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View the page of Maura Farrelly

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Maura Jane Farrelly explores the history of the Gilded Age United States, using the lives of three people from prominent East Coast families who moved to Wyoming to start over as her guide.

Image courtesy of interviewee. September 4, 2024

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This video recounts the author's journey of discovery inspired by a photograph of Edith Sergeant, found by the author's mother in their grandmother's house. The photo captures Edith in the early 20th century with a picturesque backdrop of Grand Teton National Park, and sparked the author's research into her life and connections.

The narrative delves into Edith's history, revealing her marriage to John Dudley Sergeant, who was embroiled in scandal within a prominent family connected to Alexander Hamilton. The author shares how they became engrossed in researching the family's past, uncovering the scandal involving Robert Ray Hamilton, who was linked to a "purchased baby" scandal.

The discovery process involved extensive travel and document research, highlighting how interconnected lives can lead to uncovering historical secrets. The author's exploration emphasizes the importance of storytelling in historical understanding, drawing a parallel between past social dynamics and contemporary issues like the right to be forgotten. The narrative calls for patience and forgiveness in the face of societal judgment, noting the evolving nature of standards and values over time, particularly regarding mental health issues.

Ultimately, the author encourages readers to reflect on the implications of past mistakes and the complex nature of human behavior, advocating for a more compassionate view of history and its characters.

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Here are some similar articles that might resonate with the themes and structure of the video you :

1. **"The Role of Personal Artifacts in Historical Discovery"**
This article explores how family heirlooms, letters, and photographs can serve as gateways to understanding personal histories and uncovering family secrets, much like the photograph of Edith Sergeant inspired the author's journey.

2. **"Scandal and Legacy: The Untold Stories of America's Historical Figures"**
A narrative that dives into the hidden scandals of prominent families throughout American history, linking them to broader societal issues and the importance of understanding convideo in historical narratives.

3. **"Connecting the Dots: Genealogy as a Pathway to Understanding Social History"**
This article discusses the process of genealogical research and how it unveils the interconnectedness of families and their roles in historical events, similar to the author's journey into Edith's life and that of her family.

4. **"The Complexity of Human Behavior in Historical Convideo"**
This piece examines how societal norms and values change over time, relating them to individual behavior and decisions made in the past, echoing the author’s reflections on mental health and societal judgment.

5. **"Stories Lost and Found: The Power of History in Personal Narratives"**
An exploration of how discovering personal family stories can provide a broader understanding of history and how these narratives can promote empathy for those who lived through different times.

6. **"Forgotten Figures: Unpacking the Lives Behind the Photographs"**
This article analyzes how historical photographs can lead to rich narratives that reveal forgotten lives, similar to the way the photograph of Edith sparked the author's research.

7. **"Moments in Time: How Artifacts Shape Our Understanding of History"**
Discusses the impact of historical artifacts on collective memory and individual understanding, aligning with the theme of storytelling as a medium for historical insights highlighted in the original video.

These articles encapsulate similar themes of family history, the exploration of interconnected lives, societal judgments, and the significance of storytelling in understanding our past.

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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The motivations were a discovery

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that my mother made in my grandmother's house

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after my grandmother died.

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Um, this is not a personal book in some ways,

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and yet it is a deeply personal book in other ways.

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Uh, the photograph is on the cover of the book now.

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It features a woman.

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Her hair is piled on top of her head,

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and she has a, a high collared shirt with kind

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of puffy sleeves and a very high wasted skirt

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that runs straight down.

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You can tell from her hairstyle

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and from her clothing that it's clearly light.

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19th, early 20th century. Uh, she is in profile.

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She is standing next to a log cabin under a lean to,

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there is a phonograph in the grass in front of her.

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She is playing the violin again in profile

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and in the background you see a lake

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and the Teton Mountains, Mount Moran.

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She is in what is now Grand Teton National Park,

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although it was not then.

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And on the back of the photograph,

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my grandmother had written the name Edith Sergeant.

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And so my mother showed me this photograph.

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It's charming, it's quirky, it's dramatic.

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I sat on it for a while.

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I then did what all scholars do,

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although we don't want to admit that to our students.

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And I Googled her and of course, came up with tons of,

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you know, links because Edith's sergeant is

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not an unusual name.

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But after I had plugged in words like Wyoming

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and violin, I eventually found a letter to the editor

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that Edith Edith's Sergeant had written

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to the New York Times in 1913,

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in which she took great exception

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to the way the Times had covered the death of her husband,

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John Dudley Sergeant.

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And she said he suffered from melancholia,

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but that does not prompt a person to kill his chum,

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is the way she phrased it in the letter.

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And so to give the letter some context, the times

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reminded its readers

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that John Dudley sergeant had recently killed himself,

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that he had been the business partner of Robert Ray Hamilton

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of this city.

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Um, and then it reminded re readers that

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Hamilton was the son of General Skyler Hamilton, which bing,

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bing, bing immediately said to me, okay,

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this is clearly somebody who is a descendant

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of Alexander Hamilton.

