The Murder of a Patriot: Douw Fonda (1700/1-1780)

The widower was in his eightieth year and he lived in large stone mansion with a small number of servants.  In his long life in the Mohawk River Valley he had witnessed a great many battles, some carefully orchestrated campaigns and some minor skirmishes or raids. He had never before seen, however, a winter as harsh as the one that had just passed.  It was May now, and spring was returning to the valley.  The widower and his neighbors knew that the blue skies and warmer temperatures were a mixed blessing, as they would probably be accompanied by an invasion from the Redcoats who were encamped a few days march to the north in Quebec.

The British Governor-General Haldimand had received intelligence reports that the Rebels were forcing men of fighting age to take up arms against the British crown.  The Governor was upset by this persecution of Loyalists and began to work with Sir John Johnson to muster a unit to safely escort these men to British-controlled Quebec.  Johnson was in full agreement with Haldimand’s sentiment, and also saw the mission as a chance to strike a blow against the rebelling colonists.

The Mohawk River Valley was a Whig stronghold, and the community fully supported the cause of Independence.  They had received word that the British were planning a raid, but they didn’t know when and they didn’t know how.  The widower, Douw Fonda, volunteered his home as a makeshift fortress, and stakes and pickets were planted around its circumference.  Not only was the mansion a formidable structure, but its owner was a patriarch of a family that was respected throughout the region, by Whig, Tory, and Indian alike, and perhaps this respect would temper the actions of the raiding forces.

In the middle of May 1780, Johnson put together a raiding party of 528 whites and Indians.  The party made its way south, down Lake Champlain and then marching southwest from Crown Point.  As the invaders began to pillage the northern settlements, the alarm was sounded.  The young men of the village who would have otherwise protected their farms, homes and families were off fighting the British as part of the Continental Army or militia.  Because the settlement had been left defenseless, its residents ran for the protection of the wooded hills, knowing that their homes would be destroyed, but that, perhaps, their lives would be spared.  The British and the Mohawks did not pursue the terrified villagers, but those that refused to abandon their property were locked inside their burning homes.

The elderly Douw Fonda, however, refused to flee.  When the alarm first sounded he grabbed his gun and turned to the young Scottish girl who was his personal attendant and said, “Penelope, do stay here with me, for I will fight for you with the last drop of my blood!”  Penelope Grant did her best to talk him out of this foolish plan, and encouraged him to escape with her to the hills.  When she realized that her protestations were to no avail, she knew that if she wished to survive she would have to leave the old man to his fate.

At first the Mohawks intended to spare the Douw mansion and the old man who owned it.  Many of them knew Fonda personally, had enjoyed his hospitality in the past, and were aware that he was a close friend of Sir William Johnson, the head of Indian affairs in the northern colonies.  The Tories, however, were intent on inflicting as much suffering as possible to this Whig stronghold, and commanded their Mohawk allies to do the same.  As the invaders burst through the blockaded front door, the musical clock that stood in the front hall began to play its chimes.  On a marble table was a statue of Indian, whose head was on a pivot, which from the slightest motion was “Niding, nodding, and nid, nid, nodding.”  The Mohawks believed that the strange music and the nodding statue were signs that the spirits approved of their rampage.

Douw Fonda was relieved of his weapon before he had fired a single shot.  He was led from his home, carrying a book and a cane, by an Indian known as “One-Armed Peter,” and then taken to the river and tomahawked and scalped.  When Peter was later chastised for this murder, he protested that he believed that Fonda’s fate had already been sealed and that “he might as well get the bounty for the scalp as anyone else.”

Several other villagers were killed that day, and ten dozen barns and homes were burned.  Sir John Johnson gathered 143 Loyalists, including women and children, and twenty slaves and made the trek back to Quebec.  The Rebels mustered Continentals and militias to pursue Johnson’s party, but the pursuit had to be abandoned due to rumors that the Mohawk chief Joseph Brandt was planning an attack from the south.

