and A Streetcar Named Desire. During Streetcar, Thomajan's jobs also included keeping Williams supplied with bourbon and sparring with Marlon Brando backstage between scenes."

"As a teenager in New York City in the '30s, he hung around the Group Theatre, known for its socially relevant plays. It's where he first met Kazan," Hinson said. "After serving four years in India, Burma, and Japan during World War II - a tour of duty that included the liberation of hellish prison camps in Japan - Thomajan returned to find that Kazan had become one of the most prominent directors in New York. "

Other prominent features he appeared in include The Pink Panther, Miracle on 34th Street, and Viva Zapata.

He died in Monticello, Florida in 2005.

Author Alice Morse Earle was born in Worcester in 1851. Her given name was Mary Alice Morse. She was known as an antiquarian whose work centered on “the manners, customs, and handicrafts of various periods of American history.” According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “Earle’s interest in her own family’s past and in antiques of the colonial period, supplemented by tireless research, provided impetus and material for a great many more articles and books over the next several years, among them China Collecting in America (1892), Customs and Fashions in Old New England (1893), Colonial Dames and Goodwives (1895), Colonial Days in Old New York (1896), In Old Narragansett: Romances and Realities (1898), Child Life in Colonial Days (1899), Old Time Gardens (1901), and Two Centuries of Costume in America, 1620–1820 (1903)."

Writer Susan Reynolds Williams said Earle’s books were written in “a style calculated to appeal to a wide readership. She richly illustrated books and recorded the intimate details of what she described as colonial ‘home life.’ “These works reflected her belief that women had played a key historical role, helping to nurture communities by constructing households that both served and shaped their families. It was a vision that spoke eloquently to her contemporaries, who were busily creating exhibitions of early American life in museums, staging historical pageants and other forms of patriotic celebration, and furnishing their own domestic interiors.”

In her lifetime, Earle mentioned a collection of writers who inspired her, including Amos Bronson Alcott. She called him “a sweet philosopher whom I shall ever remember with the deepest gratitude as the only person who, in my early youth, ever imagined any literary capacity in me.”

Earle’s parents were Edwin Morse and Abby Mason Clary. In 1874, she was married to Henry Earle of New York City. The couple settled in Brooklyn and raised four children. According to Williams, Earle was an intensely private woman, who “conducted much of her research either by mail or at the newly established Long Island Historical Society. She began writing on the eve of her fortieth birthday, and the impressive body of scholarship she generated over the next fifteen years stimulated new interest in early American social customs, domestic routines, foodways, clothing, and childrearing patterns.”

Earle died in Hempstead, Long Island, in 1911 as a result of a tragic accident that happened two years earlier. In the winter of 1909, she set sail for the Middle East. The ship she boarded collided with another off the coast of Nantucket. The 59-year-old writer was tossed into the frigid waters. Her health failed as a result of the incident and never fully recovered from the trauma.

One of Earle’s more memorable sayings was: “The clock is running. Make the most of today. Time waits for no man. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why it is called the present.”

Historic preservationist Walton “Kip” Danforth Stowell was born in Worcester in 1936. According to Barry Mackintosh, Stowell and his contemporaries were the first generation of historic preservationists at the National Park Service charged with implementing the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. This was a “monumental legislation enabling preservation of the nation's historic, cultural, and heritage resources.”

Although born in town, Stowell was raised in Templeton. He was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a degree in architecture. According to Wiki, he “surveyed, researched, and made measured drawings of many historical structures throughout the United States to document the buildings and to provide plans for their restoration, rehabilitation, and reuse.” Some of the many include: The Slyder House (c. 1852) at Gettysburg National Park in Pennsylvania, The Scale House (c. 1829) at Salem Maritime National Historic Site in Massachusetts, and The Sagamore Hill National Historic Site (c. 1962) in Oyster Bay, New York on Long Island.

Regionally, the historic structures that Stowell was involved with include: The Peter Burr House in Jefferson County, West Virginia, “believed to be the oldest frame structure in Jefferson County.” He also worked on Galilean Fisherman's Hall in Charles Town, West Virginia. This historic hall is where “a group of local blacks in about 1885 formed a chapter of the Grand United Order of the Galilean Fisherman, which was a black fraternal organization founded in about 1856 in Baltimore as a benevolent society to help blacks.”

Between the years of 1995-2001, Stowell served as mayor of Harpers Ferry. He was considered the “lead voice calling for saving of the deteriorating structure and pressuring the CSX Railroad and the National Park Service into reaching an agreement after many decades of back and forth negotiations."

Stowell had a reputation not only in Jefferson County and West Virginia but also nationally. He served on a train of boards and organizations including the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Board of Advisors, American Institute of Architects, and the International Institute of Interior Design, among others.

He died in his home in Harpers Ferry in 2009.

Frank Carroll and Linda Fratianne

Figure Skating Coach Francis M. "Frank" Carroll was born in Worcester in 1938. He is the coach of World and Olympic Champions. A former competitive skater himself, a partial list of the famous athletes who trained with Carroll include Michelle Kwan, Evan Lysacek, Linda Fratianne, Denis Ten, and Gracie Gold.

Carroll grew up in the neighborhood of a skating rink and spent a great deal of time in the arena. In her book, Talking Figure Skating: Behind the Scenes in the World's Most Glamorous Sport, Beverly Smith said the impressionable young skater was “interested by the combination of artistry and athleticism.” He became so involved in the sport that he relocated to Winchester to be near his coach and mentor Maribel Vinson Owen.

A year before graduating from Holy Cross, his training resulted in a bronze medal on the junior level at the 1959 U.S. Championships. A year later, he won the silver and soon after joined the ranks of professional skating taking a position with the Ice Follies until 1964. Deciding to go back to school, he was accepted to law school at the University of San Francisco, but as Smith reported, he chose to pursue a career in acting instead. “He appeared in the background of several beach films, including The Loved One.”

Carroll and Kwan

Carroll turned to coaching as a means to support himself in between acting gigs -- finding his calling in the process. His successes are many, most notably, Evan Lysacek who won a World Championship in 2009 and an Olympic gold medal. Linda Fratianne won two World Championships and an Olympic silver medal in 1980. Michelle Kwan won four World Championships and an Olympic silver medal in 1998.

Carroll and Lysacek

In 1996, Carroll was inducted into the United States Figure Skating Hall of Fame and in 2007 elected to the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame. Now in his 80s, he was recently interviewed by Philip Hersh who noted that at the 1998 Olympics, “Carroll talked about an epiphany he had while sitting in the Jules Verne restaurant on the second level of the Eiffel Tower. It suddenly hit him just how far the kid who once skated on frozen ponds in an old Massachusetts mill town had come.”




This is a work in progress. Please send all suggestions, comments, and corrections to walnutharmonicas@gmail.com.   Thank you.