Of Mother Jefferson, the Yoruba, and Once an Eagle, Vol. X

Actress Zara Frances Cully Brown was born in Worcester in 1892. She is best known as Olivia “Mother” Jefferson, who endeared herself to millions on the TV sitcom “The Jeffersons." In covering her passing, Jet Magazine said the distinguished actress, drama coach, director, and writer, had “accumulated a list of acting credentials that spanned 50 years before she died of cancer at the age of 86.”

Zara was from one of Worcester’s more prominent African-American families. The eldest of 10 surviving children, her parents were Nora Ann (Gilliam) Cully and Ambrose Cully. Two of her brothers were notable jazz musicians – Wendell (sic Culley), and Ray Cully. Her sisters were also personalities of distinction. One sister, Agnes, was a seamstress for singer Marian Anderson. At the time of her birth, Zara's father was listed in the Worcester Directory as working as a car cleaner for the New York and New England Railroad Boards and residing at 49 Bowdoin Street.

49 Bowdoin Street today

Zara, whose name is derived from Arabic roots, meaning “blossoming flower,” “splendor,” and “dawn” was a gifted child. She was a graduate of Worcester School of Speech and Music and practiced the art of elocution. “I guess God gave me talent,” she told Jet. “As a little bitty girl, I had a photographic memory. I could take a poem of 22 verses, read it over and get right up and recite it.”

Jet also said that though acclaimed as “one of the world’s greatest elocutionists,” early in her career after moving to New York City, she did not achieve real fame until her role on “The Jeffersons.”

In the 1925 edition of the Worcester Directory, Zara was listed as "removed to Jacksonville, Florida." “Mrs. Cully Brown taught acting for 15 years in her own studio and at Edward Waters College, but was disturbed by her encounters with Southern racism," Jet reported. ‘It was a traumatic experience,’ she recalled. ‘I met with such violence and things … and I was always having conflicts because I couldn’t take it. If I’d been a man I guess I would have been lynched.’”

According to the St. Petersburg Times, Zara was known as Florida’s “Dean of Drama” before leaving for Hollywood. She appeared in such movies as The Learning Tree, The Liberation of L.B. Jones, The Great White Hope, Ghetto Woman, and Brother John. Her television appearances included “Christmas Dreams,” “The People Next Door,” “Run for Your Life,” “Cowboy in Africa,” “Name of the Game,” “Mod Squad,” “Night Gallery,” and “All in the Family.”

She died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles in 1978.

Harpers Ferry, Virginia, 1865

Civil War Brevet Brigadier General Hasbrouck Davis was born in Worcester in 1827. He was known for his action with the 12th Illinois Cavalry in the Battle of Harpers Ferry in 1862. “He helped the unit escape without losing a single man, despite being surrounded,” wrote Eric B. Stone. “On February 5, 1864, he was promoted to Colonel. Throughout the rest of the war, he held various commands, including the 2nd and 3rd Brigade Cavalry Divisions in the Department of Mississippi. On March 13, 1865, he was brevetted to Brigadier General of Volunteers ‘for gallant and meritorious service’ and resigned on August 1, 1865.”

According to John Chandler Bancroft Davis, Hasbrouck was the third son of U.S. Representative and later U.S. Senator ‘Honest’ John Davis. “He attended public schools then matriculated at Williams College in 1841. He graduated four years later, returning to Worcester to teach at the high school. After a year, he decided to instead pursue a career in the ministry. He studied in Heidelberg, Baden, to study the German language. He returned to Massachusetts in 1849, accepting the pastorship of the Unitarian church in Watertown. Davis preached for only a few years before deciding to step down to study law. He was admitted to the bar in 1854, then opened a law office in Boston. The next year, Davis decided to head west to Chicago, Illinois, opening a successful firm there.”

In his book, In Memoriam: Hasbrouck Davis, Bancroft Davis wrote that Hasbrouck was mustered into service with the 12th Illinois Cavalry in February 1862 as a lieutenant colonel. “Arriving shortly after the First Battle of Winchester, Davis was put in charge of scouting posts. On a mission around Bunker Hill, West Virginia, Davis successfully repelled a Confederate attack. The Confederates counterattacked the next morning, but Davis sent a band of forty troops out near Darkesville, West Virginia. Under Davis' command, they routed the opposing troops, killing 25, including the grandson of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, and taking 50 prisoners.”

