Joseph Lee and his Bread Machines (episode 268)

Transcript

Music

Jake:
[0:04] Welcome to hub history where we go far beyond the freedom trail to share our favorite stories from the history of boston, the hub of the universe.
This is episode 268, Joseph Lee and his bread machines.
Hi, I’m jake if I sound a little bit different this week, it’s because I just had surgery to put my broken ankle back together.
So instead of recording in my home office in our spare bedroom, I’m instead recording while lying flat on my back on the living room couch with my foot propped up on four pillows.
So my apologies if this doesn’t sound exactly like it usually would, from this compromised position, I’m going to be talking about joseph lee hotelier, caterer and one of the richest men in his adopted hometown of Newton.

[0:56] By the time of his death in 1908 Lee had worked as a baker and for the National Coast Survey, he’d earned a vast fortune in hotels, lost most of it, and earned another one through his patented inventions that helped to change the way Americans eat.
He had entertained english nobles and american presidents and he had raised, three daughters and a son who was a star ivy league tackle before graduating from Harvard.
If you make bread at home or meatballs or fried chicken or casserole, you’re the beneficiary of technology that joseph lee developed.
That would be a remarkable life for anybody. But Joseph Lee was enslaved in South Carolina until he was about 15 years old, making his accomplishments even more remarkable.

[1:49] But before we talk about the inventor joseph lee, I just want to pause and thank, everyone who makes it possible for me to make hub history.
When I started this show along with co host emerita Nikki back in the fall of 2016, I wouldn’t have guessed that I’d still be at it over six years later.

[2:08] The reality is that most people who release a first podcast episode never release a second and the vast majority of shows never make it to episode 10.
If I had thought about those odds, I might have never started the show in the first place.
But now 268 episodes later, I’m lucky enough to still be in the position to keep going with thousands of listeners and dozens of sponsors who make it possible, all of you listeners inspire me to keep making the show, even when I have writer’s block when I’d rather be at the beach than locked in my basement waiting for that helicopter to pass by so I can keep recording, or when I have a broken ankle and I’m all hopped up on painkillers.
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To everyone who’s already supporting the show. Thank you.
And if you’re not yet supporting the show and you’d like to start, just go to Patreon dot com slash hub history or visit hub history dot com and click on the Support us link and thanks again to all our new and returning sponsors.
And now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

[3:32] Inspiration for this episode came from an unlikely place.
My work has an office in Atlanta that I have to visit a couple of times a year, and I usually just see the airport, the hotel lobby and our office.
This time I decided to stick around for the weekend and to try visiting a few historic sites.
By coincidence, it was the weekend of martin Luther King Day and I tried to make the most of it.
On my first morning I went and spent some time walking around and exploring the sweet auburn neighborhood that john Wesley Dobbs called the richest negro street in the world.
Then I was able to visit the tomb of Coretta Scott King and martin as well as martin Luther King’s birthplace and of course at the birthplace.
There was a family from Fitchburg on the tour with me. Hello Fitchburg.
Among other things, I learned that MLK and I had some of the same chores growing up. It was a very deeply humanizing experience for him.

[4:33] While I was in town, I visited the National Center for Civil and Human Rights and I went to the jimmy carter presidential Library.
When I was at the Atlanta History Center, I encountered belt buckles from boston’s, ancient and honorable artillery Company and the first Corps of Cadets, as well as a drum that accompanied the 55th massachusetts Volunteers, the second black Regiment and a battle in the civil War.
All in all. It was a very busy, very rewarding day and a half if you’re a history nerd like me.

[5:05] After leaving MLK’s birthplace. The first morning I went to the apex museum, which stands for the african american panoramic experience.
It seems like it was probably one of the first museums out there to center the black experience, but it never quite got off the ground.
Now, every museum in Atlanta focuses on that experience.
It’s a bit down at the heels is what I’m saying. However, it had a display about black women in stem and it had a hall of black inventors.
That’s where I first encountered joseph lee jake being jake.
I went down the lines of displays and look for Bostonians.
Pretty quickly I encountered Lewis Latimer, the electrical pioneer who innovated lightbulbs alongside thomas. Edison listen to episode 1 20 for more about him.

[5:57] A few panels down another display caught my eye.
This one said Joseph Lee, 1848 – 1905 Breadcrumb ng Machine. Newton, Mass.
Trouble with day old bread being wasted and thrown out, invented bread crumb in machine awarded patent on june 4th 18 95 used the breadcrumbs for various dishes including croquettes batter for cakes, fried chops and fish.
I snapped a picture of the display and then when I got back to my Airbnb, I started trying to find more information about this joseph lee and one of the, first things I learned was that the breadcrumb in machine was actually joseph lees.
Second patent and he came up with it because his first invention worked too well.

