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William Still

William Still (October 7, 1819 – July 14, 1902) was an African-American abolitionist based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was a conductor of the Underground Railroad and was responsible for aiding and assisting at least 649 slaves to freedom towards North. Still was also a businessman, writer, historian and civil rights activist. Before the American Civil War, Still was chairman of the Vigilance Committee of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, named the Vigilant Association of Philadelphia. He directly aided fugitive slaves and also kept records of the people served in order to help families reunite.

After the war, Still continued as a prominent businessman, a coal merchant, and philanthropist. He used his meticulous records to write an account of the underground system and the experiences of many escaped slaves, entitled The Underground Railroad Records (1872).

Household
William Still was born in Shamong Township, Burlington County, New Jersey, to Sidney both former slaves. He was the youngest of eighteen children. His parents had migrated separately to New Jersey. First, his father had bought his freedom in 1798 from his master in Caroline County, Maryland, on the Eastern Shore and moved north to New Jersey. Levin stayed around in Maryland until 1805 in order to keep watch on his wife and children. After arriving in Evesham Township, they became friends with families named “Still” and assumed the last name in order to hide Charity’s fugitive status.

His mother, Charity, escaped twice from Maryland. The first time, she and four children were all recaptured and returned to slavery. A few months later, Charity escaped again, taking only her two younger daughters with her, and reached her husband in New Jersey. Following her escape, Charity and Levin had 14 more children, of whom William was the youngest. Though these children were born in the free state of New Jersey, under Maryland and federal slave law, they were still legally slaves, as their mother was an escaped slave. According to New Jersey law, however, they were free. They settled in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey a small township named Shamong Township.

Neither Charity nor Levin could free their two older boys, who remained enslaved in Maryland. Levin, Jr., and Peter Still were sold from Maryland to slave owners in Lexington, Kentucky. Later they were resold to planters in Alabama in the Deep South. Levin, Jr., died from a whipping while enslaved. Peter, his wife "Vina", and most of his family escaped from slavery when he was about age 50, with the help of two brothers named Friedman, who operated mercantile establishments in Florence, Alabama, and Cincinnati, Ohio. They were the subject of a book published in 1856.

Later Peter Still sought help at the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, seeking to find his parents or other members of his birth family. He met William Still there, but initially had no idea they were related. As William listened to Peter's story, he recognized the history his mother had told him many times. After learning that his older brother Levin was whipped to death for visiting his wife without permission, William shouted, "What if I told you I was your brother!" Later Peter and his mother were reunited after having been separated for 42 years.

Another of William's brothers was James Still. Born in New Jersey in 1812, James wanted to become a doctor but said he "was not the right color to enter where such knowledge was dispensed." James studied herbs and plants and apprenticed himself to a white doctor to learn medicine. He became known as the "Black Doctor of the Pines", as he lived and practiced in the Medford Township, New Jersey. James's son, James Thomas Still, was the third African -American to graduate from Harvard Medical School in 1871.

William's other siblings included Levin, Jr.; Peter; James; Samuel; Mary, a teacher and missionary in the African Methodist Episcopal Church; Mahala (who married Gabriel Thompson); and Kitturah, who moved to Pennsylvania.

Marriage and children
In 1844, William Still moved from New Jersey to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1847, the year he was hired as a clerk for the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, Still married Letitia George. They had four children who survived infancy. Their oldest was Caroline Virginia Matilda Still (1848–1919), a pioneer female medical doctor. Caroline attended Oberlin College and the Women's Medical College of Philadelphia (much later known as the Medical College of Pennsylvania). She married Edward J. Wiley. After he died, she married again, to the Reverend Matthew Anderson, longtime pastor of the Berean Presbyterian Church in North Philadelphia. She had an extensive private medical practice in Philadelphia and was also a community activist, teacher and leader.

William Wilberforce Still (1854–1932) graduated from Lincoln University and subsequently practiced law in Philadelphia. Robert George Still (1861–1896) became a journalist and owned a print shop on Pine at 11th Street in central Philadelphia. Frances Ellen Still (1857–1943) became a kindergarten teacher (she was named after poet Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, who had lived with the Stills before her marriage). According to the 1900 U.S. Census, William W., his wife, and Frances Ellen all lived in the same household as the elderly William Still and his wife, confirming the custom of extended families living together.

