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An Unusual Personal Attraction

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Juliana Brent Keyser

According to the inscription on its back, the subject of the above photograph is Juliana Brent Keyser (1891-1975). I think the style of her hat dates the photograph to around 1910. When Baltimore newspapers still had “social pages” they followed every move of the debutante and her family.

Her father was Robert Brent Keyser (1859-1927) who was a president of Johns Hopkins University‘s Board of Trustees and oldest son of Baltimore industrialist William Keyser (1835-1904) who, along with his cousin William Wyman (1825-1903) and others, helped establish the university’s Homewood Campus in the early 20th Century. Her mother was Ellen Carr McHenry (1860-1946) who was a great-granddaughter of both John Eager Howard (1752-1827) and James McHenry (1753-1816) for whom Fort McHenry was named. Juliana was possibly named after her great-grandmother Juliana Elizabeth Howard McHenry (1796-1821) and her grandmother Mary Hoke Brent Keyser (1838-1911). Her only sister was Ellen McHenry Keyser (1892-1980) who married James Cabell Bruce (1892-1980). Her only brother was William McHenry Keyser (1897-1928) who married Marjorie Hambleton Ober (1900-1977) before his early death as the result of an automobile accident.

The Keyser family’s town home was located at 1201 North Calvert Street in Baltimore. The announcement of its sale after her father’s death in 1927 said the house “occupies a lot of 38 by 133 feet” and “contains four stories and thirty-two rooms, with eight baths, and an electric elevator.” The property is currently listed as nearly 12,000 square feet. The family’s country home, nearly always said to be “in the Green Spring Valley,” was Dunlora, later called Merry Hill, located in what is now the Anton Woods development in Baltimore County. According to Census records, in 1900 the family had nine servants; in 1910 the family had five servants; in 1920 the family had two maids and a butler.

Her parents “introduced” Juliana at a reception held at their town home in December 1910. The Baltimore Sun article about the reception described her as “one of the most important debutantes of several years, combining as she does birth, wealth, position, an unusual personal attraction.” December, January, and February of 1910 were filled with receptions, dances, a bal poudré, and in each announcement the setting and her clothing were precisely detailed. Several articles described her “surgical operation for appendicitis” at Johns Hopkins Hospital in November 1911. The family’s travels, domestic and foreign, and the annual moves between houses, were meticulously reported.

Juliana and Gaylord Lee Clark (1883-1969), a Baltimore assistant state’s attorney, announced their engagement at a “german” in February 1921 and The Baltimore Sun described the occasion this way: Juliana Keyser and Gaylord Clark simply “made” the dance by announcing their engagement. Everyone, of course, had noticed Gaylord’s attentions, but both he and Juliana have had so many admirers that nobody felt called upon to make any remarks in this case. That sentence is not as crazy as it sounds, for Gaylord had caused many a feminine heart to flutter, both here and elsewhere, and Juliana is not the sort of girl to care for a man whom no one else could see on the earth.

Gaylord and Juliana were married in April, 1921. He was born in Mobile, AL to Gaylord Blair Clark, Sr. (1846-1893), a lawyer who had been a member of the Virginia Military Institute Corps of Cadets who fought at the Battle of New Market on 15 May 1864, and Lettice Lee Smith (1855-1914). Gaylord had a distinguished military career like his father, serving in Maryland’s 5th Regiment during the Mexican Border War and as a company commander in the 29th Division during World War I when he was cited for gallantry under fire two times during October 1918. During World War II he was executive officer of the Maryland State Guard with the rank of colonel. After the war he joined the law firm of Semmes, Bowen, and Semmes and became a partner in 1935. He served as president of the Family Welfare Association was named state parole commissioner in 1932.

There is a lot more to know about Juliana than there is about the usual subjects of this blog, so I’ll end with a jumble of interesting tidbits. She was educated at Calvert School, Bryn Mawr School, and Miss Porter’s School. She served as a volunteer and leader of Planned Parenthood in the 1930s and remained interested in the organization all her life. When the Junior League of Baltimore was established in 1912 Juliana served as its first president until 1916. She helped organize the 1920 Lecture Club and hosted its first meeting in November 1919 where the English novelist Hugh Walpole was the speaker. In April, 1914 she hosted “about four hundred modishly dressed young women of the ‘leisure class'” who heard the evangelist Billy Sunday urge them to “leave behind something more than an obituary notice in a newspaper and a piece of black crepe floating on the door.” English miniature portraitist Charles James Turrell (1846-1932) produced “an especially fine likeness” of her in 1922. It was Juliana’s “unflagging efforts” which led to the establishment on the Homewood Campus of memorials to her grandfather William Keyser and great uncles Samuel and William Wyman, efforts which resulted in the naming of the Keyser Quadrangle and the Wyman Quadrangle.

To learn more and see a description of the Keyser-Wyman papers, look here.

Reverse of the Photograph

Aunt Edna Storll

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aunt-edna-stroll-front

A helpful someone in a hat shot this photograph of a young lady who is identified on the back as “Aunt Edna Storll”. I bought this photograph at an antique store in the Hampden neighborhood of Baltimore in September 2016.

Edna Mae Storll (1900-1950) was the daughter of German-born William Storll (1847-1924) and Josephine (Sophia) Einsig (1857-1942) whose parents were born in Germany. Josephine’s family was affiliated with the Moravian Church, a fact which which may be reflected in Edna’s attire.