Two days after the raid the dogs of several families whose homes had been ravaged and burned, and whose masters had been killed or taken prisoner, gathered on a hill just north of the Slingerland home and began to howl.  A howling by a greater number of dogs has never been heard before or since.  The unearthly baying began at sunset and continued for several hours as the dogs mourned their lost masters.  Eventually, the surviving villagers returned and rebuilt the town that would become known as Fonda, New York.

Douw Fonda was my Great (x6) Grandfather

Adam Lowe Martin (son of) - Allen Martin - Margaret Persse (daughter of) - Edwin Theophilus Persse (son of) - Margaret Alida Schuyler (daughter of) - Maria Wemple - Douw Wemple (son of) - Margrietje Fonda (daughter of) - Douw Fonda

Trained the Tetrarch, the Greatest Thoroughbred of the 20th Century: Henry Seymour “Atty” Persse (1869-1960)

The foal was chestnut with black patches, and his owner, Edward Kennedy of County Kildare, hoped that the newborn horse he had named The Tetrarch would bring back the Herod line of thoroughbred champions.  As months went by the foal’s black patches turned grey with white splotches, and the young horse did not seem to be living up to the hopes of his owner.  The Tetrarch had unusual coloring, an unusual build, and an unorthodox running style.  Several horsemen dismissed him before he was discovered by Atty Perrse.

Henry Seymour “Atty” Persse had trained The Tetrarch’s half-sister Nicola and decided to buy the chestnut colt from Kennedy for 1,300 guineas.  Over the months The Tetrarch’s long legs, which had first been seen by many as a liability, had become the source of speed that the Irish trainers had never before seen. The famous jockey Stephen Donghue would say, “To be on him was like riding a creature that combined the power of an elephant with the speed of a greyhound.”  The horse that had been previously been called “The Rocking Horse” was now referred to as “The Spotted Wonder.”

The Tetrarch’s racing success as a two year old was unprecedented and has never been matched.  As a two-year old he won the Maiden Plate at Newmarket, the Woodcote Stakes, the Coventry Stakes, the National Breeders Produce Stakes, the Rous Memorial Stakes, the Champion Breeders Foal Stakes and the Champagne Stakes.  He won all seven races in which he was entered.   The Tetrarch won six of those races easily, simply blowing away the competition.  The only challenge came at the National Breeders Produce Stakes where, despite a mix-up at the start that left him four or five lengths back, he managed to win by a nose.   Atty Persse said “I don’t think that he would ever have been beaten, over any distance.  He was a freak and there will never be another like him.”  After the Champagne Stakes The Tetrarch rapped himself badly on his off-fore fetlock joint, and he spent the winter that spanned 1913 and 1914 recovering.    Early in the spring of 1914 he rapped the joint again, and his racing career was over.

The Tetrarch ended his racing career undefeated and began a stud career that was marked by quality rather than quantity.  The champion expressed very little interest in mares and only sired 130 foals.  To his progeny he transmitted both stamina and speed, although not necessarily at the same time. Out of the 130 foals, 80 were winners, and The Tetrarch was named Champion Sire of 1919.    The Tetrarch died at Ballylinch in 1935 at the age of twenty-four.

The Tetrarch was lauded for his greatness during his time, and after his death his legend continued to grow.  Although there are questions whether he would have continued to dominate the competition as a three-year-old or over longer distances, the United Kingdom’s National Horseracing Museum called the Tetrarch a “phenomenon” and named him Britain’s two-year-old of the century.  The American National Sporting Library’s Thoroughbred Heritage website says he was “probably the greatest two-year-old of all time” and “possibly the greatest runner ever.”  He is an ancestor of both Seattle Slew and Secretariat, and countless other legendary thoroughbreds.

Atty Persse was in his early forties, an experienced rider and trainer, when he bought The Tetrarch in 1911.  He had been a very successful amateur rider under National Hunt rules and a Master of Foxhounds in Ireland.  As a horse trainer he was known as a stern man, and it was said that “woe betide the stable lad who ‘blabbed’ about a horse’s prospects."   The fact that he was able to keep a horse’s potential a secret is proven by the fact that The Tetrarch, maybe the greatest runner ever, entered his first race at 5 to 1 odds.