Abolitionism
In 1847, three years after settling in Philadelphia, Still began working as a clerk for the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. When Philadelphia abolitionists organized a Vigilance Committee to directly aid escaped slaves who had reached the city, Still became its chairman. This led him and his wife Letitia to move to a relatively new rowhouse on the east side of Ronaldson Street between South and Bainbridge Streets, which still stands today at 625 S. Delhi Street. The Stills occupied this house, which was an Underground Railroad Way Station, from 1850 through 1855. Through his status as chairman of the Vigilance Committee, Still was one of the leaders of Philadelphia's African-American community.

In 1855, he participated in the nationally covered rescue of Jane Johnson, a slave who sought help from the Society in gaining freedom while passing through Philadelphia with her master John Hill Wheeler, newly appointed US Minister to Nicaragua. Still and others liberated her and her two sons under Pennsylvania law, which held that slaves brought to the free state voluntarily by a slaveholder could choose freedom. Her master sued him and five other African-Americans for assault and kidnapping in a high-profile case in August 1855. Jane Johnson returned to Philadelphia from New York and testified in court as to her independence in choosing freedom, winning an acquittal for Still and four others, and reduced sentences for the last two men.

In 1859, Still challenged the segregation of the city's public transit system, which had separate seating for whites and blacks. He kept lobbying and, in 1865, the Pennsylvania legislature passed a law to integrate streetcars across the state.

Underground Railroad
The New York Times proclaimed Still in his obituary "The Father of the Underground Railroad", William Still helped as many as 800 slaves escape to freedom. He interviewed each person and kept careful records, including a brief biography and the destination for each, along with any alias adopted. He kept his records carefully hidden but knew the accounts would be critical in aiding the future reunion of family members who became separated under slavery, which he had learned when he aided his own brother Peter, whom he had never met before.

Still worked with other Underground Railroad agents operating in the South, including in Virginia ports, nearby Delaware and Maryland, and in many counties in southern Pennsylvania. His network to freedom also included agents in New Jersey, New York, New England and Canada. Conductor Harriet Tubman traveled through his office with fellow passengers on several occasions during the 1850s. Still also forged a connection with the family of John Brown, and sheltered several of Brown's associates fleeing the 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry.

American Civil War and aftermath
During the American Civil War, Still operated the post exchange at Camp William Penn, the training camp for United States Colored Troops north of Philadelphia. He also opened a stove store and in 1861 bought a coal yard and operated a coal delivery business, which continued after the war.

In 1867, Still published A Brief Narrative of the Struggle for the Rights of Colored People of Philadelphia in the City Railway Cars.

In 1872, Still published an account of the Underground Railroad, The Underground Railroad Records, based on the carefully recorded secret notes he had kept in diaries during those years. His book includes his impressions of station masters such as Thomas Garrett, Daniel Gibbons and Abigail Goodwin. It went through three editions and in 1876 was displayed at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. Historians have since used it to understand how the Underground Railroad worked; both Project Gutenberg and the Internet archive make the text freely available.

Business and philanthropy
After the war, Still continued as an active businessman, philanthropist and social activist in the Philadelphia metropolitan areas.

In addition to the ongoing coal business, Still owned considerable real estate, including Liberty Hall, for some time the largest public hall in the U.S. owned by a black man. He also owned stock in the journal the Nation, was a member of Philadelphia's Board of Trade, and financed and was officer of the Social and Civil Statistical Association of Philadelphia (which in part tracked freed people).

Still also remained active in the Colored Conventions Movement, having attended national conventions including the New England Colored Citizens' Convention of 1859, where Still advocated equal educational opportunities for all African Americans. He also advocated for temperance which motivated him to organize a mission Sabbath School for the Presbyterian Church. He was a member of the Freedmen's Aid Union and Commission, an officer of the Philadelphia Home for the Aged and Infirm Colored Persons, and an elder in the Presbyterian church (where he established Sabbath Schools to promote literacy including among freed blacks).

He had a strong interest in the welfare of black youth. He helped to establish an orphanage and the first YMCA for African Americans in Philadelphia. In addition to continuing as member of the board for the Soldiers and Sailors Orphan Home and the Home for the Destitute Colored Children, Still became a trustee at Storer College.

