BIRTH | Dec. 8–Mary ("Queen of Scots") Stuart

Mary Queen of Scots (1542-1587)

On this day in 1542 was born Mary Queen of Scots in Linlithgow Palace, West Lothian, Scotland. She was the daughter of James V of Scotland and his second wife, Mary of Guise. The Catholic Guise family, from Lorraine, was influential at court in Paris. Mary's father died when she was only 6 days old, at which point she was crowned Mary, Queen of Scots.

Henry VIII of England, her great-uncle, saw an opportunity to try to bring Scotland and England closer together. He formally suggested betrothal of Mary to his son Edward and followed up with a six-year campaign.

As a preemptive strike against the suggestion, Mary's mother negotiated a deal with her family in France, Scotland's old ally. From the age of five, Mary Stuart grew up in France, in the court of Henry II, a Catholic.

Mary received a good education in France - in music, dancing, and horsemanship, and in classical and modern languages. At 16 she married Henry's eldest son, Francis, who was 14 and entitled to rule. His father died in an accident and Francis became king in 1559. Six months later, Mary's Protestant cousin once removed, Elizabeth, became Queen. Mary was second in line.

Francis II, never healthy, died, widowing Mary at 18. She returned to Scotland to rule in 1561, but it was now a different country, largely converted to Protestantism. Although Mary showed great religious tolerance and was beautiful and talented, she was viewed as a foreigner in Scotland. Elizabeth meanwhile feared Mary had designs on the English crown.

In 1565 Mary married her cousin Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley and they had a son, James. However, Henry drank too much and was unpopular, so he was murdered in 1567. Mary married the chief suspect, James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, after being abducted. Bothwell was exiled by Scottish nobles, and Mary was deposed in favor of James.

In 1568, Mary foolishly left Scotland to seek the help of Elizabeth I, who saw her opportunity and promptly put Mary in prison for the murder of Darnley. In 1587, Elizabeth was informed of a  Catholic plot to assassinate her. She decided that Mary's existence was unhealthy for her, and had her tried for treason and executed on February 8, 1587.

Mary's son James did not object to the beheading of his mother and was rewarded for his filial indifference in due course by becoming James VI of Scotland (1567) and then succeeding Elizabeth in 1603 as James I of England, the first of the Stuart kings, uniting the the thrones of England and Scotland and becoming the first king of the United Kingdom.

However, his son Charles did not fare so well. He became king in 1625 when his father James I of England died. He fought for the divine right of kings to rule in the face of Oliver Cromwell's Roundhead Parliament. Charles I became the first English king ever executed by Parliament, in 1649; also the last (apparently the message was received at Buckingham Palace). But that's another story.

OLGA MARLIN | June 13–Arrives Nairobi, 1960 (Updated Feb. 29, 2016)

L to R: Olga Emily Marlin, Ervin Ross ("Spike") Marlin, Tere Temes
 and Marlene Sousa. Spike, 51, paid a surprise visit to Olga,
26, in July 1960. He was working with the U.N. Office of the
High Commissioner for Refugees.

My sister Olga went to Nairobi in 1960 to help start an interracial school for girls.

As I update this post, that is 56 years ago. It was not so long after the uprising in 1950-1954 of the rebel Mau-Mau, who were fighting for independence from Britain.

The former Belgian Congo was to become independent on June 30 barely two weeks after Olga arrived.

The transition turned out to be accompanied by widespread violence in the Congo, initiated by both incoming and outgoing leaders.

Independence for Kenya was in the offing and seeing the difficult transition in the Congo, some worried European teachers were making plans to leave Kenya, as Olga describes in her memoir (To Africa with a Dream, 2011, 84). Olga stayed and after Kenya became independent she became a Kenyan citizen.

Olga and seven other European women arrived in Nairobi in two waves to create a new school for girls:

• Group 1 (five brave women) left June 12 from Rome to Nairobi– Olga Marlin, Mary Mahoney (former army nurse), Marlene Sousa, Elisa Serrano, Rosario Insausti. 
• Group 2 (three equally brave women), left from Rome one month later, even after all the violence in the Congo–Tere Temes, Margaret Curran, Encarnacion Riera. 
• Helping the groups leave Rome was Mary Rivero, from Spain, in the Central Offices of Opus Dei in Rome. She drove the first group to the airport on June 12, 1960. 
• On the arrival end, Mrs. Agnes Lavelle from Ireland was living in Nairobi and helped get the school started. Mary Kibera is one of the first native-Kenyan members of Opus Dei and also helped get the school started. Later, she headed Kianda School for several years.

In Nairobi, the Founding Eight had very few friends to support their work. They had to rely on earning their own money. Olga had a job at Kenya High School lined up to ensure some income, and some good jobs were anticipated for the well-qualified members of the group, such as nurse Mary Mahoney and secretary Margaret Curran (To Africa, 2011, 64).

When they first arrived at Nairobi airport they were supposed to be met, but nobody was there because their original plan was to arrive on the next plane from Rome one week later, and a telegram changing the arrival time was left over the weekend in a post-office box.

The incoming team rented a house on the Lavington Estate, which had been owned by the St. Austin's Mission, supported by the French Holy Ghost Fathers. It was on Invergara Road (later changed to Vergara Road), near the Invergara Club in the Lavington Estate area.

This is the house that E. R. Marlin–Olga's father and mine–paid a surprise visit to in July 1960. The school founders lived there from June 1960 to June 1961. The two women with her in the photo, Tere Temes and Marlene Sousa, were from Spain and Portugal. When Olga was recuperating from an illness in Spain, she said she saw Tere several times. Marlene Sousa became sick in Nairobi and had to return to Portugal in 1961. (Feb. 29, 2016: Olga is back in Kenya, having recovered surprisingly from her rare illness.)

Dad was visiting Olga for two reasons.

• He was en route to the former Belgian Congo to address the violence and refugees after independence was declared on June 30, as the Senior Director of the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees. He was the highest-ranking American in the agency, reporting to a Swiss High Commissioner, Ambassador Felix Schnyder, and (starting in 1962) his Deputy, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, as well as with Yul Brynner, who was playing an active role in bringing the UNHCR's activities some visibility.
• He was of course concerned for his daughter about the impact of the violence in the Congo on Kenya–not just the Congolese refugees (To Africa, 78-79), but the prospects for a peaceful transition when Kenya itself would become independent.

Olga spoke about the first location of Kianda School in her address to the convocation of Strathmore University when she was awarded her honorary doctorate:

In pre-Independence Kenya it was unheard of to mix the races [African, European, Indian], and Strathmore met with initial hostility. However, they went ahead, full of faith, and incorporated into their shield the symbol of three hearts — one for each race — and the motto Ut omnes unum sint (“That all may be one” John 17, 11) which continues to grace the university shield today. The residential Strathmore College opened in March 1961 with students from all three races.

We had a similar experience with Kianda College. We had discovered that the most popular post-secondary training for girls was a secretarial course, since it took only one year and was well remunerated. Although only one of us was a secretary, we decided to embark on the course in our rented house at Invergara Road, Lavington. However, when we applied to the Nairobi City Council for registration, we were told that we had to have the written consent of all our neighbours before we could admit a non-European student to that area. As soon as we could we moved to the present location of Kianda.

Tom Mboya, Assassinated 1969.

Kianda College is located on Waiyaki Way (A104) in Nairobi, opposite the Afraliti Guest House, which is west of Nairobi School and east of the Communications Commission of Kenya. Strathmore School is located less than three km. southwest of Kianda College.

