Year: 2020

Miss Wolcott’s School Denver

Miss Wolcott’s School Denver

by Justin Durand ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

My maternal grandmother, Vivian Luce attended Miss Wolcott’s School for Girls, a finishing school in Denver. She studied things like piano, French, water colors, needlework, elocution, etiquette, and other things appropriate to Edwardian ladies. I estimate she was there about 1914 to 1916.

Wikipedia defines finishing schools: “A finishing school is a school for young women that focuses on teaching social graces and upper-class cultural rites as a preparation for entry into society. The name reflects that it follows on from ordinary school and is intended to complete the education, with classes primarily on deportment and etiquette, with academic subjects secondary.” (Wikipedia: Finishing school; citations, link, and emphasis removed)

Surprisingly, it turned out to be pretty easy to track down Grandma’s school. In fact, the building is still standing (at 14th and Marion). For several years my sister Laura and I lived just a block away (at 13th and Marion). It was very cool, living in the same area of the city as our grandmother, and routinely walking past the school she attended.

Miss Wolcott's School
Miss Wolcott’s School

Ranchers in Wyoming, if they were successful, often sent their daughters away to finishing schools. The idea was to prepare them to be the social and cultural leaders of the next generation.

Vivian Luce Swanstrom
Vivian (Luce) Swanstrom

The earliest ranchers on the Upper Green River in Wyoming were largely Mormons and ex-Mormons from Utah. The upwardly mobile among them sometimes chose to affiliate with genteel, mainstream churches. Grandma’s parents were founding members of the local Episcopal church in Big Piney in 1914, so they sent her to an Episcopalian school in Denver. Her dad’s ex-wife became Roman Catholic, so members of that family sent their daughters to a convent in in Salt Lake City. Grandma’s older half-sister was crippled from an accident in infancy and spent her life in hospitals and institutions. If not for the accident , doubtless she would have been sent to the Catholic school preferred by her mother’s family.

I didn’t know until today that First Lady Mamie Doud Eisenhower also attended the Wolcott School. An article by Linda Wommack says:

"At her parent’s insistence, [Mamie] completed her education at Miss Wolcott’s, a prestigious, private finish[ing] school for the daughters of prominent Denver families. During all of her schooling years, Mamie attended dances classes and piano lessons. As a young teenager, Mamie and her friends often took the trolley to Colfax Avenue or Curtis Street, popular teenage hangouts. They would shop, attend various shows or movies, snack on sodas and ice cream at Baur’s shop."

Finishing school was followed by an introduction into “society”, usually in the form of a debutante ball or coming out party. Grandma was a debutante, but I never thought to ask and don’t think I ever heard any details. I have a vague idea there was a coming out party in Denver for members of her school class but I don’t really know.

Reasearch Continues

Grandma’s mother, Essie (Wilson) Luce, also attended a finishing school, back in Illinois. I haven’t been successful finding that school. The little I know comes from notes I made years ago: “[Grandma Essie] attended a private school in Decatur, Illinois, where her teacher was Mary Helen Sommer Rinehart (1863-1920). The two became close friends. In later years they exchanged photos and letters. [Essie] also attended a private school in Kaskaskia.”

Personal Note

Purely a coincidence, when I was confirmed in the Episcopal Church at All Saints in Salt Lake City, one of my sponsors was Dr. Mark Wolcott. Same family.

More Information

  • “Baur’s Building.” KEW Realty Corporation <kewrealty.com>. Retrieved May 17, 2020. Located at 1514 Curtis Street, this “historic building was once a candy confectionery, Baur’s Candy Shop, founded in 1872 by Otto Baur who claimed to scoop the very first ice cream soda. Baur’s Restaurant continued to serve Denver as a popular chain into the 1970’s. Remnants of history can still be seen in the tile flooring and barrel vaulted ceiling on the first floor and exposed brick walls and lofty timber ceilings on the second and third floors.”
  • “Miss Wolcott’s School Denver.” Denver Public Library. <digital.denverlibrary.org>. Photograph. Retrieved May 17, 2020. “Young women parade in a circle, possibly for a May Day festival, at the Miss Wolcott School at 1400 Marion Street in Denver, Colorado. The girls carry baskets of flowers.” DPL’s photo collection includes many other pictures of the Wolcott School.
  • Justin Swanström. “Wilson.” Swan Knight <yellacatranch.com>, Jan. 1, 2000. Retrieved May 17, 2020.
  • Linda Wommack. “Mamie Doud Eisenhower: The First Lady’s Denver Years.” Buckfifty <buckfifty.org>, Feb. 9, 2009. Retrieved May 17, 2020.
Copyright Problems: A Dysfunctional System