Bancroft Davis

Bancroft Davis also noted that Hasbrouck was “brevetted a brigadier general on March 12, 1865, and was sent to George Armstrong Custer in Alexandria, Louisiana. However, he fell ill and was forced to resign on August 1. He returned to Chicago and continued to practice as a lawyer, serving one term as city attorney.”

In 1870, Hasbrouck Davis boarded the SS Cambria and set sail for Ireland. On October 19th, the ship sank off the Northern Coast of Ireland some 10 miles offshore from Donegal. More than 175 died that day, including Davis, whose body was never recovered.

Hasbrouck Davis is honored with a cenotaph at Rural Cemetery. He was 43.

Professor Winthrop Jordan was born in Worcester in 1931. He was best known as the author of White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812. The book garnered a National Book Award, the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award (Phi Beta Kappa), the Francis Parkman Prize (Society of American Historians), and the Bancroft Prize (Columbia University).

In his review of the book, August Meier said, “In his ambitious and learned volume, Professor Jordan deals with the racial attitudes of white Americans from the colonial period to the War of 1812. His main themes are the origins of slavery and racism in the United States, and the rise and decline of the late eighteenth-century anti-slavery movement which reached its crest during the era of the American Revolution.”

According to Wiki, Jordan came from a long line of scholars and liberal thinkers. “He was the son of Henry Donaldson Jordan, a professor of 19th-century British and American politics at Clark University, and Lucretia Mott Churchill, the great-great-granddaughter of the Quaker abolitionists and women's rights advocates James and Lucretia Coffin Mott. One of Jordan's great uncles, Edward Needles Hallowell, was a commanding officer of the celebrated Civil War African-American infantry regiment the 54th Massachusetts of the United States Colored Troops.

“As a young man, Jordan attended the prestigious Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts before going on to receive an A.B. in social relations from Harvard University in 1953, an M.A. in history from Clark University in 1957, and a Ph.D. in history in 1960 from Brown University, which later recognized him as a distinguished alumnus. Jordan's doctoral dissertation formed the foundation of what became his masterwork White Over Black.”

Edward Needles Hallowell of the 54th

In his teaching career, he was a history instructor at Phillips Exeter Academy, a Professor of History at University of California, Berkeley, and for more than 20 years, the William F. Winter Professor of History and Afro-American Studies at the University of Mississippi.

In her book, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, Annette Gordon-Reed points out that “in assessing allegations about Thomas Jefferson and a liaison with his slave, Jordan was the first historian to use Dumas Malone's timeline of Jefferson's activities to demonstrate that he was at Monticello for the conception of each of Sally Hemings' children.”

Jordan is also the author of The White Man's Burden, Tumult in Silence, and The United States Becoming a World Power, among others. 

Jordan died in Oxford, Mississippi of liver cancer, after battling Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).

Baseball pitcher Rosy Ryan was born in Worcester in 1898. He has the distinction of being the first National League pitcher to have ever hit a home run in the World Series. It happened at the Polo Grounds in game three of the 1924 series. Ryan was a member of the New York Giants at the time, where one of his teammates was Casey Stengel. Unfortunately, his team lost the series to the Washington Senators, but his name lives on in notoriety.

Rosy was born Wilfred Patrick Dolan Ryan. He first rose to prominence at Holy Cross College, where he graduated in 1920. He was seen as an “instant sensation as a freshman on the Crusader baseball team, posting a 9-2 record on the mound.” He broke into the big leagues at the age of 21 and from 1919 to 1933, he played professionally with the Giants, the Boston Braves, the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers.

His last major league baseball appearance was with the Brooklyn Dodgers on September 17, 1933. In his book, Casey Stengel: Baseball’s Greatest Character, Marty Appel, noted that in Ryan’s last year the Dodgers added “Casey’s pal Rosy Ryan to the pitching staff, but the year did not go well. By August they had settled into seventh place, some twenty games out of first, and newspapers were already speculating that Casey might be dropped – despite having a contract for 1934 – if things didn’t turn around quickly.”

Ryan ended his playing career after the ‘33 season going 1-1. Over the years of his MLB career, he had pitched in 248 games with 52 wins against 47 losses. He participated in three World Series, 1922, ’23, and ’24. Ryan has the record for the most World Series relief wins of three. After retiring from playing, Ryan got into coaching. Baseball Reference has him managing the Eau Claire Bears (1941-1942) and Minneapolis Millers (1944-1945). He was then the GM of the Millers (1946-1957), Phoenix Giants, (1958-1959, 1966-1973), and Tacoma Giants (1960-1965).