That founding year 1960 was a few years before Barack Obama Senior obtained a scholarship to study in the United States from a fund controlled by a fellow Luo, Thomas Joseph Odhiambo ("Tom") Mboya - who was Kenya's first Minister for Economic Planning and Development.

L to R: Olga Marlin, Mama Ngina Kenyatta.

As time went by, Tom and his wife Pamela became strong supporters of Kianda College and Pamela was a great friend of my sister Olga (To Africa, 158). When Tom was assassinated on July 5, 1969 Pamela asked Olga look after their children (To Africa, 160).

Mzee Jomo and Mama Ngina Kenyatta also took an interest in Kianda College. They visited in 1970 and later Daniel arap Moi also visited the school.

Out of the mustard seed planted by the original group of eight women have grown some 40 schools and centers for girls and young women in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa, from the first grades through to the university level.

What Happened to the Founding Eight?

Where are the founders of Kianda College today?

Group 1 (June 1960)
Olga Marlin - in Pamplona, Spain for health reasons, to be near the Navarre Clinic.
Mary Mahoney - deceased.
Marlene Sousa - returned to Portugal after recovering from TB in Kenya.
Elisa Serrano - in Spain, after many years in Kenya, for health reasons.
Rosario Insausti - deceased.

Group 2 (July 1960)
Tere Temes - in Spain.
Margaret Curran - deceased.
Encarnacion Riera - in Spain, returned from Kenya after many years for health reasons.

STARS AND STRIPES | More Shreds of Evidence

The Grand Union flag carried by the Continental Army,
 1775. The Union Jack in the canton united the English
St. George's cross with the Scottish St. Andrew's saltire
 (diagonal cross). After April 19, the canton had to go.

For three years, I have been trying to sort out "shreds of evidence" to solve a longstanding historical puzzle–the origins of the American flag, and especially (in my view) the stars in the canton.

The puzzle is still unsolved, but I believe I’ve identified some new pieces of the puzzle that may help answer the question: Was George Washington's coat of arms a factor in our flag’s design, and, if so, what is the theory of how and why it entered the design?

My search led me to focus on the counties on the border between England and Scotland, where the Washington family was settled (what is now the county of Wear and Tyne, with Newcastle as the principal city), before the family moved to Sulgrave Manor in Northamptonshire.

These connections appear to have eluded heraldry experts. My theory is that George Washington and his friends employed some misdirection to deflect questions about the obvious fact that the young American flag clearly echoed Washington's family arms, of which he was hugely proud. No other president has taken such a delight in using his family's arms as a motif in his household. The problem for Washington and his political associates is that they were determined to avoid the fate of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which left the tyranny of the British Monarch only to find a tyranny of their own. Washington resisted any talk of recreating the monarchy in the new United States of America.

The time frame for the break with Crown and the creation of the Stars and Stripes is well defined. Before 1775, most of the protesting colonists were eager to assert that, despite their grievances, they still considered themselves loyal subjects of the Crown, King George III. Hence, as Sir Charles Fawcett explains at length in a 1937 article, the East India Company flag was initially an acceptable one with which to 

indicate a union of the thirteen States in revolt, each of which had previously used a flag of its own. It seems to be established that it was first flown by Lieutenant Paul Jones on the Alfred, the flagship of the Congress Navy, on 3 December 1775. It was undoubtedly hoisted on 1 or 2 January 1776 by Washington at Cambridge, Massachusetts, when he assumed command of the united forces of those States [and is therefore called the Cambridge flag].

The meaning attached by the colonists to the 13 stripes in the Grand Union flag was the 13 colonies. This carried forward to the Stars and Stripes formally adopted by the Congress via a resolution of June 14, 1777.  The flag's origins may also be credited to the Sons of Liberty, originally nine Boston citizens who in August 1765 objected to the passing of the Stamp Act. They adopted the "rebellious stripes flag" with nine vertical stripes, five red and four white. This came to mean the nine colonies represented at the rebel Stamp Act Congress of 1765. Participants from the other four colonies eventually joined in, so the nine stripes became 13. In 1767, the Sons of Liberty adopted the 13-stripe flag, identical to the East India Company flag and began recruiting supporters. In December 1773, the Sons of Liberty united against the Tea Act and poured tons of tea into the Boston Harbor.

The perspective of London was that the King's troops cleared the French and the Indians from the colonies, and the cost of keeping the troops there should be borne by the colonies. British regular troops were the vanguard in that war, under Scotsman General Braddock, who led the troops and died in the effort. George Washington was a colonel in this war and Braddock was his mentor and hero until Braddock died after the Battle of Duquesne (today's Pittsburgh, named after Pitt the Elder).

The Stamp Act and Tea Act were two of the ways the Crown chose to pay for the cost of maintaining British troops in the colonies. For Virginians, another way was more worrisome–the Quebec Act, in which the Crown claimed all the land that Virginia had been selling off to raise revenue.

The colonies had a different perspective. The militias of each state, not the British troops, bore the brunt of the fighting with the French and the Indians. If the colonies were to be taxed by London, they wanted a voice in the London Parliament. That would be the same deal that England made with  Scotland.

The Continental Army in 1775 marched under the Grand Union flag, with Britain's Union Jack in the canton (the upper left corner) because they were hoping to trade their loyalty to the King for a voice in Parliament. Their attitude changed completely after the morning of April 19, 1775, when 700 British Army regulars arrived at Lexington Common as the sun was rising. The British regulars found 70 minutemen waiting, alerted by Paul Revere. Someone fired a shot and a battle was on. The Crown was shooting at its own subjects.

It didn't last long, as the regulars outnumbered the defenders ten to one and had superior weapons. The regulars killed eight Lexington defenders, wounded ten more, and scattered the rest. The regulars moved confidently on to Concord, but there they found more resistance. They turned tail back to Boston, pursued all the way by minutemen; the Revolution was on.

So it was not until after Lexington and Concord that the Union Jack became an enemy flag. It took more than two years for the colonies to decide on a new flag, but meanwhile the need for one was on everyone's mind. Forget the voice in Parliament. Now they wanted independence, and that meant a  new flag with no Union Jack on it. ASAP.

The key was the canton. The stripes, as noted above, already had rebel significance as the flag of the Sons of Liberty. It was the Union Jack had to be replaced. But with what??

Many people proposed new symbols. One famous one conveyed the colonists’ growing fury–a coiled rattlesnake ready to strike, over the slogan "Don't tread on me.”

The canton design of white stars on a blue field was presented by Washington to the Congress on June 14, 1777, with the description "a new constellation". There have been only two major changes since then:

• The number of points in the stars was changed in 1777 from six to five.
• The number of stars and their ordering within the canton has been changed as states have been added.

Elements of an "achievement", including the coat of
arms and the rest. Source: Berkshire History for Kids.

So. the key to the puzzle is... where did those white stars come from?

George Washington’s coat of arms features three stars and three stripes. In heraldic parlance, the blazon of the Washington shield is: Argent two bars and in chief three mullets gules. What looks like a stripe on a coat of arms is called a bar and what looks like a star is called a mullet, except in Scotland, where a star is a star. Argent is the metal silver. Gules is the tincture red.

This Washington shield is now used as the flag of the District of Columbia, which is co-terminous with the City of Washington. No one disputes that the D.C. flag is derived from the Washington family arms.

