"An Era That Has Gone, the story of a venerable Brooklyn Heights family and the support they lent to an up-and-coming portrait artist.

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(Article changed on October 18, 2013 at 16:51)

An Era That Has Gone

By Peter Duveen

Prologue

On reading of the death of his longtime friend and acclaimed painter Leon Dabo, Ned Caswell sat at his desk at the Chelsea Hotel for a few moments to conjure up some sentences of condolence to the artist's wife. A prolific illustrator, Ned had never lost touch with Leon, even though the days during which they greeted each other almost daily had long passed. Still, Ned continued to attend his friend's exhibitions over the years, and the notice of Leon's death startled him.

Into the latter's imagination emerged a harbor scene, perhaps the locale of one of the artists' colonies they had visited together, and Ned Caswell quickly captured its image with his fountain pen on the paper before him. It was his custom to create a sketch at the beginning of his correspondence, and the idea for this one was generated by his close relationship with Leon over the years, and their common appreciation for the past they shared.

November 9, 1960

Dear Stephanie:

I was shocked and saddened when I saw Leon's picture and story of his passing.

How many memories came back to me through the years! Happy ones--and knowing how he enjoyed those days I enclose this drawing--a picture of that era that has gone.

My thougths are with you at this time and I wish you to know that both of you have been in my thoughts.

Sincerely your old friend,

Ned Caswell.

What follows is the story of those "happy" times from an "era that has gone."

I.

The dry windswept leaves of autumn made a soft crunching sound under young Nancy's feet as she skipped up West End Avenue on her way home from school. The late October air was brisk and chilly. Clinging precariously to the otherwise barren branches of the majestic trees that flanked either side of the street were some shriveled and almost colorless remnants of an earlier season, each prepared to drop to the ground before the onslaught of the approaching winter. It was an abrupt transformation from the red and yellow canopy of changing colors that had graced the thoroughfares only a week or two earlier.

As Nancy ambled toward her parents' walk-up apartment, now only a couple of blocks away, thoughts raced through her mind. The fine skin covering her high cheekbones must have braced against the cool autumn wind, as her large eyes winced uncomfortably. Her thoughts briefly turned to the challenges that the new week held.

A lanky but attractive girl of 14, Nancy had not always been the best of students. Even though she was able to clinch a scholarship to St. Agatha's, a fine, high-brow Episcopal school, the rigors of academics did not completely dovetail with her temperament. The many distractions of her home life undermined the feeble attempts she made to keep up with her school work, to the point that she had been compelled to repeat third grade. That is not to say she lacked imagination or intelligence. In fact, a preponderance of these must have drawn her from her studies to other interests, whether it be the house pet, the latest book she picked up to read, or visits to friends and relatives in other parts of the city. Nancy ' s congenial and whimsical nature made her attractive socially, and in spite of her extreme shyness, a condition not unknown for girls of that age, she made many friends at St. Agatha's. These many distractions, both at home and in school, did not make it easy for Nancy to concentrate on her studies.

The young lady had hit quite a snag in her home life as well. Her father, Frederick Kingsland Middlebrook, an overachiever whose love for alcohol became an enduring legacy of his later years, did not win many points with his daughter on the domestic front. Nancy often turned to an over-doting mother for comfort and protection. A quarter century earlier, Frederic had chosen to enter upon career in finance as a fire-insurance broker. That helped him clinch a socially well-positioned bride, Esther Holt Henshaw, whose family had known the Middlebrooks in years past. The couple's marriage in 1905 was heralded in the press, which was aware of the societal connections of both families, while it managed to skip over the less desirable characteristics of Frederick's father, Charles Trinder Middlebrook, who himself had, according to the testimony of a descendant, wasted away his last years in a generally intoxicated state. In searching for a line of work to pursue, Frederic was able to secure a position at Galliard & Company, one of the many reputable fire insurance firms in lower Manhattan, and was promoted to manager after many years in the business. In fact, his career had progressed to the point where he was willing to take on a nephew, Alfred Middlebrook, as a protege. It was not to be, and Alfred would later carve out an illustrious career in banking.