Ryan died in Scottsdale, Arizona in 1980. He is buried in St. John’s Cemetery in Worcester.

Actor James Ackley Maxwell was born in Worcester in 1929. According to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), he was best known for his roles in The Portrait of a Lady (1968), World Theatre (1959) and The Terrorists (1975). Maxwell was educated at Mercersburg Academy, Mercersburg, Pennsylvania; Amherst College, Amherst, and the Old Vic Theatre School, Bristol, England “where he met the other founding members of Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre Company.”

Though he was born here, the actor, writer, and director spent most of his life and career in England. Wiki’s extensive notes have him moving to Britain at the age of 20 to “train at the Old Vic theatre school. While there he met fellow students Casper Wrede and Richard Negri (co-founders of the Royal Exchange 25 years later).”

“When the Royal Exchange,” writes Adam Benedick, “Britain's first purpose-built in-the-round auditorium opened in 1976 Maxwell appeared in both of the first productions: Kleist's The Prince of Homburg and Sheridan's The Rivals. He then directed Albert Finney in Coward's Present Laughter, Patricia Routledge in Pinero's The Schoolmistress, his wife Avril Elgar in The Corn is Green and Harold Brighouse's rarely acted Manchester play Zack. In Schiller's Don Carlos (1987), which Maxwell translated, he played with characteristic grandeur and resonance the Grand Inquisitor; and he retained to the end the '59 Company spirit in the matter of mixing old and new - directing, for example, the premiere of Michael Wall's Mobil prizewinner Amongst Barbarians (1989).”

Wiki also noted that although the theatre was always Maxwell’s first love he appeared in television and film. “His best-known television role was as King Henry VII in a BBC2 drama series, The Shadow of the Tower, but it did not have the same level of success as The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970), which was its predecessor drama. His other television credits include a prominent role in the Doctor Who story "Underworld" (1978). He also appeared as Osmond in a television serial of Henry James' Portrait of a Lady (1967), The Avengers and The Saint. He played General-Major von Wittke in an episode of Enemy at the Door.”

His film credits stretch from 1959 to 1981. He also appeared in Subway in the Sky (1959), The Damned (1962), Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1970), and Ransom (1974), among others.

Maxwell died in London in 1995. He was 66.

Writer Jane Goodwin Austin was born in Worcester in 1831. She is not to be confused with the more famous English novelist, Jane Austen. Our local author wrote historical novels mainly about her Plymouth Colony ancestors.

According to Peggy M. Baker, it was through her father, Isaac Goodwin, that Jane G. Austin was “descended from Mayflower passengers Robert Warren, Myles Standish, John Alden and Priscilla Mullins. Through her mother, Eliza Hammatt, she was descended from Mayflower passengers John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley. It is perhaps fitting, however, that the hero of Austin’s first historical novel was an ancestor shared by both her father and her mother.”

As a child, Austin was educated in private schools in Boston, where she moved to after her father died. She married at the age of 19 and turned to writing while her four children were still young. “Her first book,” Baker said, “Fairy Dreams (or Wandering in Elf-Land), a rather stiff little fantasy for children, was published in 1859 and was followed shortly thereafter by several adventure novels. These early offerings were neither original in theme nor practiced in technique. Her fiction also appeared in such publications as Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, Putnam's, Lippincott's, and the Galaxy.

“Over the next 20 years, however, Austin continued to polish her skills with a series of light novels of high sentiment and implausible derring-do. … Around 1880, Austin began to find her own unique “voice,” turning to subjects and stories with which she was intimately acquainted, first to more realistic stories of New England and, finally, to historical novels about Plymouth Colony.”

In reviewing the work, Baker said, “The book bears the true mark of a creative talent. Austin’s characters are so sympathetic and her details so vivid that a casual reader may forget that Nobleman is fiction.”

Austin wrote a series of what has become known as her “Pilgrim novels.” In addition to A Nameless Nobleman, she also wrote Standish of Standish: a story of the Pilgrims, Dr. LeBaron & his daughters: a story of the Old Colony, Betty Alden: the first-born daughter of the Pilgrims, and David Alden’s daughter and other stories of Colonial times.

She is also the author of such titles as Kinah's Curse, The Novice or Mother Church Thwarted, The Tailor Boy, Outpost, The Shadow of Moloch Mountain, Moonfolk, Mrs. Beauchamp Brown, The Desmond Hundred, Nantucket Scraps, It Never Did Run Smooth, Queen Tempest, The Twelve Great Diamonds, and The Cedar Swamp Mystery.