Death, legacy and honors
Still died July 14, 1902, at his home, 726 South 19th Street in Philadelphia. He was buried in Eden Cemetery in Collingdale, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, as would later be his wife and daughter. Founded just a month before Still's death, Eden Cemetery is now the nation's oldest African-American owned cemetery, and on the National Register of Historic Places since 2010. In March 2018, Still's residence of 1850–1855 was identified and placed on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places.

Descendants
Family members donated his papers, including personal papers 1865–1899, to the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection at Temple University Library, where they remain accessible to researchers.

Peter lived (b. 1801- d.1868) in Burlington Township, New Jersey. Dr. James (b.1812- d. 1882) resided in Medford, New Jersey. Dr. James Still descendants were notable members of the Still family include the WNBA basketball player Valerie Still and her brother, NFL defensive end Art Still, and Devon Still, former NFL defensive end with the Houston Texans. It has been assumed for many years that all the Still family members were blood related but through research and DNA testing there are definitely different progeny of the Still family.

National Underground Railroad Network
In 1997, Congress passed H.R. 1635, which President Bill Clinton signed into law, and which authorized the United States National Park Service to establish the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program to identify associated sites and popularize the Underground Railroad. This also affirmed Still's national importance as a leading Underground Railroad agent in a major center of abolition.

In popular culture

 * Actor Robert Hooks portrayed Still in A Woman Called Moses, the 1978 miniseries that is based upon the life of abolitionist Harriet Tubman.
 * Actor Ron O'Neal portrayed a fictional version of Still in the 1985 miniseries, North and South.
 * Stand by the River (2003), a musical based on Still's life and rescue of Jane Johnson, was written and composed by Joanne and Mark Sutton-Smith. It has been produced in New York and Chicago, and at universities and other venues across the country.
 * Actor Chris Chalk portrayed a fictional version of Still on the WGN America period drama TV series, Underground.
 * Underground Railroad: the William Still Story is an independent film documentary first shown on the Public Broadcasting System on February 6, 2012.
 * Nkeiru Okoye wrote the opera Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed that Line to Freedom which includes Still as a character. It was first performed in 2014.
 * Actor Leslie Odom Jr. portrayed Still in the 2019 film Harriet, based on the life of Harriet Tubman.
 * A fictional version of William Still is portrayed by Ta-Nehisi Coates in his novel The Water Dancer (2019), in which Still is represented by the character Raymond White.
 * Composer Paul Moravec and librettist Mark Campbell composed an oratorio Sanctuary Road based on the writings of William Still. The oratorio premiered at Carnegie Hall in May, 2018.  An opera version of Sanctuary Road premiered in Raleigh, North Carolina, in March 2022.

title: William Still


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Olaus Petri

Olof Persson, sometimes Petersson (6 January 1493 – 19 April 1552), better known under the Latin form of his name, Olaus Petri (or less commonly, Olavus Petri), was a clergyman, writer, judge, and major contributor to the Protestant Reformation in Sweden. His brother, Laurentius Petri (Lars Persson), became the first Evangelical Lutheran Archbishop of Sweden.

Early life
Born in Örebro, in south-central Sweden, and the son of Peter Olofsson (a local blacksmith) and Kristina Larsdotter, Olaus Petri learned to read and write at the local Carmelite monastery. He then went to the capital and studied at the University of Uppsala, studying theology and German. Later, he attended the University of Leipzig until 1516, and finally finished his education and received a Master's degree at the University of Wittenberg in February 1518. While in Wittenberg with his younger brother Lars, Olaus met with and was influenced by the main characters of the German reformation, Philipp Melanchthon and Martin Luther.

Career

Both Petri brothers returned to Sweden in 1519, nearly dying as their ship ran aground on Gotland island during a storm. They remained on Gotland for a while, with Olaus preaching and assisting the local priest, Soren Norby, and Lars teaching at the local school. In 1520, Olaus returned to Strängnäs on the mainland, accepting ordination as a deacon and serving bishop Mattias Gregersson Lilje as secretary, chancellor of the Diocese of Strängnäs, canon of the Strängnäs Cathedral and dean of the cathedral school.