Outside of work, Frederic was the type to play as hard as he worked, and as the apples do not fall far from the tree, he loved socializing. A few years after Nancy was born in 1909, he was elected to membership in the fashionable Knickerbocker Yacht Club on Long Island ' s north shore. Frederic was so enthusiastic about sailing that he eventually acquired a yacht, the 44-ft. Ninfea, which he raced against some of the best in its class. In his working life, he was not content to be a hired hand, but had an entrepreneurial streak that prompted him to place funds in one of the many real estate investment firms that had sprung up in the wake of the skyscraper boom at the beginning of the 20th Century. One of these, the City Investing Company, had purchased several properties after underwriting its own building in 1908--an architectural behemoth that managed to dodge demolition until the late 1960s. City Investing had not distributed a single dividend since its inception, in spite of the $5 million in shares originally subscribed to by investors. When, by 1914, the company had failed over successive years to pay dividends, several of the shareholders, including Frederic, mounted a challenge to the company's management. They sent out proxies before the annual meeting in an effort to effect a change in the constitution of the company " s board. The CEO was, however, the largest investor, and the opposition was hardly sufficient to dislodge him from control of the company. How much money Frederic actually lost in his investment is a mystery, but it must have been substantial enough for him to at least mount a tacit attempt to rouse things up at the company.

Losses from this investment, plus the difficulties he faced in making a living from his own line of work, must have taken a toll on his family life. Once slim and athletic, he began to put on weight as he entered his 40s, and turned to drink, frequenting the local bars in order to ease the tensions at home and work.

Frederic's immediate challenges aside, he came from a family of industrious, if not adventurous, predilections, with an impressive pedigree stretching back to the earliest days of the English settlement of America. Joseph Middlebrook, the family patriarch on the American side of the Atlantic, arrived at Plymouth, Massachusetts from England in 1635, accompanied by a rag tag group of parishioners led by the Rev. John Jones. They settled in Concord, Mass., one of a number of new colonial villages that had sprung up within 10 years of the arrival of the famous Puritan contingent, and more than 140 years after Columbus's first contact with the Americas.

The going for the early settlers was not easy. Newcomers among Joseph's compatriots complained that the soil was poorly suited for agriculture. Several of the townspeople had already abandoned their homesteads for more fertile lands, leaving others to protest the "poverty and meanness of the place." Apparently the sandy soil was well suited for cranberries but less so for more standard crops such as wheat and corn that were the staple of an economically viable agricultural industry as they had been accustomed to in the Old World. Faced with the mounting losses of time and investment over almost a decade, Jones's group, including Joseph Middlebrook, appealed to the local government to allow them to relocate. In their appeal to the governor, they lamented: "Such as hardly subsisted with us, and were none of the ablest among us, either for labour or ordering their occasions, have much thriven in other places they have removed unto." In 1644, the Rev. Jones and sixteen families, Joseph Middlebrook's among them, washed their hands of Concord and resettled in Fairfield, Connecticut, a relatively new colony that was then in need of a pastor for its congregation.

Fairfield had been established some five years earlier by a handful of colonists led by Roger Ludlow, who, after his participation in a war to quell the belligerent Pequot Tribe, discovered the area and saw its potential as a farming and seaport center. When Rev. Jones arrived, he found a welcome among the established families, and the new settlers began to blend into the conservative lifestyle that had begun to take root. The settlement became so well organized that it would be hard to distinguish its town meetings, records of which survive from the year 1661 onward, from those of today. Boundary disputes arose, laws restricting the racing of horses (the equivalent of today's "drag races") and other peculiar statues were enforced to the letter. This rule of law was effective in mediating disputes among the residents, and the enclave prospered.

In spite of its civilized exterior, however, trappings of medieval culture haunted the colony. They included witch trials that became the vogue throughout New England during the later part of the 1600s. Among those executed in the hysteria were two Fairfield citizens. The witch-hunt craze only abated when Ludlow accused the wife of a prominent citizen of witchcraft, a development that brought the ill will of the colony against him and probably expedited his departure to England. Joseph Middlebrook witnessed these developments as the colony grew and prospered, but his family managed to escape the worst of the excesses.