Goodwin and family lived for many years in Cambridge and later in Concord, where her friends and neighbors included such fellow authors as Louisa May Alcott and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The last years of her life were spent in Roxbury where she died in 1894. She is buried at Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Boston.

Promoter Haskell Cohen was born in Worcester in 1914. From the years 1950 to 1969, he was the public relations director of the NBA and is said to be the creator of the NBA All-Star Game. Richard Cohen of The New York Times wrote that in the winter of 1951, when Mr. Cohen joined the N.B.A. office, college basketball was reeling from point-shaving scandals, giving the professionals an opportunity to attract new fans. Mr. Cohen and N.B.A. Commissioner Maurice Podoloff, the league's two-man office, met with Walter Brown, the Boston Celtics' owner, to think up a way to gain attention.”

Haskell Cohen’s influence on the sport of basketball has been described as historic. He took the All-Star game that the Times writer called a “once-modest affair" and helped turn it into the annual weekend spectacle it has become. He is also credited with structuring the first NBA college draft.

A member of the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, Cohen was a Yeshiva student and Boston University journalism graduate. The Hall of Fame reported that he held the post of sports editor for the Jewish Telegraph Agency for 17 years. “As a longtime contributing editor to America’s Parade Sunday newspaper magazine supplement, he originated the National Association of College Basketball Coaches All-America Team and the High School All-America Team.”

Courtesy Howie Sann: "Kutsher's Heavyweight Division, 1950s. (l to r) Milton Kutsher (Kutsher's CEO); Haskell Cohen, NBA public relations director; my father, Paul Sann, New York Post executive editor; Joe Lapchick, original Celtic, legendary St. John's coach and New York Knicks coach; Ike Gellis, NY Post sports editor; Arnold "Red" Auerbach, Boston Celtics coach and soon to be a legend himself; and Judge Joe Kutsher, Helen's brother."

The Hall also noted that Cohen was a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame Board of Trustees, a member of the United States Olympic Basketball Committee, and a member of the Amateur Basketball Association USA, representing the National Jewish Welfare Board. “He was president of the United States Committee Sports For Israel from 1961 to 1969 and was a principal member of that organization at its very beginning. From 1981 to 1989, Cohen was the first chairman of the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame Selection Committee. Cohen is the first non-Israeli to receive the Israel Olympic Medal and has been U.S. chairman of the Hapoel Games in Israel.”

Cohen died at his home in Fort Lee, New Jersey in 2000. He was 86.

Actress Dorothy Dean Bridges was born in Worcester in 1915. Her given name was Dorothy Louise Simpson. Her mother was Louise Myles. Her father was Frederick Walter Simpson, who was born in Liverpool, England. The family moved to Los Angeles when Dorothy was just two-years-old. Before marrying her more famous husband, Lloyd Bridges, she made her debut in the 1921 film, Finders Keepers.

She is best known, however, as being the mother of actors Jeff and Beau Bridges. According to Variety, Dorothy attended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and that’s “where she met her future husband, Lloyd Bridges while acting in a small theatrical play on campus.” [He was the “leading man” in a production that they both appeared in.] They married in 1938 in New York City.

Dennis McLellan of the Los Angeles Times said that “throughout their long marriage, Dorothy Bridges wrote poems and celebrated each Valentine’s Day with a love poem to her husband. In 2005, at age 89, she collected them in the book You Caught Me Kissing: A Love Story, which chronicled their life together, with accompanying family photos and commentary by her and her children.”

Son Jeff called his mother the hub of the family. “My dad was sort of the frontman: He was out there getting public attention. But my mom was behind the scenes, sort of holding the whole thing together, and she did that with her own particular brand of verve.”

McLellan noted that Dorothy and Lloyd Bridges remained married for 60 years until he died in 1998 at the age of 85. They had four children: Beau Vernet, Garrett Myles, Jeffrey Leon, and Lucinda Louise. Garrett died of sudden infant death syndrome on August 3, 1948.”

McLellan also noted that Dorothy was an occasional actress who appeared in several film and television productions with family members, especially the TV series, “Sea Hunt.” She also appeared in the 1986 made for TV movie, The Thanksgiving Promise, as well as See You in the Morning, Secret Sins of the Father, Airplane, and Hot Shots.

She died in Los Angeles in 2009.

