The Old Farmer's Almanac 2015 (30 page)

Lt. Col. Horace Porter,
who had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his conduct at the Battle of Chickamauga, was U.S. ambassador to France from 1897 to 1905. He spent 6 years of his tenure and a great deal of his own money searching Paris for the long-lost grave of Revolutionary War hero John Paul Jones. Porter found the leaden coffin in a long-abandoned Protestant cemetery and hired experts to identify the body. Satisfied that it was Jones, Porter notified President Theodore Roosevelt, who sent four Navy warships to accompany the body home, where it was reinterred at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Porter received the unanimous thanks of both houses of Congress. He died in 1921.

Capt. Robert T. Lincoln,
the youngest and lowest-ranking officer present at the surrender, was the president’s oldest son. A strange series of coincidences put Lincoln at or near the sites of three Presidential assassinations. He had turned down an invitation to accompany his parents to Ford’s Theatre. Sixteen years later, he witnessed the shooting of President James Garfield at a train station in Washington, D.C. And he was in Buffalo, New York, at President McKinley’s invitation, when that president was assassinated in 1901.

Later, he refused another presidential invitation, saying, “There is a certain fatality about presidential functions when I am present.”

Lincoln died in 1926, the last surviving witness to Lee’s surrender.

Tim Clark has been a Civil War buff since he was 10 years old.

By Kevin Chong

75 Years Ago: In Memoriam, a Memorable Song

Pianist Ruth Lowe spent the summer of 1939 hiding in her mother’s Toronto apartment, heartbroken.

Ruth was a grocer’s daughter with dreams of adventure and stardom as a musician and composer—until her father died. Then, she put off those aspirations to help to support her family. She took a job at the Song Shop on Yonge Street playing piano sheet music for customers. While there, she learned that Ina Ray Hutton’s All-Girl Band needed a piano player. Following an audition, the band took her on and she toured with them for 4 years. On the road, she fell in love with a music publicist named Harold Cohen, and they married in 1938. Less than a year later, he suddenly died after a kidney ailment.

This was how the 24-year-old widow came to be in her mother’s third-floor apartment. One night, she was inspired to compose a ballad for Harold. A melancholy tune poured out of her and onto the keyboard. Within 10 minutes, she had written the lyrics and melody of “I’ll Never Smile Again.” Soon it was played and recorded on CBC Radio.

Ruth slipped an acetate of the CBC performance to a saxophonist friend who was playing with bandleader Tommy Dorsey, who happened to be in Toronto for the Canadian National Exhibition. In 1940, Dorsey, with his vocalist, Frank Sinatra, recorded an arrangement of Ruth’s work. It was Sinatra’s first recording. “Everybody suddenly was very quiet,” Sinatra later recalled. “There was a feeling of a kind of eeriness..., as though we all knew that this would be a big, big hit, and that it was a lovely song.”

“I’ll Never Smile Again” was indeed a hit: It launched Frank Sinatra’s recording career, was number one for 12 weeks, won a Grammy, and became a World War II anthem.

Ruth eventually relocated to New York City, where her early career dreams came to life. For Sinatra, she also wrote “Put Your Dreams Away (for Another Day),” which became his signature concert tune until he replaced it with Paul Anka’s “My Way.” Ruth’s “Too Beautiful to Last” appeared in
Ziegfeld Girl
, a 1941 film.

In the 1950s, a movie producer offered to make a film of Ruth’s life, starring Judy Garland. Ruth declined. By then, she had remarried and was raising two sons in Toronto. She continued to compose and encourage musicians (she opened one of Toronto’s first night clubs, Club One Two) until her death in 1981.

“I’ll Never Smile Again” has been recorded over 100 times, by artists such as Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, and Barry Manilow. Ruth was inducted into the American Music Hall of Fame in 1982 and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003.

95 Years Ago: A Career Bloomed and Flowered

Shortly after World War II, an admiral in the Japanese Navy who loved lilies arrived in the United States as part of a friendship exchange. When asked what he would like to see, the Admiral said, “I would really like to travel to Canada to meet Miss Isabella Preston.”

Born in 1881 in Lancaster, England, with, she later remarked, “green fingers,” Isabella Preston emigrated to Canada with her sister, in 1912, and soon after enrolled in horticulture classes at the Ontario Agricultural College (OAC) in Guelph. Before long, she quit to work in plant breeding with professor J. W. Crow.

She had found her calling.

In 1916, Isabella caught the attention of hybridists across North America with the ‘George C. Creelman’ lily. Named after the OAC’s president, this lily cross was late-blooming, strong-growing, fragrant, and 5 feet tall at maturity. It helped to make lilies accessible for home gardeners and today is used as a parent in contemporary hybrids.

In 1920, Isabella relocated to Ottawa to join the government’s Central Experimental Farm as a day laborer. Researchers there were attempting to breed ornamental flowers that could withstand the extreme cold of Prairie winters.

Isabella did not stay in her position long. That same year, William T. Macoun, head of the Horticultural Division, hired her as a “specialist in ornamental horticulture.” (Her director later made it known that the department had “failed to locate promising men” for the job and therefore hired Isabella.)