[6:48] Lee’s first patent was issued in august 18 90 for, for a labor saving device that’s familiar to many home bakers and the patent application Lee wrote.
My invention relates to a dough kneading machine, and it’s my purpose to provide a machine for use in hotels or houses, where a quantity of bread or pastry dough is made at one time.
By the use of my machine. The labor of preparing and needing such dough is greatly lessened.
The object of my invention being to provide a machine, which, while simple in construction and operation, will thoroughly mix and knead the dough and bring it to the desired condition, without resorting to the tedious process of mixing and kneading the same by hand, and by the use of my invention, a considerable saving of time and labor results.
And I have found that the dose objected to the needing action of the same is of a superior quality and fineness.

[7:44] The kneading machine consisted of a shallow trough into which the bread dough would be put after initial mixing over the trough was a kind of superstructure, with a shaft running from one side to the other.
The chef could have been turned by a hand crank or potentially by a steam engine or a water wheel, though that wasn’t specified in the patent application, there were flywheels on the shaft to keep things turning smoothly, then a pitman arm to transfer the rotation of the shaft into an up and down movement.
The Pittman arm drove a rack of five hammers or pencils in a row down into the dough trough, while a series of gears and pulleys also turned to long screws, one on each side of the trough.
The patent application describes the magic that happens when the shaft is turned.

[8:32] The necessary ingredients having been placed into the dough trough.
The rotary shaft is started and the rotary motion of said shaft is through the cranks and pittman, converted into a reciprocating motion which is imparted to the beam or head mounted in ways in the posts and having the depending arms and pencils.
It is evident then, that as the beam reciprocates, said pencils are driven with, great force into the ingredients of the trough, and they’re subjected to a powerful needing action.
The effect of the pencils is of course, to force the dough from the center of the trough to the sides as the dough is forced to either side of the trough.
It’s taken by the screw conveyors and carried forward a short distance and thrown back to the center of the trough again beneath the pencils, it will be readily seen that the action of these two opposite lee revolving conveyors is to keep the dough in the center of the trough, and at the same time carry it along longitudinal e of the trough, so that the dough is carried entirely around the trough and thoroughly mixed and is being continually thrown to the center to receive the kneading action of the pencils.

[9:41] These days, home bread makers are a bit smaller and they don’t tend to be powered by a steam engine or water wheel, but we still benefit from these improvements and mixing and kneading.
The value of this machine was quickly apparent in 19 0, to the Richmond planet, Black owned Virginia newspaper that sought to redefine the public image of african americans and white culture reported on joseph lees kneading machine and the, business venture that it spun off, For 1000 years.
There has been no advance in the homely art of making bread.
The primitive conditions of the Stone Age are still the methods employed by the housewife.
Through all these years. It has remained for an afro american to invent a machine which will lessen the labor, increase the economy of bread making and ensure absolute purity, Joseph Lee, who was for 11 years a steward in the United States Coast Survey, gave particular attention to bread making, he noticed that the best bread was produced when the dough was most evenly and completely needed.
In 1890, for while the proprietor of the Auburndale Hotel, Mr Lee, invented his machine for the purpose of producing a uniform bread, but with no idea of revolutionizing the bread making industry.

[11:01] While fashionable boston came out to Auburndale to eat and carry away this particularly good bread.
The inventor for five years, carefully guarded the secret that his bread was made by machine, and not by hand.
When the secret was discovered, the National bread Company was organized to exploit the invention of Mr lee.
After the machine was developed, the miracle was discovered of making something out of nothing Out of each barrel of flour.
This colored man’s invention produces £60 more of finished bread than the hand process.
This is explained when it’s understood that in the handmade bread, all of the flour is not turned into bread substance, but much of it is left in its natural state throughout the body of the bread.
Whereas in the case of bread made by this machine, the thorough kneading and manipulation, so develops its latent qualities that more water is absorbed in the dough, and every particle of flour has turned into bread substance.
Thus the additional 60 lb of bread is easily accounted for.
If this machine was put into universal operation in the United States, it would result in the savings of $90 million dollars per year.

[12:14] And keep in mind that those are $1902. The more thorough mixing and kneading provided by lee’s bread machine allowed bakers to make more bread out of the same amount of flour.
But along with the obvious financial benefit of creating more from less.
The bread machine also provided additional culinary and sanitary advantages over traditional hand baking methods.
A profile of Lee, in the May 1902 edition of coloured American magazine expounds on these additional advantages of the Lee Bread Machine, The lead bread making machine is the only bread making machine in existence.
It is not merely a bread mixing machine, such as those now used by some bakers, but a machine that in addition to mixing the bread needs it a great deal better, cheaper and more hygienically. That can possibly be done by hand.
Only two or three men are necessary to operate the machine and produce hundreds of loaves of bread in a day, thus performing the same amount of work in the given time of dozens of men who are required by the old process of bread making.
It is more than a labor saving machine needing done by. It, develops the gluten of the flour to an unprecedented degree, and the bread is made wider finer and texture, and improved indigestible qualities.

[13:36] One of the most striking features of the new process as introduced by the lee machine, is that the thorough kneading develops the latent qualities of the flower and brings it to such a condition that it not only absorbs and retains more moisture, but thereby makes a more sound palatable, and better keeping bread, without making heavy bread.
This also increases the total weight of dough obtainable from a barrel of flour.