Copyright Problems: A Dysfunctional System

by Justin Durand

We watched Sita Sings the Blues the other day. Haven’t seen it? Picture this. A cartoon that tells the story of the Hindu goddess Sita set to 1920s Blues music. Cool stuff. And it turns out to be a famous instance of copyright problems.

Everyone knows copyright can be a pain in the butt but is it also bad for the creator? Nina Paley thinks so.

Bad for the creator? I wouldn’t have guessed, although the evidence is right there for everyone to see. Genealogists bicker about copyright, seemingly endlessly, and it’s now routine for people to claim “Fair Use”, thinking that’s an all-purpose loophole for any use without permission.

My experience is that even attorneys who claim expertise in copyright are often woefully inept on the ground. They’re so used to making certain pro forma arguments they’ve never bothered to understand either the theory or the case law. Just rote rules. (To avoid being sued, I’m not going to name names.)

So, here’s what happened with Sita Sings the Blues.

Nina Paley created an animated film she wanted to place in the public domain. And it would have worked, except changes to copyright law brought the songs of jazz vocalist Annette Hanshaw back into copyright. As a result, Paley was thrown into a needless copyright storm. In the end, she had to buy the rights to use material that had been in the public domain when she created her film. (You might have to read that a few times to understand how dysfunctional the copyright system can be.)

"Nina Paley's first feature film, Sita Sings the Blues, was a huge critical success: it received 100% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes —which is incredibly rare. She used music by the 1920's singer, Annette Hanshaw, which can no longer be heard through legal channels unless you happen to own her old 78's or watch Nina's film. This video tells the story of why Nina joined Question Copyright.org and encourages artists to ignore copyright law."

Paley makes two key points. First, copyright holders were using their power to suppress individual artists. Second, it did not benefit her to copyright her work. As a result, she now advocates what she calls “intellectual disobedience”. Ignore the law. Let disobedience become so common, enforcement collapses.

But on the opposite side, my generation remembers clearly and often painfully the death blow to the music industry from unrestricted copying. In the early days of the Internet, the technology to restrict distribution just wasn’t there. Many of us probably haven’t thought beyond that.

Paley acknowledges there are ongoing efforts to reform copyright law, for example, by limiting the copyright term, but she points out that as a creator her own time would be wasted if it were spent on legal reform rather than on creating her films. Good point. And she thinks efforts like Creative Commons that use an end run, miss the real point. I’m not sure I agree, but maybe.

I would like to see more public discussion about the value of copyright. Is it true that all creative work is derivative? (It seems so.) And, what practical social benefit do any of us gain from extending copyright terms as long as we do?

Nina Paley

Copyright

Attribution

I’ve written before about my own experience, having my work hijacked: Copyright Problems (Feb. 6, 2019). The problem hasn’t been infringement; it’s been attribution. We should be clear attribution is a separate issue. I want my work to be distributed. And I want to get credit for it.

Updated May 21, 2020 to add link.

Kruse Connections

Kruse Connections

by Justin Durand ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I’ve mentioned several times lately that the Swanstroms have a yDNA connection to a German Kruse family. And I’ve thrown out a few thoughts, but no real details. Today, just a quick note about what I’m really thinking.

The soldier Petter Jönsson Cavat, born about 1732, lived in Gärdserum parish, He’s the earliest provable Swanstrom ancestor.

In nearby Vist parish there was a man named Petter Kruse. According to Rötters Anbytarforum, this Petter Kruse married 9 December 1720 to the maid Sara Olofsdotter.

This seems a promising lead. Petter Cavat cannot have been a son of Petter Kruse. Cavat had the patronymic Jönsson so his father must have been Jonas.