Henry Seymour Persse, the second son of Henry Sadlier Persse, was born at County Rahoon, Ireland, on the 17^th of June, 1869.  Although he came from a long and distinguished line of equestrians, it was widely thought that he would one day devote his attentions and efforts to running the Persse distillery, which at the time was the largest whiskey manufacturer in the west of Ireland.  At the age of 20 he matriculated to Brasenose College, Oxford.  After leaving the university, he embarked on a career that would take him to America, where he found success as a cross-country rider, and then to England where his exploits would make him a legendary figure in the history of Irish and British horseracing.

Persse would stay active in the horse racing game until his retirement in 1953, when he was eighty-four years old.    He lived until 1960, and is still regarded in Irish and Britsh horseracing circles as an icon of a golden age.

ATTY PERSSE RETIRES (LAMBOURN)

Adam Lowe Martin (son of) - Allen Lowe Martin - Margaret Persse (daughter of) - Edwin Theophilus Persse (son of) - Dudley Persse - Theophilus Blakeney Persse - Henry Stratford Persse (father of) - Matilda "Mattie" Persse (mother of ) - Henry Sadleir Persse (father of) - Henry Seymour "Atty" Persse

The Founder of The Irish Times: Maj. Lawrence Edward Knox (1836-1873)

“There are seventy million Irish, and only one Irish newspaper,” is the somewhat hyperbolic tagline of The Irish Times.   Although the paper has a significantly smaller circulation than its main rival, The Irish Independent, the historically controversial Irish Times is commonly considered to be Ireland’s paper of record.

Lawrence Edward Knox was only twenty-two years old when he founded The Irish Times in 1859.  He named the paper after both The Times of London and the successful, but short-lived, Irish Times that had existed from1823 to 1825.  The paper was originally established as a moderately liberal Protestant paper, but when it changed ownership after Knox’s death less than two decades later, the paper became the voice of Irish Unionism.

Knox, who was born in 1836 at Kemp Town, Brighton, England was the eldest of the five children of Arthur Edward Knox and Jane Parsons.  Arthur Knox was a Life Guards (an elite all-officer regiment of the British Army) officer from Castlerea, Co Roscommon, Ireland. Jane Parsons was the daughter of the famous Irish astronomer Lawrence Parsons, the 2nd Earl of Rosse. 

Lawrence Knox began a life in the military at the age of sixteen, when he joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman.  Two years later, at the start of the Crimean War, he became an ensign in the 63^rd Regiment of Foot and was made a lieutenant shortly thereafter.   Eventually he became captain of the 11^th Regiment, but left the army less than half a year later at the age of twenty.

After leaving military life, the young Lawrence Knox founded the newspaper that would become known as The Irish Times.  It was a time of prosperity in the newspaper industry, and The Irish Times was an immediate success. It was originally published only three days a week, but in less than four months it became a daily.   Its moderate and balanced coverage of the major issues of the day set it apart from competing papers, and it was a major factor in The Times’s success.

The paper’s readership, revenues and reputation continued to grow for the greater part of the next decade, and it became the nation’s largest paper.  Knox, who retained control of the paper, returned to military life, becoming a major in the 2^nd Royal Tower Hamlets Militia.  He also served as a Justice of the Peace for County Dublin, and then was elected Tory MP for Sligo borough, only to be unseated by petition.  He was known as a sportsman, and held the position of Commodore of the Irish Model Yacht Club, a club for racing small boats of 18 feet in length.

Knox was cut down by scarlet fever in the prime of his life, and died in 1873 at the age of thirty-six.  After his death the paper he founded was sold to the widow of former MP Sir John Arnott.  The headquarters of the paper was moved and its politics became staunchly Unionist.  The paper retained its Unionist bent for decades, and critics of The Irish Times still refer to the fact that the paper, along with The Irish Independent and several regional newspaper, called for the execution of the leaders of the failed 1916 Easter Rising insurrection by Irish republicans.