Isabella worked at the Farm for more than 20 years. During this time, she produced numerous hybrids, including lilacs, roses, and columbines. She created 23 hybrids of Siberian irises, which she named after Canadian rivers; two, ‘Ottawa’ and ‘Gatineau’, won Awards of Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society. Between 1928 and 1940, she originated 33 hybrids that she named after Canadian lakes; of these, ‘Athabasca’ and ‘Simcoe’ won awards. She named a series of lilacs after Shakespearean heroines (e.g., ‘Adriana’, ‘Portia’) and World War II fighter aircraft (e.g., ‘Hurricane’, ‘Mosquito’). In all, she originated 200 hybrids in her lifetime. In 1929, she authored
Garden Lilies
, the first book about lily cultivation in Canada. All of this earned her a reputation as the “dean of hybridists” and the “Grand Lady of Canadian Horticulture,” as well as attention from the press and fans, yet she never shed her shyness. At a Philadelphia Flower Show, she advised her niece: “Don’t say a word to anyone who I am or they’ll flock around me.”

Isabella retired in 1946. Slightly stooped from bending to look at lilies, she continued experimenting with lily and iris hybrids until her death in Georgetown, Ontario, in 1965.

Today, her legacy lives on in the Isabella Preston Trophy, established by the North American Lily Society for best stalks in its shows, and the ‘Preston Lilacs’, a collection of winter-hardy, late-blooming lilacs that are still available at most nurseries.

Remarkably, Isabella’s achievements came despite almost no formal education in horticulture. She taught herself, adding to her on-the-job experience by “reading all the books in the library.”

100 Years Ago: Love Forged a Life on the Frontier

“I love to meet a cougar if I have a gun,” Ada Annie Rae-Arthur was fond of saying. Born in 1888, the tomboy daughter of a Sacramento, California, veterinarian, Annie moved herself, her three young children, and her husband Willie from Vancouver to an isolated piece of forested land, accessible only by boat, in Clayoquot Sound in 1915. She did it to save Willie from opium addiction.

Faced with cold winters and a charming but unhelpful spouse, Annie was determined to survive. She cleared 5 acres, built a business selling flower bulbs by mail order across western Canada, and ran a post office and general store on her property, where she also kept chickens and goats. Before Willie died in 1936, she gave birth to eight more children.

In need of help on the homestead, she placed a personal ad in the
Western Producer,
a Prairie newspaper: “BC Widow with Nursery and orchard wishes partner. Widower preferred. Object matrimony.”

The ad, or a version of it, led Annie to three husbands. Some believe that the self-inflicted accidental gunshot that killed the first of these was fired by her. Despite this, and perhaps due in part to her blue eyes and fondness for hats, Annie had many male admirers. Some would buy postage stamps from her to keep her and her post office afloat. (Although frugal, Annie was always cash-strapped; she even sold eggs that had gone bad rather than throw them away.)

Annie was renowned for her marksmanship. To protect her livestock, she killed cougars, luring them to an iron trap with a goat as bait. She would wait for a cougar to become ensnared, then shoot it with her 20-gauge shotgun. By 1957, Annie claimed to have killed 62 cougars and “about 80” black bears. Long before this, she had earned the nickname “Cougar Annie.”

Annie outlived all of her husbands and died in 1985, at age 97. Her legacy lives on through her garden. The beautiful, wild property and heritage English garden are stewarded by two federally registered charities, the Boat Basin Foundation and Ecotrust Canada. Six cabins and a retreat center are opened occasionally to private groups by prearrangement.

Kevin Chong is the author of five books, most recently
Northern Dancer
(Viking Canada, 2014). His writing has appeared in the
Globe and Mail, The Walrus, Maclean’s,
and
Vancouver Magazine. He teaches creative writing at the University of British Columbia.

First Prize: $250

I was 7 years old and my mom bought a trinket for me to give to the pretty girl next door. It was a heart in two pieces that snapped together. She told me to give the girl half since we were moving.

About 10 years later, I was sitting beside a beautiful woman on a flight. We figured out that we both went to UNC Chapel Hill and were born in the same town, but with no more time to talk, we went our separate ways.

I am now 47, living in Atlanta. I sit down for dinner at a restaurant and a woman sits near me. Finally, she says, “I know why you are staring at me. We were on a flight about 20 years ago, you are from Greenville, we both went to UNC, and I never forgot you.”

It did not take long to figure out that we were those kids from 40 years ago, so I pulled my good luck charm from my pocket. With that she started crying, telling me that she still had the other half. We are now married.

–
Carl White, Atlanta, Georgia

Second Prize: $150

In 1984, on a turbulent flight into my hometown, I comforted the flyer next to me who was in tears until the wheels touched down. She thanked me, and we shared a laugh.

In 1985, I found myself in dire straits and really needed a job. On my way to an interview, I spotted a woman whose car had broken down. She looked frantic. Hoping that I wouldn’t be late, I offered her a ride. It was the woman from the plane! We recognized each other, shared another laugh, and determined that we were headed to the same block.

We parted ways in a garage and I headed for my interview. When my name was called and I was ushered into an office, I saw behind the desk ... the lady! We burst out laughing, and she said, “You’re hired!” She’s the best boss I’ve ever had.

–
Nancy Pullen, Mt. Juliet, Tennessee

Third Prize: $100

My boyfriend and I were fishing for largemouth. He liked trying out different lures and rubber worms, so he tied on a distinctive silver and black rubber worm. One bass swallowed it, hook and all, so he cut the line and set him free.