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Uh, the Times reminded readers

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that Ray Hamilton had been a lawmaker,

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that he had died mysteriously in Wyoming,

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and that he had been involved in a scandal in which a woman

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named Ava Mann

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and a purchased baby figured is the

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way the times phrased it.

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And so, naturally, I was curious about

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what this purchased baby scandal was all about,

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how this person named Robert Ray Hamilton had died,

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what the nature of his business relationship was

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with John Deadly Sergeant.

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And so that kind of began me on this journey.

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And I, I rapidly went down the rabbit hole into a den

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of other people's secrets.

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And, it became this book I,

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in my acknowledgement section,

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I named this couple specifically.

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Fortunately for me, the property that that photograph,

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was taken on, it was the homestead of John Dudley Sergeant.

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It remained in private hands

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while Grand Teton National Park grew up around it,

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starting in 1929.

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And it was not sold to the National Park Service until 1976.

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And when it was sold to the Park Service,

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the Park Service partnered up with the University

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of Wyoming,

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to run a biological research center on the property.

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And that research center is still there.

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And you get graduate students who come out every summer

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and they stutter study grizzlies and butterflies

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and night skies and, and that sort of thing.

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But the very first director of

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that research center was a man named Kenneth Die.

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And he and his wife, Lenore,

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even though they were scientists, they loved history.

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And so they just spent the rest of their lives collecting

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as many documents as they could that pertained

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to the history of this property.

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That became the research center in the middle

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of Grand Teton National Park.

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And when Kenneth died in 2006, his wife donated those papers

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to the University of Wyoming, the American Heritage Center,

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which is in Laramie.

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And so that was a good place for me to start.

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I, flew out there on my own dime, planning

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to spend two weeks out there.

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And, the very first day

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everything I was looking at was about elk poaching.

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And mind you, I went out there wondering, am I gonna be able

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to get a scholarly article out of this?

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I I really had no sense of whether I would find anything,

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and if so, what I would be able to do with it.

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So that first day I read all about elk poaching,

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and I thought, my gosh, I've just wasted all

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of this money and all of this time,

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I don't mind telling you, I, I went that night

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and I bought myself a bottle of red wine

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and I drank it in its entirety in the Days Inn.

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And by the way, the, the name of that red wine,

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it was Elk Cove.

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I don't mind giving a shout out of, I mean,

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I fig it appropriate, right?

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And I went in the next day, then

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a little bit later than usual and hit the jackpot.

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And really what that trove of articles did for me,

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in addition to kind of filling me in a little bit, on

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the lore surrounding the story of Robert Ray Hamilton

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and John Deadly Sergeant, because these two characters,

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and Edith as well, the woman in the photograph,

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I learned they are very well known out in,

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Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

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I had no idea who she was when my mother

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showed me the photograph.

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My mom didn't know who she was,

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but people in Jackson would have recognized her instantly.

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And so this trove of articles allowed me

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to understand the lore surrounding

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These people's lives.

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But then the articles also

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provided me with clues that I needed to follow up on

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to get the truth of the story.

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And those clues required me then

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to do quite a bit of travel.

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So one example I can give you is that in this collection

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of letters, there was, a, a letter

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from, an attorney in Wyoming who mentioned

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that back in 1897, he had been the attorney

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who took the depositions in a liable case

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that John Dudley's Sergeant launched against Joseph Pulitzer

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and James Gordon Bennett in the late 1890s.

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And that is all the letters set.

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Well, that's a pretty significant thing,

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probably some paperwork somewhere about that libel case.

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And so I had to track down the paperwork

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and sure enough, the paperwork is in the Surrogates

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Courthouse in New York City.

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So I traveled to New York City

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and I was able to take a look at this paperwork.

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And what it consisted of was, what were known

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as inter are known as interrogatories.

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So lists of questions that were put together by attorneys

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representing Pulitzer and Bennett in New York City

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that were then sent to attorneys in Wyoming and Idaho,

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and those attorneys in Wyoming

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and Idaho swore in people in Wyoming and Idaho,

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and then typed up the answers.

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And so you have the interrogatories on some papers,

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and you have the answers on other papers,

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and of course, they're all messed up and mixed up.

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And so sometimes you'll encounter the answers

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before you encounter the in interrogatories.

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Um, but I give that, I mean, that's just one example of,

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of the research process for me, it was really a matter

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of detective work.

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I traveled to New York, I traveled to Maine, I traveled

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to Chicago, I went out to Oregon.

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Um, I did interviews with people who live in Nebraska,

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but it all begins with documents that were a part

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of this collection that the deans put together

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and donated to the University of Wyoming.

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Robert Ray Hamilton,

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was a state lawmaker from New York City.

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He represented the Murray Hill district of Manhattan.

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He was the son of general Skyler Hamilton,

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who was the son of John Church Hamilton, who was the son

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of Alexander Hamilton.

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And it is important for me though,

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to talk about the various Hamiltons that were

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between Alexander and Robert Ray,

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because as I say in the book,

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this was a pretty scandal laden family.

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At one point, I compare them to the Kennedys today,

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they were prominent, they were, political,

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they were wealthy, they were plagued by scandals.