In the 1930s the editors of The Irish Times angered the Catholic Church because the paper strongly opposed General Franco’s Fascists in the Spanish Civil War.  During World War II, the Irish DeValera government often censored the paper when it criticized the government’s position of neutrality.  Perhaps the most controversial episode in the paper’s history occurred during The Troubles in the late 1960s, when the paper’s chairman, a former British Army officer, called its longest running editor, Douglas Gageby, a “white nigger” for not taking a harder line against the republican cause.

In recent years the paper has suffered from the industry-wide reduction in newspaper readership and now has a daily audience of slightly over 100,000 readers.  In an attempt to adapt to this shrinking market, The Irish Times has acquired local newspaper groups and, in 1994, became the first newspaper in Ireland or Britain to establish a presence on the Internet.  The paper’s management has also expressed its intention to launch a mobile phone application version of the paper in the near future.  The paper’s ownership of the website address, Ireland.com, is symbolic of its continuing role as the nation’s news authority.

Adam Lowe Martin (son of) – Allen Lowe Martin – Margaret Persse (daughter of) – Edwin T. Persse (son of) – Dudley Persse – Theophilus Persse – Henry Stratford Persse (1769 -26 Oct 1833) - William Persse  (1730 – 1803)– Elizabeth Parsons (1710 – 1768)  (daughter of)  – William Parsons, Esq. (1685 – 1740) (son of)  – Sir William Parsons, 2^nd Baronet  (1661 – 1740) (father of) – Sir Lawrence Parsons, 3^rd Baronet (1707-1756) - Sir William Parsons, 4^th Baronet (6 May 1731 – 1 May 1791) - Lawrence Parsons, 2^nd Earl of Rosse (21 May 1758 – 24 Feb 1841) - Jane Parsons (d. 31 Dec 1883) (mother of) – Maj. Lawrence Edward Knox (1836 – 1873)

A Steward of Land and of History: Henry Stratford Persse (1837-1918)

Three hundred million years ago the Rocky Mountains began to push their way up through the earth and created the spectacular red sandstone formations that exist along the front-range today.  At the end of the Nineteenth Century Henry Stratford Persse, originally from the Mohawk River Valley in New York, bought several hundred acres on land that was then known as Washington Park, fifteen miles from Littleton, Colorado.  He re-named the park, which is noted for the rolling foothills and dramatic red rock formations that mark the landscape, Roxborough Park after his family’s ancestral estate in the west of Ireland.

Henry Stratford Persse, who shared his name with his Irish grandfather, had made a name for himself in politics in upstate New York.  In his first political campaign he ran for Town Clerk in the heavily Republican Amsterdam, New York, as an anti-war Democrat.   Persse was declared the upset winner of the hotly contested election and the Republicans called for a recount of the vote.  It turned out that Persse had actually lost by eight votes.  When Persse conceded victory his opponent said “if a Republican can’t win an election in a Republican county by more than eight votes, he shouldn’t take the job”, and Persse became the Town Clerk.  In his political career Persse went onto associate with some of the great names in New York politics in that era, including Horace Greeley, Samuel Tilden and Gordon Emmett.

Persse eventually followed Horace Greeley’s famous words of advice and headed west.  He made the round-trip between New York to Denver at least twenty-six times, before finally settling with his wife and two daughters in Colorado in 1892.  Shortly after making Colorado his home he was elected Justice of the Peace of Douglass County, but he never tried a single case.

Henry Stratford Persse was a family historian and immensely proud of his heritage.  His home in Denver was full of heirlooms and old family portraits, and he owned a large collection of ancient family records.  He was descended from the Moyode Castle and Roxborough Persses who had come to Ireland in the 1500s.  The family traced their lineage back to the Percys of Northumberland, England, who had participated in every historic battle in England back to the time of William the Conqueror.  Perhaps the most famous Percy was Hotspur, the Henry Percy immortalized in Shakepeare’s Henry IV, Part 1.