Washington's coat of arms has also been widely discussed as the likely source of inspiration for the flag, and this was the common view in 1876, when the Stars and Stripes were celebrated at the centennial of the Declaration of Independence.

But a letter to the editor of the New York Times, cited by mainstream historians since 1914, flatly rejected any connection with the Washington arms. Typical is a statement by Joseph McMillan, director of research for the American Heraldry Society, who wrote in the first issue of the group’s American Herald journal, in 2006:

Ever since the 19th century, many have been unable to resist the conjecture that the American flag and coat of arms are derived from the armorial bearings of President Washington. Unfortunately, there is not a shred of evidence that the one had anything to do with the other … [N]owhere in the records of [the government’s flag and great seal committees] is there any indication of a desire to honor Washington with the flag or the seal, honors which it would have been quite out of character for Washington to accept, considering how he reacted to other attempts to create a cult of personality around him.

Elements of an "achievement". Source: Fleur de Lis.

Has Mr. McMillan considered the possibility that the desire to honor Washington might well have been raised but was squashed for the obvious reason that it would have been out of character for Washington to accept such an honor?

Is there really "not a shred of evidence"? Or has no one looked at the evidence seriously?

I will assemble here a few pieces of evidence for the connection between the flag and the coat of arms as I am searching for some new evidence in the origin of the stars on the flag, which I believe to be the key to the puzzle.

1. Sulgrave House Manor. In Northamptonshire last year I took a photo of the frame above the portrait of George Washington, contributed by the Colonial Dames of America. They strongly assert the connection between the Stars and Stripes and the Washington coat of arms. They used a design of Paul Revere, who had prepared it for William and Mary University. Paul Revere attached himself to the view that Washington's coat of arms was connected to the Stars and Stripes. Remember that no one wants to assert too close to a connection out of respect for Washington's democratic posture.

2. Tupper Play. In 1876, on the centennial of the Declaration of Independence, a popular English poet named Martin Farquhar Tupper wrote a highly successful play in which the character of Benjamin Franklin asserts that friends of Washington, unknown to him, made sure that the U.S. flag reflected the George Washington coat of arms. This was the widely accepted view at the time.

3. Douglas Wardrop. In 1914, in The New York Times, G. Douglas Wardrop, described as an Assistant Secretary to Theodore Roosevelt, asserted, "There is very little doubt that the three stars and the three stripes [on Washington’s coat of arms] furnished the idea for the American flag."

4. Mr. McMillan himself.  McMillan supplies evidence to answer his last sentence, about George Washington's avoidance of anything to do with the cult of the individual, earlier in his own article. Take a look at the long list he provided of Washington's purchases of objects bearing his coat of arms or crest or were defined by it. The Father of Our Country started buying these costly armorial objects when he was just 23 years old! I have greatly abbreviated the detail in his list and have ordered it by year to make my point. Does the following collection not suggest someone who would be deeply grateful if the new American flag were to echo his family's arms?

George Washington coat of
arms with raven crest, coronet
and helmet. The arms are now
used in the D.C. flag.
Source: Arms and Badges.

1755: Unspecified goods ordered, marked with his crest [Washington appears to use the word crest loosely in heraldic terms, sometimes referring to his coat of arms with crest, sometimes just to the arms].
1755: Livery suits ordered from London for his house slaves and servants based on the red-and-silver (gules and argent) colors from his coat of arms–translated into scarlet and off-white, with lace trimmings. Washington owned slaves since his father died 12 years before and bequeathed to him ten slaves; when Washington died, there were 318 slaves at Mount Vernon. Washington's will provided for the freeing of all his slaves after his widow's death.
1757: Arms engraved on a silver cruet set made for him in London.
1758: Arms on the wax seal on a document he signed.
1768: Request to a London firm to manufacture a new carriage– requiring "my Arms agreeable to the impression here sent ... On the harness let my Crest be engraved.”
1771: A walking stick ordered from London with the arms engraved on the head, and the famed "rococo" bookplate with the Washington arms. In his will, Washington left his two canes to his cousins Lawrence and Robert Washington.
1771: Two seals ordered from the London carriage maker, one preferably of topaz in a gold locket, “with the Washington Arms neatly engrav'd thereon," and another stone in a second gold locket “with the Washington Crest.”
1790: Request to a Philadelphia firm to repaint a coach specifying:

 [M]y crest without any cipher [motto] is to be on the four quarter panels, all to be enclosed with the original ovals. If it is thought best that the crests should be painted (as Silver does not show on a light ground) they may be painted. But quere, whether of some ornamental painting within the Oval, and around the Silver crests (the colours of which should form a contrast to the silver and not be inconsistent with other parts of the work) might not look well.

1796: The Washington crest appears on the inkwell in the famous Lansdowne Portrait of Washington painted by Gilbert Stuart, now owned by the National Portrait Gallery in Washington.
1802: In the estate sale following the death of Washington's widow, his nephew Samuel Washington purchased a "Seal with W. arms" for $36.
1802: A second nephew, William Augustine Washington, bought another two seals, one with an ivory handle and another attached to a gold chain, most likely with the crest on them.

Many pieces of Washington armorial silver survive, notably at Mount Vernon:

• A set of silver cups Washington used during the Revolutionary years.
• A number of small silver items, such as spoons.
• Numerous items of silver made in London before the war.
• A silver service made in Philadelphia after the war. 

All this shows that Washington was fiercely proud of his ancestors and their coats of arms. He was justly proud, as they certainly were distinguished. The arms, according to several sources, appear to date back to the 1346 Battle of Crécy, following which victory over the French his ancestor William de Wessyngton, knighted by Edward III, adopted the red bars and mullets for his shield. Washington may have resisted a cult of personality, but he succumbed early in life to a preoccupation–rising even perhaps to what we might today call an obsession–with this coat of arms.

The Hopkinson flag adopted by Congress in 1777.
Note that his stars were six-pointed. The Washington
family used five-pointed stars. Why the change?

If, however, we ignore all this and other evidence, and follow the post-1914 orthodoxy, accepting the current Wikipedia pronouncement that any connection between the Stars and Stripes and George Washington's arms is "erroneous", what then is the conventional view of the inspiration for the stars in our national flag?

Hopkinson Arms. Source:
My Heritage Wear.

Francis Hopkinson

Enter Francis Hopkinson, a multi-talented signer of the Declaration of Independence who was an employee of the Continental Navy Board, which operated as a rudimentary Navy Department. He was asked to deliver a flag. He did not change the red-and-white stripes and proposed that instead of the Union Jack in the canton there be 13 six-pointed white stars on a dark blue field, as shown above left.

His arrangement of the stars with a five-star diagonal echoes the English cross and Scottish saltire in the Union Jack. Hopkinson is credited with the design, although Congress didn't pay him his invoice of a "Quarter Cask" of wine because other people were involved and anyway he was already being paid for his services to the Navy Board.

Many authorities take all this at face value. Francis Hopkinson invented the Stars and Stripes, therefore it has nothing to do with George Washington. End of story.

Another Version of Hopkinson
Arms in Red (Gules).

However, I haven't seen it noted anywhere as of any significance in this context, but Hopkinson's family originated from Yorkshire and, like Washington's coat of arms, the coats of arms of the Hopkinson family have three stars in them.  The star-like charges on the Hopkinson coats of arms differ slightly:

• They are wavy "estoiles" (Old French for "stars") rather than the straight-sided "mullets" (which are supposed to be the spur-revels on the heel of a knight's boot) on the Washington crest.
• They are six-pointed, whereas the Washington mullets are five-pointed. The original Stars and Stripes flag presented by Hopkinson had six points. Was he trying to assert that the Hopkinsons had a superior charge on their escutcheon? 