The Pequot War did not end Indian resentment against and opposition to the British colonists, who remained under constant threat of attack from the natives with whom they shared territory. While the Pequots had been ruthlessly subjugated, not, mind you, to the discontent of a good number of other Indian tribes that resented their warlike character, an uneasy peace was made that was to last for many years. It was in this atmosphere of foment and instability that Joseph Middlebrook gradually established himself as a farmer and landowner. Land was the incentive that drew new settlers to the colonies, and as such it was working well. Droves of pioneers made their way across the Atlantic. In 1649, the town granted Middlebrook "two acres and half more or less," and seven years later, "five acres of meadow."    All in all, over the years he is listed in some sources as acquiring ownership or use of over 800 acres. The grants of land that even the courts agreed belonged to the native Americans of the region were finally formalized when the town negotiated, at least according to the tradition of English law, formal recognition for land purchases from the natives. The Indians seemed to have been on a learning curve as to how the English operate. Some of the discontented tribes were being supplied arms by the Dutch just to the south, reflecting international tensions between the Amsterdam and London. But peace between England and Holland in the later half of the 1600s finally eased much of the conflict between the two nationalities, making life in the colonies easier and more prosperous for all.

Joseph died in 1686 without leaving a will, but a special Fairfield court appointed his son, Joseph, Jr., to administer the estate. Joseph Sr.'s daughter, Phebe, received "one third part of ye lands," an amount her father had reserved for her before his death.  "She is not to inherit these lands not during my natural life but at the date of my decease she shall inherit it and her heirs forever." Phebe's brother received the lion's share of the estate.

Joseph Jr. was quick to pick up where his father left off. He fathered six children, and through hard work and by building on what his father left him, was able to leave considerable property to his descendants, including his youngest son, Jonathan.

Jonathan fought in the Indian conflicts of 1706 and lived to father nine sons and daughters. As the years passed, his eldest son Michael left the family base in Fairfield, and quickly acquired land in what today is the posh community of Wilton, immediately north of the Connecticut port of Norwalk, from which vantage point the outlines of New York City skyscrapers can be made out in our own day.

At first Michael built a modest home on property owned by an earlier settler. "I don't think you could call it more than a tent, for he built it without a floor and the chimney was built on the ground, and the fire place was built up with one side open and he lived a great many years without but a very few repairs," wrote a family member 150 years after the fact. But after ten years of relative squalor, records show that he acquired a larger tract and built a more handsome home, part of which is incorporated in a still-standing structure improved by his descendants. As time passed, Michael married and left a legacy of his own. His eldest son, Daniel, was eventually given the homestead, leaving a younger brother, Samuel, with nothing more than a three-acre plot.

His comparatively more humble estate did not squelch Samuel's ambitions, as he was destined to become among the wealthiest citizens of the booming port of Norwalk and its Wilton suburb. In 1779, in the thick of the American Revolution, and during a time that could be described as an economic recession, Samuel teamed up with his brother Sumner and a neighbor, Aaron Comstock, and opened a general store and warehouse. The new business was an immediate success. But during the Revolutionary War, Norwalk was burned by the British, and Samuel's store was looted by marauding Red Coats. He lost a mirror - at the time a high-end luxury item - and a cask of rum. Another tale has it that a cannonball flew through the premises, damaging the two-story building that stored commodities and produce from the neighboring farms, along with a substantial stock of molasses, sugar and rum from the Caribbean that were becoming mainstays of the colonies. The cannonball was recovered, and became a part of family lore, or so the story goes. Later records show that Samuel put a value on the damaged goods of 14 pounds, an appreciable sum for the time, but by no means a catastrophic loss.

During the stressful days of the Revolutionary War and its aftermath, Samuel found it profitable not only to expand his enterprise along the riverfront, but to invest in a seagoing vessel that would make trading expeditions to the Caribbean. Other merchants followed suit, turning Norwalk into one of the busiest seaports of the newly liberated colonies through which goods from the West Indies found their way to New York City and other northeast destinations.

Always interested in expanding his enterprise, Samuel bought out his two partners after the war. Later he underwrote a trading depot in Ballston Spa, some 150 miles to the north on the upper reaches of the Hudson River, assigning his former partners to manage the new location. The Ballston Spa depot became a regional distribution point for goods from Connecticut farmers.

Rum was beginning to blossom as a favorite of the colonists, young and old alike, and Norwalk became a town known for its heavy consumption of alcoholic beverages, with boys as young as 14 commonly found in an intoxicated state by local constables. Samuel capitalized on the new liquor craze by ensuring that his vessel was filled with fine Jamaican rum before its departure from the East Indies to the the newly formed United States. Hardly a sale in his store was made without a dram of liquor being included in the purchase. The dark side of this prosperous rum trade was that overconsumption of alcohol would eventually be the downfall of several of Samuel's descendants.

