After joining the GDS Index (Global Destination Sustainability Movement) in 2021 in 55th place, Paris is now in 25th position.
Collection Smithsonian's African-American Museum Pineapple Quilt by Lydia Walden Hardiman (1838-1922) Last week we looked at Lydia Walden Hardiman's quilt made in the 1880s according to family. https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2021/03/lydia-walden-hardimans-civil-war-1-her.html When the Civil War began in 1861 she was 23 years old and had been married for 5 years. Lydia and husband Alexander Hardiman farmed land in southwestern Indiana's Gibson County near the town of Princeton. Lydia's family headed by Henry and Lucretia Walden likely came to Indiana from Tennessee in the early 1840s when Lydia was a young girl. As free Black settlers they were members of a tight-knit community begun in the 1830s. Lydia was mother to two young children when the war began, living close to her parents, sisters and brothers. Marker for Alexander Hardiman (1837-1898) Lydia's husband was a Civil War soldier, a veteran of the 14th Rhode Island Colored Heavy Artillery. The Marker reads: "Alex. Hardiman Co. M." Then perhaps "14 U.S. C. H. A." The first question is "What was an Indiana man doing in the Rhode Island army?" Henry D. Walden Co I 55 Mass. Inf. We'll begin with Lydia's father's story. Henry Walden, born in Chatham, North Carolina, was 60 years old when the war began. As an African-American, even though free and probably a free man all his life, he was excluded from the Union Army. But once Abraham Lincoln's executive order the Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863 Lincoln decided to open the Union Armies to African-American men. Troops were segregated by race (that went on into the 1940s) and officers were white. The best-known of these Colored Troops is the Massachusetts 54th Volunteer Infantry whose story was told in the 1989 movie Glory. Massachusetts recruited Black men all over the Union with a very effective campaign in early 1863. Henry Walden age 62 responded by heading for Readville near Boston, Massachusetts and Camp Meigs. By the time Henry arrived the 54th was full so a 55th regiment was formed and they accepted him. (If you've seen Glory you know he was lucky to be in the 55th and not the 54th.) People back in Lyles Station, Indiana must have been proud of Henry. His son-in-law Alex Hardiman followed his lead a few months later, enlisting in the 14th Rhode Island Colored Heavy Artillery at the end of 1863. Henry's Massachusetts regiment went to Florida and then to the occupied Sea Islands near Charleston, South Carolina where they spent much of 1864, waiting to take the philosophical capitol of the Confederacy. The C.S.A. abandoned the city in February, 1865 and the 55th marched into Charleston to the delight of the black population who welcomed Yankees of their own color. Henry was likely one of the liberators of Charleston, pictured in Harper's Weekly in March, 1865. In his history of the 55th Charles Bernard Fox recalled the day. "The only restriction placed on them in passing through the city would be to keep in the ranks, and that they might shout and sing as they chose....the streets...were crowded with the colored population. Cheers, blessings, prayers and songs were heard on every side. Men and women crowded to shake hands...The white population remained within their houses, but curiosity led even them to peep through the blinds at the 'black Yankees.' "Little disorder occurred. Some pigs, geese, and chickens came to untimely ends...some of the white inhabitants complained that the colored troops insulted them which, when it is considered that they thought it an insult for a black man to address them without first removing his hat, was also to be expected." Charleston in 1865 Henry must have had compelling stories to tell the rest of his life. He lived to be about 83. Alex Hardiman's Rhode Island regiment went to the Gulf of Mexico spending time in Texas and occupying Plaquemine, Louisiana to defend Union-held New Orleans. Their duty was less dramatic. An officer described the dangers as they built a fort: "Though not comparing with the arduousness of field service, our duties were by no means slight. It must be remembered that we were in a semi-tropical country, where to an unacclimated person the climate was itself almost a deadly foe. The extreme heat produced a lethargy that was depressing in the extreme. In a few days of dry weather, the surface of the ground would be baked like a brick. Then would come most violent storms, converting the soil into a quagmire and covering it with water like a lake." Alfred Waud's painting "Mustered Out," showing troops returning to Little Rock, engraved for Harper's Weekly in 1866. Library of Congress The real enemy there was disease but Alex survived, remaining in Louisiana in the first months of Reconstruction and returning to Rhode Island where he was mustered out in October. He came home to Lydia and three children; baby Paul had been born while he was gone. The lives of Lydia and her mother Lucy while their husbands were fighting are not so easy to cipher out. Their husbands may have been motivated by the enlistment bonus as well as a desire to fight for slavery's end. Did the men receive a $100 bonus for enlisting? Did their pay go home to support their families while they were fighting? With no paper trail we are left without answers. The next link to the families is Alex's pension records. He began to receive his war pension in May, 1887 and after his death Lydia got a widow's pension. See Lydia Hardiman's grave here: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/35872912/lydia-a.-hardiman And read about a spectacular quilt taken somewhere in South Carolina by one of the 55th Massachusetts's white officers Captain William H. Torrey from Foxboro, Massachusetts. http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2018/08/stolen-quilts-south-carolina-to.html Quilt historian Xenia Cord has also done a good deal of research into Indiana's African-American history. See her article "Black rural settlements in Indiana before 1860" in Indiana’s African-American Heritage, edited by Wilma L. Gibbs and published by the Indiana Historical Society in 1993.
