March 10: On this date in 1915, Charles Schieren, who had served as mayor of the City of Brooklyn, died. On the next day, his wife Mary, who had been nursing him, also died. A bronze sculpture, by Solon Borglum, “The Angel of Death,” was erected at their graves.
March 9: Do-Hum-Me, daughter of a chief of the Sac tribe, became the toast of New York City but was soon struck down by disease and died on this date in 1843. P.T. Barnum paid for her gravestone.
March 8: “The Great Divine,” Rev. Henry Ward Beecher of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights, who, according the the Pulitizer Prize-winning biography had been “The Most Famous Man in America” only to be diminished by scandal, died on this date in 1887.
March 7: Susan Smith McKinney-Steward, who was the first black woman to be licensed as a doctor in New York State, died on this date in 1918.
March 6: On this date in 1957, fire destroyed Louis Comfort Tiffany‘s magnificent mansion, Laurelton Hall, in Oyster Bay on Long Island; much of his art there was destroyed, but a good deal of it was salvaged.
This Friday, the much-ballyhooed 3D movie, Oz The Great and Powerful, a prequel to the classic 1939 movie “The Wizard of Oz,” opens across the country. It stars James Franco as Oz. Here’s the video trailer. Which, of course, reminds us that veteran actor Frank Morgan reached the pinnacle of his career when he played … Read more
March 5: The “Mad Poet,” McDonald Clarke, died in his jail cell on this date in 1842 by drinking water until he drowned.
March 4: On this date in 1841, engineer David Bates Douglass‘s brilliant plan for the design of Green-Wood Cemetery was adopted by its board of trustees.
March 3: “Boss” Tweed, who in a long career made his name synonymous with corruption and theft from the public coffers on a massive scale, was born on this date in 1823.
March 2: John Eberhard Faber, pencil manufacturer in Greenpoint who put the eraser on the pencil, died on this date in 1879.