Olaus accompanied Mattias to Stockholm and attended the tumultuous crowning of Danish King Christian II, who had captured Stockholm and held it for about a year until returning to Denmark, where he was soon deposed and replaced by his uncle, who became King Frederick I of Denmark. Meanwhile, at the notorious Stockholm Bloodbath in early November, King Christian violated his promises of a general amnesty for the Sture party, and during the post-coronation festivities arrested and executed 80–90 churchmen and secular Swedish nobles, including Bishop Mattias. When Olaus expressed his outrage, he was almost executed as well, but a German who had seen him in Wittenberg identified Olaus as a fellow German and thus saved his life. King Christian tried to appoint his friend and bishop of Odense, Jens Andersen Beldenak, to the now-vacant Strängnäs bishopric, but both Danes soon returned to Denmark, and the scholar-priest Laurentius Andreae, who had been named archdeacon in 1520, ran the diocese.

The massacre provoked the Swedish War of Liberation, including the election and crowning of Gustav Vasa as King of Sweden, in Strängnäs in 1523. Olaus (whose father died in 1521, after which he and his brother had joined the insurgents under Vasa's leadership) attended the coronation, swore fealty to his monarch, and soon became the kingdom's chancellor. A year later, Olaus was appointed Stockholm's town secretary and moved to the capital, where he also served as a judge (despite a lack of specific legal training) and town councilor.

Olaus became known for his advocacy of Lutheranism and criticism of the prevailing Roman Catholicism. In October 1524, the Uppsala Cathedral's chapter excommunicated both brothers on grounds of heresy. They remained, however, confident in the new Swedish king's strong support. In 1525, Olaus married, as Lutheran practice permitted, and also implemented another of Luther's ideas by having the mass sung in Swedish for the first time. Throughout this period Olaus was also involved in scholarly endeavours, including translating Lutheran works into Swedish. In 1526, Olaus published the first Swedish translation of the New Testament, and also published a catechism in Swedish.

The Petri brothers' efforts to teach their king and fellow Swedes about Luther's ideas bore fruit the following year, as the Diet of Västerås declared Sweden Lutheran. In 1531, Olaus published a slightly simplified version of the Catholic mass in Swedish. Vasa also confirmed the kingdom's Lutheran alignment in 1531 by appointing Lars (who had been ordained a priest in 1527 and had married a daughter of the king's cousin that year) Archbishop of Uppsala, in part because the Pope refused to acknowledge the consecration of his candidate as bishop of Strängnäs, Magnus Sommar (1528–36; ultimately deposed and forced into retirement by the king).

Contemporaries described Olaus as energetic and pushy, particularly about matters in which he believed strongly. He also wrote a Swedish hymnal, liturgical manual, and many homiletic and polemic tracts. In fact, some consider the brothers and their ally Laurentius Andreae (who had physically crowned Gustav Vasa king in 1523) responsible for most early Swedish printed literature. Olaus also wrote a Chronicle of Sweden, which despite some historical inaccuracies, contains many interesting facts and anecdotes and remains an important historical document. Olaus also had an important part in translating the whole Bible into the vernacular; the Gustav Vasa Bible was completed circa 1541.

In 1539, Olaus Petri was ordained a priest, as permitted under Luther's reforms, and perhaps influenced by the Sun dog phenomenon of 20 April 1535 which caused Olaus to commission the mystical painting Vädersolstavlan and preach some apocalyptic sermons. However, shortly after his ordination, Olaus' relationship with King Gustav deteriorated sharply. Olaus was arrested and put on trial for treason, supposedly because he had learned about a conspiracy against the King during confession and had not revealed it. One historian suggests that Olaus' writings criticizing the King's harsh punishments and taxation policies contributed to the criminal trial. King Gustav also wanted to control the church, while Olaus distrusted the king's autocratic tendencies and supported religious self-governance. After Olaus Petri and Laurentius Andreae were found guilty on January 2, 1540, both received death sentences, and even his brother Lars signed the judgment. However, after much bargaining and many requests, friends managed to get both clergymen released on bail (Stockholm's merchants contributing to pay the stiff fines), although clearly their political careers had ended.

Olaus received a royal pardon in 1542, possibly as a reward for completing the massive biblical translation project, and in that year was appointed inspector over Stockholm's schools. The following year, he was promoted to dean of St. Nicholas' Church (Storkyrkan) in Stockholm, and fulfilled that priestly position during the final nine years of his life.

Death and legacy
Olaus Petri was buried at Storkyrkan, which became the national cathedral (supplanting Uppsala Cathedral) two centuries later. Since 1898, a large plaque and statue outside Storkyrkan have commemorated the reformer. His younger brother Lars survived him by two decades, completing the Swedish church's alignment with Lutheran (contrasted with Calvinist) reformed practices.