She spent her whole life living with her parents on Pattison Street in York, PA and never married. She was inducted into the York chapter of the General Electric Quarter Century Club in 1945 and was an insulation machine operator at the time of her death. The cause of her early death was a cerebral hemorrhage. She is buried in Mount Rose Cemetery in York and shares a gravestone with her parents (findagrave.com memorial #150111323).

aunt-edna-stroll-back

Doris Cecil Dinwiddie Crawford

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Doris Cecil Dinwiddie 1893 front

Doris Cecil Dinwiddie was born in 1893 in the town of Jordan Valley, OR, and died in Austin, TX in 1968. On the back of this photograph, which will be displayed at the bottom of this post, someone wrote some helpful biographical information. She married Graydon Clemson Crawford (1893-??) in 1919 and they had two children. We’ll learn more about Doris and Graydon’s journey in upcoming posts.

Her father was Joseph Milan Dinwiddie (1851-1918). He moved to OR from Indiana with his parents in the early 1850’s and eventually farmed a “section” of land (640 acres) adjoining the town. He also operated a “first class hotel and livery barn” in the town.

There were three photographs of the Dinwiddie Ranch in the dozens of photographs I picked up at an antique store in Baltimore. Each one had a description written on the back.

Dinwiddie Ranch 3

“D Dinwiddie, Jordan Valley, Ore x Grandfather Dinwiddie, Dinwiddie Ranch” Grandfather Dinwiddie, identified by the “x” over his head, must refer to Doris’ father.

Dinwiddie Ranch 2

“Haying on Dinwiddie Ranch, Jordan Valley, Ore”

Dinwiddie Ranch 1

“Dinwiddie Ranch first feed in morning taken about 22 mch south side only 1/5 cattle in sight”

Here are two photographs of Doris’ brother, Rufus Milan Dinwiddie (1896-1974):

Rufus Dinwiddie

Rufus Dinwiddie_0001

Rufus spent April 1917-May 1919 in the U.S. Army. In the U.S. Census of 1930 Rufus was enumerated as “widowed” in the household of his father-in-law Charles H. Catlin in Kelso, WA. He married Catlin’s daughter, Florence J., in 1925 and she died in Portland, OR in 1929. He later married a woman named Margaret Edith whose maiden name I have not yet discovered.

Zora Elinor Dinwiddie (1888-1965) was Doris’ and Rufus’ big sister. In the undated photograph below she does not look someone to be trifled with. Her history is confusing. She was married to George W. Spencer in 1906 and they had three or four children before he died at some point before the U.S. Census of 1920. She married a man named Hutchinson and they had a child who was named Milan after her father. She married Robert Lantz in Reno in July 1942 and divorced him in October 1944. She married Theodore C. Baland in August 1952 in San Fransisco and that is where she died. A note on her findagrave.com memorial page, #87841940, states: Cemetery Records indicate that Zora was cremated at Cypress Lawn Cemetery in Colma, San Mateo County, California. However, her ashes were released to relatives. The location of her ashes is unknown.

Zora Dinwiddie.jpg

Doris had another sister, Elsie Lenore Dinwoodie (1890-1983), and two siblings who did not survive infancy.

The following is the reverse of the portrait of the lovely Doris Cecil Dinwiddie. The handwriting looks masculine, so I am guessing it was written by Doris’ son, Joseph Clemson Crawford AKA Joe Clem. We’ll learn more about him in an upcoming post.

Doris Cecil Dinwiddie 1893

Albert Lee Stone

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Stone Family Front

The above 8×10 photograph has a small note taped to the back:

Stone back

Albert Lee Stone (1881-??) married Carrie S. Wade ( 1884-1942) in about 1905 and they had seven children, one of whom was Randolph L. Stone (1908-1964).

After weeks of not being able to find out who Albert’s parents were (the 1890 Census is lost to us and I cannot find him in the 1900 Census), it dawned on me that the unnamed Grandpap looked familiar. See the resemblance to Daniel and Ella who were subjects of an earlier post:

Daniel Stone

Daniel Louis Stone had only one daughter, Jessie E., so she was probably the author of the notes on the back of each of these photographs, but I have not been able to find her after the 1900 Census when she was about 15 years old.

Here is another, undated photograph of Albert Lee Stone:

4

This head shot appeared in the  The Baltimore Sun of 29 August 1935 accompanying an article entitled “Man Missing For Week Is Sought By Family.” According to that article and others, the police were called when customers at Albert Lee Stone’s meat market in the 1100 block of Light Street in Baltimore waited for over an hour without being served on the morning of 22 August 1935. “Occupants of nearby stores told the police that Stone had delivered an order to a nearby restaurant then dropped out of sight, leaving his automobile parked in front of the store.” On 24 August 1935 the Sun reported that “His wife, Mrs. Carrie Stone, was in a highly nervous condition at her home, in Glen Bernie, fearing that her husband, who was in good health, had met with foul play.”

Equity docket case 18523, which I read at the Maryland State Archives, informs that Carrie Stone received a divorce from her husband in 1941. Albert was declared “judicially dead” in 1969 when his children sold some land he had owned. In depositions it was said “he went to work and didn’t come home” that day and was never heard from again. (msa_cm96_000005)

Here is the kicker: According to the Social Security Applications and Claims Index, an Albert Lee Stone who was born in Maryland on 12 February 1882 died on 29 September 1944. According to Albert’s WWI draft registration card he was born on 12 February 1881, and it isn’t uncommon for there to be such a discrepancy in these dates.

Same man? I didn’t try all that hard to prove it one way or the other. Sometimes mysteries never get solved.