Persse claimed that the family changed the spelling of their name from Percy to Persse to commemorate the service of the French in the Irish Rebellion of 1798.  The Irish (and Australian) branches of the family continued to pronounce the name “purSEE”, but the American branches would pronounce it “PURSE”.  Persse was also a cousin of James Smithson, son of the Earl of Northumberland, for whom the Smithsonian institute in Washington, D.C. was named.

In 1889 Persse acquired the land south of Denver known as Washington Park, named for a distinctive formation that resembled the first American president.  In 1902, after renaming the park for his family’s ancestral Irish estate, Persse and two partners established the Roxborough Land Company to develop the property into a premiere tourist destination.  One vision for development included “a first class 200 room hotel, golf links, a club house, a well stocked lake and comfortable cottages.”  Visitors would be able to travel to the park from Englewood aboard an electric train.

Although this grand vision was never realized, the simpler amenities that Persse did construct attracted members of Denver’s high society, who could take the South Park & Pacific Railroad from downtown Denver to Kassler, very close to Roxborough.  Many visitors were relieved that the full-scale development never took place.  One guest commented “A Park made by Nature’s hand alone – The Arts of Man could only mar it.”  Another wrote that the park “should be owned by the city for the free use of the people.”

Henry Stratford Persse died in August of 1918 when a tramway car struck him as he crossed the intersection of Milwaukee and Twelfth Avenue in Denver.  Almost sixty years later the Colorado State Division of Parks bought five hundred acres of the Persse family property, forming Roxborough State Park.  Since then the park has expanded to over 3,319 acres and has been designated a National Natural Landmark, a National Cultural Landmark and contains an Archaeological District.  The Persse family home still stands on the park grounds.

Adam Lowe Martin (son of ) – Allen Lowe Martin – Margaret Persse (daughter of) - Edwin Theophilus Persse – Dudley Persse – Theophilus Persse (father of) – Henry Stratford Persse

 

Witness to the Revolution: Ashley Bowen (1728-1813)

Ship "Argo" of Marblehead Bound Home, by Ashley Bowen (1783)

Ashley Bowen, an Eighteenth Century resident of the coastal town of Marblehead, Massachusetts, was the first American maritime diarist.  His writings provide contemporary, first-hand insight into New England life in the period leading up to, during, and following the American Revolution.  His political, religious and personal writings are heart-felt and complex.  He was sympathetic to the overwhelming revolutionary fervor of the citizens of Marblehead and their grievances against the British Crown, but he was also loyal to the Anglican Church that housed his religious faith.  His journals give graphic accounts of his personal adventures, successes and failures, and his emotional inner life.

Bowen was the son of ambitious justice of the peace and almanac writer Nathan Bowen.  When the younger Bowen was twelve years old, his beloved mother died during child-birth, an event he would later describe “as the greatest part of my ruining”.  Less than a year later he was bound into an apprenticeship with a cruel ship captain who gave the boy regular beatings, treated him as a personal servant, and taught him little or nothing about running a ship.   A friend of the Bowen family who witnessed this cruelty arranged for Ashley to be released from his servitude before the term of apprenticeship was completed .

Ashley Bowen was a sailor from before he was a teen until he was in his late thirties.  He had a wide variety of duties and occupations both while at sea and while ashore.  He visited all of the major ports of the Atlantic and the Caribbean, and wrote detailed narratives about his journeys.

In 1754, the ship that he was serving on, The Swallow, was captured by pirates and he was held prisoner on the island of Hispañola.  Bowen and his fellow prisoners were treated well by their captors, but the tropical climate took its toll.  When Bowen fell ill, he was allowed out of the prison to regain his health.  Soon after being released on this sick-leave, he found a house cat.  The cat’s owner was a wealthy island merchant, and when he discovered that Bowen had the lost cat in his care, he invited the sailor to his home for a meal and eventually arranged for his passage back to New England.

After over a quarter century as a sailor, Ashley Bowen never fulfilled his ambition of becoming a ship's captain.  As he reached middle-age he left the seafaring life and became a sail maker, a somewhat lucrative but unstable career.  He was widowed twice, married a third time, and fathered fourteen children.