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And every one of these scandals was something

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that the American people loved to read about.

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And the reason it's important for my readers

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to understand this about the Hamilton family is

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that Robert Ray Hamilton, as I just said,

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was involved in a scandal in which a purchased baby figured.

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And his family's

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Reaction to this scandal struck me

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as a little bit unusual

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and over the top, even for the time even understanding

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that our standards today are not the same standards

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that people had in the 1890s.

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Their reactions still seemed extreme to me, given

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that this was a family that was not unused to scandal.

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And, so I think by the end of the book, I am able

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to explain to readers why the family's

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reaction was so extreme.

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But you need to understand

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that this was a scandal laden family in order to appreciate

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how bizarre the family's reaction was.

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And so, stick with me, please.

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People, when you're reading about all those Hamiltons at the

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beginning, it is relevant.

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I'm just gonna take a drink of water.

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John Dudley Sergeant then was, in the same family

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as the famous, portrait painter, John Singer Sergeant.

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They were both descended from a man named EEPs sergeant,

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the, and they were contemporaries of one another.

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They were cousins, but not 100% cousins

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because John Dudley sergeant is descended from EEPs

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sergeant's second wife, Catherine Winthrop,

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who was herself a descendant of John Winthrop, the governor

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of Massachusetts, who made the famous city upon Hill speech.

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Whereas John Singer sergeant was descended from EEPs

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sergeant's first wife, Esther McCarty.

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And again, there's a family tree for this family as well.

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One of the things I say about John Dudley sergeant though,

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is that he was really a living, breathing embodiment

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of a social and cultural change

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that the Northeastern United States was experiencing in the

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late 19th century.

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In that on his father's side,

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he has a great deal of heritage.

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The sergeant family, the Dudley family, the Winthrop family,

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these are what, Oliver Wendell Holmes referred to

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as Boston Brahmins.

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And until the late 19th century, there was a lot of power

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that came with being a descendant from somebody

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who was prominent during the colonial period,

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or prominent during the revolutionary period.

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And so John Dudley sergeant has a lot of that

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on his father's side.

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On his mother's side, he was a hemenway, which is a name

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that may not ring many bell bells for people

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unless you live in New England.

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It's actually a pretty prominent name in New England.

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Now we have lots of roads that are named Hemenway.

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Um, it was starting to become a prominent name

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in New England and in the United States more broadly

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during John Dudley sergeant's childhood in the 1870s.

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And that is because the Hemenway family were starting

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to become very, very wealthy.

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They were timber barons.

11:39.945 --> 11:42.885
His grandfather William Hemenway

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and his great uncle Augustus Hemenway were Timber

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Barrens in Maine.

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And in fact, when his uncle died in 1876, I found

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Numerous newspaper obituaries that described him.

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Some of them said he was the wealthiest man in America.

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Some of them described him as being one

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of the wealthiest men in America.

12:03.105 --> 12:04.125
He had an estate

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that was valued at about $35 million when he died,

12:07.805 --> 12:10.085
which adjusted for inflation is about

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$840 million today.

12:13.425 --> 12:14.965
Um, so these are, you know,

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that wealth is eventually eclipsed

12:16.825 --> 12:19.365
by people like Andrew Carnegie and John Dudley, Sergeant,

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but the Hemingways were some

12:20.725 --> 12:23.005
of those very first robber barons.

12:23.385 --> 12:26.685
And so Jack, as he was called John Dudley, Sergeant Jack,

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has the heritage on one side,

12:29.105 --> 12:31.485
and he has the wealth on the other side.

12:32.025 --> 12:34.245
And then finally, Edith, what I would say about her,

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she is John Dudley, sergeant's second wife.

12:36.705 --> 12:39.125
And, her father was a prominent,

12:39.175 --> 12:41.955
bonds tradesman in New York City.

12:42.015 --> 12:43.595
His name was James Monroe Drake.

12:44.135 --> 12:46.595
Um, he was one of the early cottagers in,

12:46.775 --> 12:47.995
Newport, Rhode Island.

12:48.145 --> 12:50.995
When that town was starting to transition from being

12:51.555 --> 12:54.835
a vacation spot for moderately wealthy Boston Brahmans

12:54.835 --> 12:57.475
to becoming this big glamorous playground

12:57.735 --> 13:01.035
for robber barons in New York City, James Monroe,

13:01.035 --> 13:02.035
Drake helped many

13:02.035 --> 13:04.195
of those robber barons become the robber

13:04.295 --> 13:05.675
barons that they became.

13:06.375 --> 13:09.315
He had apprenticed with a trader named Jacob Little,

13:09.415 --> 13:12.675
who was the first trader ever in the world to make a fortune

13:12.675 --> 13:13.715
through short selling.

13:14.055 --> 13:15.355
And in fact, short selling is

13:15.355 --> 13:17.915
how James Monroe Drake made his fortune as well.

13:18.415 --> 13:22.515
Um, short selling short sellers are not well liked by,

13:22.605 --> 13:24.515
executives because short sellers seemed

13:24.515 --> 13:27.355
to cheer rather unabashedly for the value

13:27.375 --> 13:29.355
of a corporation stock to go down.

