Karen Chadwick’s Tribute, Dear Jean P.S. Part Four, to:
David Dale, A Life by David J. McLaren, Stenlake Publisher,
Ayrshire, Scotland, 2015, a truly beautiful new book rich with photos, docs,
maps, all supporting Dr. McLaren’s extensive research on David Dale, 1739-1806.
Dale was one of the first “Captains of Industry” at the dawn of the Industrial
Revolution with his new cotton yarn mill in New Lanark, Scotland beginning in
1786. I found this book fascinating for a few reasons, here’s one.
In 1799, Dale’s oldest
daughter, Anne Caroline, married Robert Owen. RO married into a pot of money.
In 1825, RO purchased a town from a departing Lutheran cult in the new state of
Indiana and renamed it New Harmony. RO took his passion for social engineering,
six of his well-educated adult children, were joined by other dreamers, and
attempted to create an intellectual communal experiment that failed two years
later. RO could talk the talk; he couldn’t walk the walk. In spite of this
expensive failure, RO became world famous for his radical ideas of how to shape
good humans. To this day, there is a “Robert Owen Society” in Japan, for
instance.
Flash forward to 1995 and my
new job in New Harmony as private secretary to Jane Blaffer Owen, JBO. She
married Kenneth Dale Owen, KDO, in 1941 and I worked for her when she was in
her 80s. She brought great wealth to the marriage as her Blaffer/Texas roots
were in Humble Oil and Texaco Oil, which morphed to Exxon. KDO was a descendant
of David Dale and Robert Owen, through Richard Dale Owen. Elsewhere on this
blog is their genealogy record. Wealth from the Dale/Owen legacy had evaporated
by KDO’s time. Young Jane Blaffer appreciated that this suitor was not from the
lazy wealthy class she grew up with and she was impressed that he had worked
his way through college. That credential and his notable name sealed the deal.
This wing of the Owen family
continued with the tradition of honoring David Dale. Kenneth and Jane gave the
Dale name as middle name to two of their daughters. The Blaffer wealth saved an
interesting portion of American history as Jane Blaffer Owen poured herself
into the restoration and renovation of New Harmony for over 70 years. I helped.
All page references from David
Dale, A Life. Buy it! It’s valuable.
* * * * * * *
David Dale of New Lanark by David J. McLaren, Caring Books,
Glasgow, 1999, my copy autographed!
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* * * * *
David
Dale of New Lanark by
David J. McLaren, Milngavie: Heatherbank Press, 1983. This research regarding
Dale, New Lanark Mills and child labor is the basis for a letter to my young
nephews on this blog and also an appendix of my manuscript, The Other Woman, Private Secretary to a
Daughter of Exxon Oil. I seek an agent/publisher for this work.
* * * * * *
*
Gratitude to Dr. David J. McLaren and Dougie MacLean, Dunkeld
Records, Perthshire
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Dear Jean P.S. Part Four of 10
February 2, 2020
Religion
Religion was a thing in Europe,
various flavors ruled, new religions grew faster than weeds, and the test of
who aligned with who was serious business. Ah, more to the point, religion
ruled with the laws. I’ve often thought that chess pieces need a tweak. Instead
of a church guy on either side of King and Queen, one of those pieces should be
a lawyer. White Bishop, Black Lawyer. Or Black Bishop White Lawyer, I’m
flexible.
As you noticed with Dear Jean #1, David Dale
had to sign a long legal document, Oath for a Burgess Ticket, promising he was
a good Established Church — Presbyterian — member in order to become a guild
merchant in Glasgow in the 1770s. In McLaren’s book, David Dale, A Life, we
see an appendix, #13, pg. 260, showing the text of the Oath, and he also had to
promise to only buy malt for brewing if it was grinded at Town’s Mills! Even
more restrictive was the Oath that Catholics had to sign if they wanted to do
business in Scotland, that’s really worth a read. That’s one small example of
how religion and law commingled and oversaw everything in Europe. Dear Jean
letters also chat up how, years on, David Dale was occasionally attacked as he
walked in Glasgow because he had left the Established Church and started a new
religion. How dare he think he can preach without EC approval? He kept
smiling.
Well, guess what? Some people were
real done with religion. In Europe, it wasn’t so easy to be nonreligious. No.
No. No. But now that the former Great Britain colonies were starting their own
country in 1783, the USA wanted nothing to do with religion. Wow! Of course,
just the opposite view also had a strong appeal, as the USA allows for
so-called “religious freedom” and many, for instance, the Harmonists, came for
freedom to be more religious. Some Europeans, you’ll see shortly, even
held hope that a religious/legal concept called marriage would not be a part of
the USA. Uh huh.
Malt for brewing? Hold that
interest. Great Brits loved their beer.
Money
When David Dale died, 1806, things
got messy with his estate. As Dale realized his end was near, and no son to
take over his considerable holdings — and culturally impossible to give
that manly responsibility to his daughters — he entrusted much to a young Scot,
John More. More began to handle Dale’s partnerships and joint holdings with
many Glasgow and wider Scotland entities that included a very long list of
complicated business deals, Guild/Burgess monies, other textile mill
co-ownerships, Dale’s church financial obligations, and more, all either up and
running or in various stages of progress. As Dale was declining, his new
son-in-law, Robert Owen, RO, also became quite involved with Dale’s
professional concerns, so that might have been some comfort to the ailing man.