As much as his prosperity was seen as a sign of God's blessing, Samuel endured the tragedy of the early deaths of several of his children, an all-too-common phenomenon of a time when cyclical outbreaks of small pox and consumption were sure to take their toll. It was under such circumstances that one of his promising sons, Lewis, was given the responsibility of running a general store. The store flourished until Lewis's untimely death in 1811 at age 25, only a few months before that of his father. Not much is known about Lewis's short life, except that he kept slaves, and married his brother Nathan's wife after Nathan passed away. Lewis fathered three children before he died, and Samuel, perhaps grief-stricken by the loss of his son, left each of them $2,000 - the equivalent of about $35,000 today. One of those children, George Lewis Middlebrook, was the beneficiary, not only of money from his father's estate, but of land as well.

Not content with the small-town atmosphere of Wilton, George Lewis and his brother, Aaron Legrand, moved closer to New York City, where occupations other than farming held sway. They settled in Elizabethtown (now Elizabeth), New Jersey, where Aaron established a retail outlet that stocked every kind of luxury and staple item imaginable, from fine art work to fabric, furniture, men's suits and pots and pans. It was there that George Lewis ' s youngest son, Charles Trinder Middlebrook, was born. George Lewis himself partnered with a Middlebrook uncle to trade goods in New York City. He later moved with his family to Brooklyn, and died there in 1841, his wife quicky remarrying and garnering enough resources for her son, Charles Trinder Middlebrook, to be educated abroad. After his graduation from what is today's Princeton University, Charles married Emily Congdon, the daughter of a prosperous Brooklyn merchant and cultural impresario, and was almost immediately thereafter sent to the front lines in the American Civil War. His service, however, was short, and after the war, he was able to establish a successful legal practice in Brooklyn, dealing with matters as diverse as estate liquidations and labyrinthine liability cases. In the 1890s, after moving to Staten Island with his wife and her parents, Charles and Anna Congdon, his cousin, Aaron Legrand Jr., and his three children, he established an office at 20 Nassau Street in lower Manhattan at the height of the skyscraper building boom.

In spite of his professional accomplishments, Charles leaned heavily on drink to ease his burdens, whatever they may have been. His mental condition steadily deteriorated, and toward the end of his life, he spent much of his time in rehabilitation centers, according to a descendant. He died in 1908, only three years after his son Frederic married Esther Henshaw.

Frederic's sister Eleanor became a successful music teacher and later moved to a family compound in the Hudson River Valley. Charles jr. studied engineering and established a practice in Albany, New York, later acquiring a farm in Columbia County just outside the upstate village of Valatie. But Frederic, following his father's footsteps, chose to be a Manhattan high flyer. As a successful insurance manager, he kept company with the jet set of his time. Making the rounds of Shelter Island and exotic Hampton resorts in the late 1890s, he found himself in close proximity to the Henshaw family, who vacationed at the same spots and who knew his father, Charles, when he was just a schoolboy in Brooklyn Heights.

Esther, who had been actively attending social events with one of her older brothers in the hopes of landing a mate, finally achieved her objective. She was a beauty in her own right, but more important, perhaps, was her demeanor, which was, to those who knew her, very loving and generous. Her breeding was impeccable, as she was carefully primed, not only by her mother, Cornelia Henshaw, but also by her grandmother by adoption, Sarah Middagh Gracie, a fixture of the Episcopal Church in Brooklyn Heights. Sarah not only made sure that her granddaughters made the social rounds, but held many open teas at the family townhouse in Brooklyn Heights, thus ensuring that the Henshaw daughters would mix with the right crowd in a carefully chaperoned environment.

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To be continued.

Authors Bio:

Born in New York, March 14, 1949. Staff writer for the New York City Tribune, Economic Growth Report, Register-Star. Presently publish on OpEd News. Mr. Duveen heads up a project known as "The Museum of Brooklyn Art and Culture,' which explores cultural subjects of Brooklyn's past and hosts periodic exhibitions and lectures. He is co-proprietor, with his wife, Junalyn, of "The Siberian Coffee Pipeline Company," which aspires to supply the world with freshly brewed coffee generated from major brewing installations in Siberia. He has also created a planning system known as the Millennial Flexi-Planner, which accommodates short-term and long-term (1,000 years or more) scheduling in a single compatible framework.