13:29.895 --> 13:33.875
Um, Edith was incredibly talented,

13:34.695 --> 13:36.675
and also incredibly eccentric.

13:36.855 --> 13:38.915
You know, she's playing the violin in that photograph.

13:38.935 --> 13:41.195
She was actually a classically trained violinist.

13:41.315 --> 13:44.835
I have discovered. She trained at the Paris Conservatory,

13:45.695 --> 13:49.755
in the late 1880s when she was in her early twenties.

13:49.975 --> 13:51.915
She started acting very strangely

13:52.095 --> 13:55.555
and became a source of concern for her family,

13:55.615 --> 13:57.635
who concluded she was mentally ill.

13:58.135 --> 14:00.115
Um, she may have been mentally ill.

14:00.115 --> 14:02.955
It's hard for me to say she was definitely a woman

14:03.215 --> 14:05.875
who did not conform to the standards of her class.

14:06.695 --> 14:07.915
Um, and her time.

14:08.535 --> 14:11.755
She was institutionalized a number of times by her family.

14:11.895 --> 14:14.795
And I think with well intentions, you know,

14:14.795 --> 14:16.755
we talk a lot about how people will be shoved off

14:16.755 --> 14:18.435
to institutions and asylums

14:18.435 --> 14:20.235
because the families just want to hide her.

14:20.395 --> 14:22.475
I do not think that's what her family were doing.

14:22.915 --> 14:24.915
I think they were genuinely concerned about her.

14:25.405 --> 14:29.315
There is an incident that happens in 1887

14:29.385 --> 14:30.595
that I talk about in the book

14:30.595 --> 14:33.395
that is almost single handedly responsible

14:33.415 --> 14:35.115
for her going off the rails.

14:35.295 --> 14:36.355
And readers will have to read

14:36.355 --> 14:37.515
the book to find out what that was.

14:38.135 --> 14:41.195
Um, but she's institutionalized a number of times.

14:41.455 --> 14:45.075
The press in New York City loves to write about her antics.

14:45.335 --> 14:47.195
And eventually, her brother

14:47.215 --> 14:49.475
and her sister finally sent her to Wyoming

14:49.745 --> 14:50.795
with the hope of getting

14:50.855 --> 14:54.205
Her away from the clutches of the press, thinking

14:54.205 --> 14:55.925
that Wyoming is the frontier

14:56.065 --> 14:57.845
and that the press is not going to be able

14:57.845 --> 14:58.845
to find her out there.

14:59.025 --> 15:01.685
One of the things that I realized when I sat down

15:01.825 --> 15:06.545
to write this book, realized early on that storytelling,

15:07.175 --> 15:08.265
more so than any

15:08.265 --> 15:11.105
of the more traditional academic books I've done,

15:11.105 --> 15:14.065
that storytelling was going to be an important part

15:14.065 --> 15:15.585
of the project that I took on.

15:15.685 --> 15:19.505
And so I did work really hard to try

15:19.505 --> 15:22.825
to replicate the process of discovery that I went

15:22.825 --> 15:24.825
through for my readers.

15:24.845 --> 15:27.345
And so I don't wanna give too much away in talking about the

15:27.345 --> 15:30.185
humiliations, but what I will tell you, just to kind

15:30.185 --> 15:32.665
of springboard on something that I was saying earlier,

15:33.845 --> 15:37.625
the frame that I came up with for this really wild

15:37.725 --> 15:39.785
and crazy story, I used to be a journalist,

15:39.785 --> 15:41.945
and journalists will talk a lot about frames that you have

15:41.945 --> 15:43.465
to kind of like wrestle it all together

15:43.485 --> 15:45.625
and contain the story in some way.

15:46.415 --> 15:50.155
So the framing that I came up with is to draw a parallel

15:50.465 --> 15:53.675
between what these people were going through in the 1890s

15:53.975 --> 15:55.555
and a reality that many

15:55.555 --> 15:58.315
of us are confronting today in the third decade

15:58.375 --> 15:59.755
of the 21st century.

15:59.975 --> 16:04.755
And that is the demise of our right to be forgotten, that

16:06.085 --> 16:08.995
these people left their wealthy,

16:09.555 --> 16:13.115
prominent lives on the East coast and went to Wyoming

16:13.185 --> 16:15.595
because they had all experienced some form

16:15.595 --> 16:17.275
of humiliation on the East Coast.

16:17.415 --> 16:21.915
And so they were doing what Americans broadly conceived,

16:22.295 --> 16:25.755
had been doing ever since those Puritans left England in the

16:25.755 --> 16:27.515
1620s and the 1630s.

16:27.665 --> 16:30.955
They were going to a place that from their perspective,

16:31.025 --> 16:32.755
they were wrong, but from their perspective,

16:32.815 --> 16:35.235
it was unsettled, it was uncivilized.

16:35.975 --> 16:37.435
We can have our humiliations

16:37.495 --> 16:39.275
and our persecutions be forgotten,

16:39.495 --> 16:41.515
and we can start our lives over again.

