Sirroscoe
C. L. Blood
editA belated welcome to Wikipedia, Sirroscoe. Thanks for your recent update to the C. L. Blood article. I note that you added information about Blood's birthdate and family, but didn't provide any reliable source. Could you let me know where you got this information and/or add it to the article yourself? —Psychonaut (talk) 15:09, 26 December 2016 (UTC)
- Thanks for providing the sources. I note that one of them, the manuscripts from Blood's sister, don't seem to have been published, but are the only documents currently referenced that establish that C. L. Blood is the son of Lewis Blood (and by extension, that the article's C. L. Blood is the same C. L. Blood whose birth and death records you list). Are you aware of any published document that links C. L. Blood to Lewis Blood? Are the archives available online anywhere? —Psychonaut (talk) 09:43, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
Hello, Psychonaut. Thank you for your guidance. I must admit that although I am a published historian with 35+ years of experience in archival research, I am a complete and utter novice at contributing to Wikipedia. So please excuse my mistakes and oversights as I learn the protocols of proper Wiki editing. I'll probably even get this Talk page in a muddle!
No, the Blood/Clough family papers are private and have not been published. Massachusetts birth records and Federal/State census returns confirm accounts in family papers that Charles Lewis Blood (b.Sept 8 1835) was the eldest child and only son of Lewis and Almira Wood Hartwell Blood of Groton, Shirley and latterly Ayer, Mass.
Although his advertisements are invariably attributed to Dr C L Blood, or C L Blood MD, virtually all the news articles during the various scandals of the late 1870s and 1880s called him "Dr Charles L Blood". In a few weeks of searching I have tracked down nearly 150 advertisements dating from 1864 to 1891. I also have some 400 articles about his various scandals; admittedly, many of these are duplicate pieces appearing in outlets around the country.
As for CLB's birth record, here is a link from Ancestry.com. If the link doesn't work, the mss original and transcribed records can be found through an exact search for <Charles Lewis Blood, born 1835, Groton, Middlesex Co, Mass>.
Federal census returns for Shirley, Middlesex Co, record Charles L in the Lewis Blood household in 1850 and 1860; the Mass state census records him there in 1855. The Massachusetts Marriage Records (1840-1915) for Worcester show a Charles L Blood, 33 year old Physician from Boston, being the son of Lewis & Almira W Blood. If you would like links to these, please let me know.
In an early advertisement for his Inhalation treatment (Providence Evening Press, 21 May to June 1 1864) that "Dr C L Blood [was] from the Worcester Lung College." He seemed to have a definite connection with Worcestor; he returned to practice there for at least a year under the name of Dr C B Lewis at the time of the Sawtelle affair before he was rumbled by a reporter from the Boston Herald (April 14 1891).
The NYC municipal death record that I tried (and apparently failed) to post late last night confirms that the Charles Lewis Blood that died in Manhattan on September 27 1908 was indeed the son of Lewis Blood of Groton Mass, though the transcribers for LDS transcribers (as shown in FamilySearch.org) were rather sloppy in their reading of the original documents stating that CLB was born in 1885, rather than 1835, and that his mother was an "Elmyra Wood Hortons" [sic] of Townsend Mass. That should read "Almira Wood Hartwell" who did indeed hail from Townsend. The less detailed entry transcribed from the NY, NY Death Index 1862-1948 on Ancestry.org correctly show the CLB death date of 9.27.1908 and age as 73, with a birth year being "about 1835".
There are various newspaper accounts indicating that Charles L Blood hailed from Ayer, Mass, and came from a prominent family, i.e. the "A Wily Doctor" piece in the Boston Daily Globe of January 30 1883. On page 1 of the Boston Daily Globe of May 7 1890, there is a lengthy discussion of Pinkerton Supt John Cornish's attempts to track down the missing Dr Blood's whereabouts during the height of the Sawtelle affair. Cornish sent "one of his best men to Ayer Junction" to stake out the Blood house. It was described as a "pretty brown house that is not far distant from the Union railroad station." This would undoubtedly be the Lewis Blood house in Washington Street in Ayer, less than two blocks from the station. According to the Globe, the "investigations showed that the Blood family during the week consisted of the Mother and One Daughter, a lady of about 30 years." This would coincide with the mother being Almira WH Blood, then a widow of three years since the death of Lewis Blood in 1887. Although the age described for this daughter was flattering at best, it is most likely to be the spinster Clara E Blood (1847-1912) who was the only surviving daughter of Almira and Lewis to live in Ayer at this time. Two other daughters (including Mary Jane Blood Clough) were married and lived elsewhere in Middlesex Co., and another spinster sister, Sarah Adelaide, lived in Watertown, Mass and was likely to be the one mentioned in the Globe who "would put in an appearance and stay until Sunday or Monday when she would depart to her work near Boston".