[14:02] The unsanitary conditions of nearly all such hand bakeries are not only disgusting, but dangerous to health.
The kneading baking and handling of the dough and bread are done in dirty cellars, where fresh air never circulates, and where rats, mice, roaches and other vermin abound.
The kneading of the dough is performed by hand. Under these unfavorable conditions, by men whose surroundings cannot induce fastidious or even cleanly ideas, a bread eater should not pause to think of these things, nor in summer to think that the temperature of the cellar bakery may have been over 100 degrees, and the man kneading the dough may have been perspiring profusely at the time.

[14:49] First of all. Gross! I really don’t want to think about the possibility of a sweaty man handling my dough in a hot basement.
So let’s hope all the bread I buy is made by machine.
Second of all, kitchens, using lee’s invention, soon had an advantage and produced ever greater quantities of better bread.
As their bread became fluffy er and finer textured customers became more demanding of fresh bread so they could enjoy those advantages, that left kitchen is using the li machine, including the one that joseph lee worked in with an increasing amount of stale bread to figure out what to do with.
Luckily Lee soon turned his inventive mind toward this new problem, leading him to file an application for a second pattern, which was issued less than a year after his first in June of 1895.
In lee’s own words, this is how the new machine would help him deal with a glut of uneaten bread.
By the use of my invention, the scraps and crusts of bread which come from the table can readily be crushed and crumbled, thereby affecting a great saving, and establishments with the bread waste from the table is considerable.
My invention is of such a character also, that fresh bread can be readily crumbs and reduced to the proper fineness.
A matter of some difficulty where the bread is new and inclined to roll rather than to crumb when crushed.

[16:15] The bread crumb er was a long metal trough with a perforated bottom and a long hand crank on one end, five shafts ran the length of the trough geared together so that they turned in opposing directions.
When the crank was turned radial spines or rods on each shaft turned toward one another.
Pulling the bread down into the works and tearing it up into tiny pieces, the size of the gaps between the spines and the size of the perforations in the bottom of the trough, work together to regulate the size of the breadcrumbs the device produced, or as joseph lees patent application put it, the material to be crumbs is drawn down into the trough by the crumbling fingers of two outer shafts in the upper row, and is then seized by the crumb ng fingers of the two lower shafts and forced to the bottom of the trough, and if the crumbs are fine enough they pass through the perforations in the bottom of the trough and fall into a suitable receptacle.
If the pieces of bread are too coarse to pass through the perforated bottom, they’re carried around by the two lower shafts and thrown up to the central shaft and one of the outer shafts to be carried to the top of the trough again, and then to the coming action of the fingers a second time and so on until the requisite fineness is attained.
The fingers could be adjusted to produce anything from croutons sized chunks, to the fine breadcrumbs that soon took the place of cracker crumbs and most popular recipes.

[17:44] That 1902 profile of Lee in the coloured American magazine points out how chefs took advantage of the new machine, which quote, by a tearing and grinding process, reduces the loaf to crumbs of, any desired size for use in making croquettes, a scalloped oysters dressing for poultry batter cakes, crumpets and puddings or in which to fry chops, cutlets, fish clams or oysters.
The breadcrumb in machine he sold to a manufacturing firm at and from new Hampshire, of which former Governor Goodell of New Hampshire as President.
One large company, the royal worcester breadcrumb company of boston has in a short time built up a lucrative business by manufacturing breadcrumbs with this machine and selling the crumbs and packages similar.
Two packages of oatmeal, cracked wheat and other cereals.
Lee’s breadcrumb er is regarded as an essential part of the equipment of every first class hotel and restaurant.

[18:46] The kitchen of 1 1st class hotel where the crumb in machine was taken full advantage of, was run by Joseph Lee himself.
The 1889 Kings Handbook of Newton by MF Sweet Stir describes the cream intense of dishes that Lee served in one local hotel restaurant.
It is averred that mr lee serves the only genuine philadelphia chicken croquettes and dressed Terrapin in all new England, joseph lees position in that Newton hotel helps to explain why he was able to take advantage of his inventions and patents.
While so many black inventors from the same era were not A 2021 article by Brian Garrett in Forbes Magazine Notes, Countless black Thomas Edison’s produced transformative inventions in the late 19th and early 20th century that were either lost to history or outright stolen, simply because of their race.
Joseph Lee however, defied the odds in 18 90 for he successfully filed the first patent for his bread niedere, making him one of 92 black patent ease, according to data cultivated by Henry baker, a black patent examiner at the time, beyond owning the patents for his machines, lee had another major advantage over his fellow inventors.
Lee was already rich.

[20:13] Joseph lee wasn’t always rich, and he certainly wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth, According to his obituary in the Newton graphic.
He was born in Charleston South Carolina in 1848.
It notes that he was, quote the son of slaves and was present at the bombardment of fort sumter.
That facts mentioned in several obituaries from local papers, but it’s not clear to me if it’s factual or just supposition based on his age and the fact that he was born in coastal south Carolina.