Ashley Bowen lived during perhaps the most tumultuous times in American history.  He enlisted in the expedition against Quebec in 1759 and witnessed the Battle on the Plains of Abraham, and saw the French surrender Quebec to the British a few days later.  He saw epidemics sweep through Boston and Marblehead, taking the lives of many of his family and neighbors.  From 1766 until the outbreak of the American Revolution, Bowen wrote almost a daily account of his activities and life in Marblehead.

According to Bowen, the Revolution was an ill-conceived idea.  He had served in the British Army a decade and a half before, and he believed it to be an undefeatable force.  He had a strong allegiance to the Anglican Church, of which King George III was head.   Marblehead, however, had a stronger anti-British sentiment than any other community in the Colonies.  When Bowen believed that the Anglican structure in Marblehead, St. Michael’s, was threatened, he copied The Book of Common Prayer by hand, word-for-word, so that the text would survive the wrath of the angry mob.  In August of 1776 he wrote the following poem:

On Religion and Revolution

As for opinions, I confess

I never upon them laid stress

Sometimes a Whig, sometimes a Tory

But seldom steadfast in one story.

                The reason is, I’m not yet fixed

So my religion is but mixed.

Yet, most of all, I do incline

The Old Episcopalian Line:

Yet not so fixed on this head,

But I can turn my coat for bread,

Yet don’t mistake my meaning, as

If from the truth I meant to pass;

The essential parts of my opinion

Is not in any sect’s dominion

Nor will I e’er be tied to think

That in one spring I ought to drink.

In Christendom we all affect:

The Christian name in some respect:

Yet to our shame and our derision

Were full of schisms and divisions

Some are Papists, some are Prelates

Some are Quakers and some Zealots.

Some Anabaptists, some Aquarians,

Some Antinomians, some Arians;

Some are Free Willers, some Ranters:

Some Presbyterian covenanters;

Some Erskinites to gain probation:

Some Glasites, some for presentation

Though these all aim at Heaven at last

There diff’rence puts me in a gast;

To follow which I cannot tell;

Therefore I bid them all farewell;

Because I knew, that faith and love

The sphere is wherein I should move.

For sure without true Charity

None can enjoy Felicity

But Charity, now at this day

She is obliged to fly away.

Instead of which envy and hate

Contempt, resentment, and debate,

Is most in each society,

This makes me all these sects deny

Tis not in word as I do read

But Christians, must be so in-deed;

So Madam, this is all my creed.

In addition to being a diarist, Ashley Bowen was also a watercolor artist. Several of his maritime paintings are currently displayed in New England museums.  Through his prose, poetry and painting, Ashley Bowen has provided modern historians with one insightful witness’s account of the historic events and everyday life that occurred during the period of the American Revolution.

Adam Lowe Martin (son of ) – Allen Lowe Martin – Allen Littlefield Martin – Frank Martin – Elbridge Gerry Martin, Jr. – Elbridge Gerry Martin, Sr. – Ambrose Bowen Martin – Elizabeth Bowen (daughter of ) – Nathan Bowen (father of) – Ashley Bowen

A Life in the Arts, A Death at Sea: Sir Hugh Lane (1875-1915)

Sir Hugh Lane was a true connoisseur of fine art, and his gift for recognizing artistic genius had brought him the admiration of the art world, as well as a vast fortune.  In the spring of 1915, Sir Hugh travelled to New York in hopes of finding support for a project that he believed would be the crowning achievement of the Irish Revival of art and culture.

In the twenty-plus years since he had begun his career as a trainee painting restorer for a London art dealer, Lane had established himself as a “gentleman art-dealer”.  He had become an expert on Impressionist paintings, and had been appointed a director of the National Gallery in London.

Lane’s career was based in London, but his heart was in Dublin.  He spent most of his time and fortune supporting fine art in the Irish capital by raising funds and donating works from his own private collection.  He called upon his influential circle of friends and relations – including his aunt Lady Gregory (founder of The Abbey Theatre), poet William Butler Yeats, Douglas Hyde (founder of the Gaelic League), political activist and playwright Edward Martyn, and Lane’s fiancée, the portraitist Sarah Cecilia Harrison – to aid him in this work.