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On December 19, 1808 a small congregation formed The Cedar Street Presbyterian Church on Cedar Street near William Street. As the city grew northward the church moved to Duane Street in 1836 and, in 1852, again to Fifth Avenue and 19th Street. Finally, in 1875 the church, now known as the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, moved for its final time to the corner of Fifth Avenue and 55th Street. The land was purchased for $350,000 and, surrounded by brownstone mansions along “Millionaires Row,” the new church would cost an amazing $1 million. While the new St. Patrick’s Cathedral four blocks to the south and St. Thomas Episcopal just two blocks away utilized the traditional Gothic cruciform layout; architect Carl Pfeiffer designed an interior revolutionary for its time. There were no right angles, no soaring stone pillars. Instead Pfeiffer produced a ship-like open space with a ribbed 60-foot ceiling and unobstructed views from every perspective. The carved woodwork was of polished ash. The New York Times called the interior, capable of seating 2,000 worshippers, “early English.” photo museumplanet.com The brownstone exterior was purely Gothic Revival. The two main entrances, on Fifth Avenue and below the corner tower on 55th Street, mimicked the Gothic arches of the 49 traceried windows and belfry openings. The main steeple, also executed in brownstone, rose 300 feet above Fifth Avenue. Copper-clad fleches to the north gave an exceptionally picturesque touch; however they were as much utilitarian than simply attractive. photo nycago.org In the third quarter of the 19th century, long before air conditioning or central heating, worshippers suffered intolerable heat in the summer and cold in the winter. Pfeiffer solved the problem with an ingenious system of air movement. In the basement he had installed 9,000 feet of steam pipes directly below the floor of the sanctuary. The two fleches acted as airshafts, outfitted with a iron fan seven feet in diameter which ran at 220 revolutions per minute. When the shafts sucked the air out of the sanctuary, the warmed air from the basement was pulled through the holes in the floorboard, heating the room (and, more importantly, the feet of the parishioners!). Likewise, in the summer, the fan would pull 30,000 cubic feet of air out of the church every minute, completely renewing the air every fifteen minutes and providing a constant movement of otherwise stale, hot air. Behind the sanctuary was a chapel, 75 feet by 45 feet, a lecture room, a large hall and rooms for the minister, trustees, sexton and classrooms and a roomy library. The chapel of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian -- photo nycago.org Through the immediate and aggressive sale of pews, the structure was paid for within only two years. “The pews,” reported The New York Times on May 23, 1875, “were appraised in such a way as to provide for the extinction of the debt, and for the annual expenses of the church organization. These prices ranged from three hundred dollars each to six thousand dollars, according to location…” While the purchaser received a perpetual title to his pew, he was then liable for an annual assessment of six per cent on the cost price. The church realized almost immediately that, based on its popularity, it might have nearly doubled its physical size. Under the Reverend Dr. John Henry Jowett in the first quarter of the 20th century, upwards of 1,000 hopeful worshippers would have to be turned away on a Sunday morning. The church's work was proactive and altruistic. In 1867 it established the first Bible class in the city for women, resulting in lines outside the church awaiting admittance. By 1907 it was supporting two missions, a large settlement house, numerous educational, charitable and relief agencies and employed 57 clergymen and paid workers globally to carry out its missionary and charity work. The church was instrumental in the establishment of the Princeton Theological Seminary and the New York Presbyterian Hospital. Fifth Avenue Presbyterian in 1917, decorated to honor British, French, Italian, Japanese and Russian War Commissions A riot was narrowly avoided when, in 1920, ministers from Belfast were invited to speak, representing the Protestant churches of Ireland. Sinn Feine members, the Irish Republicans, massed outside the church on Fifth Avenue hollering “Hurray for the Irish Republic!” During 2000 and 2001, as an outward demonstration of its concern for the less fortunate, Fifth Avenue Presbyterian established a policy of allowing the homeless to sleep on the steps of the church. Although there is a shelter in the basement, it was limited to ten men. The pastor, one Sunday, remarked to the congregations that “these homeless friends are part of our ministry…Outside on our signboard there’s a sign that says ‘This is God’s House, All Are Welcome.’ All are welcome, and we mean it.” When, in December 2001, the city evacuated the homeless from the steps, the church filed suit, charging that the city was in violation of the United States Constitution. The church won. In the 1990's, after a five-year study, a major renovation project was undertaken that included the formation of a new Christian Education Center in the formerly unused space below the sanctuary, installation of air conditioning and fire proofing. Today Fifth Avenue Presbyterian remains essentially unchanged, down to the gas brackets and reflectors still in place.
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