[20:46] Another thing that I’m not sure is 100% based, in fact, is Lee’s early experience with cooking and baking.
Though the profile of him in coloured American magazine states confidently that his association with bread began while he was still enslaved.
Mr lee has invented to bread machines, that both of his inventions should be concerned directly with bread.
In the bread industry will not appear singular at all when we know his career, the inventions, the logical outgrowth of a creative mind reacting upon its immediate environment.
The first employment of any consequence that Mr lee had, when a boy was in a bakehouse, there, he picked up much of the general business and some knowledge of the art of making bread, from that time until the present day, he has been almost continuously engaged in vocations having to do with the preparation and serving of food during all his long and diversified career.
Mr lee has been handling and making and experimenting with the staff of life, bread and what a store of theoretical and practical knowledge of the subject he is thus accumulated.
He has a bread specialist.
He knows bread is a greek scholar knows homer, he is a bread scholar, but he also knows how to make the best bread as well as to write or talk about bread.

[22:11] At some point, young joseph lee moved out of charleston though it’s not exactly clear when Anthony W. Neil Picks up his trail and a profile written for the base state banner in 2014.
A Freedman’s bank record dated January 30, 1872, makes reference to a light complexion. 24 year old Joseph Lee who was born and raised in Charleston and who listed Susan Lee as his mother.
The record reveals that he was employed as a servant in Beaufort.
Then the timing of this move makes a big difference in the teenage lee’s experience of emancipation.
If he was already in buford south Carolina by then, young joseph lee would have been freed in early 18 63.
Following the first reading of the emancipation proclamation on january 1st, by thomas Wentworth Higginson under a tree that was ever after called the Emancipation Oak, just south of town.
A few is still near charleston. Freedom wouldn’t have come for another two years, until february 18 65 when Union troops finally occupied the city or shortly before that as the siege lines closed around it.

[23:27] Although the documentation sparse, our assumption that lee was a baker while he was enslaved, is supported by his first career after becoming a free man.
Despite the reference to his presence in buford in 18 72 it’s believed that joseph lee worked as a steward for the U. S. Coast Survey for most of the decade between 18 65 and 18 75.
A forerunner of today’s US Coast and Geodetic Survey.
The Coast Survey was America’s first scientific agency responsible for producing detailed navigational charts of the nation’s harbors and maps of its shorelines.
As a steward. These primary responsibility was as a cook and waiter for the white officers of the service, allowing him to further refine his skill in the kitchen.

[24:17] After a decade as a steward with the U. S. Coast Survey. His obituary in the boston globe notes He was married to Miss Christine Howard, a school teacher in Philadelphia in 1875.
The 2014 profile of Lee in the Bay State Banner adds a bit of background for Christine, who is identified in other sources as Cristiana saying, She was born free in 1850 in Sandy Springs, Maryland to Rebecca and Greenbury Howard.
Her mother was a dressmaker and her father was a laborer.
The lease made their way to Massachusetts by June of 1878.
As their second child, Joseph Howard was born there at that time.

[25:02] The lee family was growing fast, which may have been the impetus behind their move to the boston area.

[25:10] That second child got special notice and Joseph Lees 1908 obituary in the Newton graphic, He married Miss Christine Howard, a Baltimore schoolteacher who survives him as do three daughters and a son.
Howard, a graduate of Harvard in 1900 and a famous tackle on the football team.
Howard was young, joseph Howard lee who played right tackle for Harvard’s ivy League football team.
He was a standout athlete from a young age with the globe, noting during his junior year of high school in 1890 for, Lee tackle and substitute half on last year’s 11, will play behind the line this year and will make a capital player.
He has a clear head runs low and with good speed.

[25:59] Even in his college freshman year, he was an outstanding player, helping to anchor the Harvard team and their grudge match against Princeton that year.
Even though the Crimson got blown out 12 to nothing, he was credited with almost single handedly stopping a Princeton drive with the globe reporting cheer.
After cheer was given by the Harvard men in all parts of the field and the Harvard forwards braced themselves for the attack.
Writers smashed at lee twice in succession, but the Crimson line back supported the tackle in grand style and when bannered failed to push between do set and shaw, Harvard was given the ball on downs.

[26:41] Howard Lee was also a respectable tennis player, which the May one, Boston Globe Sports page pointed out might have something to do with having access to a tennis court at home out at Newton.
The winner of last year’s Trophy looked to Howard Lee for several points.
If not the championship, lee has the advantage of excellent courts at Auburndale, and is probably in better practice than the majority of the men whom he will meet.