Lane’s largest contribution to Irish arts came in 1908, when he donated over 300 paintings to the City of Dublin.  The collection, which was originally displayed in Clonmell House, on Harcourt Street, was described by the Paris newspaper Le Figaro as “an entire museum rich in beautiful works, a museum envied by the most prosperous states and the proudest cities.”  Lane was honored as a Freeman of the City, and knighted the following year.

This gift had been made on the condition that Dublin build a permanent museum of modern art that was worthy of holding the collection.  The plans for this new building ran into difficulties from the onset.  Lane had asked Sir Edwin Lutyens, whom many critics considered the greatest of all British architects, to design the museum.  The Dublin architectural community was outraged at the idea that such a prestigious building would be designed by a foreigner, and blocked the project at every turn.  An exasperated Lane would later write, “I hate the place, the people, and the Gallery.”

By 1915, little if any progress had been made on the new museum.  Lane hoped that a trip to New York would provide the opportunity to renew interest in the project.  The Americans did not support the project in the way that Lane wished, but he was able to sell two of his most important paintings – Man in the Red Cap by Titian and Hans Holbein’s Portrait of Thomas Cromwell - to the American art collector Henry Clay Frick.

Lane booked his return to Britain on the cruise liner RMS Lusitania.  The Lusitania and her sister-ship The Mauretania were the most luxurious ships of the era, and perhaps in history.  In addition to the ships’ opulence, they were the fastest on the seas, regularly setting ocean crossing speed records.

Britain and Germany were at war in Europe.  On April 22, 1915, the German embassy in Washington, D.C., had issued the following warning:

NOTICE!

TRAVELLERS intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany and her allies and Great Britain and her allies; that the zone of war includes the waters adjacent to the British Isles; that, in accordance with formal notice given by the Imperial German Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or any of her allies, are liable to destruction in those waters and that travelers sailing in the war zone on the ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk.

IMPERIAL GERMAN EMBASSY

Washington, D.C. 22^nd April 1915

Despite the fact that it was a time of war, and that the German warnings had been made public, few of the crew or passengers aboard The Lusitania feared for the safety of the ship.

On the eastward bound voyage Sir Hugh made a £10,000 contribution to the Red Cross war relief effort.  It would be the last of the 39-year-old’s many charitable acts.  In the early afternoon of the 7^th of May, the German submarine U-20 fired a torpedo that hit The Lusitania starboard side right before the bridge.  There was a huge explosion, the ship stopped immediately, and keeled over to the starboard.  The Lusitania sank in eighteen minutes, taking 1,198 lives with her, hundreds of who were children. 

Sir Hugh Lane’s body was listed among the nearly a thousand which were never recovered.   Also lost on that day were the paintings by Monet, Rembrandt, Reubens and Titian that Lane had taken aboard with him. In 1994, diver Polly Tapson claimed to have located the container where these paintings were stored.  The paintings were being transported in lead tubes, and may have survived.  The Irish Arts Ministry has placed a Heritage Protection order on the wreckage, thus preventing recovery of these works of art.

Today the museum known as The Hugh Lane, in Dublin’s city center, houses one of Ireland’s foremost collections of modern and contemporary art.  It contains works ranging from the impressionist masterpieces of Manet, Monet, Renoir and Degas to works by leading contemporary artists. The Hugh Lane plays a pivotal role in Ireland’s cultural life and has gained worldwide acclaim, both for itself and the city.

Adam Lowe Martin (son of) – Allen Lowe Martin – Margaret Persse (daughter of) – Edwin Theophilus Persse (son of) – Dudley Persse – Theophilus Persse – Henry Stratford Persse – William Persse (father of) – Robert Persse – Dudley Persse – Adelaide Persse (mother of) – Sir Hugh Lane 

The Greatest Knight That Ever Lived: William Marshal (1146 – May 14, 1219)

Civil war raged throughout England, and the period that would become known as The Anarchy was entering its thirteenth year.  John Marshal, who had once been the staunch ally of King Stephen, had switched allegiance and was now guarding Empress Matilda’s retreat by holding Newbury Castle.  In a ploy to save time, John agreed to surrender the castle to Stephen. He gave the King his five-year-old son William as collateral.  John had never intended to surrender and used the time to fortify the castle.  When Stephen realized that he had been duped, he demanded that John surrender immediately, or watch William be hanged in front of the castle gate.  John replied, “Do your worst. I still have the hammer and the anvil to make more and better sons!”  Stephen could not bring himself to slaughter the young boy.

