Close to Shore - Michael Capuzzo [121]
To fix Dr. Vansant's place in the medical history of the United States and the storied medical history of Philadelphia—necessary, I thought, to understand the moments he watched his son die despite the best “modern” medical knowledge—took wide-ranging research.
My thanks to Gretchen Worden, director of the Mutter Museum, the museum of medical history and education at the College of Physicians in Philadelphia, for an afternoon explaining the practice of turn-of-the-century medicine and showing me a typical doctor's office of the period as well as a variety of laryngological tools that Dr. Vansant would have used.
Louisa Vansant's personality shines through her letters from sailing ports around the world, especially her touching letter to Eugene from New York City dated Feb. 18, 1891. I obtained copies from John Dillon.
For my descriptions of turn-of-the-century Spring Lake, the New Essex & Sussex Hotel, and the New Monmouth Hotel, I would like to thank the librarians and curators at the Spring Lake Historical Society, who gave me access to their archives and exhibits. My description of Mrs. George W. Childs requires a special thanks to Dan Rottenberg, the Philadelphia writer who shared research on his forthcoming book, The Man Who Made Wall Street: Anthony J. Drexel and the Rise of Modern Finance, to be published in the fall of 2001 by the University of Pennsylvania Press.
Woodrow Wilson's cabinet meeting about the shark was front-page news across America, and it is from these accounts the scene is derived.
My research in the small town of Matawan was made delightful by Ruth E. Alt of nearby Morganville, New Jersey, who with her husband Joseph runs something of a single-stop genealogical resource for the area that is truly remarkable. Ruth Alt's research and personal recollections of the boys at Matawan Creek—Lester Stilwell, Rensselaer Cartan, Johnson Cartan, Anthony Bublin, Charles E. Van Brunt Jr., Albert O'Hara, and Frank Clowes, as well as Constable John Mulsoff and retired captain Thomas V. Cottrell—were invaluable in creating the swimming-hole scenes. In addition to interviews and personal recollections, the sketches of the people in Matawan are drawn from stories in The Matawan Journal and Keyport Weekly, as well as Monmouth County census, birth, and death records. I am grateful to Helen Henderson for her interview about Matawan and for her fine pictorial book, Around Matawan and Aberdeen, which was extremely useful in its descriptions of the merchants, shops, and feeling of Main Street in the small town. Special thanks are due the librarians of the Matawan Aberdeen Public Library on Main Street for help with their archives, especially Virginia Moshen, for sharing her knowledge of the shark case; and Sarah Ellison, head docent of the Burrowes Mansion Museum in Matawan, home of the historical society, for showing me her town.
In my attempt to create a portrait of cultural life in early twentieth century America, the America of the Vansants and Bruders, the Fishers and Stilwells, I drew upon numerous sources. They include the first five volumes of Our Times by Mark Sullivan. Our Times was especially useful for my portrayal of the “Robber Baron” era, but it was a constant browsing companion as well for songs, schooling, automobiles, and a sense of being alive then. I also consulted Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s, by Frederick Lewis Allen, which begins in May 1919 with elements of life, like the hazards of driving a tin lizzie, still germane to 1916; A History of American Life, edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., and Dixon Ryan Fox, which was the sturdiest of companions on social matters; and the book 1919 by John Dos Passos, which, though fiction, inspired fresh passes at the facts. Remember When: A Loving Look at Days Gone By: 1900–1942, by Allen Churchill, is a fine way for a reader, or a researcher, to acquire a glow of nostalgia.
In describing the Victorian era and its evolution