It’s Women’s History Month and I’ve been reading Susan Ingalls Lewis’s book on female proprietors in Albany between 1830 and 1885. We think of nineteenth century business as an entirely male affair. Unexceptional Women[i] shows us otherwise: many women throughout the country operated businesses in that period.

In fact, businesswomen abounded in the nineteenth-century United States. Rather than exceptional pioneers, these women were unexceptional contributors to their family economies and local communities. Neither notorious nor particularly notable, the vast majority were home-based micro-entrepreneurs who faced many of the challenges that today’s working women assume are unique to the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.[ii]

Much of the book details the experiences of women seamstresses and milliners, and of others operating small shops in Albany. But Lewis devotes a chapter to female entrepreneurs, exceptional women who took risks to expand their businesses. Once of her examples in this chapter is Julia Ridgway, whom she describes as “a woman of exceptional drive and ambition.”[iii] Julia, you won’t be surprised to learn, was a communicant of St. Paul’s Church, and matriarch of a family with a deep connection to the parish.

Julia James was born in Manchester England about 1819. She married Frederick W. Ridgway, and by the early 1840s, the couple had emigrated, and they were living in New York City. Frederick and his brother Jonathan were the “& sons” of “J. Ridgway & Sons,” a plumbing firm in lower Manhattan that seems to have begun work there in connection with supplying water from the new Croton Aqueduct. By 1843 the sons had established a plumbing shop in Albany. Jonathan soon left Albany for Boston, but Frederick continued the business here, and prospered.[iv]

In 1851, F.W. Ridgway died suddenly at the age of 34. His young widow, the mother of two children under the age of 10, initially tried to sell the business[v]. But within a year she had decided to carry the business on by herself. In 1852 Julia advertised that as “proprietress and licensed plumber to the Albany Water Works” she would continue her late husband’s business, and boasted that the New York State Plumbing Establishment “is one of the largest in the State, and is well known throughout the country as one of the leading establishments in the Plumbing business.”[vi]

An advertisement in the 1853 city directory gives more detail on the scope of Mrs. Ridgway’s business two years after her husband’s death, promising “[o]rders executed in any part of the United States by competent workmen.” She also lists a wide variety of household and industrial equipment for sale. An illustration of a household water closet, with toilet, sink and bath, is prominently displayed.[vii]

Julia Ridgway did not merely keep the business going. She expanded and innovated, so that by 1865 the business was valued at triple the figure at her husband’s death a dozen years earlier. A Dun Mercantile Agency credit examiner in 1865 reported that Ridgway was “doing the best bus[iness] of any firm or man in the line in Albany,” and, he added, “clearly making money.”[viii]

I’ve been unable to find a photograph of Mrs. Ridgway. As you picture her, please don’t think of Josephine the Plumber in those 1970s Comet Cleanser advertisements. I doubt that Julia Ridgway ever donned a pair of coveralls and climbed under a sink. She was the business brains of the operation, providing capital, doing the accounting, and managing the business, but leaving the plumbing to her employees.[ix]

Part of Julia Ridgway’s success may have been due her relationships with her partners. For the first years, she relied on her husband’s foreman, Herman Henry Russ, who was also a St. Paul’s communicant.[x] As the business grew, she took on Russ and Edmond Nesbitt as partners, organizing as Ridgway & Co. When Nesbitt left the firm in 1871[xi], she reorganized the business again, as Ridgway & Russ. The business continued under that name until 1898, when her son Frederick W. Ridgway (who had been managing the firm since 1871) and Russ formed separate firms.[xii]

Like Elizabeth Maria Starr Hawley (about whom I wrote several years ago), Julia Ridgway was the head of a family that included several generations of active parishioners at St. Paul’s. Julia and her daughter Mary Elizabeth became communicants in 1868, transferring from Grace Church[xiii]. Mary Elizabeth married Charles Carmichael Gould at St. Paul’s in 1876.

Julia’s son Frederick W. Ridgway (1849 – 1915) was confirmed at St. Paul’s in 1867. He was a parishioner for the rest of his life and a vestryman from 1901 until his death. Three of this second F.W. Ridgway’s children were closely associated with the parish. Dorothy White Ridgway (1891 – 1979) married our organist, T. Frederick H. Candlyn and was an active member until the couple left Albany in 1943. And I’ve already written about his elder daughter Elsa Ridgway (1884 – 1956), the long-time director of girls’ activities at the Trinity Institution, and about his son Frederick W. Ridgway Jr. (1896 — 1916), an active volunteer with our Sunday School.