The connection between the Washington and Hopkinson stars would surely have been noticed by both of them. Although the Washingtons were based in Durham, their properties and influence extended from inside Scotland down to contiguous northern Yorkshire, as shown, for example by the Washington coat of arms in the 15th century stained glass window of the Benedictine Abbey at Selby, Yorkshire, well south of Durham. I have visited the Abbey, having attended a sister institution, Ampleforth College, for three years.

The so-called Betsy Ross star
cut. But the "one cut" is no
 time saver, as nine steps are
required before the cut.

When Scotland was getting ready to vote on independence earlier in 2014, leaders in the counties of Cumbria, Northumberland, Durham and Yorkshire toyed with trying to follow them out to become another independent country. Up there, London can seem far away. While Scottish soldiers often crossed the border to fight, in the north it was more of a domestic dispute.

In 14th century Oxford, students were divided into "northerners", meaning north of the River Trent (roughly, the old Danelaw territory), and southerners, meaning from England south of the Trent, or Wales, or Cornwall or Ireland (the old Wessex area).

Is it possible that:

• Francis Hopkinson was selected to design the flag because Washington, or his loyal comrades like Benjamin Franklin and Paul Revere, liked the idea of white stars on a blue field and they expected the outcome of the Hopkinson deliberations to be what it was? 
• The final version of the stars on the flag went to five points because Washington's powerful fans preferred the connection to him rather than to the less-reputed Hopkinsons?
• The Betsy Ross story that five points are easier to cut than a symmetrical six–which is counter-intuitive–was promulgated as a convenient cover for the real motivation. The intent was to honor Washington without stirring up fears of a new monarchy.

(Next: The Douglas and Moray coats of arms. See also: Unsourced notes on George Washington's arms and the origin of the name.)

WW2 | 1.The Boissevain Clan (Updated July 9, 2016)

"No regret for the past.
No fear of the future."

The following is the first chapter of a book on the Boissevains before 1940 and During WW2.

My grandmother Olga Boissevain's family were Huguenots – French Protestants who followed John Calvin's doctrine of predestination, changing the status of business people from one of toleration to one of divine grace.

This was naturally an attractive religion for business people in France, who had been pilloried by the Catholic Church for having become too rich to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Boissevains originally lived in Bergerac in the Dordogne, France but had to leave because the Catholic king Louis XIV became uneasy at the growth of Huguenot power.

The Boissevains Escape and Some Go to Holland

No one, of course, would leave the gorgeous Dordogne area voluntarily. They had to be ejected. The Boissevains were booted out, a minority within France that was no longer welcomed.

The name Boissevain comes from the boxwood tree (Buxus) that is common in the Dordogne. In that part of the world, one tree means in front of the house means "Go Away”. Two trees means “Come and Go as You Please”. Three trees together means “Welcome”.

The first of the Boissevain clan was Lucas Bouyssavy (1660-1705), who made his Roman name into a more French name by changing it to Boissevain. He was a French Calvinist, who were called Huguenots because of an early leader named Hugues.

 After the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in 1685, Lucas escaped to Holland in 1688, hiding among wine barrels in the hold of a ship from Bordeaux to Amsterdam. He began his life as an immigrant by teaching subjects like bookkeeping, French and architectural drafting. He kept the faith, attending the Walloon (francophone) church in Amsterdam.

Calvin went beyond Martin Luther in objecting to an anti-business bias in Roman Catholic doctrine. He built on preachings of St. Augustine to develop a doctrine of predestination, in which worldly wealth is a sign of divine favor. For from being an obstacle to entering the Kingdom of Heaven, wealth was a sign of the elect.

With this wind in their sails, the Huguenots were successful in France, and at their height they accounted for half of the nobility and half of the artisans. But the Catholic Church fought back:

• In 1534, the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) was created by Spaniard St. Ignatius of Loyola, as a counter-Reformation group with a military-style organization, reporting directly to the Pope.
• In 1572, to end a French civil war between Catholics and the Protestant Huguenots, Catherine de' Medici, wife of Henry II, called Huguenot leaders to Paris on St. Bartholomew's Day, ostensibly for peace negotiations. She then had all of these leaders massacred in their beds during the night.
• In 1685, Louis XIV became impatient with the Huguenots' mobilizing an "armed political party" (William Langer, Encyclopedia of World History, 1948, p. 386) under the protection of a promise of religious freedom by Henry IV. Louis revoked  this promise, the Edict of Nantes. 

After the Revocation of the Edict, the Huguenots fled France. This damaged the country's economy and contributed to the unrest that erupted into the French Revolution. The New Catholic Dictionary (1929, p. 321) says it all:

The results of the Edict's being revoked were disastrous for France.

The Boissevain family well remembers its history of religious persecution, not least and the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. This has meant - as in many other families that have faced persecution - the family retains a core value of fighting for justice, and a consciousness of the cost of this value. The Huguenot religious beliefs have been diluted and modified through shifts to a more secular society as well as  conversions and marriages (my mother, for example, converted to Catholicism). The core family value is expressed in the Boissevain motto

Ni regret du passé, Ni peur de l’avenir.  No regret for the past, because its costs are the price we must pay. No fear of the future, because we are here to face forward.

The Boissevain Family in Holland

Charles and Emily Boissevain proudly pose with their six
daughters, at Drafna c. 1910, before the wood was painted white.
Back row (L to R): Olga, Emily, Charles, Hester.
Front row: Mary, Hilda, Nella, Teau.

The Boissevains in Holland begin with Lucas Bouyssavy (1660-1705), who made his Roman name into a more French name by changing it to Boissevain.

After the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in 1685, Lucas escaped to Holland in 1688, hiding among wine barrels in the hold of a ship from Bordeaux to Amsterdam. He began his life as an immigrant by teaching subjects like bookkeeping, French and architectural drafting. He kept the faith, attending the Walloon (francophone) church in Amsterdam.

Through the church he met Marthe Roux, who escaped with her mother and sister in a hay wagon in 1686. Marthe Roux's mother kept her daughters quiet even when soldiers at the border stuck their bayonets into the hay. Marthe's mother was stuck in the leg but was soundless, even having the presence of mind to wipe her blood off the bayonet with her skirt. Of such stuff were the Boissevain women made. No wonder they were leaders in the woman suffrage movement in Holland.

She and Lucas married in 1700 and had a son Jeremie Boissevain (1702-1762), who continued his father's business of teaching drafting and English, and worked as a bookkeeper. He had a son Gideon Jeremie Boissevain (1741-1802), who was a merchant and accountant (bookhoeder). He had a son Daniel Boissevain (1772-1834), who became a ship-owner, living in the middle of Amsterdam on the Herengracht. He married a socially prominent woman and they had 14 children, including five males from whom most of the other Boissevains in the world appear to be descended (the others descend from Daniel's brother Henri Jean Boissevain).

The Boissevains in Holland did well with their Huguenot appetite for commerce. They were involved in seagoing activities - Dutch Navy admirals, shipping magnates, sea rescue directors, shipbuilding, and banking. The family was extremely musical and creative, and generated not only Bankers and Boaters, but Bohemians as well. The Boissevains were a major force for the creation of the concert hall (Concertgebouw) in Amsterdam. I heard this from my mother and from a Dutch relative who was close to her, the late Sacha Boissevain (see February 2010 post).