[27:13] Those three daughters who went unnamed inlays Newton graphic obituary are given a fuller introduction in his 1908 New York Age obituary.
MS Genevieve lee, vocalist and music teacher, MS Tessa lee Sergeant School of Physical Culture in 1905 and at present teacher in the high in manual training schools of Washington, D.
C, and MS marco lee a graduate this year of Roxbury High School With one child already and another on the way the lease made their way to the Boston area in the late 1870s.
In 1877, Joseph was the manager of the Hillside House Hotel in Weston.
Then by 1880, he was in charge of the Bellevue Hotel in Wellesley.
Also, in 1880, the family moved to Needham. Then in 1882 Joseph Lee was able to lease the Woodland Park Hotel and the Auburndale village of Newton.
A year later he purchased the hotel outright, so it must have been getting paid well and saving shrewdly.

[28:22] The 1889 Kings Handbook of Newton by MF Sweet Stir gives us our first introduction to the hotel.

[28:30] Less than a mile from Auburndale station by the lovely Woodland Avenue, and about a half mile from Woodland Station on the circuit railway is the chief public house of Newton.
The Woodland Park Hotel, well secluded from the adjacent rural roads and standing on an elevated plain with the charming view of the far away blue hills of Milton.
It is a handsome queen and building of considerable size, with an abundance of picturesque dormers, Gables and verandas.
The entrance hall is 30 ft square, with heavy ceiling beams overhead and floors.
Wayne skits in a grand stairway of quartered oak, and from vince, the visitor may pass into the Aryan comfortable dining room, or the richly furnished parlor, with its interesting paintings, or enter upon the road to the billiard room, or send the stairway to the three stories of chambers overhead.

[29:28] If you think that description of the location near Woodland Station on the Green line and adjacent to Woodland Road. Sounds similar to the area around Newton Wellesley Hospital today.
Well you’re not wrong.
The present day Woodland Golf Club was developed around the old Woodland Park Hotel, though the current clubhouse is nothing like the Queen and masterpiece described in that passage, boston marathon veterans will notice the golf course on the left after passing the hospital, but before turning right onto commode and going up Firehouse Hill.

[30:03] King’s handbook continues.
The climate of this locality, like that of the Wellesley Hills a few miles westward, is very beneficial and certain diseases of the throat and lungs to common in boston.
And several of the best physicians of the New England metropolis have been in the habit of advising their patients to go to florida or Auburndale during the inclement seasons of the year.
At certain seasons of the year, the assassin like spring and the perilous Late autumn, the hotel fills up with families from the back, Bay, the Faubourg Saint Germain of boston, whose delicate residents find security here from throat and lung troubles, and an environment of good manners and correct genealogies, while still within a half hour’s ride of their tall red brick or brownstone mansions.

[30:55] The Woodland Park Hotel became known for fine dining and lavish accommodations.
Whether you were there for a weekend or for a season the sorts of Back Bay families who believed they needed to announce in the globe where they’d be spending their winters, spent them at Woodland Park, the dining room at the hotel hosted groups of all types, from boston physicians in need of refreshment, on a slaying trip in Brighton, to the bicyclists of the boston Wheel Mons Union, on a group ride to the official 2/100 anniversary celebration for the town of Newton.

[31:31] As part of its reputation as a healthful retreat. The hotel was also a venue for athletics.
There were Billiard tables, tennis courts and ball fields on the grounds, and from about 1890 onward, it played host to a bowling tournament in a new annex building.
Within just a few years, Joseph Lees reputation as a hotelier was known throughout New England, and he was opening the equivalent of franchise operations in other areas such as this seaside resort in northern Maine that was advertised in the globe starting in the spring of 1884.

[32:08] Felt Point House in Cape Jellison.
Stockton Main, having been thoroughly renovated and improved, will be open for the season of 18 85 on june 22nd under the management of mr joseph lee, who will run it in connection with his Woodland Park hotel.
Also during 1884, there was an incident at the Woodland Park Hotel that has little to do with our narrative about Joseph Lee, but it’s so closely tied to a fan favorite episode that I feel like I have to mention it.
Long time listeners will recall our show about the cattle drives and cowboys that brought beef to the boston market via Brighton’s vast stockyards, which aired as episode 99 in september 2018, one of the dangers of driving cattle over land to market.
That we noted in that episode was that steers would sometimes escape in a rampage through the streets of the boston suburbs.
Well, the boston Globe’s july 29th, 18 84 edition took note of such a rampage, one that ended nearly on joseph lees front steps.

[33:14] The escape of from 15 to 20 steers out of a drove which was being driven through Wellesley last Thursday has been reported in the globe.
Nine of these steers have been shot.
One was killed in Auburndale yesterday, near the Woodland Park hotel by Officer Harrison.
The officer was riding in a wagon and being chased by the steer, drew his revolver and fired.

[33:39] A party of men from Brighton had been riding in quest of the steers yesterday, a lad of 16 years named William Fitzgerald, whose home is an upper falls, attempted to get into the back of the wagon with the hunters.
When one of the rifles was accidentally discharged, the bullet passed into the boy’s wrist, then followed up the arm lodging above the elbow.
He was taken to his home and dr Hildreth extracted the bullet.
The lad was doing well at last accounts, though, the wound is a severe one and may result in the loss of his arm.