And Petter Cavat cannot have been a grandson of Petter Kruse and Sara Olofsdotter. They were married only 12 years before he was born.

But Petter Kruse might have had an earlier marriage and a son named Jonas. Or Petter Kruse might have had other relatives in the area.

I intend to follow up. As soon as I find a research strategy. I’ve been saying that for two years now but haven’t thought of anything. Now I’m putting it out in the world in case someone else wants to scoop me.

City States in America

City States in America

by Justin Durand ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

The Ancient World had city states. Sometimes they became empires. And then when the empires collapsed they sometimes became nations. (Although–the modern ethnic nation state is more or less a late European invention.)

When I was a kid, I used to imagine, particularly on car trips, that the cities around me were like ancient city states. I would spend time looking for geographic features that would make good natural, defensible boundaries. Sometimes I’d even think about crops and natural resources, but that usually got boring quickly because there just isn’t much variety in the American West, where we lived.

I could never make up my mind whether Grand Junction would be part of Denver, part of Salt Lake, or be far enough away to be its own city state, albeit smaller and weaker than the other two. Spoiler alert: I never imagined it would be part of the “Albuquerque Plateau”.

Now, I’m loving a map that draws on the same basic idea, although sadly without the romantic trappings.

This map shows a United States composed of metropolitan areas and the surrounding areas tied to them by commuting. I’m not going to embed the map here. Go see it for yourself.

Nifty eh? 

"Essentially, they used data describing more than 4 million commutes to look at how small units of place—census tracts—are connected into much larger units of place. One of the results from their algorithm is the map above, which shows how the country is divided into economically entwined regions that don’t conform to city or state boundaries. Pittsburgh’s region spills into Ohio and West Virginia; Denver’s tips over the border into Wyoming; and Oklahoma City’s reaches into Missouri and Arkansas."

I’ve spent nearly my entire life in the areas Nelson and Rae call Salt Lake City, Albuquerque Plateau, and Denver Front Range, with time here and there in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and New York City.

My past wasn’t so simple in reality. It’s the abstract categories that make it so. And, as I look at the the map, and see the organic rightness of it, I also think to myself I typically use different categories—sometimes east and west of the Continental Divide; other times Colorado River Basin, Great Basin, and Missouri River Basin; sometimes the Colorado Plateau, the Intermountain West and / or the Zion Curtain*.

It’s worth remembering these different schemes are just human ideas imposed on the landscape. They don’t have any reality in the landscape itself.

* Zion Curtain. A supposed cultural boundary separating Mormons, or the state of Utah, as a region dominated by Mormons, from the rest of the country. (Dictionary of American Regional English)

More Information

Updated May 24, 2020 to resolve problem with link to definition of Zion Curtain.

Curly Bear

Curly Bear

by Justin Durand

A bit of silliness tonight.

We know from yDNA testing the Swanstroms might descend from a German Kruse family settled in Sweden. They, the Svanströms, lived relatively near a noble family named Crusebjörn. The Crusebjörn family’s original name was Kruse. They came from Lübeck in Schleswig-Holstein to Sweden. When they were ennobled their name was changed from Kruse to Crusebjörn because there were already two Swedish noble families named Kruse.

The usual etymology given for Kruse is that it was “a descriptive German surname meaning ‘with curly hair,’ from the Middle High German krus, meaning ‘curly.'”

And björn of course is “bear.”

So, curly bear.

I’m in love with that image. I could have the etymology wrong, or I could have the translation wrong, and anyway there is no particular reason so far to imagine the Swanstroms are any more likely to be descended from the Crusebjörn family than any other Swedish Kruse family.

Still.

I had a polar bear fetish hanging from my rear view mirror. Now it’s hanging on the door to the balcony. I think I’ll keep an eye out for something a little more curly.

More Information

  • “Kraus Surname” by Kimberly Powell, at ThoughtCo <www.thoughtco.com/>, updated March 4, 2018, retrieved May 4, 2020.
  • “Kruse Surname” at Forbears <forebears.io/>, retrieved May 4, 2020. No pun intended.
  • “Peter Kruse“, at Svenskt biografiskt lexikon <sok.riksarkivet.se/>, retrieved May 5, 2020.