Emily Heloise MacDonnell Boissevain and her five sons, c 1910.
L to R, seated, front row: Charles E. H., Emily, and Alfred.
Standing: Jan Maurits, Eugen and Robert (all three went to USA).

The eldest of the five children of Daniel Boissevain was Gideon Jeremie Boissevain (1796-1875). He married three times, the second time to a van Lennep. All of his eight children who survived infancy were by his third wife Maria van Heukelom. Of the eight, the three most prolific were:

The Jantjes - Boaters and Bankers

Jan Boissevain (1836-1904, NP p. 52) was  the fifth child of Gedeon and was a Boater and Banker. My mother used to call his nine children and their descendants the Jantjes (little Jans). The term is formally identified in the Dutch Boissevain Foundation Bulletin. The Jantjes were very important in the Dutch Resistance in World War II.

• His third child Charles Daniel Walrave Boissevain was a Boater, going from the Dutch Navy to serve as Consul-General to Canada (1866-1944, NP p. 55); his son Jan "Canada" Boissevain was born in Montreal, hence the nickname; Jan Canada's sons Gi and Janka were leaders of the armed resistance. 
• His seventh child, Petronella Johanna Boissevain, married Adriaan Floris ("Aat") van Hall (1870-1959, NP p. 54), and their children included the Dutch Resistance leader Walraven van Hall. Aat van Hall's twin brother Floris Adriaan ("Floor") van Hall died during the early part of World War II,  and Aat was named as his executor.

The Charletjes

http://nyctimetraveler.blogspot.com/2015/02/who-were-emily-helose-macdonnell-and.html

Charles Boissevain (1842-1927, NP p. 67), sixth child of Gedeon, was a Bohemian, publisher of the leading Dutch newspaper and, for some years, the most popular journalist in Holland, writing a column called Van Dag Tot Dag ("From Day to Day"). He married an Anglo-Irish woman, Emily Heloise MacDonnell, in 1867. His original first name was Karel, the Dutch version of Charles. But since he married an Irish girl, Emily Heloise MacDonnell (1844-1931), whom he met when covering the International Exhibition of 1865, he anglicized his name to Charles. He got sick while at the Exhibition, and Emily's parents brought him home to recover. Emily looked after him and they fell in love.

The MacDonnells came from Scotland in the 15th century. Colla MacDonnell settled in Tynekill Castle and was provided with gallowglasses (government soldiers) to keep order. They were powerful people in the county. My nephew Christ Oakley has visited what is left of Tynekill. James MacDonnell unfortunately forfeited the property and privileged position that Colla had acquired by rebelling against the British King in 1641. After that the MacDonnells had to have a profession or a government appointment. Richard MacDonnell (1787-1867) was Provost of Trinity College Dublin from 1852 until his death. He married Jane Graves, daughter of the Very Rev. Richard Graves who was descended from Duc Henri de Montmorency, executed in France in 1652. One of Richard MacDonnell's sons, Hercules Henry Graves MacDonnell (1819-1900) married Emily Anne Moylan in 1842, eloping to be wed by the blacksmith of Gretna Green - their second child was Emily MacDonnell. Emily Moylan (1852-1883) was the only child of Denis Creagh Moylan (1794-1849) and Mary Morrison King, who was the out-of-wedlock daughter of George, Third Earl of Kingston, who can be traced back to John of Gaunt and Edward III.

Charles was outspoken and liberal. He took the side of the Boers against British aggression in a book-length "Letter to the Duke of Devonshire" and upset his wife's relatives in Ireland. When Emily tried to defend the British, her daughters called her a Rooinek ("Redneck"), which is what the Boers called the British soldiers. Charles never seemed to have enough money, certainly not enough to match his vanity, but with he help of occasional inheritances they brought up eleven children in style. The Bohemians among the Boissevains never seemed to match the affluence of the Banker-Boaters like Jan, and the women among the Bankers were occasionally scandalized by the behavior of the Bohemians.

Charles and Emily had 11 children and they and their descendants are called the Kareltjes or Charletjes (little Charleses). The Boissevain Foundation Bulletin spells it Charles-tjes, but the English language avoids having three consonants in a row and I am spelling it the way my mother did, without the hyphen:

• His eldest son, Charles Ernest Henri Boissevain (1868-1940, NP p. 69) married a famous Dutch suffragist Maria Barbera Pijnappel (one of many suffragists in the family); they had ten children of whom the third was Robert Lucas Boissevain, who was bankrupted by the Nazis and became a Dutch Resistance leader. In a house in Haarlem owned by his wife's recently deceased uncle Aat (Floris Adriaan van Hall), he lodged himself, his wife, six children (including one hiding from the forced-labor razzia), plus four Jewish hideaways. 
• The third daughter, Olga Emily Boissevain (my grandmother), married a naval officer, Bram van Stockum.  They had a daughter, Hilda van Stockum, and two sons. The middle son, Willem van Stockum, worked with Einstein, volunteered to be a bomber pilot, and was killed in his sixth bombing mission over France during the week of D-Day (a book was written about him in 2014, Time Bomber, by Robert Wack, a U.S. Army major and pediatrician).
• The fourth daughter, Hilda Boissevain was born July 12, 1877. She was the younger of the middle two girls among the Charletjes.  The first two of Charles’ daughters, Mary and Hester (Hessie) made conventional marriages, with no interest in higher education. The second two–Hilda and Olga–were interested in higher education but had to fight for it. The third set of two, Nella and Teau, both went on to university without thinking twice about it. Hilda married Hendrik (“Han”) de Booy, from a long line of Dutch naval officers, including some vice-admirals, bonding with the Boaters among the Boissevains. In 1929-31, when Hilda van Stockum was in Amsterdam studying art, she stayed with the de Booy family and painted the portrait of their daughter Engelien. Han became the head of the Dutch Lifeboat Company, a sea-rescue organization. He also worked for the Amsterdam Concertgebouw as an officer, during which time his brother-in-law Charles E. H. Boissevain stepped off the Board to avoid a conflict of interest. The de Booys had four children: (1) Hendrik Thomas (Tom) de Booy, b. December 26, 1898, who married Ottoline Gooszen and followed his father as Secretary, then Director of the Dutch Lifeboat Company. (2) Alfred de Booy, b. May 29, 1901, married Sonja van Benckendorff, from Byelarus, the daughter of a landowner near Bakou. (3) Olga Emily de Booy, b. March 14, 1905, married John Gottlieb van Marle and they had three children (some cousins of the van Marles were active in the Resistance). (4) Engelina ("Engelien") Petronella de Booy, b. June 17, 1917 as mentioned was a friend of my mother Hilda van Stockum; she married Dr. Marcus Frans Polak at the beginning of the war and thereby saved his life because he was Jewish and would have been deported if not married to her. After the war they were divorced because he couldn’t carry the burden of knowing she saved his life. But, Engelien says, they remained very good friends to the end of their lives. [See also https://nyctimetraveler.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-first-year-of-dutch-occupation.html.]

Hester and the den Texes

Hester Boissevain den Tex (1842-1914, NP p. 49), twin of Charles, married Nicolaas Jacob den Tex in 1866. They had ten children, one of whom married a Boissevain cousin!