16:41.975 --> 16:44.435
And so that's what these three people were doing.

16:44.505 --> 16:45.635
Only, you know, you can't go

16:45.635 --> 16:48.755
to Massachusetts anymore in the 1890s, you have to go out

16:48.755 --> 16:50.595
to Wyoming, is what they think.

16:51.535 --> 16:55.355
But again, it's the 1890s, you know, 30 years earlier,

16:55.885 --> 16:57.515
maybe you could do something like that.

16:57.575 --> 16:59.155
But this is, you're, they're not going out on

16:59.195 --> 17:00.235
a Conestoga wagon.

17:00.465 --> 17:01.835
They're taking the train.

17:02.155 --> 17:03.355
A journey that used

17:03.355 --> 17:06.115
to take three months can now be done in four days,

17:06.615 --> 17:08.355
and the telegraph goes out there.

17:08.455 --> 17:10.555
So communication that used to take weeks

17:10.615 --> 17:12.955
or months can now be done in a matter of minutes.

17:13.415 --> 17:15.635
The Associated Press has reporters out there.

17:15.655 --> 17:19.035
The very first Associated Press reporter to die in the line

17:19.035 --> 17:21.835
of duty was killed in 1876 during the Battle

17:21.895 --> 17:24.475
of Little Bighorn, which was actually three years

17:24.475 --> 17:26.995
before John Dudley Sergeant even moved to Wyoming.

17:27.375 --> 17:29.905
And so they can't hide.

17:30.325 --> 17:33.265
Um, their persecutions are not forgotten

17:33.845 --> 17:34.945
in much the same way.

17:35.245 --> 17:37.865
You know, there is sort of a, a generational component

17:37.885 --> 17:38.905
to it, I think.

17:39.365 --> 17:41.865
Um, but all of us need to be aware of the reality

17:42.095 --> 17:44.145
that we make mistakes.

17:44.445 --> 17:47.665
We do things that violate the standards or the norms

17:47.685 --> 17:48.825
or the habits or the

17:48.825 --> 17:51.325
Rules or the laws of the society

17:51.325 --> 17:52.645
that we are living in today.

17:53.225 --> 17:55.725
It gets written about on the internet, you know,

17:55.775 --> 17:59.285
maybe we learn from it, we move on, we try

17:59.285 --> 18:01.205
to rehabil rehabilitate ourselves.

18:01.345 --> 18:03.485
But 10 years, 12 years, 15 years later,

18:04.045 --> 18:06.525
somebody discovers this information on the internet

18:06.825 --> 18:08.565
and it is brand new to them.

18:09.155 --> 18:11.205
It's old for us, but it's brand new for them.

18:11.905 --> 18:15.365
And that makes it very difficult for us to recover

18:15.875 --> 18:18.125
from the violations of standards

18:18.195 --> 18:20.205
that we may have engaged in.

18:20.305 --> 18:23.405
And I think it is a similar story with Rage Jack and Eat It.

18:23.425 --> 18:25.885
So I think there's a lot that we can learn about ourselves

18:26.505 --> 18:28.965
simply from understanding what they went through.

18:29.285 --> 18:31.565
I hope all of us will think a little bit

18:31.815 --> 18:33.965
about the issue of forgiveness.

18:34.685 --> 18:37.685
I I do say in the epilogue in that, in talking to one

18:37.685 --> 18:41.245
of my undergraduates, we realized that when people speak

18:41.265 --> 18:44.405
of the right to be forgotten, what they are really

18:45.205 --> 18:47.405
speaking about is the desire to be forgiven.

18:48.065 --> 18:49.205
You want your mistakes

18:49.225 --> 18:52.005
and your transgressions to be forgotten only

18:52.005 --> 18:53.765
because you think that's the only way you could

18:53.765 --> 18:54.805
really be forgiven.

18:54.945 --> 18:56.245
And the problem, of course, is

18:56.245 --> 18:57.245
that those mistakes in

18:57.245 --> 18:58.925
transgressions are not being forgotten.

18:59.345 --> 19:01.565
But I think all of us can encounter them

19:02.555 --> 19:04.845
with a little bit more humility than we

19:04.845 --> 19:06.365
sometimes are, you know?

19:06.365 --> 19:09.725
And so before we lash out on social media about someone

19:09.945 --> 19:12.045
who has violated the standards of our days,

19:12.695 --> 19:13.805
let's think about the extent

19:13.805 --> 19:15.485
to which we all violate standards.

19:15.785 --> 19:19.205
Uh, all human beings always have violated standards.

19:19.205 --> 19:21.165
People in the past did, we're doing it.

19:21.165 --> 19:22.925
People in the future will as well.

19:23.625 --> 19:26.485
And, and, and let's just maybe be a little bit more humble,

19:26.885 --> 19:28.765
a little bit more patient,

19:28.765 --> 19:29.885
and a little bit more forgiving.

19:30.805 --> 19:33.205
Standards change, values change.

