Julia Crowell's Husband

There is very little information available on line or at sources such as the Western Reserve Historical Society about Julia Crowell, after whom the south half of Camp Crowell/Hilaka was named.  But there is a lot about her husband, Benedict.  Benedict Crowell was in charge of miliary procurement during World War I.  That meant that he coordinated the entire American effort to manufacture and transport all of the materiel used by the American forces in that war!  After the war, he wrote extensively about how he did it, and about how the US armed forces should prepare themselves forthe next conflict.  And during World War II, while he did not have an official position that we know of, he was a close advisor to Secretary of War Henry Stimson. 

Below are a speech and two articles found in the Western Reserve Historical Society archives.  The speech and one article are biographical, and the other article was written by Benedict Crowell in 1921 about "Modern Preparedness".  You can click on an image to display it sized to fit on your screen, and then click on it again to display it in its original size, where you will be able to read the text more easily.

Jim Kirby's letter

One of the things in the Mother Lode was a letter from Jim Kirby to the Girl Scouts describing what they had purchased, and how to take care of it.  Here it is:

The Mother Lode

A box recently arrived at the GSNEO History Committee office.   Sunny took one look , saw what was in there,  and gave me a call.  

Where it has been all these years?  She says they didn't have all this information available to them when they wrote "A Promise Kept"   - but hey - better late than never!    

I couldn't resist immediately sharing the letter from James Kirby himself!   Some of the information is not new - but I never had a source to really confirm.  I like that Kirby capitalized the names of trees!   I like that he called his workshop " the power house" .  I especially am happy to hear how sturdy the dam is!!!!!!!

The most surprising thing to me is that when the Girl Scouts bought the property, the mechanism for the self-clarifying lake was still operating!!!   I wonder if the old council ever realised what a unique structure this was & tried to maintain it?   I wonder if anyone ever took care of the ballbearings in the millwheel per Kirby's instructions?   

Stuff I want to find out more about - evidently there was some sort of farming operation still going on.   a chicken coop?  extra barns?  whooa!  what's up with those?   I'm more pumped than ever to do some archeology!!!

Next up:  the official description of the land when the council was getting ready to buy it,   the campaign to raise the money , old maps.  Tons of stuff about the early council.  Poor Sunny had to pry my hands off the xerox machine and drag me screaming out the door.  She promises to let me back in if I promise to behave.

Some of it I will summarize instead of repeating everything  - but Rob has agrred to scan everything so it can be posted on the history blog!

Lynn 

Celebrity Endorsements

Purchase of the Kirby estate to be a Girl Scout camp was SPECIFICALLY endorsed by:

• Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of President Franklin Roosevelt
• Lou Henry Hoover, wife of former President Herbert Hoover
• Eliot Ness, crimefighter

Eleanor Roosevelt said:

"I was very much interested to hear whatthe Cleveland Girl Scouts are planning to do, and I wish them every success in their campaign for funds with which to buy a camp site.  I think camps for girls are very valuable and are greatly needed."

Those of you who have run programs at camp about solving mysteries, Crime Scene Investigation, etc - you were more appropriate than you knew.    Elliot Ness was the saftey director of Cleveland.  He noted that there was much less juvenile crime in areas where there were organized Girl Scout troops.  He supported the purchase of this camp!!!!!

Here's the introduction of "Elliot Ness: The Man Behind the Myth", a biography written by Marilyn Bardsley:

Ever since Eliot Ness first published The Untouchables in 1957, the public has fallen in love with the adventures of this authentic American hero. His book was a runaway best seller because it was the exciting true story of a brave and honest lawman pitted against the country's most successful gangster, Al Capone. The television series that followed in the 1950's and the Kevin Costner movie in 1987 built fancifully on the same theme. Then again in 1993, the television series has been remade for yet another generation to watch Eliot Ness battle it out again with the Capone Mob.

Every school child knows what Eliot Ness did for two years in Chicago, but what happened to him afterwards when Al Capone went to jail? Almost nobody knows. Does that mean the young hero retired to a quiet life?

Not by a long shot! With a new group of "Untouchables," Eliot Ness went right on fighting the mob for another decade: staging daring raids on bootleggers and illegal gambling joints, catching criminals with his bare hands, and generally putting organized crime on the run. After Capone, he broadened his crusade to include labor racketeers, crooked cops and the country's most vicious serial killer, the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run.

So why didn't Eliot Ness write about his adventures after Chicago? Actually, he had planned to do just that, but he died of a heart attack just before the publishing of The Untouchables.

Ness's career in law enforcement continued for a decade beyond the Capone years, a decade in which his very considerable talents flowered. At the age of 33 in Cleveland, he faced the challenge of his career when he took over the corrupt and incompetent police force in a city that had become a haven for gangsters.
Never one to sit behind a desk and administrate, Eliot took to the street with a new group of trusted confidants, mostly undercover investigators and reporters, until he cleaned up the police force and put the mob chieftains behind bars.

Drawing on his master's degree in criminology, he turned the miserable Cleveland police force into one of the most modern, efficient and respected departments in the world. Crime in the city dropped 38 percent after he was on the job just a couple of years!

Eliot Ness was so much more than just the courageous guy who battered down the door of Capone's biggest brewery. It's time the American public knew about the rest of his accomplishments, which are at once exciting, inspiring and long lasting.

comment from Corey :
this is completely not related...but I'm currently working with the materials from Al Capone's hide out to add detail to my professor's home...after the hide out was shot out during their stand off, my professor's professor gutted it for architectural remnants...all his detailed windows and doors are in my professor's garage and he's asking a few students to hang the elements around his house...
...Lucy,  this is the contemporary history professor I was telling you about that specializes in mid-century modern and design in America between the wars...

comment from Lynn:

the wife of this proffessor donated her hand-stiched 1960's senior GS uniform to the Richfield Historical Society