[i] Susan Ingalls Lewis, Unexceptional Women: Female Proprietors in Mid-Nineteenth Century Albany, New York, 1830—1885 (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2009).

[ii] Lewis, 2.

[iii] Lewis, 131.

[iv] Amasa J. Parker (ed.), Landmarks of Albany County New York (Syracuse: D. Mason & Co, 1897), 142.

[v] “To Plumbers,” Albany Evening Journal, 31 May 1851, 3.

[vi] “New York State Plumbing Establishment,” Albany Evening Journal 30 Mar 1852, 3.

[vii] Munsell’s Albany Directory and City Registry for 1853 – 1854 (Albany: J. Munsell, 1853), 445.

[viii] Lewis, 131-133.

[ix] Lewis, 133.

[x] “Herman Henry Russ,” The Plumber’s Trade Journal Steam and Hot Water Fitters Review, volume 43 (Feb 1908), 160. Russ’s wife Catherine was confirmed at St. Paul’s in 1863, and their daughter was baptized here the same year. Herman and Catherine became communicants in 1875 and 1880, respectively. Their children were confirmed here, and Herman’s funeral was held at St. Paul’s in 1908.

[xi] “Dissolution,” Albany Evening Journal 25 May 1871, 3.

[xii] Parker, 142. See also The Metal Worker, volume 1, number 9 (17 Sep 1898), 52.

[xiii] Grace Church had been founded in 1846, with financial support from St. Paul’s. In 1865, the church (then located at the corner of Washington Avenue and Lark Street) was unable to support itself financially, and St. Paul’s provided our assistant minister, Edwin B. Russell, to serve as their rector. That relationship lasted until 1866.

Today’s post brings a story from the memoirs of Arthur R. McKinstry (St. Paul’s rector from 1927 until 1931), with an amusing anecdote about Eleanor Roosevelt’s preference for simple food during Franklin’s term as New York governor (1929-1932).

Albany society, which had felt particularly cheated during the Smith regime, rejoiced that aristocracy had returned to the Governor’s Mansion. They waited hopefully for the first high tea to be given by Mrs. Roosevelt. But Mrs. Roosevelt, not sensing this, and being interested in a school and a furniture factory in New York City would be absent from Albany virtually the whole week, returning only for the weekends.

Soon Albany society became very discouraged about the prospects of any activity in the Mansion House. A good friend went to Mrs. Roosevelt and explained the situation to her, whereupon the Governor’s wife sent out engraved invitations, with one going to the rector of St. Paul’s Church and his wife. We all gathered expectantly at the Mansion. I remember how Mr. Roosevelt, came in – how gracefully he moved among the guests on his crutches. But what almost ruined relations between the Mansion and the society of Albany was the fact that on that occasion Mrs. Roosevelt served only bouillon cubes and saltine crackers. Albany society felt cheated again.[1]

Albany society need not have been surprised that the new governor’s wife would have little time for entertaining. Mrs. Roosevelt had announced before Franklin’s inauguration that she would be busy from Tuesday through Friday each week, teaching American history, literature and serving as Vice-Principal at the Todhunter School for Girls in New York City, and overseeing the furniture factory at Val-kill in Westchester County.[2]

Albany society’s values were shallow indeed: despite the warmth of the Roosevelts’ greeting, they thought the event “almost ruined” because of the simplicity of the refreshments. No disrespect was intended: the food served was a matter of principle for Eleanor Roosevelt. Starting during the early 1920’s, Eleanor was much influenced by the Cornell University Home Economics program. She had a close relationship with its founders, Martha Van Rensselaer and Flora Rose, and advocated their simple and frugal recipes.[3]

This commitment to simple food extended to Eleanor Roosevelt’s years as First Lady (1933 – 1945). Contemporary accounts of the food served at the White House during the Roosevelt administration are harsh: guests routinely reported dull, unimaginative food. No wonder that many in Washington knew that it was advisable to eat before dining at the White House. It was not only guests that were dissatisfied: Franklin Roosevelt often complained about the quality of the food.[4] The food Eleanor chose was certainly plain, “especially at lunchtime. Broiled kidneys on toast, chipped beef on toast, shrimp wiggle on toast, curried eggs on toast…”[5] The president once complained about being served “liver and beans three days in a row.”[6]