In 1616, long after his death, the Rule for Judges' Associations was published, which is now thought to have been written circa 1520–1540 and has long been attributed to Olaus Petri. These 42 general rules, a mixture of common law and statutes, have formed the basis of Scandinavian legal traditions, particularly in Sweden and Finland. In the law of Finland, they are always included in the introduction section of legal codices, despite never having been enacted as binding law. Although some aspects seem outdated (particularly overt religious references), Olaus' twin values of legal certainty, and equity and justice, remain important to Nordic legal scholarship and practice. Part of the problem in assessing his life, however, is that accounts of the trial which ended his legal career were also published long after his death by Vasa's chronicler, Erik Jöransson Tegel.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America remembers the brothers jointly with a liturgical commemoration on 19 April, the anniversary of his death.

Olaus Petri is the main character of August Strindberg's play Master Olof (Swedish title: Mäster Olof), the five-hour-long première of which opened on 30 December 1881.

His collected works (Samlade skrifter av Olavus Petri) were published in Uppsala (1913–1917).

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Olaus Petri


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Trimontium (Newstead)

Trimontium was a Roman fort complex located at Newstead, near Melrose, in the Scottish Borders, in view of the three Eildon Hills which probably gave its name (Latin: trium montium, three hills).

It was occupied intermittently from about 79 to 184 AD and was the largest of the "outpost" forts after the construction of Hadrian's Wall in the 120s AD. It was located 60 miles north of the wall on the extension of Dere Street the main Roman route to the north, initially in seemingly "hostile" territory. Trimontium was about three times larger than any fort on Hadrian's Wall and by 180 became the most northerly settlement of the whole Roman Empire.

Trimontium is also considered of international importance as the site of one of the largest caches of Roman military objects in Britain, found in 117 pits.

It was identified by Roman geographer Ptolemy in his Geography.

The fort sits on the banks of the River Tweed, with the Eildon Hills and the Iron Age hillfort atop Eildon North, a visible reminder of both the local population and imposing landscape of the Scottish Borders. The location benefitted from the rivers Tweed and Leader providing routes for the movement of goods and people and from the Roman road that became Dere Street passing alongside the fort.

Historical background

It took the Romans almost four decades, from the invasion of 43 AD and subsequent conquest of southern & eastern Britain, followed by expansion into northern England and Wales, for them to be closing in on southern Scotland when the fort was first constructed.

In 79 AD Roman general Agricola moved against the Brigantes of northern England and the Selgovae along the southern coast of Scotland, using overwhelming military power to establish Roman control. He built a network of military roads and forts, including Trimontium, to secure the Roman occupation. Existing forts were strengthened and new ones planted in northeastern Scotland along the Highland Line, consolidating control of the glens that provided access to and from the Scottish Highlands. The line of military communication and supply across southeastern Scotland and northeastern England was Dere Street (on which Trimontium was located) which was well-fortified.

After Agricola was recalled from Britain in 84 AD the Romans retired from northerm Scotland to a more defensible line along the Forth–Clyde isthmus.

Around 105 there appears to have been a serious setback at the hands of the tribes of the Picts: several Roman forts were destroyed by fire, with human remains and damaged armour at Trimontium indicating hostilities. Trimontium was abandoned and in the 120s Hadrian established the frontier further south by building his wall.

The fort's fortunes mirrored that of the later Roman expansion and retreat in the area, as its role swung from frontier post beyond Hadrian's Wall to supply and logistical waypoint for the Antonine Wall after 136, and back to frontier outpost from 164.

From its first construction phase in c.80 AD through to the last occupation and retreat shortly after 180 the fort would have been a focal point and centre of activity for both Romans and locals alike. The local Iron Age population, living in family farmsteads across the region, and gathering at times within the network of hillforts across the landscape would have had to develop a range of strategies to exist within or alongside the Roman presence. These could vary from alliance and trade to dispute and warfare.

