Tags: Chicago

• HISTORIC TINTYPE of RHODA MAY-JAMES

  RHODA MAY (1806-1889) is the stalwart spouse of the “talented, but erratic” Rev. Joseph Martin James (1791-1848). Rhoda withstood all transgressions, indignities, & social ostracism that her husband created with admirable Teutonic stoicism. When acute alcoholism took Joe’s life at age fifty-seven, Rhoda became a forty-two year old widow, left alone to raise nine children. For the next forty-one years of her life, Rhoda May James resolutely carried the social burden of her husband’s disgrace. She watched as the Civil [...]

• Jesse Edward Smith Recalls Jesse James, His Namesake & Cousin

  My mother (ed. Susan Prudence James-Smith) and her brother, R. W. James (ed. Robert Woodson James 1838-1922), were first cousins to the James Brothers. The Jesse in my name was taken from Jesse James. He paid some special attention to me when I was a small boy and made occasional visits to our house until the law was in such hot pursuit they hardly dared to visit among their kin. On one visit to Salt Springs Jesse gave me a [...]

• Duke Ellington, Two Ton Baker, & a Pair of James

  A couple of childhood friends… Chicago radio & TV personality Two Ton Baker, and Duke Ellington, taken at the Blue Note, where my mother Elaine was a cocktail waitress. She & Ella Fitzgerald shared the same birthday, & always joked about it. At home I wasn’t all that friendly to my sister, Mary Lee, though we put on a good show in public. Duke taught me all about custom made shirts & suits, but more about creativity as a profession. [...]

• Marshall Field’s Christmas & Anna Knaff James

    Anna Emalia Knaff (1883-1954) met Frank James when she was working at Chicago’s Marshall Field’s Department Store. A fire had broken out at the Iroquois Theatre nearby. She ran into the street to assist, and met her future husband Francis Marion James (1880-1931), as he was dragging dead bodies out of the theatre. In years to come, Anna brought her seven children, as well as her grandchildren, back to Marshall Field’s every Christmas to see the store’s magical windows [...]