FINDING JERRY

A family mystery was recently fleshed out when through some minor luck, I found online a copy of the playbook “Jerry of Jericho Road. An Operetta in Two Acts” by Estelle Merrymon Clark and Palmer John Clark. This author/composer couple were kind of like the Rogers and Hammerstein of 1930’s and 40’s high school musicals, specializing in two act operettas. They were full of bizarre plots, simultaneous subplots, convolution and confusion. The Clark operettas were perfect for high school productions though, because their large casts ensured a part for everyone and lots of chorus and ensemble songs. 

Mary Jane Casteel, 1936

My mother, Mary Jane Casteel Doherty, was called “Jerry” for all of her adult life. One wonders how such a name exchange came about. How, one asks, did one trade the beautiful name “Mary” for “Jerry”? 

Aha! The answer is right here. Jerry of Jericho Road, which first saw the light of day, or probably the light of night, sometime in the 1920s, was presented by the Battle Ground High School (Washington) in 1939. My mother had the lead role, which somehow conferred on her a type of thespian baptism and christening of  “Jerry” which name she bore until the day she died. Growing up in the fifties and Sixties, my siblings and I were aware of her part in the play and the origin of her lifelong nickname, but knew nothing else about this mysterious production.

The playbook was a very interesting read, bringing memories of my own participation in a high school production in which I, in my brother’s suit, was stranded onstage somewhere in the second act after another erstwhile thespian skipped about two pages of dialogue during which I was supposed to have exited, stage right. I was in a panic, looking in all directions for help while vast numbers of stagehands in the wings were gesturing and pointing in a fruitless effort to guide me offstage. I finally announced, “I guess I’ll duck out for a cup of coffee and see you all later” and rushed as fast as I could for the nearest exit. In the aftermath, no one told me what an ingeniously clever recovery that was. In fact, no one spoke to me for days.

Cover art for Jerry of Jericho Road. Many
playbooks of this era had much more attractive
cover art.

But back to the musical and its plot:  Jerry (in the play) owns some ranch (Jericho) and oil land somewhere in the West. She is joined by her aunt and cousin, who are chasing the wealthy adjoining rancher (enter Alan) with matrimony for the cousin in mind. Comes now John, Alan’s cousin, trying to buy Jerry’s oil rights. Jerry and John develop an attachment, but Jerry comes to believe that John and another woman are trying to get her land underhandedly. Jerry, her cousin, and John disappear. The cousin reappears and tells a story of kidnapping. Jerry reappears with a Mr Bean from Boston (I kid you not!) There are some shenanigans about options and sale of the oil, but in the end all are happy, with the pairing of the cousin and Alan, and Jerry and John. There’s a lot of corn in this thing. Here’s part of the Finale:

            I'm Jerry of Jericho Road,

Proclaiming my place of abode

And chasing the tumbleweed flurries,

On pony am  I

Passing them by,

            Shouting I fly  Hi! Hi! 

They’ll tell you that when the wind blows.

I follow it wherever it goes,

With laughter as gay as their dancing,

So merry am I,

For Jerry am I

Of Jericho Road.

 Well, maybe its better with the music. The only information I can find online about this little operetta and its authors are in a blog entitled “High School Musicals – The Origins”. This blogger, Sean Martin, reviewed four of the Clarks’ operettas  (but not this one) and used words like rambunctious, convoluted, bizarre, twisted, surreal, overdone, awful, relentless, outlandish, inane, and on and on. Martin is not kind to the Clarks. He does seem, however, to like the artwork on some of the covers of the plays he reviews.

One can see the evolution of these musicals from productions of the twenties, and earlier. They were products for their time, full of corny gags and plot twists …. and they worked. Remember that before the days of television and netflex, productions such as high school drama were important community events. And on a more personal note, I know more now about my mother’s youth and her times. 

Roger Doherty

A Trove of HC Merrill Wood Engravings

“The art and trade of wood engraving are today largely a matter of history,” Hiram Campbell Merrill, age 71, said in 1937. Probably as his way of marking the transfer of wood engraving from a trade integral to the printing industry to the art form in which it is known today. For a period of seventy years, Merrill practiced his trade and creativity in prints, drawings, and paintings.

Ann Prentice Wagner, the most knowledgeable authority on Merrill, mentions him in her work “The Graver, the Brush, and the Ruling Machine: The Training of Late-Nineteenth-Century Wood Engravers”: “Hiram Merrill (1866-1958), a wood engraver whose life is well documented in the Hiram Campbell Merrill Collection of the Boston Public Library, began his career in the typical fashion with an apprenticeship of several years in an illustration firm. Two major factors urged Merrill, like so many young people in the late nineteenth century, toward a career in wood engraving: he was poor and he was interested in art. His father was a wheelwright and, as the family probably had no connection to art, Merrill is unlikely to have received any particular encouragement in that direction. Despite this, from an early age he drew from nature and dreamed of being a painter. Merrill attended drawing classes at Shephard Grammar School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a surviving report card records that he received excellent grades in drawing. Merrill summed up his situation: ‘The necessity to earn money decided me to embrace wood engraving, as I was told it was lucrative.’”