[34:15] The presence of the steers in such a usually quiet neighborhood has created a stir among the residents.
The animals are from colorado and are thoroughly wild.
No mischief has been done by them yet, as far as known, can you imagine the public reaction these days if a teenager got shot, needed to have a limb amputated because of an accident like that.
Somebody would definitely be losing their gun license and probably their freedom.
The lee family’s reputation only grew through the first decade and a half or so of their work in hotels.
Joseph Lee was one of the wealthy and influential people who were invited to attend the governor’s inauguration in 1891, and he would play host to the first, family of the United States that year, not knowing that his fortunes would soon be reversed.

[35:10] On September 16, 1891 the globe trumpeted the arrival of the first lady of the United States and Newton, though, due to a miscommunication, her reception was more subdued than had been planned.
Mr Joseph lee, the proprietor of the Woodland Park Hotel, had arranged to have his distinguished guests conveyed from the station to the hotel in a style befitting their social importance, but they neglected the Telegraph and that they were en route and missed the chance of arriving in the state that had been prepared for them.
There are but few people at the station when mrs Harrison and her party arrived, a half dozen schoolchildren and chance passengers awaiting their train, and but few recognized the quietly garbed arrivals who sat upon one of the Democratic benches.
While mrs Mckee secured a conveyance to the hotel, Caroline.
Harrison was accompanying her daughter and son in law, as well as her two grandsons, one an infant, and the other five years old Caroline would stay for a week while the Maquis family planned to stay all winter, at the Woodland Park Hotel, they found the accommodations worthy of the presidential party as described in the Globe.

[36:27] After registering as mrs Harrison of Washington, Mr and mrs J.
R. Mckee, two Children and two nurses.
They were shown to the suite of apartments that have been set apart in readiness for a week passed.
These are in the new Queen and wing of the house on the west side facing Washington street, and consists of a private dining room and parlor on the first floor, and sleeping apartments. On the second floor, reached by a private staircase.

[36:55] There are charming landscape views from the windows and arriving, as they did on one of the most delicious of autumnal days.
The ladies can but have been pleasantly impressed with their surroundings.
The chambers, furnished handsomely in cherry, with dainty muslin hangings, were under the special supervision of mrs L. A. F walther.
The housekeeper, who was a sister of Captain Harry Dawson of boston flowers and ferns added their fragrance and beauty to the rooms above and below breakfast was served at nine in the cheerful dining room.
The table being handsomely laid with delicate china and cut glass and silver, and brightened with a large bowl of asters, while the fireplace was filled with ferns, Caroline.
Harrison stuck around longer than expected, waiting for President Benjamin Harrison to join them as originally planned When it became clear that he couldn’t get away from Washington.
The first lady hosted the ball at Woodland Park on September 30, before returning to the White House to join him the next day’s boston globe reported at the subscription party given at the Woodland Park Hotel this evening.
The wealth wit, fashion and beauty of the garden City were represented.
Mrs Benjamin, Harrison and mr and mrs J. R. McKay were the honored guests of the occasion.

[38:19] Arriving guests found the big hostelry ablaze with light from without an indoors, a bower of beauty, with blossoms and greenery and flashing lights used lavishly, and yet in perfect taste.

[38:33] The decorations were all designed and super intended by MS Grace Whiting, MS Brown and MS pratt, in the music room asparagus hung from the chandeliers and made a background against the carved doorway into the office for the half 100 colored electric lights that simulated among their feathery curtains with bewitching effects.
One of the mantels was backed with late golden rod, while the other was heaped high with yellow and brown oxide daisies in the supper room.
The decorations were confined to the mantel at the end of the apartment, which was a massive asparagus and american beauty roses.
The ballroom, for which the big dining room was utilized, was festooned with tri colored bunting fastened with clusters of small flags, potted palms and chrysanthemums screened the boston cadet band.

[39:27] By the time of that sumptuous ball at Woodland Park. The leaves were being regularly included on lists of the richest families in Newton.
It was an incredible rags to riches story for a black man who had been enslaved until his teenage years.
But unfortunately the good times couldn’t continue indefinitely.
About six months after he hosted the first family joseph lee was forced to declare bankruptcy, as reported in The Globe on april 23rd 18 92, Joseph Lee, proprietor of the Woodland Park Hotel at Auburndale, and the Abbotsford on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, who recently failed, has gone into insolvency.
The creditors will have a meeting on April 28.

[40:16] The women’s era was a newspaper founded by josephine ST Pierre Ruffin to report on issues primarily of interest to black women.
It reported on lee’s bankruptcy with dismay not only for his family’s fortunes, but also for what he meant as a symbol of black success.
Noting the failure of Mr Joseph Lee, the proprietor of the Woodland Park Hotel at Auburndale, Mass, has carried consternation all over the country.
This failure is one to be particularly deplored and is in the nature of a public calamity.
For 21 years, Mr Lee and his wife have put money brains and industry into their work, and this hotel has become one of the famous ones of the neighborhood, in every respect it was first class and entertained many distinguished people in its way.
It was unique, for it is seldom that a suburban hotel, with all the accompaniments of parks, tennis ground stables, et cetera, can find a large winter patronage, but so attractive was the table and inter appointments that rooms were in demand here throughout the entire year.
The Woodland Park Hotel was a source of pride to the whole race, and the large number who have been entertained there cannot but feel a personal loss in this failure.