Also, when Dr Blood's veiled wife Rena surprisingly appears in the Boston Herald offices with a letter from her elusive husband (apparently then hiding in NYC, though claiming to be "out west"), she mentioned that she had been staying in Ayer Junction, most likely at the large Blood house in Washington Street as described in aforementioned Globe article and pictured in the 1902 Sargent book on Ayer. ("Doctor Blood Writes a Letter", Boston Herald Feb 25 1890)
I have only started (online) research on CL Blood about six weeks ago but have already compiled a mass of material which I am only beginning to sift through and make some sense of. I'm happy to contribute further to this wiki page as I pull together the tangled strands of his complicated and fascinating life, and would be pleased to receive any advice on how best to do this without trampling on anyone's toes here. I'm happy to feed others with material to post as I'm rather busy to work out all the complexities of Wiki editorial work just now. Sirroscoe (talk) 18:59, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
Dec 30 - I have confirmed Charles' burial place in Woodlawn Cemetery in Ayer owing to the kind work of a local BillionGraves volunteer who visited the family plot and then contacted the cemetery authorities. As I believed based on my own photos of the site from 1995, Charles' name was not on the Blood/Clough granite memorial. A Woodlawn official has confirmed that "Dr Charles Lewis Blood" was interred on Oct 1st 1908 in the rear row, second lair from the right alongside his sister Hattie (d. 1867). She is sending me these details from their records in the new year. I subsequently found a reference to Charles' death and burial in the local paper, "Turner's Public Spirit," digital copies being available online on the Hazen Library, Shirley website. Details therein confirm information included in the NYC death certificate. Sirroscoe (talk) 17:22, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
Hello
editArchitecture buff native to Buffalo, NY here. Very impressive work on the Herbert C Burdett article. In case you need any more images for the article, you should know that Commons already has a dedicated category of images of Marling & Burdett buildings. If you like, I can also go out myself and snap a picture of any extant buildings that are local to me. -- Andre Carrotflower (talk) 05:42, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
Thanks!
edit@Andre Carrotflower: Hi Andre. Many thanks for your kind words. As a true outsider, having only visited Buffalo once nearly 40 years ago, I am grateful that a local appreciates my efforts. I am also thankful for your generous offer to take some up-to-date snaps of surviving buildings. I tried to check out as many as I could on Streetview, but a few are hidden behind such leafy trees that I can barely work out the correct address, let alone judge the architecture. So yes, please, if you fancied shooting as many as you like from that list of known works in Buffalo we can then add them to that M&B dedicated category. In the article itself I only uploaded pics of those buildings for which I had copyright-free images (thus the several old postcard views) or are in WikiCommons. And please feel free to tweak my text if you see anything needing correction. There are still a few sites I'm trying to figure out (like the George H Lewis house) and some local knowledge might be useful. Thanks again and keep in touch. Kind regards, Gordon
Sirroscoe (talk) 22:19, 5 January 2022 (UTC)Sirroscoe
- Hello Gordon, thank you for your reply. It looks like we're tackling this project at the right time of year, as it will be at least four months before the leaves return to the trees in Buffalo. Over the next few weeks, I will seek out as many surviving Marling & Burdett buildings as I can find and upload photographs of them to Commons. I'm not sure if there are any particular ones you'd like me to take care of first, but anyway one idea I had for the Burdett article is to incorporate the building images into the table of known works, rather than having them clutter up the narrative section of the article where other images, e.g. his headshot, may be better suited. (See List of City of Buffalo landmarks and historic districts as an example of how this might look in practice.)
