In front of Brooklyn Hospital, an ambulance prepares for a trip. There’s been no snow for over a week, so they should make good time. The driver’s ready, and the doctor arrives, ready to climb aboard.
Most cities at the time had to use off-duty funeral carriages, but this hospital had its own dedicated ambulances. If the doctor sat up in front with the driver, there was even space in the enclosed back portion for a patient to recline on a padded seat. Even though there was no way to treat a patient en route, this represented the cutting edge of medical care at the turn of the 20th century.
My grandmother was Head Operating Room Nurse at BH, and my grandfather did his medical internship there. He took this picture. We donated the photos to Brooklyn Hospital Foundation. Read more about this family in The Girl Who Talked Too Much.
My grandparents moved from Indiana to Auburndale, Florida, during the summer of 1915. He became one of the earliest doctors in town, if not the first. This Christmas tree was a Short-Leaf Pine, cut in the pine woods outside of town. We did the same when I was a child, I remember. What I thought absolutely delightful about this photo was that they have hung a new kind of decoration on the tree; a piece of Spanish Moss, which can be seen hanging off the right side of the tree..
This moss only grows south of a certain area (roughly equivalent to the Mason-Dixon Line that separated the US Northern states from the Confederacy in the Civil War)….they would never have seen it before, and must have admired its delicate structure.
We’re so used to it these days that we’d never think of using it that way. Though not a parasite, it can break branches of smaller trees like Crape Myrtle, if it gets too dense and then gets weighed down by rain. Tree companies are often hired to remove Spanish Moss from oaks when they prune the branches. I like being able to look at it a different way!
My mother is the baby who sleeps soundly in her father’s arms, as her mother and other relatives look on fondly. The candelabra (minus the little shades) is now in my son’s house. I’ve tried to figure out the foods on the table, besides the centerpiece of apples, and I think that’s a glazed ham on the right, a mound of mashed potatoes in the farthest bowl, and maybe slices of toast in the left foreground. Napkins are still lying on plates, so they hadn’t begun to enjoy the dinner at this point. Read their story in The Girl Who Talked Too Much.
Here’s my grandfather in 1905, about to make his medical rounds in rural Indiana, using a one-horse open sleigh. There were probably bells on there somewhere that jingled as they went, even though this horse was not a ‘bob-tail’.
My grandfather is the doctor in this photo. I’m guessing he’s palpating the glands of the baby the nurse is holding. Notice the child on the left in the foreground (a girl, I think, since she’s wearing a nightgown). She’s sitting in a wicker wheelchair, and she and the little boy are reading a large book or maybe looking at a photo album. The child in the background looks bald, and closely shaved haircuts for boys weren’t common till crew cuts became popular.
Ma Google tells me that chemotherapy and radiation were used experimentally for cancer treatment in 1900, so there is a possibility he was being treated for that. I think it’s more likely that his head was shaved to stitch a laceration, and because it would be much easier to keep the skin clean afterwards. But that’s only a guess.
This was part of the collection of his photos that we donated to the Brooklyn Hospital Foundation. They were very pleased, and said that earlier they’d only had blueprints of the hospital’s layout, but no interior views. Also, many of the staff were identified in the albums. Earlier, they had lists of doctors and nurses, with dates and professional responsibilities, but no photos of them, and were frustrated when descendants would write in and ask for information concerning forebears who worked there. With this collection, they could match names with faces. For example, the nurse on the left is identified as Miss Waddell, although the other two were not named.
This little corner, with windows on three sides, sticks out from the wall of the castle, and is called an Ecker. It’s comfortable on winter days when it’s sunny, since the castle could be chilly. It overlooks the outer courtyard, and the large family house (where we lived because it was easier to heat), is visible. You can see the two windows of my room; the first two past the middle of the left-hand window. The castle has been restored since I lived there, and Count Carl and his family live in it.
For the last ten days I’ve been unable to bring an image from my thumb drive labeled “Castle Choices” into my blog, because we had to update the PhotoShop program. Bill’s been working with it today, and now I’ll see if it’s working.
Well, yes and no. This image is from a different folder, but although I could get the interior shot (of the Great Room in the castle) from the thumb drive to come up on the PhotoShop screen, I wasn’t able to transfer it anywhere. We’ll keep working!
I may have even posted this one before! This is Count Carl von Soden-Frauenhofen, the current Count, and the son of one of the kids I cared for. When the book was published in 2020, he actually got his copy before I received my author copies, and had his wife Antonia take his picture with the same view of the castle behind him.
Bill and I had visited there in 2014, which was when Bill took what later became the cover photo. On that visit, Carl had literally given Bill The Keys To The Castle, and told him every room in the place was open to him. He got up early every morning and worked his way through, shooting photos everywhere, while I visited Carl and Antonia and their kids and practiced my German.
Just lately, I’ve been rereading the book, and enjoying all over again the adventures I had there in 1961 and 62….54 years ago now! What a time capsule! Although I will say that the small village of Neufraunhofen, and even life at the castle, has not changed a great deal in all that time.
If you haven’t already, go to American Governess on Amazon and read the first chapter.
….after such a long dry period. Maybe that’s why I’m feeling lazy and just want to laze around. I have lots of things to do, but I just can’t quite get around to doing them. Cookie baking is on my list, but I need two ingredients that are in low suppy, and I don’t feel like splashing through the rain into the grocery store.
In thanking us for the donation, they mentioned that previously they’d had nothing but printed materials to indicate a person had worked there, and when families would ask about their forebears, all they could do was to confirm dates and positions. But my grandfather recorded the names of all the doctors and nurses he photographed, enabling them to put faces to many of the names. It’s a pity he didn’t know the names of the patients, especially that bright-eyed, intelligent-looking little girl in the right foreground.
That’s German for St. Nicolas’ Eve, and in my memory I can hear the children I took care of singing “Lustig, lustig, tra la la la la! Heute ist Nikolaus Abend da!” (Merry, merry, tra la la…today is Nikolaus Eve).
The Count had arranged for St. Nikolaus to actually come to the castle and ask the children to convince him they’d been good enough. I remember watching out the upstairs wiindows of the nursery as we all saw him walk through the entry arch of the castle, followed by Knecht Ruprecht, his rather scary helper, who was said to carry away misbehaving children and to leave them in the forest overnight.
Heilige Nikolaus had a long white beard, wore a white bishop’s gown with a pointed mitre on his head, and carried a long wooden staff. Knecht Ruprecht’s face was blackened with coal dust, and he was bent over, carrying chains, a bundle of twigs, and a bulky burlap bag with something sticking out the top.
The Count let them in. They came upstairs, and as they entered the nursery, the children greeted him; “Guten Abend, Heilige Nikolaus.” The saint pulled a scroll from his robes and addressed the oldest child, reading his misdeeds; pulling his sisters’ hair, being naughty at the table, etc. Ruprecht shook his chains, and then we noticed that feet were sticking out of his sack, and the boots belonged to a known troublemaker. But the saint went on to read of the boy’s good deeds, then asked what he had to say. The child sang a hymn for him.
Each child went through this, then saying a poem or a short prayer. When he got to the toddler, she ignored him, and kept calling out to me….”Ann!” in a perfectly American accent.
When the Count escorted them out again, he found a basket of cookies and a box of small presents had appeared on the doorstep. When those were passed around, I got a nice pair of warm mittens.
You can read the story of my stay in my book, American Governess. Below, the current Count, Carl von Soden-Frauenhofen, holds my book in front of the castle.
Ann Dickinson Sargent 