Between More and RO, it took
several years for all Dale holdings to finally wrap up. Upon reading McLaren’s
work, David Dale, A Life, I learned that More got caught with his
hand in the Dale estate till and did time in prison for stealing Dale assets.
RO and More worked closely together to settle Dale’s estate, and McLaren
suspects RO might have — well, read the book.
Here’s something to untangle: RO
came to that marriage in 1799 with modest wealth as recorded in the marriage
contract, he definitely married up. Just months before the marriage, Welshman
RO and seven English partners bought New Lanark Mills from David Dale. RO
became Mill manager and earned 1,000 pounds sterling a year for this work. Mill
profits must have been divided 8 ways. Within a few years some of the Mill
partners were quite done with RO’s management priorities, resulting in a long
harsh process of their exit while new investors were found.
A worthy book, Robert Owen of New Lanark
by Margaret Cole has details of RO’s involvement with the New Lanark Mills
financial partners and his wider influence on British labor. Quite amusing in
this book are views of various British cooperative living experiments based on
RO’s ideas that all crashed quickly. RO had passionately influenced many to see
a new way to live, yet the dream did not travel well in reality. RO worked very
hard promoting himself and had a fan club, but did they fund his expensive
dream for buying an empty town in the USA? Most likely not, yet I wonder,
where, oh where, did RO come up with an immense sum of money to make such a
huge purchase? No, he did not sell his interest in the Mills to raise the cash.
Curious.
Ah, here’s how to amass money:
Gratitude again to McLaren for
including in David Dale, A Life, an appendix, p. 267-9, a letter
from a New Lanark Mill worker, a woman, to her sister dated 1823 and thus I
learn that her husband had been receiving 15 shillings a month from the Village
Society, connected to the New Lanark Mill operation. For some reason her
husband goes through a lot of coal each month. She writes to her sister that
RO had just let everyone know that the Village Society fund was bankrupt.
The writer goes on with controlled passion at changes they hear RO will soon
expect of all Mill Village workers, “… live 50 families to one fire, live like
swine, and take children away, Owen says it’s a privilege …” The very next year
RO had $150,000 to purchase the town in Indiana. Bankrupt, indeed.
Society
Who came to the USA? Let’s take a
look at the Europeans who brought their culture, their money, their artisan and
craft skills, their intellectual contributions, their dreams, and their greed
to new USA. Focus in on some of the people who arrived from Great Britain in
the early 1800s and started elaborate dreams in Tennessee and what became
Illinois and Indiana.
As the Harmonists were building a
town on one side of the Wabash River, on the other side were a group of 20+
English who attempted a cooperative effort to farm in 1817, called “The English
Prairie.” As with the Germans across the river, these were the first whites
arriving with organization, purpose, and resources. The only other whites in
the area were individuals or lone families trying to make it through the clash
of cultures with any remaining American Indians or other whites they didn’t
like.
The English quickly had a major
breakdown in Plan A when the two leaders had a parting of the ways and never
spoke to each other again, so best to start two towns, Albion and Wanborough in
what would soon be the state of Illinois. Two men fell in love with the same
woman, ouch. These English, several Flower and Burbank families, and others
sympathetic to their dream started a hoped-for English presence on cheap land,
the Illinois prairie. They left Great Britain for similar reasons as many did,
they were sick and tired of the restrictions of church and the King’s laws.
These people had some money, had success with brewing, farming, animal
husbandry in England, and came with skills to the recently available land once
the First Nations people were pushed further west. One of the English Prairie
men, Richard Flower, was the agent who facilitated the transaction of the town
for sale, Harmonie, including thousands of acres, owned by the Harmonists, and an
interested buyer with a lot of cash and big dreams, Robert Owen.
Very unfortunate for the English
Prairie group, once the nearby town was sold to the Welshman RO in January
1825, the English Prairie folks had a most difficult time attracting new
helpers to their work. Their dream slowly crashed for several harsh reasons.
The RO dream started then failed
quickly, yet others kept parts of RO’s dream moving. The town, now renamed New
Harmony, became a destination for intellectuals while across the Wabash, the
English Prairie plan withered. I highly recommend a book, Eliza Julia Flower, Letters of an
English Gentlewoman: Life on the Illinois-Indiana Frontier 1817-1861 by
Janet Walker and Richard Burkhardt. Eliza was a primary part of the English
Prairie dream. She was that woman.
One amusing account from this book,
Eliza writes to English friends who might come to visit and consider joining
them while also warning, “We eat with the servants! We work with our hands, we
ALL work, ALL day.” I found the account of this woman’s life quite interesting;
she was from some privilege in England yet rose with lifelong dedication to
make a decent life out of the difficult circumstances she encountered at every
turn. She was noted for her intelligence, her hostess skills, her devotion to
her family, her ability to work as hard as a man in most endeavors, and she
wrote long letters! She fell in love with George (son of Richard) Flower, a
married man, they “married” anyway, and she loved him to the end, even though
her English family refused to have any contact with her ever again. How’s that
for harsh? More curious, her hubby spent much time, energy, and money to help a
vivacious Scot, Fanny Wright, build her nutjob dream in Tennessee.
Keep Eliza’s words in mind, “We eat
with the servants!” and I’ll give background on this important new world change
up ahead.
Eliza and George Flower finally
moved to New Harmony after they bailed their son-in-law out of a financial mess
that left them with very little resources to the end of their lives.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
To be continued
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Citations
and Bibliography
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Other web sources include:
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