19:33.505 --> 19:36.245
The way mental illness is received today is not the same

19:36.245 --> 19:38.045
as it was received in Eat It's time.

19:38.545 --> 19:40.165
And so, in some respects, many of the values

19:40.365 --> 19:43.085
that we're using to judge one another today are going

19:43.085 --> 19:44.245
to be different in the future.

19:44.505 --> 19:47.125
Is it worth destroying somebody's life or reputation?

19:47.675 --> 19:48.365
Just think about it.

00:00 - The motivations were a discovery that my mother made in my grandmother's house after my grandmother died. this is not a personal book in some ways, and yet it is a deeply personal book in other ways. the photograph is on the cover of the book now.

00:15 - It features a woman. Her hair is piled on top of her head, and she has a, a high collared shirt with kind of puffy sleeves and a very high wasted skirt that runs straight down. You can tell from her hairstyle and from her clothing that it's clearly light. 19th, early 20th century. she is in profile. She is standing next to a log cabin under a lean to, there is a phonograph in the grass in front of her.

00:44 - She is playing the violin again in profile and in the background you see a lake and the Teton Mountains, Mount Moran. She is in what is now Grand Teton National Park, although it was not then. And on the back of the photograph, my grandmother had written the name Edith Sergeant. And so my mother showed me this photograph. It's charming, it's quirky, it's dramatic. I sat on it for a while.

01:11 - I then did what all scholars do, although we don't want to admit that to our students. And I Googled her and of course, came up with tons of, you know, links because Edith's sergeant is not an unusual name. But after I had plugged in words like Wyoming and violin, I eventually found a letter to the editor that Edith Edith's Sergeant had written to the New York Times in 1913, in which she took great exception

01:37 - to the way the Times had covered the death of her husband, John Dudley Sergeant. And she said he suffered from melancholia, but that does not prompt a person to kill his chum, is the way she phrased it in the letter. And so to give the letter some context, the times reminded its readers that John Dudley sergeant had recently killed himself, that he had been the business partner of Robert Ray Hamilton of this city.

02:07 - and then it reminded re readers that Hamilton was the son of General Skyler Hamilton, which bing, bing, bing immediately said to me, okay, this is clearly somebody who is a descendant of Alexander Hamilton. the Times reminded readers that Ray Hamilton had been a lawmaker, that he had died mysteriously in Wyoming, and that he had been involved in a scandal in which a woman named Ava Mann

02:33 - and a purchased baby figured is the way the times phrased it. And so, naturally, I was curious about what this purchased baby scandal was all about, how this person named Robert Ray Hamilton had died, what the nature of his business relationship was with John Deadly Sergeant. And so that kind of began me on this journey. And I, I rapidly went down the rabbit hole into a den of other people's secrets.

03:04 - And, it became this book I, in my acknowledgement section, I named this couple specifically. Fortunately for me, the property that that photograph, was taken on, it was the homestead of John Dudley Sergeant. It remained in private hands while Grand Teton National Park grew up around it, starting in 1929. And it was not sold to the National Park Service until 1976. And when it was sold to the Park Service,

03:35 - the Park Service partnered up with the University of Wyoming, to run a biological research center on the property. And that research center is still there. And you get graduate students who come out every summer and they stutter study grizzlies and butterflies and night skies and, and that sort of thing. But the very first director of that research center was a man named Kenneth Die. And he and his wife, Lenore,

04:00 - even though they were scientists, they loved history. And so they just spent the rest of their lives collecting as many documents as they could that pertained to the history of this property. That became the research center in the middle of Grand Teton National Park. And when Kenneth died in 2006, his wife donated those papers to the University of Wyoming, the American Heritage Center, which is in Laramie. And so that was a good place for me to start.

04:27 - I, flew out there on my own dime, planning to spend two weeks out there. And, the very first day everything I was looking at was about elk poaching. And mind you, I went out there wondering, am I gonna be able to get a scholarly article out of this? I I really had no sense of whether I would find anything, and if so, what I would be able to do with it. So that first day I read all about elk poaching, and I thought, my gosh, I've just wasted all

04:54 - of this money and all of this time, I don't mind telling you, I, I went that night and I bought myself a bottle of red wine and I drank it in its entirety in the Days Inn. And by the way, the, the name of that red wine, it was Elk Cove. I don't mind giving a shout out of, I mean, I fig it appropriate, right? And I went in the next day, then a little bit later than usual and hit the jackpot.

