Notes for: Joel Goode Bodine

Here is a picture of Joel Bodine taken around 1900. It was sent to me by CA:

Joel Goode Bodine

I originally had his name as Joel E. Bodine, but a biography by Harold A. Williams of Aubrey Bodine gave his father's name as Joel Goode Bodine. I think the "E" I had came from a census transcription. Here is some of that biography. It was written up by a Jennifer B. Bodine. It comes from the first chapter called "Messenger at 14, Photographer at 18."

MESSENGER AT 14,

PHOTOGRAPHER AT 18

Aubrey Bodine never talked about what his life was like before he achieved fame as a photographer. And he never gave anyone an opportunity to ask about it. A 2,500-word article on his career, prepared in 1946 under his direction, spanned his birth to employment in one ambiguous sentence: Bodine went to work for the Baltimore Sun (circulation 300,000) right after leaving St. Paul's Episcopal School. The biographical sketches he wrote or had written for publicity releases in connection with his exhibitions or books always started his life when he had become famous and dealt only with his work. It is obvious that he was not proud of his modest beginnings and that he sought to obliterate any mention of them. When required to furnish biographical facts for Who's Who he exaggerated his education with misleading dates and made other intentional errors. One could never learn from him that in many ways his life was as amazing, and he showed as much pluck, as a Horatio Alger hero.

He was born in Baltimore on July 21, 1906, the second of four children of Joel Goode Bodine and Louise Adele Wilson. Henry, the first child, died at the age of 5 days; Seeber, the third, and Ellen, the fourth, still live in the Baltimore area.

The Bodine ancestors were French Huguenots who fled to America in the Seventeenth Century after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and first settled on Staten Island. Later some moved to New Jersey; others in about the middle 1800's went to Prince William county, Va. It is from the latter that Joel stemmed. He was one of six children of Theodore Bodine, a school teacher living near Manassas. During the Civil War some Union soldiers were once hidden in the Bodine cellar from pursuing Confederate cavalry; ironically, other Union men later took everything the family owned except three geese.

Joel was 48 and a widower with four grown children, two boys and two girls, when he married Louise Wilson, then 33. As she was from Washington county, Md., they were married there: in Breathedsville, June 14, 1904. The Wilsons were well-to-do and socially prominent. They traced their history back to pre-Revolutionary days. The bride's father, Henry Beatty Wilson, was a physician, a contributor to medical journals in both this country and England, and editor of a country weekly, the Boonsboro Odd Fellow. One of her aunts, Sarah Catherine Wilson, was a musician and artist. Her grandfather, John Wilson, achieved passing fame for traveling by horseback through all the existing states. Louise's sister Edith was an amateur photographer as early as 1880; two albums of family pictures she took still exist. Two brothers were physicians. Another, George R. Wilson, was an executive of the Pennsylvania Railroad. When he died in 1951 he left a crossroads church near the family home $150,000. The 300-acre Jericho Farm near Boonsboro on which the Wilsons lived remained in the family until 1951.

There was also a notable character on the side of the bride's mother. A member of her family, George Scott Kennedy, married Rebecca Swearingen, whose great grandfather, Van Swearingen, was a county lieutenant in the Colony of Virginia and was known as King Van. Mrs. Kennedy, according to family tradition, was a woman of strong character and few words. When her husband died she walked into the kitchen of Jericho Farm and told the servants, Clean the silver. Mr. Kennedy just died. And when the horses pulling his hearse became so unruly that the grooms could not handle them, she, without a word, got out of her coach, climbed up on the hearse and drove it to the cemetery. Family archives preserve the deeds of both Kennedy and Wilson ancestors who fought in the French and Indian wars, Revolutionary War, War of 1812 and Civil War.

In Virginia Joel Bodine had lived in Manassas; he owned two farms and operated a general store until it was destroyed by fire. When he remarried he came to Baltimore. His bride, a great believer in education, felt that if they had children the city would offer better schools than the country. They bought a two-story row house at 2021 Harlem avenue, between Monroe street and the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks. A fresh spring near the tracks supplied their drinking water. Though it was a workingman's neighborhood, they had a cook and laundress. Aubrey was enrolled in public school No. 78 at Harlem avenue and Monroe street in 1912 and attended there for three years.