Hiran Merril in 1937, addressed

the Sociey of  Printers of Boston

Hiram Merrill was born in Boston and was 16 when he entered his apprenticeship as a wood engraver. He worked for a firm that did book illustrations. In 1890, seeking to advance in magazines and newspapers, he moved to New York City. He worked for Harpers, both their Monthly and Weekly magazines. This work was at a faster pace than in Boston. Yet he found time to take art classes, draw, and paint. In 1896 he traveled around the United States drawing and painting. In 1905 he traveled to Europe and again in 1909 to Brittany where he made studies that were material for many later paintings and engravings. Merrill often visited Vermont, where his mother was born, and where he also found material for his creativity. Merrill was awarded a bronze medal for engraving at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, 1901, and the same honor at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St Louis, 1904. Merrill died in 1958.

A print collector, Barbara Robeson, describes Merrill as “one of the highly skilled practitioners of American reproductive wood engraving that flourished at the end of the 19^th century. Late in his life and long after the demise of “reproductive wood engravings”, he embarked on a series of 50 original wood engravings created from his own designs - paintings, sketches, and photographs of his extensive travels in Europe and New England.”

"Village Store, Ryegate Vermont" 1942. Signed by the artist. 

Ryegate is the birthplace of Hiram Merrill's Mother.

We are indebted to the estate of Miss Shirley Southard who died this year in Denver, intestate and without any known family, for this peek into the art of Hiram Merrill. Among her papers were a small trove of Hiram Merrill wood engravings. In order to share these engravings, her only legacy, with the public, they are reproduced here. Southard was of New England stock, and is buried with her mother in Peacham, Vermont, which may explain the subject matter of five of her seven engravings. Southard’s collection are representative of the latter part of Merrill’s life. The first is dated 1942, when he would have been 76 years old. The most recent is dated 1951, at age 85. Five are scenes in New England; one shows his mother; and the last is a scene in Brittany. Southard was in her teens during these years. We don’t know how she acquired them as she left no notes. She might have come by them later in life through purchase, or an older relative might have acquired them, later passing them to Southard. In the 1940s, Merrill’s prints appear to have sold for as little as $10.

"My Mother, Emeline W. Merrill, 90 years old" 1944. 

Signed by the artist. 

"The Holstein Calf, Newbury, Vermont " 1945. Signed by the Artist

"The Covered Bridge, Conway, New Hampshire" 1945

Signed by the Artist

"Vermont Hills" 1950

Signed by the Artist

Title Indecipherable - Farm Scene 1951

Signed by the Artist

"Concarneau, Brittany. Fishermen's Wives" 1951

Signed by the Artist

Resources:

Merrill, Hiram Campbell, “Wood Engraving and Wood Engravers”, An Address to the Society of Printers of Boston, January, 1937

Robeson, Barbara, Website: www.flickr.com/photos/19469168@N02/4457653365, “Wood Engraving  by HC Merrill”, 2010

Wagner, Ann Prentice, “The Graver, the Brush, and the Ruling Machine: The Training of Late-Nineteenth-Century Wood Engravers”, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massechusetts, 1995

Whittles, George Howes, “Monographs on American Wood Engravers, XXIX Hiram Campbell Merrill”, The Printing Art Magazine, University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, Volume XXXII Number 6, February, 1919

Roger Doherty

Shoshoni, Wyoming Postcard. The Casteels Arrive.

About 1905 Archibald and Estella Casteel, my great grandparents were casting about for a new opportunity. Their family had been in Nebraska since the late 1870s, when Archibald’s father, Isaiah Bennett Casteel moved from Grundy County , Illinois and filed a homestead claim in the Loup Valley area of Sherman County. By 1905, the extended Casteel clan centered in the Mitchell/Morrill/Lyman area in the Southwest corner of Nebraska.

In 1904, the townsite of Shoshoni, Wyoming was being developed. The Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Railroad was building west from Casper, a nearby portion of land in the Wind River Indian Reservation was opened for mineral exploration, and the nearby Boysen Dam and Reservoir was under construction. There were opportunities. 

So the next year, 1905, Casteel loaded his brood of ten children (his eldest, Sam, having left home previously) and possessions onto a railroad car, and headed for Wyoming. The railhead at that time was Moneta, some twenty miles east of Shoshoni. The Casteels traveled the rest of their journey by horse and wagon.

 By 1906, Shoshoni’s population was maybe as high as 2,000, although the city was largely composed of tents. Here is another view of Shoshoni in 1906. Today, about 650 persons live in Shoshoni. 

The Casteel home was one of the first built in Shoshoni, and exists today although vacant and in a very decrepit state.

Roger Doherty

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