Writer Anton Myrer was born in Worcester in 1922. He was the author of such best-selling novels as Once An Eagle, The Last Convertible,” and The Big War. Mel Gussowjan wrote his obituary for the New York Times, in which he said: “While serving in the Marine Corps during World War II, Mr. Myrer was wounded in the invasion of Guam. He drew upon his military experiences in novels that included The Big War and Once An Eagle. The Big War was made into a film, under the title In Love and War (1958), starring Robert Wagner and Bradford Dillman.

“When Once An Eagle was published in 1968, Martin Levin wrote in The New York Times: ‘If this is not the Great American Novel . . . at least it's a mighty big American novel. It represents some 50 years of war and peace, and a surprisingly large chunk of it throbs and pulsates like the real thing.’ Ten years later, Once An Eagle became a television mini-series starring Glenn Ford.”

Though born here, Myrer grew up in Boston. His parents were Raymond Lewis and Angele E. Myrer. Anton went to Boston Latin High and later at Phillips Exeter Academy before entering Harvard. His studies were interrupted when he enlisted in the Marines. “After the war, he returned to Harvard and graduated magna cum laude,” Gussowjan said. “His first novel, Evil Under the Sun, published in 1951, was about a war veteran convalescing at a Cape Cod artists' colony.”

Myrer was once quoted as saying that "World War II was the one event which had the greatest impact on my life. I enlisted imbued with a rather flamboyant concept of this country's destiny as the leader of a free world and the necessity of the use of armed force. I emerged a corporal three years later in a state of great turmoil, at the core of which was an angry awareness of war as the most vicious and fraudulent self-deception man had ever devised."

Other novels by Myrer include The Violent Shore, The Intruder: A Novel of Boston, The Tiger Waits, and A Green Desire.

He died of leukemia in Saugerties, NY in 1996.

Museum of African Art founder Warren M. Robbins was born in Worcester in 1923. It was the purchase of a $15 carved-wood figure of a man and woman representing the Yoruba people of Nigeria that started him on the path of collecting. At the time of his death, Dennis Hevesidec of The New York Times wrote, “Mr. Robbins was a cultural attaché for the State Department when he bought that statue, but not in Africa. He was wandering the streets of Hamburg, Germany, one day in the late 1950s when he stepped into an antiques shop and was smitten by the carved figure.” [Note: He was walking with future senator S. I. Hayakawa.]

Robbins was the youngest of 11 children. His parents were immigrants from Ukraine. He was a graduate of the University of New Hampshire where he received a BA in English. In 1949, before becoming a State Department cultural affairs officer, Robbins received a master’s degree in history at the University of Michigan. For a short-time, he also taught at the Nürnberg American High School.

“From that initial purchase,” wrote Joe Holley in The Washington Post, “Mr. Robbins started his museum in the basement of his home, in part to promote cross-cultural communication at a time of civil rights ferment. Six years later, he heard that a former Capitol Hill home of Frederick Douglass, the 19th-century abolitionist icon, was on the market. Mr. Robbins raised $13,000 -- his first foray into fundraising -- and took out a $35,000 mortgage to buy the house, where he put his pieces on display as the Museum of African Art. Later he purchased other houses on the block -- nine in all -- as his collection grew.

Robbins with Alex Haley, author of Roots

"With little money, through the largess of friends and collectors, and an undeterred dream, Robbins established what would become one of the world's preeminent museums for exhibiting, collecting and preserving African art," said Sharon F. Patton, director of the National Museum of African Art, in a statement.” The Post also reported that “the museum was, in the argot of the 1960s and 1970s, a happening place. Mayor Marion Barry got married there. Elizabeth Taylor dropped by. So did Muhammad Ali.”

Hevesidec said by the mid-1970s, Robbins became more and more concerned about the permanence of his museum. “Mr. Robbins began lobbying friends in Congress to have the Smithsonian take over the collection. … The Smithsonian accepted the collection in 1979, and eight years later it was moved to the National Mall and renamed the National Museum of African Art. … The collection, now consisting of about 9,100 objects representing nearly every area of the African continent, includes headdresses, pottery, copper reliefs, musical instruments, baskets, carved-wood maternity figures, objects used by healers, and frightening masks used in ceremonies that mark a boy's passage to manhood. It also houses more than 32,000 volumes on African art, history, and culture.”

Robbins retired in 1983. He then managed the Center for Cross-Cultural Communications out of his Capitol Hill home. He died in Washington, DC in 2008.



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