Many of these dishes were influenced by the menus recommended by Cornell’s Home Economics Department. During the Depression, Eleanor wanted White House food to represent the kind of cooking that America’s distressed citizens could afford and cook. The emphasis was on low cost, efficient cooking, and nutrition, not on the pleasures of the table.[7] This view certainly made sense to a person like Eleanor, of whom her son James Roosevelt said “… she has no appreciation of fine food. Victuals to her are something to inject into the body as fuel to keep it going, much as a motorist pours gasoline into an auto tank.”[8]

While commentators agree that the Cornell program influenced Eleanor Roosevelt, there are two related theories about underlying factors, the type and quality of food served during the White House years.

As a practical matter, Henrietta Nesbitt, the head housekeeper that Eleanor employed during the entire time she lived in the White House, was unprepared for her role as supervisor of a staff of thirty-two, both maintaining the mansion and organizing meals from state dinners to family suppers. She seems also to have been willfully incompetent, ignoring advice from professional chefs and restaurants.[9] Roosevelt’s biographer, Blanche Wiesen Cook, in a chapter titled “ER’s Revenge: Henrietta Nesbitt, Head Housekeeper”[10] argues that Eleanor Roosevelt’s hiring of Nesbitt and her refusal, despite many provocations on Nesbitt’s part, to dismiss her, is an element in the First Lady’s passive-aggressive style in a troubled marriage. In partial defense of Mrs. Nesbitt, Barbara Haber points out that Nesbitt was above all loyal to her employer and benefactor, and was carrying out Mrs. Roosevelt’s instructions.[11]

This psychologizing on party food, however, seems petty and even mean-spirited. Eleanor Roosevelt, as First Lady of New York State, then as First Lady of the nation, and finally (in Harry S. Truman’s phrase) as First Lady of the World, lived a busy and noteworthy life, contributing much to our nation and our world. As a woman with many interests and causes, as her husband’s legs during Franklin’s governorship, as one of the most active and effective First Ladies in our history, Eleanor Roosevelt had far more important things on her mind than canapés.

Returning to St. Paul’s connection to this story, our rector Arthur R. McKinstry wrote that Governor Roosevelt knew him “quite well” when they were both in Albany, and we suspect this was not the only time McKinstry visited the Governor’s Mansion. Roosevelt and McKinstry kept in touch after Roosevelt was elected president, and in 1935 Roosevelt pressed his church, St. Thomas, Du Pont Circle, Washington, D.C. to call McKinstry as rector, a call that he declined.[12] McKinstry went on to be named bishop of Delaware.

[1] Arthur McKinstry, All I Remember…: The McKinstry Memoirs by the Fifth Bishop of Delaware 1939 – 1954 (Wilmington: Serendipity Press, 1975), 40.

[2] “Mrs. Roosevelt to Keep on Filling Many Jobs Besides Being the ‘First Lady’ at Albany,” New York Times, 10 Jan 1928.

[3] H. Roger Segelken, “Affectionately, Eleanor,” New York Archives 15, no. 4 (Spring 2016), 12 – 17.

[4] Laura Shapiro, “The First Kitchen: Eleanor Roosevelt’s austerity drive,” New Yorker (November 22, 2010).

[5] Shapiro.

[6] Henrietta Nesbitt, White House Diary (Garden City: Country Life Press, 1948), 185.

[7] Barbara Haber, “Home Cooking in the FDR White House: the Indomitable Mrs. Nesbitt,” in From Hardtack to Homefries: An Uncommon History of American Cooks and Meals (New York: The Free Press, 2002), 118-119.

[8] Haber, 123.

[9] Cook, 55.

[10] Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 2, 1933 – 1938, (New York: Viking, 1999), 52-59.

[11] Haber 121-124.

[12] McKinstry, 49-50.

When these slides were taken on January 8, 1966, the new church was almost complete, with the consecration scheduled for the following April . The first slide shows the tower, with a ladder propped against the roof next to it. They may have been working on the wiring for the electric chimes, which had originally been installed in 1947 in the east tower of the Lancaster Street church as a memorial to members of the congregation who died in World War II.

The photograph also allows us to see progress on the installation the stained glass windows from the Lancaster Street building in the new narthex.

The second slide shows the Hackett Boulevard facade of the building, looking much as it does today, except for the bare soil and missing landscaping.