William was the second of his father’s sons, and as such had no land or title to inherit.  At the age of twelve, he was sent to a wealthy cousin’s estate in Normandy to learn combat skills.  In 1166, at an unsuccessful street skirmish at NeufChatel-en-Bray, he earned his knighthood.  Two years later, in a battle with Guy of Lusignan, William was taken prisoner, and then ransomed by Eleanor of Acquitaine.  Eleanor was impressed with the young knight’s tales of bravery, and she entered her new charge into tournaments.

It was in the tournaments that William found his true calling.  Tournaments in that era were dangerous staged battles that were often fought to the death.  The financial rewards for the victor were substantial.  In his later life William claimed to have won over 500 battles, and to have never lost a contest.  History shows that, although his record was unparalleled, William did occasionally lose, and he did not take losing lightly.

After earning a name for himself on the tournament circuit, William Marshal became a tutor to the son of King Henry II.  The relationship between William and the King’s son was a tumultuous one.  William was  a gifted guide and mentor, but his ambition caused friction between him and his master.  William’s personal motto, “God Aids The Marshall”, was seen by many to be disrespectful to the royal heir. William was at his master’s side when the prince died at Limoges in 1183.  He fulfilled his dead protégé’s crusade vow, going to Jerusalem with the approval of the bereaved King Henry.

When William returned from the Crusades in 1186, the king immediately rewarded him with numerous titles and substantial estates.  His greatest prize, however, would not come until after the king’s death.  Henry’s successor, Richard, gave approval for the 43-year-old William to marry Isabel de Clare, the 17-year-old daughter of Sir Richard Strongbow, Earl of Pembroke.  This marriage made William, who had once been a landless knight from a minor family, into one of the richest and most powerful men in the kingdom.

During the reign of King john, William was one of the few barons to remain loyal to the crown and he was present at the signing of the Magna Carta at Runnymede on June 15, 1215.  When King John died, William was entrusted to oversee John’s nine-year-old son, Henry III’s, ascension to the throne and the regency.

William’s health eventually failed him, and he died at his estate at Caversham in Oxfordshire at the age of 73.  Shortly after his death, his eldest son commissioned a biography.  This book, entitled L’Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal, solidified William Marshal’s place as one of the most legendary figures in English history.

Adam Lowe Martin (son of)- Allen Lowe Martin-Margaret Persse (daughter of)-Edwin Theophilus Persse (son of)-Dudley Persse-Theophilus Blakeney Persse-Henry Stratford Persse-Col. William Persse-Elizabeth Parsons (daughter of) -William Parsons (son of)—Sir William, 2^nd Baronet Parsons- Frances Savage (daughter of)-William Savage (son of)-Sir Arthur Savage-John Savage-Lawrence Savage-Ann Bostock (daughter of)-Elizabeth Dutton-Anne Touchet-James Touchet , 5^th Baron Audley (son of)-JohnTuchet, 4^th Baron Audley- John Tuchet-Joan Audley (daughter of)-James, 2^nd Lord Audley (son of) -Nicholas, 1^st Lord Audley-Nicholas of Aldithley-Ela Longespee (daughter of )-William Longespee  (son of)-Ela, Countess of Salisbury (daughter of)-William, 2^nd Earl of Salisbury (son of)–Patrick, 1^st Earl of Salisbury-Walter of Salisbury (father of )-Sybil of Salisbury (mother of)- William Marshal

Although not an historical documentary by any means, "A Knight's Tale" (2001) did draw on many events in William Marshal's life.