[41:35] However, Mr Lee has a couple of lucrative patents upon the market, and these, together with his name and fame as a caterer, must offer opportunities for the future, in the restaurants conducted by Mr lee in several large fairs recently it was a decided novelty to see the help, mixed colored and white waitresses, clerks, cooks, etcetera.
The work that was being done by him was so valuable that we feel to repeat that his failure as a great public calamity, reflecting on the bankruptcy, from a comfortable vantage a decade into the future.
The 19 oh two profile of lian colored american magazine credits the hotelier with pulling himself up by the bootstraps for a second time.
The traits of his character, which stand out most prominently are late and early.
Stick to itiveness, courteous nous, and cheerfulness, combined with the never failing sense of humor.

[42:35] His courteous nous is the natural product. It arises from a genuine consideration for others.
It is prompted solely by a sense of brotherhood.
His cheerfulness has endured in the midst of financial difficulties, and reverses bordering on serious disaster.
His failure at the Auburndale Hotel would have thrown into lasting dejection, a man of less composure and cheerful determination, but mr lee at once moved with his family into boston, and opened up a new business, which he rapidly developed into the lee catering company on Boylston Street, in the exclusive Back Bay district, where today enjoys a large and wealthy patronage.

[43:17] Lee’s rise back to success was more complex than Horatio Alger or the colored american magazine would have you believe.
Before bankruptcy, he’d already been branching out into smaller ventures and hospitality, such as a new residential hotel at 1 86 and 1 88 commode, in the back bay of which the herald reported in september 18 90.
Mr, joseph Lee, proprietor of the Woodland Park Hotel, will have charge of the new apartment house.
The Abbotsford, an ad in the boston Daily Transcript, noted that suites of 346 or seven rooms plus bathrooms, would be available starting on january 1st, and advertised that the hotel would boast a quote restaurant by joseph Lee of Woodland Park Hotel.

[44:06] An article about Lee, by the Quincy Historical Society explains that this diversification of his portfolio, though valuable for his breadth of experience, coincided with a nationwide financial collapse.

[44:19] Unfortunately, the timing of lee’s business expansion could not have been worse.
A deep recession in 1891 adversely affected least businesses.
In May 1892, newspapers around the country reported that Lee had assets of $75,000 and debts of $103,194.
The Detroit Plain Dealer reported on May 13, 1892, Mr, lee has gone into insolvency.
He was an enterprising colored man and strictly attended to business.
Therefore, as many friends regret this turn in fortune, The panic of 1893 and subsequent depression sealed these fade.
They had to give up the Woodland Park Hotel and Hotel. Abbotsford businesses.

[45:11] Though he wouldn’t be running his own hotel’s lease catering businesses and the revenue from licensing his bread machine patents allowed him to slowly rebuild his fortune.
By 1895, he was again listed as the Proprietor and Caterer at the Woodland Park Hotel, though not the owner soon enough, he was entering into the uncharted territory of amusement parks.

[45:37] In June of 1897, a new attraction opened on the banks of the Charles River in Auburndale, named after an imaginary viking settlement that an eccentric local businessman believed had been built in Western and Newton Noram bega Park advertised itself as boston’s famous pleasure resort.

[45:58] The Kamov Street railway company had opened the park to try to tempt more riders into taking their trolleys all the way to the end of the line and admission to the park was included in trolley fare.

[46:10] In the early years, Nora bega could boost new England’s largest zoo in vaudeville theater and it had a carousel penny arcade and the requisite boathouse where visitors could rent a canoe for the day.
Over the years, it added more attractions like a ferris wheel bumper cars and a large ballroom where big bands would perform for a nationally syndicated radio audience before the park’s decline when automobiles took over after World War Two.

[46:40] And the Bay State Banner Anthony neal noted a sites here on july 16th 18 97 recorded that trolley cars run into the very park itself on a loop track, and just at the swell of the loop is the elevated restaurant of the renowned joseph lee who served delicatessen under the roof or under the stars as his customers wish.
He may have gone bankrupt. But that didn’t hurt joseph lee’s reputation as a chef and host as a june 27th 18 97 article about the brand new amusement park makes clear.

[47:14] Nor am bega Park, the natural beauty and many attractive features of which have, already been set forth in this paper is daily attracting great crowds of people who appreciate the exceptionally beautiful open car ride out there, and the many things there are there to entertain and contribute to one’s cool comfort. These warm days of summer.

[47:35] The elevated restaurant will be open July four. The fact that is to be personally conducted by the celebrated joseph Lee, formerly of the Woodland Park Hotel, promises much for the attractiveness of this particular feature of norm bega Park.
The tables will accommodate 250 people, and the windows are so arranged that it may be thrown open on all sides, giving a grand view of the entire park and of the river for a considerable distance.

