Julia Logan Carvin passed away Monday, May 28, 2012. Click the link below to view the full story.
Julia Carvin Obituary
Jun 042012
Nov 072011
It turns out that just down the road from where we used to put the boat in the lake there is a monument in the town of Benbrook that connects, sort of, to Verne and Dorothy’s early life. The monument marks the spot that British dancer, actor and aviator Vernon Castle died in a military training plane crash in Feb. 1918. Vernon Castle had moved to New York from England early in the century and started a career in acting and dancing. In 1911 he married Irene Foote of New York. They became the Fred and Ginger Rogers of their day, dancing on stage and in silent movies from 1911 to 1916 when Vernon returned to England and joined the Royal Flying Corps to do his part in the Great War.
Oct 312011
In March 1919 Verne moved to an apartment a couple of blocks east of Westlake Park (now MacArthur Park) just west of downtown Los Angeles. The picture is actually from a few years before he lived in L.A. but it’s all I could find. It serves as a fortuitous illustration for this post on Verne’s interest in telegraphy, since it has all those wires in the foreground.
Oct 072011
I have noted before that both Verne and Dorothy were strongly in favor of Prohibition. Verne saw the contrast between Arizona, which instituted statewide prohibition at the beginning of 1915, coincidentally at the moment when the Garrisons moved to San Simon, and New Mexico, which was only a few miles away and still wet. As expected the N.M. towns were full of saloons and all that went with that.
Sep 232011
Verne claimed to not be particularly impressed with Los Angeles, but one thing he did like was getting in the water. He went frequently to the Bimini Baths in the summer of 1918, a large private bathhouse on a natural hot spring just northwest of downtown L.A. The Baths were a feature of L.A. life from 1900 to 1951, at least if you were white. He could take a streetcar to the baths – you can see the line in the upper right of the photo.
Notes and Transcriptions of Letters
This is all my notes and transcriptions of the letters as it stands at the moment. I have read all the letters through 1918, except for a few in 1917, and a few from 1919, and the summary was based on that. I have taken notes on all the letters through Sept., 1915 and a fair number from 1917 and 1918. I will fill in the gaps as I get a chance.
This is a very long post, but I wanted to make it available to anyone who is impatient. It will help to read the summary posted earlier before you read this. I am marking recently added letters with an *, so if you just want to see recently added stuff, do a Find command in your browser for *.
Verne and Dorothy were among the generation of Americans that moved in droves from the country to the city. Both began their lives in fairly big cites (Fort Worth and Dallas), but neither town was very old – both traced their beginnings to around 1850, but neither really got going until after the Civil War. Verne and Dorothy were born into a world where horses and trains were central, but saw in their youth the rise of the automobile. Both of them were comfortable in both worlds. In the newly transcribed letter in this post, you see how much Verne liked the old world, which he inhabited in an AZ that was still a frontier. In other letters, you see how much he liked the new world of photography, telegraphy, telephones, cars and the rapid expansion of science.
This is an updated summary of Verne G.’s and Dorothy Logan’s relationship from V.’s letters to D. from 1913-1919. Recently added material is marked with *s.
Aug 292011
These are Verne’s letters to Dorothy around Xmas of 1917, right before he would leave to go to Los Angeles.
This is the first page of a letter from W.O. Garrison (Verne’s father) to him in which he tells V. what he needs to do to document his homestead claim. The letter was 4 pages, but page 2 is missing. I don’t know what happened on the homestead claim, but there are no property tax receipts on this property in the file.