His father invested the money from his farms in tenant row houses. Later he supplemented this income by setting up penny gum ball and candy machines in drug and grocery stores. He was not a good businessman and his capital and income dwindled. The couple became unhappy on Harlem avenue and decided to move to Elk Ridge (then spelled as two words), about nine miles south of Baltimore, where a cousin, the Rev. Robert A. Castleman, was rector of Grace Episcopal Church. The Harlem avenue property was sold and in the spring of 1915 the Bodines moved to a two-acre lot they had bought for $200 on St. Augustine avenue, not far from St. Augustine's Catholic Church. Until a home could be built, a large tent was rented and the family lived in it. Rugs were placed on the ground, beds put up in one corner, table, chairs and a stove in another corner. For six months the family lived this way; then in December the cold and snow forced them into a hurriedly-constructed shed which later became their chicken house. The father paid $20 to have the foundation dug for the story-and-a-half frame cottage that succeeded the shed but he did the rest of the work on the house himself although he was almost 60, blind in one eye and in failing health. His daughter remembers with admiration that he was handy with tools and could do almost anything with them. After the house was finished he did not work regularly because of his health until World War I when he clerked in the Patent Once in Washington. He lived in the capital, coming home every other week by train.

Until he obtained the government job money was scarce. Though the Bodines were poor their life was not unpleasant. The father liked to read and encouraged his family to read too. His favorite books were Dante's Divine Comedy, Milton's Paradise Lost and a biography of Washington. He urged the children to learn new words and to spell them correctly; Ellen became so good with words that her friends called her Dictionary. Aubrey was interested in American Indians; on his bedroom wall for years was a magazine-cover Remington painting of a dying warrior. (During this period - 1913 to 1920 - Seeber lived with an uncle and aunt in Florida.)

After Aubrey and Ellen were sent to bed the parents would sit on the lawn on summer evenings and the father would play a guitar while the two sang folk songs and hymns. The father had a way with him and was particular in his dress. He wore a coat at the dinner table. When he visited relatives in New Jersey he donned a silk hat. In summer he wore a white linen suit on Sundays. After church the family would picnic along the Patapsco River, walking several miles to reach a favored spot. Mother and father would fish while the children frolicked on the bank. The Fourth of July was celebrated with lemonade and gingerbread because, the mother said, that's the way my family did it for generations.

On fall and winter evenings the mother made popcorn and roasted chestnuts, the father read in his rocker, and Ellen and Aubrey sat at the dining room table doing their homework by the light of an oil lamp. The only heat in the house came from a wood stove. Aubrey and Seeber carried wood into the house every night when they came home, no matter the hour, until 1927 when Seeber put in a better heating system. In winter bricks were heated on the stove, wrapped in paper and put in the beds to keep feet warm. There was no stairway to the second floor; at bedtime Aubrey climbed a stationary ladder, lighting his way with lamp or candle. Electricity did not come until 1925.

A cracked and faded photograph in Ellen's possession shows the house at about this time. The trim white cottage had been added to on one side and in back. The side porch had wooden rocking chairs, a glider, and a table and stand filled with potted plants. Rose trellises flanked the doorway, shrubs bordered the walk and there was a bird feeder under a pine tree. In the backyard was a wooden lawn swing. Bordering the street was a row of maple shoots Aubrey had dug up in the woods. He erected a flagpole on the lawn. Most mornings he had the family and the neighboring Pearson children stand at attention while he raised the flag. This was a landmark. His mother directed visitors, "When you see the flag, that's our house." St. Augustine avenue itself was a rough, unpaved road. When Dr. S. Kennedy Wilson drove out he would leave his car at the bottom of the hill, along the Washington boulevard, and walk, puffing, up the steep grade.

The cottage was in West Elk Ridge, with only a few houses nearby. Ellen remembers fields and woods bordering their property with a meadow filled with daisies stretching off into the distance and, beyond a woods, a stream they called the Branch, with forget-me-nots and white violets growing along the green banks.