References

Benoit, Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes (5 vols., Delft, 1693);

Browning, History of the Huguenots (London, 1840); PUAUX, Histoire de la Reformation francaise (7 vols., Paris, 1859);

Coignet, L'evolution du protestantisme francais au XIX siecle (Paris, 1908);

Encyclopedie des sciences religieuses, ed.

de Beze, Histoire ecclesiastique des eglises reformees au royaume de France (2 vols., Toulouse, 1882).

de la Tour, Les Origines de la Reforme (2 vols. already issued, Paris, 1905-9).

Dégert, Antoine. (1910). "Huguenots."  The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Co. Retrieved Dec. 14, 2015 from New Advent: www.newadvent.org/cathen/07527b.htm

Encyclopedia Bitannica, 11th ed., 1910. "Huguenots. http://www.britannica.com/topic/Huguenot.

Laval, Compendious History of the Reformation in France (7 vols., London, 1737);

Lichtenberger, Paris, 1877-82), s.v.; HAAG, La France protestante (10 vols., Paris, 1846; 2nd ed. begun in 1877); Bulletin de l'histoire du protestantisme francais; Revue chretienne;

Smedley, History of the Reformed Religion in France (3 vols., London, 1832);

Other Chapters

The above post is a draft of Chapter 1 of a book. The other chapters are listed with links in The Boissevain Family in the Dutch Resistance, 1940-45. 

The Causes of the Great Depression (Comments)

The red bars are the years of GDP
decline, i.e., recession/depression.
The Depression started August 1929.

Martin Kelly is a high school teacher who posts under about.com useful summaries about different eras in American history. Sort of, "What Every High School Graduate Should Know about American History."

It is important in a democracy that all voters understand their history.

Kelly recently posted on "The Causes of the Great Depression". Understanding the causes of the Depression is important so that we will avoid repeating the mistakes we made in the 1920s.

Since I am working on a biography of FDR's first Treasury Secretary, William H. Woodin, I was especially interested in his report. Woodin took the brunt of the initial Federal response to panic that greeted FDR's arrival in Washington. I believe the stress killed him. He resigned for health reasons at the end of 1933 and died not much more than a year after FDR took office.

I think some of Kelly's statements in his first two "Causes" about the timing of the Depression and the timing of bank failures are erroneous. I looked for a place to send him a correction but I could not find an email contact on his web site.

So I am posting my concerns here in an effort to spread truth and correct error. Americans should remember the facts about their history correctly. I'm expecting that this will in time reach him and perhaps he will make some changes. He lists other causes, but these are the first two and I will limit myself to them.

Cause #1 - The "Stock Market Crash of 1929"

Kelly considers the stock market crash of October 1929 as the first cause of the Great Depression. Here are his words:

1. Stock Market Crash of 1929 Many believe erroneously that the stock market crash that occurred on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929 is one and the same with the Great Depression. In fact, it was one of the major causes that led to the Great Depression. Two months after the original crash in October, stockholders had lost more than $40 billion. Even though the stock market began to regain some of its losses, by the end of 1930, it just was not enough and America truly entered what is called the Great Depression.

The Depression of 1929-1933 ended with FDR's
New Deal. The Recession of 1937-1938 resulted
from a weakening of the New Deal. The
run-up to World War II revived GDP in 1938.

My Comment: The Bureau of Economic Analysis at the U.S. Department of Commerce has kept track of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) since after World War II. GDP is a measure of all goods and services produced during a year.

Business cycles are dated by an independent Business Cycle Dating Committee, also known as the Wise Men although it is not restricted to men. It reports through the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The Committee dates the Great Depression by two declines in GDP.

• The first was August 1929 (or more broadly the third quarter of the year) through March 1933 (the first quarter), lasting three years and seven months. Starting with the arrival of FDR, the economy was recovering from the 26.7 percent decline in the economy.
• The second was the recession from May 1937 (second quarter) to June 1938 (second quarter), when the economic decline was a serious 18.2 percent. This was precipitated by lower profits and tight fiscal and monetary policies.  

So... the misleading statements in Cause #1 in Kelly's post I think include the following:

• The stock market crash occurred two months after the Depression started. Since the Depression started before the crash, something else was at work.
• America did not enter the Great Depression at the end of 1930, but 18 months earlier.
• The crash of the New York Stock Exchange is not a cause of anything except through the opinions of investors, of which it is simply an indicator. The cause of the Depression must be sought in the high value placed on stocks in the late 1920s, and the reason for the high level of speculation, i.e., borrowed money. The reliance of investors on debt subject to margin calls increased the riskiness of the stock market and added to the intensity of the revaluation of stock prices.
• The $40 billion loss by investors in two months doesn't sound like a lot in today's stock market. It would be more meaningful to say that the 1929 high value of all stocks on the New York Stock Exchange was $87 billion and this valuation fell to $19 billion in 1933 - a drop of 78 percent. More than three-fourths of the value of listed stocks was wiped out.

Cause #2 - Bank Failures

Part of the problem that created the Great Depression is the instability of the banking system and therefore of the stock market that depended on it and the national economy that depended on both.

2. Bank Failures Throughout the 1930s over 9,000 banks failed. Bank deposits were uninsured and thus as banks failed people simply lost their savings. Surviving banks, unsure of the economic situation and concerned for their own survival, stopped being as willing to create new loans. This exacerbated the situation leading to less and less expenditures.

Bank failures virtually ended in 1933 with passage of the
Glass-Steagall Act, which created federal insurance of bank
deposits (via the FDIC) and, as a price for that, separated
banking from more speculative financial activities.

My Comment: The problem here in making bank failures the cause of the Depression is  the timing. The Depression is dated 1929-1933, with many of the failures being imposed by the Treasury at the end of the period.

There were bank failures in 1925, but then none until 1930. The underlying problem was the belief by depositors that they should be able to convert their deposits into gold or currency without limit.

Printing greenback dollars that were not backed by gold or silver was no longer controversial. It was problematic when Lincoln did it to pay the Union Army, but by 1929 paper dollars were well established.

However, in the 1920s, depositors were still of the belief that some or all of their deposits were backed by gold or silver. Some of the dollars were marked "gold certificates" with a yellow color on a part of the bill to indicate their special status.

Some depositors still believed that if they asked for it they would be entitled to redemption of their money in gold. In fact, what started to happen in the 1920s and especially in the early 1930s is that banks could not redeem demand deposits even with paper money. They were out of cash. Some were insolvent but others were only illiquid.

The fear that a bank could fail and depositors could lose their money was a basic underlying flaw in the banking system, leading to "runs on banks".

But here in a nutshell is what is wrong with what Kelly said about bank failures as a cause of the Depression:

• Bank failures were not the cause of the Depression - they were a symptom of problems in the banking system that contributed to the Depression. As Warren Buffett has said: "Only when the tide goes out do you find out who is not wearing a bathing suit.”
• Bank failures did not occur "throughout the 1930s". They occurred mostly before FDR was inaugurated in March 1933. The banks that were closed by the Treasury's Comptroller of the Currency were already insolvent.
• Bank deposits were uninsured only until 1933. But starting in 1933, the Glass-Steagall law created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, insuring most deposits and virtually ending bank closings. In 1934, only 57 banks closed, and after that the FDIC's guarantee and oversight was enough.