05:18 - And really what that trove of articles did for me, in addition to kind of filling me in a little bit, on the lore surrounding the story of Robert Ray Hamilton and John Deadly Sergeant, because these two characters, and Edith as well, the woman in the photograph, I learned they are very well known out in, Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I had no idea who she was when my mother showed me the photograph. My mom didn't know who she was,

05:47 - but people in Jackson would have recognized her instantly. And so this trove of articles allowed me to understand the lore surrounding These people's lives. But then the articles also provided me with clues that I needed to follow up on to get the truth of the story. And those clues required me then to do quite a bit of travel. So one example I can give you is that in this collection

06:13 - of letters, there was, a, a letter from, an attorney in Wyoming who mentioned that back in 1897, he had been the attorney who took the depositions in a liable case that John Dudley's Sergeant launched against Joseph Pulitzer and James Gordon Bennett in the late 1890s. And that is all the letters set. Well, that's a pretty significant thing, probably some paperwork somewhere about that libel case. And so I had to track down the paperwork

06:49 - and sure enough, the paperwork is in the Surrogates Courthouse in New York City. So I traveled to New York City and I was able to take a look at this paperwork. And what it consisted of was, what were known as inter are known as interrogatories. So lists of questions that were put together by attorneys representing Pulitzer and Bennett in New York City that were then sent to attorneys in Wyoming and Idaho, and those attorneys in Wyoming

07:16 - and Idaho swore in people in Wyoming and Idaho, and then typed up the answers. And so you have the interrogatories on some papers, and you have the answers on other papers, and of course, they're all messed up and mixed up. And so sometimes you'll encounter the answers before you encounter the in interrogatories. but I give that, I mean, that's just one example of, of the research process for me, it was really a matter of detective work.

07:40 - I traveled to New York, I traveled to Maine, I traveled to Chicago, I went out to Oregon. I did interviews with people who live in Nebraska, but it all begins with documents that were a part of this collection that the deans put together and donated to the University of Wyoming. Robert Ray Hamilton, was a state lawmaker from New York City. He represented the Murray Hill district of Manhattan. He was the son of general Skyler Hamilton,

08:07 - who was the son of John Church Hamilton, who was the son of Alexander Hamilton. And it is important for me though, to talk about the various Hamiltons that were between Alexander and Robert Ray, because as I say in the book, this was a pretty scandal laden family. At one point, I compare them to the Kennedys today, they were prominent, they were, political, they were wealthy, they were plagued by scandals.

08:35 - And every one of these scandals was something that the American people loved to read about. And the reason it's important for my readers to understand this about the Hamilton family is that Robert Ray Hamilton, as I just said, was involved in a scandal in which a purchased baby figured. And his family's Reaction to this scandal struck me as a little bit unusual and over the top, even for the time even understanding

09:04 - that our standards today are not the same standards that people had in the 1890s. Their reactions still seemed extreme to me, given that this was a family that was not unused to scandal. And, so I think by the end of the book, I am able to explain to readers why the family's reaction was so extreme. But you need to understand that this was a scandal laden family in order to appreciate how bizarre the family's reaction was.

09:32 - And so, stick with me, please. People, when you're reading about all those Hamiltons at the beginning, it is relevant. I'm just gonna take a drink of water. John Dudley Sergeant then was, in the same family as the famous, portrait painter, John Singer Sergeant. They were both descended from a man named EEPs sergeant, the, and they were contemporaries of one another. They were cousins, but not 100% cousins because John Dudley sergeant is descended from EEPs

10:00 - sergeant's second wife, Catherine Winthrop, who was herself a descendant of John Winthrop, the governor of Massachusetts, who made the famous city upon Hill speech. Whereas John Singer sergeant was descended from EEPs sergeant's first wife, Esther McCarty. And again, there's a family tree for this family as well. One of the things I say about John Dudley sergeant though, is that he was really a living, breathing embodiment of a social and cultural change that the Northeastern United States was experiencing in the

10:32 - late 19th century. In that on his father's side, he has a great deal of heritage. The sergeant family, the Dudley family, the Winthrop family, these are what, Oliver Wendell Holmes referred to as Boston Brahmins. And until the late 19th century, there was a lot of power that came with being a descendant from somebody who was prominent during the colonial period, or prominent during the revolutionary period.

11:03 - And so John Dudley sergeant has a lot of that on his father's side. On his mother's side, he was a hemenway, which is a name that may not ring many bell bells for people unless you live in New England. It's actually a pretty prominent name in New England. Now we have lots of roads that are named Hemenway. it was starting to become a prominent name in New England and in the United States more broadly during John Dudley sergeant's childhood in the 1870s.

11:34 - And that is because the Hemenway family were starting to become very, very wealthy. They were timber barons. His grandfather William Hemenway and his great uncle Augustus Hemenway were Timber Barrens in Maine. And in fact, when his uncle died in 1876, I found Numerous newspaper obituaries that described him. Some of them said he was the wealthiest man in America. Some of them described him as being one

12:00 - of the wealthiest men in America. He had an estate that was valued at about $35 million when he died, which adjusted for inflation is about $840 million today. so these are, you know, that wealth is eventually eclipsed by people like Andrew Carnegie and John Dudley, Sergeant, but the Hemingways were some of those very first robber barons.

12:23 - And so Jack, as he was called John Dudley, Sergeant Jack, has the heritage on one side, and he has the wealth on the other side. And then finally, Edith, what I would say about her, she is John Dudley, sergeant's second wife. And, her father was a prominent, bonds tradesman in New York City. His name was James Monroe Drake. he was one of the early cottagers in, Newport, Rhode Island.

