A couple of weeks into this blog and we can see some themes emerging and repeating themselves. That’s good because I felt from the get-go it would be difficult to keep up the pace sticking strictly to my antipastoralism premise. FAKE fits nicely, as I see the mandate of pastoralism to present an overtly skewed, romanticized, false vision of the countryside to the city consumer. I want to oppose that. Stay away. It’s not what it looks like in those slick magazines. Sustainability and environmentalism are paramount and I want to continue to explore these issues. FAMILY is also a recurring theme; especially when it relates to local historical figures who can provide some insight into where we find ourselves globally. Dr. Winthrop Jon Van Leuvan Osterhout and his daughter Ann are two such characters.
For those of you who haven’t read www.fancestor.blogspot.com these two will be new to you. For those who have, bear with me. I have new information. First let me introduce the doctor. WJVL was the son of Rev. John Osterhout of Lackawack, New York. Lackawack was flooded by the government in 1951; its ruins now sitting at the bottom of Roundout Reservoir. My great grandfather Andrew Osterhout was born just down the mountain, north of Ellenville, in Wawarsing (the bird’s nest.) We are close cousins to these academics from Lackawack. Winthrop was a world renown physiologist and botanist who taught at U.C. Berkeley, Wood’s Hole and Harvard. He was known to work and socialize in the highest circles of the scientific community, often frequenting that bastion of power elites and behind the scenes leverage, Bohemian Grove. Great grandfather Andrew Osterhout was an illiterate farmhand and seamster, who abandoned his family in Montgomery and died alone. I point this out not to disparage Andrew (although I heard he was an asshole) but to show that this Osterhout branch was (and still is) academically uneven.
Dr. WJVL Osterhout founded the august Journal of General Physiology with Jacques Loeb. Our old buddy Mark Twain found inspiration not only in the Cardiff giant hoax, he also was inspired by Dr. Jacques Loeb; writing Dr. Loeb’s Incredible Discovery in 1910, an essay calling for a questioning of “general consensus” amongst the scientific community as new discoveries rapidly increased. Loeb was perhaps the most famous scientist in America at the time, nominated for the Nobel Prize repeatedly. Neither Osterhout nor Loeb won the Noble Prize, but they knew plenty who had. Portrayed in the press as a modern day “Faust,” Jacques Loeb’s experiments with sea urchins proved that “Physical chemistry could be a tool for altering the basic process of reproduction.” The 1899 Boston Herald headline declared in bold type “CREATION OF LIFE. STARTLING DISCOVERY OF PROF. LOEB. LOWER ANIMALS PRODUCED BY CHEMICAL MEANS. PROCESS MAY APPLY TO HUMAN SPECIES. IMMACULATE CONCEPTION EXPLAINED. WONDERFUL EXPERIMENTS CONDUCTED AT WOODS HOLE.” Loeb was as notorious as he was revered. Imagine life without sperm! Their little magazine benefitted tremendously from the salacious press. You are known by the company you keep.
Winthrop Jon Van Leuvan was the smartest (book wise) and well connected Osterhout ever to be born. He married Anna Maria Landstrom and had two daughters Ann and Olga. Both daughters married well. Olga, the artist in the family, married a Sears. But it was Ann who would become the Osterhout celebrity, specifically because of her choice in husbands. She married “the Wizard’s kin,” Theodore Edison. By 1925 Loeb was dead and Edison was the most famous family name/brand in the world.
A few nights ago we (the band of all faiths) gathered down at John Letourneau’s deciding whether or not to convene a last CLGM service in calendar year 2019. John has probably the most spectacular backyard of anyone I’ve ever met….and it’s just down the hill. Between his house and the bucolic Neversink River is a carefully groomed “infinity lawn,” a swamp and orchard I hunt, and acres of yellow goldenrod waving gently in the evening breeze. If a plein air painter ever wanted a vista to cum over this is it. As the meeting continued I stared out across that field….looking for deer.
And this brings me back to Winthrop, Ann and younger sister Olga. I have Olga’s sketch book that I bought on Etsy, a oddly precious heirloom from this brilliant family branch. But as an artist Olga went nowhere. Judging from her sketchbook, she had a little talent but no edge or ambition. I’m speculating. It’s only a sketchbook. Her father and sister were different animals entirely. Ann went to M.I.T., met Theodore Edison and fell in love. The parents Prof. Winthrop and Anna Maria Osterhout, and the in-laws Thomas and Mina Edison, approved of the match. Newspapers across the world in 1925 carried photos and accounts of the Firestones and Fords attending the Edison/Osterhout nuptials at the Harvard chapel. What’s the connection between these privileged, academic Osterhouts and John’s field you ask? Goldenrod.
Right around the time that Theodore and Ann were tying the knot America was experiencing tremendous growing pains due to colonialism, money and the influence of industrial titans like Ford, Firestone and Edison. Oil, coal, steel production and the extraction of rubber were important components of capitalism’s master plan to take over the planet. WWI had proven that we had better shape up, think outside the box and put our shoulders to the grindstone if we were going to win WWII. It didn’t hurt that Ford, Firestone and Edison were buddies who actually went on motoring vacations together (with of all people the naturalist John Burroughs) to test out their collaborative product—the automobile. Edison and Ford built winter mansions side by side in Fort Myers, Florida. And that’s where they enlisted Dr. Winthrop Jon Van Leuvan Osterhout the botanist, to help them make rubber out of goldenrod. It was an informal arrangement. Family.
After years of research a particular hybrid, Solidago edisoniana, was chosen as their plant source for rubber production. It would only be used experimentally. The tires of the car they took on touring vacations were fitted with goldenrod rubber tires. Due to low tinsel strength in the rubber, there were plenty of flats and eventually they switched back to natural rubber tires for their summer vacations. They never invited Winthrop to come along.
Thomas Edison died in 1931. Henry Ford and the U.S. Department of Agriculture continued the goldenrod research deciding, as WWII approached, to abandon the plant based rubber in favor of synthetics. Goldenrod and Dr. Osterhout’s experiments and findings were shelved. The doctor got divorced, went blind and married his half-Japanese young research assistant Dr. Marian “Icky” Irwin (a genius in her own right), dying in 1964, outliving all the titans. Olga lived out her life in quiet with Harold Sears. Daughter Ann and her husband Theodore Edison had no children, but would take in Ann’s ailing mother, go on to be lauded as staunch environmentalists, anti-war activists and through their efforts, save portions of the Everglades, proving once again that family will always surprise. Rubber remains, for the most part, petroleum based and synthetically produced. The goldenrod is safe. Oh, we decided not to have another church in 2019. Always leave ‘em wanting a little more bounce.
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