[48:06] Lee left Nora bega Park after a single season that fall. The Globe carried ads for joseph lees, very fine dinners, a trinity cord, a cafe on Dartmouth Street in the Back Bay served from 6 to 8 p.m.
For 75 cents, while the tabla de haute menu was fixed each night, the ad reassured readers that choice wines were always on hand.

[48:34] Lee’s name featured prominently enough in the ads to make it clear that he was the main attraction.
That december a brief notice in the globe. Read Mr joseph lee has left the trinity court and is now giving his personal supervision to catering and cuisine.
At 3 95 Boylston Street.

[48:54] After a rebuilding season that actually dragged on for about six years, joseph lee was ready to swing for the fences again.
In 1898 he thought it was time to get back into the hotel business.
And on May 14, the brief news item on page seven of the globe announced Lee’s next venture in hospitality.
Mr joseph Lee, formerly of the Woodland Park Hotel Auburndale has secured the new in now being erected at Squad um park at the terminus of the Quincy and boston Electric Railroad.
ATS Quantum point The Inn will be open June 17, a specialty will be made of fish and game dinners.
It is a half hour’s ride from town and less than 40 minutes to drive over the pleasant Dorchester roads to the end.

[49:46] The news Quantum in offered not only joseph lees, fine dining and find hotel rooms, but also an opportunity to own a summer cottage on the shore of boston harbor.
I’ll include a 1901 map of Quincy in the show notes that gives the exact location of this Quantum man, but it would have been on your right immediately before getting to the guardhouse that prevents the general public from reaching the B.
F. D. And B. P. D. Training facilities on Moon Island.
On page 11 of that same edition of the globe and add allowed Lee to tout the benefits of his new resort with his cooking as one of the key selling points.
This beautiful high land overlooking the shore of Dorchester Bay.
The finest building land for the seashore are all year round houses is offered for sale.
City of boston, water, electric lights and telephone service already on the property.
The roads are being laid out and built several houses to be built at once, Squash them in is to be opened June 17 under the management of Mr Joseph Lee, formerly of the Woodland Park in Auburndale Fish and Game dinners to be a specialty.
Come and see the land.

[51:01] Apparently those ads had some success because two weeks later another advertisement announced that there was nothing left but the choicest building lots.

[51:12] An article about Leaf in the Quincy Historical Society describes how this Quantum in allowed the hotel E 80 clause way back from bankruptcy into wealth.
Lee made his money on never ending corporate and political banquets, customers found his hospitality irresistible diners could view the fish and game on hand, make their selection and have a cook to order.
When the Boston Jewelers Club held an outing on October 1, 1898.
Their next newsletter contained a short review at the squad of men where refreshment for weary travelers is furnished in the highest style of the art.
An excellent dinner was spread.

[51:55] The Boston Herald of September 11, 1899, also wrote glowingly.
The manager, joseph lee is known by almost every epicure.
His bountiful table, bright with linen and silver and overloaded with good things, has made an enviable reputation among all hotel men.

[52:17] By the time he died of tuberculosis on June 11, 1908, at about 60 years old, Joseph Lee was once again the owner of a substantial fortune.
His death was noted in newspapers in boston newton and even new york as well as in black owned papers around the country.

[52:39] Unfortunately, joseph lees, hotel business died along with him.
But Anthony Neil’s profile and the base state banner ads, a coda explaining how lee’s widow took up his mantle.

[52:51] Within a year of his passing, his wife bought the proudest e near park ave and, Quantum there she opened a restaurant similar to this Quantum in and in memory of her husband named it listen, open during the summer season as well.
The in provided an ala carte bill affair, served dinners and broiled by lobster.

[53:16] Until she died of heart disease on February 9, 1916 at the age of 65, Cristiana Lee managed lease in with the help of her daughter, Genevieve.

[53:28] Eulogizing the businesswoman, the boston globe wrote Mrs lee was a woman of executive ability and enjoyed a great degree of popularity.
Indeed, the leaves were well known to thousands who are their guests at both the squad um, and Liens and the Woodland Park Hotel joseph lee and his wife are buried at Newton Cemetery.

[53:52] An altogether remarkable life from a beginning shrouded in the documentary shadows of slavery to the pinnacle of brahmin boston social life.
Thanks to the Hall of black inventors at the apex Museum for introducing them to me to learn more about the life.
Hotels and inventions of joseph lee.
Check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 268, I’ll have links to all the sources I quoted from this week, including the colored american magazine, the Richmond Planet, the women’s era kings handbook of Newton, and a ton of articles from the globe.
I’ll link to lee’s obituaries in the Newton graphic, the boston globe and the new york age as well as modern profiles of joseph lee and Forbes and the bay state banner.
Plus I’ll link to online copies of lee’s patent filings so you can see diagrams of the kneading and cramming machines that he invented.
I’ll also include pictures of his hotels as well as 1886 and 1894 maps showing exactly where the Woodland Park Hotel was and another one from 1901 showing this quantum in.

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