The year 1933 was crucial. Withdrawals of paper money and gold from banks occurred in February 1933 at three times the previous rate of $5 million per day. That month, Louisiana declared a bank holiday, and then Michigan did the same, closing the banks for eight days. By the day that FDR took office, 400 more banks closed. In the month before the inauguration, $320 million was withdrawn, and most of it $226 million, was withdrawn in the last week.

On Inauguration Eve, March 4, 1933, after meeting with outgoing Treasury Secretary Ogden Mills and staff, Will Woodin contacted New York Governor Herbert Lehman through the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and persuaded him to agree to a bank holiday starting the next day. Lehman made the announcement at at 4:20 a.m.

The measures taken by FDR and Treasury Secretary Woodin, starting with, on March 5, the imposition of a three-day national bank holiday, and measures to stop the export and hoarding of gold. Woodin personally supervised printing more dollars in three shifts. The bank holiday was extended to March 13, and Woodin made it a priority that the Comptroller of the Currency performed stress tests quickly so that the healthy banks could be reopened.

These measures restored calm. Confidence returned. The public began putting their money back in the banks. The country returned to a growth in its GDP. Barnard Professor Raymond Moley, leader of FDR's brains trust and the man who recruited Will Woodin to work for FDR, said:

If ever there was a moment when things hang in the balance, it was on March 5, 1933 - when unorthodoxy would have drained the last remaining strength of the capitalist system. Capitalism was saved in eight days, and no other single factor in its salvation was half so important as the imagination and sturdiness and common sense of Will Woodin.  (Moley, After Seven Years, NY: Harper, 1939, Chapter V, p. 155.)

October 14 - William's Norman Army Wins Battle of Hastings, 1066

Harold II is said to have been killed, in this panel from the
Bayeux Tapestry, by William the Conqueror. But was he?

This day in 1066 William the Conqueror defeated the English at the Battle of Hastings. He had set off for England from Bayeux, so that's where a tapestry was made celebrating his victory. It's now a major tourist attraction in Normandy. (I visited the week of the 70th anniversary of D-Day with Alice Tepper Marlin and the Rex Hendersons from Australia.)

It looks a lot like a comic strip, maybe the oldest surviving one, and surely the longest one on public display.

One scene of the Bayeux Tapestry shows the death of King Harold II of England (Harold Rex Interfectus Est - King Harold Is Killed.). Some new scholarship suggests that this might not have happened then, and that Harold lived on, perhaps "on condition of anonymity" or in what we might today call a Witness Protection Program.

What interests me especially is how the history of Britain depends so much on what happened militarily after the 10th century, and how the split between northern and southern Britain has such deep roots. During the 10th century, the individual kingdoms within southern England - south iof the Trent is the usual dividing line - unified under the rule of Wessex into the Kingdom of England, which opposed the Danelaw, the Viking kingdoms established from the century before in northeastern England.

• Ethelred II had a very long reign (978-1016, 38 years), but  he is called "Ethelred the Unready" because he was defeated in  by Danish King Sweyn, who invaded in 1013. However, Sweyn died a year later and Ethelred II climbed back onto the throne for two more years.
• In 1015, Sweyn's son King Canute launched a new invasion. Ethelred's successor, Edmund Ironside, said "Hey, wait a minute, why don't we just divide the place up?" Smart move. 
• That's what they did, Canute in the north and Edmund in the south. However, Edmund died in 1016, so England was reunited under Danish rule for the next 26 years.
• However, in 1042 Harthacanute, son of Canute and Ethelred II's widow Emma of Normandy, died without an heir. 
• So he was succeeded by his half-brother, Ethelred II's son, Edward the Confessor. He is considered the last of the Wessex kings, since his successor was in office only a few months. He had few rivals for the throne, so the Wessex Kingdom of England was free of foreign domination for 24 years, though not without challenge. Edward's Norman sympathies annoyed Godwin of Wessex, whose daughter Edith Edward married in 1045.  In 1050-52, Godwin assembled an army against Edward and Edward banished him. He may initially have named William, Duke of Normandy as his heir. Increased Norman influence brought Godwin back. Edward named Harold to lead the army as the king's deputy and probably named him heir on his deathbed. Edward died in 1066 and was buried in the Westminster Abbey that he built in the Norman style. 

In September 1066, William of Normandy left France with 600 ships and possibly as many as 10,000 men. They landed at Pevensey, in Sussex, and marched along the coast to Hastings. Harold II was pinned down in the north fighting off his brother and an army of Vikings. When he heard of William's invasion, he hurried his army south to a ridge about 10 miles northeast of Hastings. William sent his army to attack Harold, with archers in front, then infantrymen, and knights in the rear.

The Normans suffered early casualties, and twice pretended to retreat, luring out English troops from their defenses. Harold II was reported as being killed, which so demoralized the English army that they dispersed. The Norman victors moved on to London, where William I was crowned king on Christmas Day. William went to Berkhamsted Castle to accept the allegiance of the Saxon nobles.

Other stories about France: The Matisse Chapel (Vence)

RAF No. 10 Squadron to Celebrate Its Centennial in 2015

The 10 Squadron Halifax Mark II, Series 1 at RAF Leeming, December 1941 - 
the plane flown by the two RAF crews shot down over Laval, June 10, 1944.

The No. 10 Squadron of the Royal Air Force will be 100 years old on January 1, 2015.

The No. 10 has been repurposed throughout the last century from observation to bombing, transport and aerial refueling.

During World War II, the No. 10 was a bomber squadron. It lost two Halifax bombers to anti-aircraft fire  over Laval, France on June 10, 1944, four days after D-Day.

One plane was piloted by F/O Henderson, an Australian, the other by a Dutchman who had been teaching at the University of Maryland and was  flying for the Royal Canadian Air Force, F/O van Stockum (subject of the novel Time Bomber). The 14 crew members of the two planes have been memorialized by two monuments outside of Laval unveiled on June 10, 2014, on the 70th anniversary of their deaths.

These two planes were less than 2 percent of the 128 Halifax planes lost by the Squadron during the war's 300 missions. With seven airmen on each plane, that would be 896 flyers killed, or about three per mission. The loss of two planes, 14 crewmen, on one mission would be four times the average.

 The 10th Squadron currently flies the Airbus Voyager, a transport and tanker.

First World War

1915-1919. No. 10 was formed in 1915, as part of the Royal Flying Corps, in 1915 at Farnborough Airfield, Hampshire, UK. It served as a spotter and bomber in France.

1928-1941. In 1928 it was reconstituted as a night bomber unit on Hyderabads at RAF Upper Heyford. It moved to RAF Boscombe Down in 1931 and later on to RAF Dishforth in 1937 to form part of the newly created No. 4 Group of RAF Bomber Command, using including Hinaidis, Vickers Virginias and Handley Page Heyfords.


Second World War 1941-1945


The squadron began in the Second World War as the first unit equipped with the Armstrong Whitworth Whitley.

The squadron remained a part of No. 4 Group throughout the war,re-equipping with the Halifax at the end of 1941.

In mid-July 1940 the squadron moved to RAF Leeming, Yorkshire. In mid-1942 they moved to RAF Melbourne, Yorkshire.

Since World War II

1945-50. No. 10 spent four years with Transport Command, flying Dakotas in India. After a one-year 1947-48 disbandment, No. 10 took over No. 238 Squadron and operated in Europe, taking part in the Berlin Airlift.

