Cheesy Grits: Granddad Ralston: The Changes in a Man's Life

Granddad Ralston was starting to come into his own as a basketball coach at Lincoln House. His teams were the Tigers, the Pioneers, the Bullets, the Cubs, and the Tanks. Teams at this level were ordinarily divided up by both age and weight, but I've not yet seen the specifics for Lincoln House basketball teams.

And his teams won:

"Last evening at St. Cyprian's Gymnasium, the Lincoln House Tanks defeated the St. Cyprian Tanks in a very interesting game by a score of 17 to 4. The visitors led from the start and were never in danger...."

While Granddad was busy with basketball, Lincoln House of course was offering more than sports programs: they also had a strong program in the fine arts. Their music program seems to have been especially strong and was offered in conjunction with the Music School Settlement for Colored People that was headed up by David Mannes, founder of the Mannes School of Music.

There were concerts offered at the Lincoln House and several of them featured a rising young soprano named Audrey McCabe. It's not clear from the documentation so far whether she was also a student at the Music School Settlement, but there was little doubt about the confidence Lincoln House showed in her musical gifts. Here is one of several printed programs from the Lillian Wald files at Columbia University's Butler Library:

Audrey McCabe was the daughter of Frank and Mathilde Dagmar (Christensen) McCabe, who were both immigrants from the Danish West Indies (now the U.S. Virgin Islands). Both had spent a considerable number of years in the West End of St. Croix in the town of Frederiksted. It's not clear when Frank came to the U.S., but Mathilde Dagmar Christensen's arrival at Ellis Island aboard the Madiana was recorded on 26 Aug 1893.

We also don't know how they met in New York City, as Frank apparently arrived after Dagmar (as she was called) had been there for a while. What was known was that a sizable percentage of the black population in San Juan Hill, where they lived, came from the Caribbean, and West Indians would go on to make a large contribution to the cultural and political movement of the Harlem Renaissance.

Frank and Dagmar were married in New York City on 19 Dec 1897. Their first child, Audrey, made her appearance on 7 Dec 1898, likely at the McCabe residence at 404 W. 57th St. About two years later, Audrey's younger sister, Dagmar was born.

Both girls' names appear here and there amongst the reports of fine arts activities at Lincoln House, but it was apparently Audrey who received the greater portion of the attention. At the time of the recital shown above, she will have been about six months shy of her eighteenth birthday.

There is no record that Audrey ever played basketball or that Granddad Ralston attended her concerts, but nevertheless, George Ralston and Audrey McCabe were married at City Hall on 6 February 1918.

The pace of life had picked up for Granddad Ralston and it wasn't about to slow down.



Note:

I should do an excursus on the Music School Settlement for Colored People that was launched by David Mannes even before he had established the music school that still bears his name.  The reason he undertook this venture was to make a payment on an old and remarkable debt.