Connections: "Entitled"

Horatio Lange and William Blair Lancaster in 1896.  How well did they know each other?

I have entitled* this ongoing blog post “Connections.”  It is entitled* to that title because so much of what makes family history and research worthwhile are the connections that we discover in the course of our work.

There are the coincidental connections that we find, for example, when two ancestors from different sides of your family are in the same place.

In the course of researching my maternal great-grandfather, I found out that he and my paternal great-grandfather were on the opposite sides of a dispute regarding the construction of a crypt on the grounds of the Carmelite Convent on North Rampart Street in New Orleans.  They must have met each other at the meeting of the Committee on Public Health on September 24, 1891, at City Hall (Gallier Hall).

Horatio Lange (my father’s grandfather) was part of a neighborhood group that spoke against the construction of the crypt on the grounds of sanitary health.  William Blair Lancaster (my mother’s grandfather) supported the construction as part of a group entitled the Carmelite Co-Operative Association. Their spokesman asserted that such crypts were located on the grounds of other religious groups.

Surely they knew each other’s names after the meeting, during which they offered opposing arguments.  

Here is the entirety of Horatio’s argument, as reported by the Times-Picayune on Friday, September 21, 1891:

Mr. Lange called attention to the fact that the institutions mentioned … as already possessing crypts, are situated in the suburban portion of the city.  The Carmelite Convent is in the heart of the city. His opposition is not based on religious grounds, as he is a good Catholic, but because he is a resident of the neighborhood, and is opposed to there being introduced a menace to the health of his family.

And here is what William had to say, again according to the T-P, in a short reply to an argument that cemeteries are dangers to the spread of contagious diseases:

Mr. Lancaster cited eminent French medical opinion of a contrary nature.

The discussion ended with a motion for the committee to examine the site of the proposed crypt.  Later, the City Council allowed construction to proceed by passing an ordinance written specifically for the Carmelites’ project, despite the objection of the public health director. Finally, the ordinance was vetoed by Mayor Shakspeare (sic), after Horatio’s group met with him and convinced the mayor to follow the wishes of neighboring property owners. The dispute faded from the pages of the New Orleans newspapers.

In that first meeting of the Committee on Public Health, if Horatio and William met one another, I hope that they were cordial.  I like to imagine that they engaged in a short conversation in French—the first language of Horatio and the language William learned during his education at the Sorbonne in Paris.  But even if they had only a nodding acquaintance, I hope they had respect for one another’s viewpoints.

Or did they feel entitled to have their opinion heeded, regardless of the validity of the contrasting perspective?

The newspaper reports never mentioned that Horatio’s property abutted the property of the Carmelites, nor did the accounts point out that William’s daughter Annie had entered the Carmelite Convent as a postulant five years before.  Regardless of their personal agendas, Horatio and William ended their direct involvement in the controversy soon after the public health committee meeting.

Who knows if they ever laid eyes on each other again?  Their families certainly came into contact. Thirty-eight years later, in 1929, Horatio’s grandson, Joe Garcia, met William’s granddaughter, Edith Lancaster, at a party on the Tchefuncte River in Covington.  Joe and Edith were only 14 years old, but they remembered each other when they again encountered one another in New Orleans after Edith moved there in 1932. They were married in January of 1938, beginning a long life together, a life that brought nine children into the world, the ninth of whom is yours truly.

Next post: The connections that occur between families that are unrelated yet become linked when they are both swept up into the great events of history.

* The word entitle has at least three meanings, all related to the idea of naming.

When a person was given a role in the nobility, they were given a title.  The monarchy controlled that process of entitlement. So, for example, Queen Elizabeth II offered the courtesy title of “earl” to her daughter’s first husband, Captain Mark Phillips.  He refused the offer to be entitled Earl Phillips.  His children, as descendants of the female line, do not have courtesy titles.  Therefore, they are not entitled; they have not received a title.

Another meaning is related to the first.  To entitle a piece of writing is to give it a name.  Thus, I have entitled this blog Connections.  Edgar Rice Burroughs entitled his first book of a series of books Tarzan of the Apes.  John Clayton III becomes Tarzan after the death of his parents, John and Alice Clayton II, Lord and Lady Greystoke.  Tarzan does not know that he is the son of a lord and has inherited the title of Lord Greystoke. Tarzan does not know he is entitled.

And that brings us to the third definition.  Tarzan does not know he is entitled to be entitled.  In this meaning, entitled means “to be deserving of or to have the right to.”  As Americans we are aware of what our rights are, what we are entitled to.  Some might say we have become hyper-aware, sensitive to the point of becoming easily offended, if we are denied what we think we deserve.  That idea is worthy of an entire post. For now, I’ll leave that discussion for another day.