Joel Bodine died in 1924 after a long illness. Aubrey and Seeber had been helping their family financially from the time they started working, but now they gave their mother a larger share of their salary. Seeber was working for the Wolfe and Mann Manufacturing Company. He was paid 20 cents an hour for a 481/z hour week. He gave his mother $5 a week, paid $7.07 for a monthly commuter's ticket on the Baltimore and Ohio and had a few dollars left for himself. Aubrey, because he was older and making more money, undoubtedly gave his mother more. Ellen was still in school but was soon to start work as a secretary.

There is quite a bit more in this biography that I did not put here.

Here is a message I got about this family:

From: WA
Sent: Saturday, January 29, 2005
Subject: Bodine Family

Hi Dave,

...

My line is from Joel Goode Bodine and Bessie Allen to Lena Arlee (sometimes Ada) Bodine who is my grandmother. Lena married Claude Hal Haga and had seven children with only three surviving past young adulthood. Those children were Windsor, Margaret, and William. My Aunt Margaret was born in 1908, remembered Grandpa Joel very well, and related many family stories to me. She also played with the children of Joel's new family, Aubrey, Seeber, and Ellen.

Aunt Margaret passed away last year at the age of 96. I have a photo of Joel, taken about 1900. If you are interested, I would TRY to scan and email to you...

...

CA

CA told me that three of the children from Joel's first marriage are listed together in the 1910 Washington DC Census. They are in the household of Pascal Bordan Breedan. Listed are Pascal's wife Madge Adeline (Bodine) Breedan, Ruth Eileen Breedan (daughter of Pascal), Joel Augustus Bodine (brother-in-law), Theodore Bodine (brother-in-law), and Laura E. Bodine (sister-in-law and wife of Theodore).

Here is some more info on this:

From: WA
Sent: Saturday, February 05, 2005
Subject: Re: Bodine Family

Hi Dave,

I always have notes- I aim for high standards but sometimes they are incomplete, illegible, or otherwise useless! This information should be accurate. I do not know any birth months for this group of people, so I have subtracted their age from 1910 for the estimated birth year.
1. Pascal Borden Breedan, age 30, born about 1880 in Tennessee; policeman.
2. Madge Adeline Breedan, age 26, born about 1884 in Virginia; musician.
3. Ruth Eileen Breedan, census image for age is not clear,- (census reports that Pascal and Madge have been married four years and that Madge had one child)-so estimating born between 1906-1910 in DC.
4. Joe Augustus Bodine, age 16, born about 1894 in Virginia; pressman/dressman??
5. Theodore Allen Bodine, age 24, born about 1886 in Virginia, can't read occupation
6. Laura E. Bodine, age 20, born about 1890 in Virginia; domestic.

...

CA

From Ronny Bodine:

The birth of Joel Bodine appears in the birth records for Prince William County. However, the date of birth inscribed on his gravestone reads 10 Aug 1856. Joel Bodine lived 1880-1900 in Brentsville, Prince William County. In 1880, he was recorded as Joseph Bodine. In 1900, he reported that in 22 years of marriage his wife Bessie had borne 4 children, all then living. In 1910, he lived with his family in Baltimore, Maryland working as a real estate collector. He reported that Louise was his 2nd wife to whom he had been married 6 years and that she had borne 4 children of whom 3 lived. Louise (Wilson) Bodine was the daughter of Henry Beatty Wilson. Joel Bodine was buried in Grace Episcopal Church Cemetery, Elkridge, Howard County. Louise Bodine was buried in Boonsboro Cemetery, Boonsboro, Maryland which is so inscribed on her husband's gravestone.

Newspaper Obituary, The Frederick Post (Frederick, Md.) of Friday, 12 July 1946.
Baltimore, July 11 (AP)--Mrs. Mary Louise Adele Bodine, mother of A. Aubrey Bodine, photographic director of the Sunday Sun Magazine died suddenly yesterday at the home of her son here. A native of Boonsboro, Md., Mrs. Bodine was the widow of the late Joel Goode Bodine, Manassas, Va. Funeral services will be held in Baltimore Saturday. Burial will be in Boonesboro.

Burials in Bradley Community Cemetery, Prince William County.
(Find A Grave Memorial # 17496664)
Bessie Allen Wife of Joel G. Bodine 1855-1900