The Fort

The fort was constructed in multiple phases. Dr Simon Clarke of Bradford University has produced a logical sequence of building and destruction for the fort and its annexes. This was managed by combining evidence from the first excavations of James Curle and Sir Ian Richmond with aerial photographs and modern search and rescue excavations of Bradford University (1987–1997)

Phase 1 (c.79-87 AD): The earliest occupation of the site identified by aerial photographs since the 1940s have revealed at least three and possibly as many as five camps in this area. The enormous "Great Camp" identified by Curle was on the highest point of the ridge at the centre of the whole enclosure, commanding a view over the road from the Cheviots, and across the Leader valley to control the crossing of the river. It had an area of 49 acres and each of its 4 gates had a titulus, a long straight ditch for defence, dug in front of it. Its size means it must have been constructed for a large, probably legionary, force and its occupation must have been of short duration. In Scotland the only excavated camp that compares with it in size is the legionary fort at Inchtuthil of 56 acres. In Wales, Caerleon of 50 acres occupied by the Second Legion, corresponds closely in area.

The later smaller Agricolan fort was built to the west of the Great Camp about 80 AD by the Legio XX Valeria Victrix mentioned on many of the inscriptions. It had a turf rampart on a cobble foundation with two ditches in front of it, overlapping each entrance. On the west side was an annexe which was also defended by a similar rampart and ditches arrangement.

Phase 2 (c.90-105 AD): After a possible short abandonment of the fort, the Romans were back, and building in strength. Old ditches were filled in and new defences constructed. This resulted in a colossal strengthening of the fort. The new turf rampart was built on a cobble base which measured 13.5 m across and around 8.4 m high. In front of this was a single ditch between 5 & 7 m wide and 2 to 4 m deep. New, well defended annexes appear on the south, east and probably north sides of the fort, inhabited by civilians and camp followers.

Phase 3 (c.105-137 AD): Trimontium was deserted as the Roman occupiers retreated south of Hadrian's Wall.

Phase 4 (c.137-139 AD): Clarke suggests that evidence points to the possibility that the fort was reoccupied a few years prior to the 140 AD advances into Caledonia by Emperor Antoninus Pius. If this is the case, the fort would have been a formidable outpost beyond Hadrian's Wall, with a civilian population within the annexes. Excavations and modern archaeology show the main entrance is now positioned through the southern annexe.

Phase 5 (c.140-158 AD): As the Roman presence pressed northwards and work began on the Antonine Wall (from 142 AD), the role of Trimontium changed. It was reduced in size with the building of a 2 m thick masonry wall through the main fort, though at the same time stone was used in the rebuilding. Manufacturing was becoming an important role for this newly purposed supply and logistics centre. Now behind the front line, it is believed that the civilian population attached to the fort may have numbered some 2–3,000.

Phase 6 (c.160 AD): Around this time the previous construction of the subdividing wall was removed as Trimontium's role changed from supply and manufacture to a front line fort due in part to the abandonment of the Antonine Wall. Within the fort a long, narrow barrack block was constructed and evidence points to a large decrease in the civilian population surrounding the fort.

Phase 7 (c.160-184 AD): As the civilian population surrounding and supporting the fort diminished further, the land that housed the annexes returned to a more natural state. The military presence reduced further, with the barrack block now housing the remaining soldiers and their families. The evidence points to the fort being deserted some time around 180 AD. It is unclear whether the remaining civilian population left at this time or remained, outside or even inside the fort. Evidence does point to the potential use of early 3rd and late 4th century coins in the area (coins have been found to the south and to the west of Newstead village). The local population may still have engaged in a Romanised trade and economic pattern of behaviour.

Evidence from the site indicate the presence of a considerable cavalry contingent at Trimontium. The list of such archaeological finds is extensive and includes horse skeletons, multiple parts of horse tack or harnesses, outstanding decorated cavalry parade helmets and face masks that can be seen at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, and intriguingly the prospect of a gyrus, or training ring.

During these phases of occupation, the population of the fort varied considerably, the permanent garrison level was probably around 1000 but this number would be complemented by the trades, manufacturers, craftsmen and families associated with the camp during the different phases of occupation. It has been estimated that the number could have risen to anywhere between 2000–5000.

Site archaeology
The earliest modern reference to the archaeological significance of Trimontium stems from finds uncovered during mid-Victorian railway cutting works as part of the Waverley Line construction in 1846. As land to the east of the village of Newstead was worked, finds from pits full of Roman artefacts were uncovered. Excavations by James Curle between February 1905 and September 1910 began the first exploration of the site, making many findings. These include foundations of successive forts described earlier, which throw much light on the character of this site, an unparalleled collection of Roman armour, including ornate cavalry parade (or 'sports') helmets, horse fittings including bronze saddleplates and studded leather chamfrons, numerous artefacts associated with trade and manufacture, building and construction, and daily life on the Roman frontier. In 1911 Curle published his archaeological findings in 'A Roman Frontier Post and its People'. This volume quickly became a standard reference work, ahead of its time and still the most decisive work published in Scotland covering this period of Roman occupation, expansion and retreat.