- -- Andre Carrotflower (talk) 04:01, 7 January 2022 (UTC)
Hi Andrew, Thanks again for your offer to record all those M&B buildings. No great rush.
When drafting the HCB article, I had perused a number of architecture-related Wiki pages and considered a simple bullet list of M&B known works with separate gallery of building views. But with my limited access to images of extant sites to put on Commons, I opted to use just those few historical views I had to hand and put them in the body of the article rather create only a tiny gallery. Also, as this is the first Wiki page I've created, I wanted to keep things simple and go with the coding I could manage easily – knowing I could improve things in due course.
But, yes, if we had a full complement of site images, I think it would great to have them all in the table to illustrate the known works.
Of course, I'd love to hear if you knew of any other M&B sites not on this list, or if you knew any more about those early M&B works that might have been re-worked Silsbee & Marling sites. As I live in Scotland I have to rely on online sources, and these are really limited to historical journals and newspapers, the Buffaloah site and a few other things like the Searching for Silsbee blog.
Cheers, Gordon Sirroscoe (talk) 12:15, 8 January 2022 (UTC)Sirroscoe
Hi Andrew
Hope you're keeping warm where you are. Your photos look rather snowy!
Just wanted to say thanks for all your recent photos of the M&B sites. Looks like the image table is getting nearly complete. Fantastic.
283 Summer Street is an odd one. I did see it on Streetview before but felt it looked denuded in some way. Perhaps there was previously a porch around the front? The dormers also look clumsy but from the detailing I guess they look original.
And of course, as soon as you paint a Shingle Style house – especially pure white – it loses much of its shingly charm.
Also, I must thank you for catching those various typos and occasional howlers in the text – and for your additional research into Cornwell, Tucker et al. A great help.
Cheers for now.
Gordon
Sirroscoe (talk) 17:30, 30 January 2022 (UTC)Sirroscoe
- Hello again! I apologize for not having read this message until now. Yes, here in Buffalo these past weeks we were hit with two snowstorms one right after the other, so there's been a decidedly wintry look to my recent photographs. It's been a pleasure to help out with this project, though - as I mentioned before, architecture (and particularly architectural photography) is a passion of mine, and I appreciate the appreciation.
- In cases like 283 Summer Street, where extensive exterior alterations leave doubt as to whether the original building is extant or has been replaced with a newer one on the same site, I have found the 1894 City of Buffalo Atlas to be an invaluable resource. Not only is it roughly contemporaneous with M&B's work in the city, but the individual map plates give detailed information as to the materials used in the construction of each building and the shape of their footprints, which can then be compared with, for instance, satellite photos on Google Maps. Of course, it's a shame when one imagines the original details that have been lost to time...
- There is one more Buffalo-area photograph (417 Linwood) to take and upload, which I plan to do in the next few days. After that, I intend to verify dates of construction (which I know to be inaccurate in some cases) and perhaps gather some additional information to place in the Notes sections. In the somewhat further future, as the COVID pandemic recedes, I have high hopes for a lifting of restrictions vis-à-vis crossing the U.S.-Canada border, and I might make a trip to Woodstock to identify and photograph some of Burdett's buildings there. There's also a fairly good chance that I might get to Burlington, Vermont this summer, as in June there will be a memorial service for a family friend from neighboring New Hampshire who recently passed away.
- Thank you again for spearheading this article. It's an excellent piece of work!
- -- Andre Carrotflower (talk) 15:59, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
@Andre Carrotflower: Hi Andrew,
Thanks for the pic of 417! I guess that's the last of the known Buffalo buildings to be illustrated. Fantastic! I'm very excited about what you might find in Woodstock if you make it there sometime. I think I spotted just the one on Streetview. I didn't have all three addresses. More local research is probably needed. And yes, the dates probably need some tweaking. Many were taken from Buffaloah so I can't vouch for them. Hope you get to Burlington sometime. A lovely city, as I recall. Took a summer course at UVM in 1981 and I remember quite a lot of lovely architecture similar to that of Redstone. Where did your late friend live in NH? I spent my childhood summers in Randolph, in the White Mts. I'm very fond of that area.
And thanks again for your kind words and for all your support on this little project. It's my first attempt at a Wiki article so it's been very helpful to have your guidance.
Kind regards
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