12:48 - When that town was starting to transition from being a vacation spot for moderately wealthy Boston Brahmans to becoming this big glamorous playground for robber barons in New York City, James Monroe, Drake helped many of those robber barons become the robber barons that they became. He had apprenticed with a trader named Jacob Little, who was the first trader ever in the world to make a fortune through short selling.

13:14 - And in fact, short selling is how James Monroe Drake made his fortune as well. short selling short sellers are not well liked by, executives because short sellers seemed to cheer rather unabashedly for the value of a corporation stock to go down. Edith was incredibly talented, and also incredibly eccentric. You know, she's playing the violin in that photograph. She was actually a classically trained violinist.

13:41 - I have discovered. She trained at the Paris Conservatory, in the late 1880s when she was in her early twenties. She started acting very strangely and became a source of concern for her family, who concluded she was mentally ill. she may have been mentally ill. It's hard for me to say she was definitely a woman who did not conform to the standards of her class. and her time. She was institutionalized a number of times by her family.

14:11 - And I think with well intentions, you know, we talk a lot about how people will be shoved off to institutions and asylums because the families just want to hide her. I do not think that's what her family were doing. I think they were genuinely concerned about her. There is an incident that happens in 1887 that I talk about in the book that is almost single handedly responsible for her going off the rails.

14:35 - And readers will have to read the book to find out what that was. but she's institutionalized a number of times. The press in New York City loves to write about her antics. And eventually, her brother and her sister finally sent her to Wyoming with the hope of getting Her away from the clutches of the press, thinking that Wyoming is the frontier and that the press is not going to be able

14:57 - to find her out there. One of the things that I realized when I sat down to write this book, realized early on that storytelling, more so than any of the more traditional academic books I've done, that storytelling was going to be an important part of the project that I took on. And so I did work really hard to try to replicate the process of discovery that I went through for my readers.

15:24 - And so I don't wanna give too much away in talking about the humiliations, but what I will tell you, just to kind of springboard on something that I was saying earlier, the frame that I came up with for this really wild and crazy story, I used to be a journalist, and journalists will talk a lot about frames that you have to kind of like wrestle it all together and contain the story in some way. So the framing that I came up with is to draw a parallel between what these people were going through in the 1890s

15:53 - and a reality that many of us are confronting today in the third decade of the 21st century. And that is the demise of our right to be forgotten, that these people left their wealthy, prominent lives on the East coast and went to Wyoming because they had all experienced some form of humiliation on the East Coast. And so they were doing what Americans broadly conceived, had been doing ever since those Puritans left England in the

16:25 - 1620s and the 1630s. They were going to a place that from their perspective, they were wrong, but from their perspective, it was unsettled, it was uncivilized. We can have our humiliations and our persecutions be forgotten, and we can start our lives over again. And so that's what these three people were doing. Only, you know, you can't go to Massachusetts anymore in the 1890s, you have to go out

16:48 - to Wyoming, is what they think. But again, it's the 1890s, you know, 30 years earlier, maybe you could do something like that. But this is, you're, they're not going out on a Conestoga wagon. They're taking the train. A journey that used to take three months can now be done in four days, and the telegraph goes out there. So communication that used to take weeks

17:10 - or months can now be done in a matter of minutes. The Associated Press has reporters out there. The very first Associated Press reporter to die in the line of duty was killed in 1876 during the Battle of Little Bighorn, which was actually three years before John Dudley Sergeant even moved to Wyoming. And so they can't hide. their persecutions are not forgotten in much the same way. You know, there is sort of a, a generational component

17:37 - to it, I think. but all of us need to be aware of the reality that we make mistakes. We do things that violate the standards or the norms or the habits or the Rules or the laws of the society that we are living in today. It gets written about on the internet, you know, maybe we learn from it, we move on, we try to rehabil rehabilitate ourselves.

18:01 - But 10 years, 12 years, 15 years later, somebody discovers this information on the internet and it is brand new to them. It's old for us, but it's brand new for them. And that makes it very difficult for us to recover from the violations of standards that we may have engaged in. And I think it is a similar story with Rage Jack and Eat It. So I think there's a lot that we can learn about ourselves simply from understanding what they went through.

18:29 - I hope all of us will think a little bit about the issue of forgiveness. I I do say in the epilogue in that, in talking to one of my undergraduates, we realized that when people speak of the right to be forgotten, what they are really speaking about is the desire to be forgiven. You want your mistakes and your transgressions to be forgotten only because you think that's the only way you could really be forgiven.

18:54 - And the problem, of course, is that those mistakes in transgressions are not being forgotten. But I think all of us can encounter them with a little bit more humility than we sometimes are, you know? And so before we lash out on social media about someone who has violated the standards of our days, let's think about the extent to which we all violate standards.

19:15 - all human beings always have violated standards. People in the past did, we're doing it. People in the future will as well. And, and, and let's just maybe be a little bit more humble, a little bit more patient, and a little bit more forgiving. Standards change, values change. The way mental illness is received today is not the same as it was received in Eat It's time. And so, in some respects, many of the values

19:40 - that we're using to judge one another today are going to be different in the future. Is it worth destroying somebody's life or reputation? Just think about it.

Faculti AI can make mistakes