Sir Ian Richmond undertook small scale excavations and some re-interpretations of Curle's work in 1947. At this time, with the advent and development of aerial photography as a tool in modern archaeological research, Dr Kenneth St Joseph’s work at Trimontium revealed up to nine temporary encampments, evidenced through cropmarkings.

In 1989 The Newstead Project began, a 5-year archaeological investigation undertaken by the Department of Archaeological Sciences of Bradford University. Initially under the direction of Dr. Rick Jones, and thereafter Dr. Simon Clarke, the project employed the most modern archaeological techniques to the Trimontium site for the first time. Clarke uncovered forty major archaeological features in his 1994 'rescue excavation', including six deep pits containing a wealth of organic material. In 1996 he returned to the site to examine the suspected amphitheatre and suspected north annexe, and in 1997 the Bradford University team completed the geophysics survey of the Trimontium site.

Museums
The Trimiontium Trust run a museum local to the Trimontium site in the nearby town of Melrose. The museum's £1.4 million redevelopment was part of a project supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund to enhance and extend the galleries, displays and interpretation of Trimontium's history. The trust carry out guided walks to the Trimontium site, run a lecture and talk series, undertake activities linked to local community events, and present school and family workshops.

Many of the original and later finds from Trimontium are of such quality and importance that they are displayed at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. Items such as the cavalry helmets and decorative face mask, horse chamfron, leather work and much else besides can be seen as well as other Roman finds.

The Trimontium Trust museum redevelopment project has seen key finds return to the vicinity of the original fort site & archaeological excavations. They are housed within this contemporary museum setting which extends, redesigns, reinterprets and re-displays objects telling the story of Trimontium and its relationship with the local population.

Patrons
Patrons of the Trimontium Trust include:
 * HRH The Duke of Gloucester
 * The Hon. Gerald Maitland-Carew CVO
 * Andrew Hepburne Scott, Lord Polwarth
 * James Curle's granddaughter, Lady Cameron
 * Professor Lawrence Keppie.

title: Trimontium (Newstead)


text:
John Collier (painter)

John Maler Collier (27 January 1850 – 11 April 1934) was a British painter and writer. He painted in the Pre-Raphaelite style, and was one of the most prominent portrait painters of his generation. Both of his marriages were to daughters of Thomas Henry Huxley. He was educated at Eton College, and he studied painting in Paris with Jean-Paul Laurens and at the Munich Academy starting in 1875.

Family
Collier was from a talented and successful family. His grandfather, John Collier, was a Quaker merchant who became a member of parliament. His father, Robert, ( was a member of parliament, Attorney General and, for many years, a full-time judge of the Privy Council) was created the first Lord Monkswell. He was also a member of the Royal Society of British Artists, and had artists' studios in his home at 7 Chelsea Embankment for the use of John and his wife Marion. John Collier's elder brother, the second Lord Monkswell, was Under-Secretary of State for War and Chairman of the London County Council.

In due course, Collier became an integral part of the family of Thomas Henry Huxley PC, President of the Royal Society from 1883 to 1885. Collier married two of Huxley's daughters and was "on terms of intimate friendship" with his son, the writer Leonard Huxley. Collier's first wife, in 1879, was Marian Huxley (Mady). She was a painter who studied, like her husband, at the Slade and exhibited at the Royal Academy and elsewhere. In 1881, the couple settled in Tite Street, Chelsea, in a purpose-built studio house, alongside their friend Anna Lea Merritt. After the birth of their only child—a daughter, Joyce—, Marion suffered severe post-natal depression and was taken to Paris for treatment where, however, she contracted pneumonia and died in 1887. Joyce became a portrait miniaturist and was a member of the Royal Society of Miniature Painters.

In 1889 Collier married Mady's younger sister Ethel Huxley. Until the Deceased Wife's Sister's Marriage Act 1907 such a marriage was not possible in England, so the ceremony took place in Norway. By his second wife he had a daughter and a son, Sir Laurence Collier, who was the British Ambassador to Norway 1941–1951.