1953-1964. No. 10 Squadron reverted to its original bomber role, taking part in the Suez Crisis, equipped upon reformation at RAF Scampton with Martin B-57 Canberras, the first jet planes to drop bombs during combat. After 1968, the squadron was reformed at RAF Cottesmore, flying Handley Page Victors. The squadron's VC10s have also been used to fly the British Royal Family and top government ministers around the world. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair reverted to the VC10 for sensitive flights, such as during his diplomacy to Pakistan and after the 9/11 attacks.

No. 10's Vickers VC-10 C1 in 1977.

1966-2005.The squadron received 14 new Vickers VC10 C1s, which were named after the airmen who had been awarded the Victoria Cross. No. 10 thereby reverted to air transport at RAF Fairford and then RAF Brize Norton. The C1 flew 1,326 sorties during the Gulf War, carrying 50 bombs weighing 1,000 lbs each for the Tornado GR1 force. It took part in most other operations including the 1982 Falklands War and the 2003 war in Iraq.

2011-present. With the closure of RAF Lyneham and the transfer of the RAF's Hercules force to Brize Norton, No. 10 Squadron has been reformed as the first operator of the new Airbus Voyager.

TIME BOMBER | Robert Wack Speaks in Westminster, Md.

Dr. Robert Wack, Washington, DC pediatrician,
author of Time Bomber (Boissevain Books, 2014)

The Westminster Fallfest weekend, sponsored by the Carroll County (Maryland) Public Library, was a big success, at least based on the modest expectations of Boissevain Books author Robert P. Wack.

We previously reported that Wack spoke at the Westminster library.  He said the speaking event was attended by about 15 people and generated some excellent discussion. The Carroll County Public Library  is continuing to promote the book and they bought several copies.

At the two-day Westminster Fallfest weekend, Wack reports selling 34 copies.

Wack's Banner of the
Book's Cover.

He says that about half were sold to strangers, who were persuaded by the banner (see right), the author's pitch, and their perusal of the cover.

He also talked to several people who said they were going to download the Kindle version from Amazon.

Going forward, Wack has two more events scheduled this fall - appearances before book clubs in October and November. 

Nowadays, books are sold, not bought... and they are sold one copy at a time.

Meanwhile, Richard Peacocke of Ottawa, Canada had some nice words to say about Time Bomber. He posted a 5-star rating on the Amazon listing of the book and had the following to say about the book, which he writes that he tried to post but may not have succeeded:

[Time Bomber is a] [g]ripping narrative of warfare and moral choice, underpinned by a far-reaching mathematical theory about space and time. 

Highlights for me are the authentic scenes in the RAF squadron and gripping episodes in the fields of Normandy. The book weaves together the history of several places and time periods, with inspiration drawn from the real-life Dr. Willem van Stockum. 

There is a great deal of action, but while there is bravery and cowardice, there is little or no glory. The character studies and human experience in wartime ring true. 

All the way through the reader has an uneasy feeling that something unknown and mysterious is occurring. This is based on a soaring mathematical theory, the intricacy of which is touched on, but not laboured over. The theory is based on Dr. van Stockum’s work and allows the protagonist to bridge fiction and reality. 

I couldn’t put the book down.

September 26 - Birthday of George Gershwin, NYC Composer

George Gershwin (1898-1937)

This day in 1898 was born, in Brooklyn, American composer and pianist George Gershwin. Among his best-known works are two orchestral compositions - "Rhapsody in Blue" (1924) and "An American in Paris" (1928) - and the opera "Porgy and Bess" (1935).

Gershwin's father came from a Russian-Lithuanian Jewish family, and his wife Rose was from the same town in Russia. Their first child, Ira, was born December 6, 1896. George (born Jacob) was the second. He became first interested in music when at the age of ten he heard his friend Maxie Rosenzweig play the violin.

George's parents had bought a piano for lessons for his older brother, but to Ira's relief, it was George who learned to play it. Charles Hambitzer was his piano teacher, a conventional musician who until his death in 1918 was George's  mentor.

For four years, George and Ira Gershwin lived at the top of
 33 Riverside Drive in Manhattan. Although their work was
not always immediately appreciated, it is now revered. This
and the next two photos by JT Marlin. 

On leaving school at 15, Gershwin found his first job as a "song plugger" for Jerome H. Remick & Co.  based in New York City's "Tin Pan Alley", earning $15 a week for handing out song sheets. His first published song was "When You Want 'Em, You Can't Get 'Em, When You've Got 'Em, You Don't Want 'Em" (1916). His 1917 novelty rag, "Rialto Ripples" (1919), was a commercial success.

His first big national hit was his song, "Swanee" (1919), with words by Irving Caesar. Al Jolson, the famous black-face Broadway singer, heard Gershwin sing "Swanee" at a party and featured it in his repertoire.  In 1916, Gershwin started recording for Aeolian Company and Standard Music Rolls in New York, producing dozens of rolls.

George and Ira Gershwin taking a break from
table tennis at 33 Riverside Drive.

In the late 1910s, Gershwin met songwriter William Daly, with whom he wrote Broadway musicals -"Piccadilly to Broadway" (1920) and "For Goodness' Sake" (1922), and jointly composed the score for "Our Nell" (1923). In the early 1920s, Gershwin frequently worked with the lyricist Buddy DeSylva, with whom he created the experimental one-act jazz opera "Blue Monday", set in Harlem, a forerunner to "Porgy and Bess".

In 1924, George and Ira Gershwin collaborated on a stage musical comedy "Lady Be Good", which included "Fascinating Rhythm" and "Oh, Lady Be Good!". They followed this with "Oh, Kay!" (1926); "Funny Face" (1927); and "Strike Up the Band" (1927).

 The Gershwin brothers created "Show Girl" (1929); "Girl Crazy" (1930, with Ginger Rogers), which introduced "Embraceable You", "I Got Rhythm", and "Of Thee I Sing" (1931). Gershwin's first major classical work, "Rhapsody in Blue" (1924), for orchestra and piano, was orchestrated by Ferde Grofé. It was his most popular work.

In the mid-1920s, Gershwin stayed in Paris briefly, writing "An American in Paris" (1928), which received mixed reviews but was quickly adopted by musicians.  Gershwin was commissioned by Fox Film to compose the score for the movie "Delicious" (1929); the final film used the five-minute "Dream Sequence" and the six-minute "Manhattan Rhapsody".

George and Ira Gershwin, outside their
apartments at 33 Riverside Drive

Gershwin's most ambitious composition was "Porgy and Bess" (1935), based in all-black Catfish Row in Charleston, S.C. The music combines popular music with black music. Some songs like "Summertime", "I Got Plenty o' Nuttin'" and "It Ain't Necessarily So" have been praised for musical ingenuity. "Porgy and Bess" is now considered one of the most important American operas of the 20th century, but when it did not win immediate success, Gershwin went back to Hollywood, to RKO Pictures, for whom he wrote the jazz music for ballet-type scenes in the film "Shall We Dance" (1937), starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

Early in 1937, Gershwin began to have blinding headaches and the smell of burning rubber, which the Los Angeles hospital he checked into could not explain. Later he fell into a coma and it became clear he had a brain tumor. Dr. Harvey Cushing in Boston recommended Dr. Walter Dandy who was fishing in Chesapeake Bay. Gershwin's condition was judged to be critical, so the L.A. doctors tried and failed to cut out the tumor.  Gershwin died on July 11, 1937, at 38. He received his sole  Academy Award, for Best Original Song, posthumously at the 1937 Oscars for "They Can't Take That Away from Me", written with his brother Ira for "Shall We Dance".