Mantua Female Seminary

    During the nineteenth century there were a number of small schools, academies and seminaries in houses in Powelton.  These were set up by one or two teachers and most apparently lasted only a few years.  One of these was the Mantua Female Seminary.  During the early and mid-1860s, it was common for the northern parts of the neighborhood to be linked with Mantua, a much older neighborhood to the north of Spring Garden St.
     The only evidence I have found of this school is ads in the Philadelphia Inquirer in August, 1865 which read:
“MANTUA FEMALE SEMINARY, Baring ST., BELOW Thirty-Fifth, West Philadelphia.  A Day and Boarding School for Young Ladies.  The next Term will open September 4^th.  For Circulars, apply to Rev. John Moore, Principal.”
   John  Moore lived at 3412 Baring St. from 1864 through the late 1860s.

The Marot Family - Gardens & Unions

Helen Marot [far right] with other leaders of the Women's Trade Union in 1907

A good place to start posting articles I've written for the Powelton Post is the article on the Marot family. This was one of my first posts. It is also very timely. In recent weeks there has been a lot of media attention to the anniversary of the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory on March 25, 1911. That horrendous event led to important changes in labor laws. Helen Marot played a central role in union organizing and was a member of the official commission that investigated the fire and recommended new protections for workers. The Marot Family of 33rd St.

Charles and Hannah Marot lived at 317 N. 33^rd St. from about 1865/66 until his death in 1888. He was the publisher of The Gardeners Monthly from 1859 until 1887 when it was folded into American Garden. In 1904, the Cyclopedia of American Horticulture stated that “[i]t had a long and useful career under the editorial management of one of the most accomplished and conscientious of American horticulturists, Thomas Meehan, whom all the younger generation has learned to love.” In 1890, his widow lived at 3513 Hamilton St. and in 1900, she lived at 315 N 33^rd, which she owned. They had five children, one died young.

One of their daughters, Helen Marot, was educated at Quaker schools and the Drexel Institute Library School. In 1899 she published a Handbook of Labor Literature then moved to New York where she investigated child labor. She was part of the group of women who founded the Women's Trade Union League and headed its New York branch. She was largely responsible for creating the Bookkeepers, Stenographers and Accountants Union of New York, a pioneering effort in organizing white-collar women. She was a leader of the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union, and organized and led the 1909-1910 Shirtwaist Strike in New York. In 1912, she was part of a commission that investigated the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in which 146 garment workers died. From 1913 on, she devoted herself to writing, primarily about the labor movement. She was also a member of the U.S. Industrial Relations Commission (1914-16). In 1914 she published American Labor Unions, a tract on the syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World written from her standpoint as a Fabian socialist.

In Creative Impulse in Industry: a Proposition for Educators (1918) she wrote that "[a]s people become inured to machine standards, they lose their sense of art values along with their joy in creative effort, their self regard as working men and their personal equation in industrial life." (p 14) She rejects the usual alternatives writing that "[i]f America is ever to realize the concept of political democracy, it can accept neither the autocratic method of business management nor the bureaucratic schemes of state socialism. It cannot realize political democracy until it realizes in a large measure the democratic administration of industry." (p 67) Her solution begins with trade schools for teenagers to give them work experiences in special firms set up for the dual purpose of education and production of a product. Half of the students’ time would be for standard school subjects, but these would be taught in relation to industrial production. "It is the intention of this educational experiment to bring down the great enterprise and industry, [and] to give the young people the experience of the industrial adventure in full achievement, lest they become the subjects of those who control the movements of industry and determine the character of its advance." (p 133)

Garden journals and social activism were clearly part of the Powelton experience from the beginning.

This blog has been inactive for far too long. I am going to restart it by posting articles I have written for the Powelton Post. In some cases, I will add additional text. (The Post pieces are generally limited to just over 500 words.) This will also give me the opportunity to add links to the Powelton interactive map and other sites and to include additional photos. I will try to post about one article per week until I catch up with all the past articles. This might also encourage me to post additional, smaller posts.

Max Riebenack and the Social Scene

Max Riebenack (1844-1910) immigrated from Bavaria as a child. At age 19, he began working for the Pennsylvania Railroad, eventually rising to the position of Controller of the Railroad and all of its subsidiary lines. He and his family lived at 3701 Powelton Ave. from the 1870s until 1889. He then built the mansion at the corner of 34th St. and Powelton Ave. (227 N. 34th St., now Drexel University's Ross Commons) where he lived until his death in 1910. One measure of his social position is his club memberships. According to the 1906 edition of Boyd's Blue Book, he was Treasurer of the Union League, President of the Five O’Clock Club (927 Chestnut St.) and a member of the Merion Cricket Club, the Belmont Cricket Club, the Philadelphia Yacht Club and the Powelton Club (209 35th St.). According to a history of the Five O'Clock Club written in 1891, it was a social club founded in 1883 that was initially composed of "well-known newspaper, railroad, theatrical and other professional and business men." It is hard to tell from this list how sociable he was, but he was certainly well-connected.

Another Innocent Swarthmore Student

The Mexican Revolution was in full swing. The New York Times headline for May 11, 1911 was “Juarez Falls; Gen. Navarro a Prisoner; Madero Captures Border Town after Three Days’ Sharp Fighting and Makes it His Capital." At the end of a long dispatch came the following: “Happiest among those who were about the streets were the prisoners liberated from the jail during the day. Many of them claimed they have been innocent of any wrongdoing. James Monaghan of 3309 Baring Street, Philadelphia, a student in Swarthmore College, who went sightseeing in Juarez on Sunday, says he was arrested as a spy, and since then has been in prison, being forced frequently during the fighting to carry water from across the street to the Federal soldiers who fought from the top if the jail.” He was actually James Jay Monaghan IV (1893-1980), the son of a Quaker lawyer. He went to Friends Central, then spent some time at school in Vevy, Switzerland. During the summers of 1908 and 1909, he worked at cattle roundups in Wyoming even though he was only 5'6" and 100 pounds. After Swarthmore, he spent several more years in the west and later got an M.A. from Penn. He became a Lincoln scholar and Illinois State Historian (at left with Carl Sandburg, 1947). Basically, he was just another Quaker kid from Powelton.