Subjects
Collier's range of portrait subjects was broad. In 1893, for example, his subjects included Lovelace Stamer, Bishop of Shrewsbury; Sir John Lubbock FRS; A N Hornby (Captain of the Lancashire Eleven); Edward Augustus Inglefield (Admiral and Arctic explorer).

His commissioned portrait of the Duke of York (later George V) as Master of Trinity House in 1901, and the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) were his major royal portraits. The latter work was hung in Durbar Hall, Jodhpur, Rajputana.

Other subjects included two Lord Chancellors (the Earl of Selborne in 1882 and the Earl of Halsbury) in 1897; The Speaker of the House of Commons, William Gully, (1897); senior legal figures the Lord Chief Justice Lord Alverstone (1912) and the Master of the Rolls Sir George Jessel (1881).

Rudyard Kipling (1891); the painter Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1884); the actors J.L. Toole (1887) and Madge Kendal, Ellen Terry and Herbert Beerbohm Tree (in The Merry Wives of Windsor) (1904); heads of educational institutions such as the Master of Balliol Edward Caird (1904), the Warden of Wadham G.E. Thorley (1889) and the Provost of Eton (1897) were also subjects for Collier. His portraits also include those of soldiers such as Field Marshal Lord Kitchener of Khartoum (1911) and Field Marshal Sir Frederick Haines (1891); two Indian maharajahs, including the Maharajah of Nepal (1910); and scientists including Charles Darwin (1882), the artist's father-in-law Professor Huxley (1891), William Kingdom Clifford, James Prescott Joule and Sir Michael Foster (1907). Clark reports a total of thirty-two Huxley family portraits during the half-century after his first marriage.

A photocopy of John Collier's Sitters Book (made in 1962 from the original in the possession of the artist's son) can be consulted in the Heinz Archive and Library, National Portrait Gallery. This is the artist's own handwritten record of all his portraits, including name of subject, date, fee charged, and details of any major exhibitions of the picture in question.

Posthumous reputation

Collier died in 1934. His entry in the Dictionary of National Biography (volume for 1931–40, published 1949) compares his work to that of Frank Holl because of its solemnity. This is only true, however, of his many portraits of distinguished old men – his portraits of younger men, women and children, and his so-called "problem pictures", covering scenes of ordinary life, are often very bright and fresh.

His entry in the Dictionary of Art (1996 vol 7, p569), by Geoffrey Ashton, refers to the invisibility of his brush strokes as a "rather unexciting and flat use of paint" but contrasts that with "Collier's strong and surprising sense of colour" which "created a disconcerting verisimilitude in both mood and appearance".

The Dictionary of Portrait Painters in Britain up to 1920 (1997) describes his portraits as "painterly works with a fresh use of light and colour".

Public collections
Sixteen of John Collier's paintings are now in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery in London, and two are in the Tate Gallery. Four of the National Portrait Gallery paintings were in December 1997 on display: John Burns, Sir William Huggins, Thomas Huxley (the artist's father in law) and Charles Darwin (copies of the last two are also prominently displayed at the top of the staircase at the Athenaeum Club in London).

A 1907 self-portrait has been preserved in the Uffizi in Florence which presumably commissioned it as part of its celebrated collection of artists' self-portraits.

Other pictures may be seen in houses and institutions open to the public: his Clytemnestra, a large and striking painting of the mythical figure, is in the Guildhall Gallery of the City of London. Another version, in which Clytemnestra has committed the murder and stands half-naked by the bath with a bloody sword is in the Worcester City Art Gallery & Museum. Sentence of Death was given by the widow of the artist to Wolverhampton Art Gallery. His portrait of the Earl of Onslow (1903), is at Clandon Park, Surrey (National Trust). His full-length portrait of Sir Charles Tertius Mander, first baronet, is at Owlpen Manor, Gloucestershire, with another version in the collection of the National Trust at Wightwick Manor, and his Lady Godiva is in the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum. "A glass of wine with Caesar Borgia" 1893, can be seen hanging in the atrium of Ipswich Town Hall.

Reproductions of many others, from various collections, may be consulted in the John Collier box in the National Portrait Gallery Heinz Archive and Library, and a good selection is published in The Art of the Honourable John Collier by W.H. Pollock (1914). His work was also included in the Great Victorian Pictures exhibition mounted by the Arts Council in 1978 (catalogue, p27).

Views on ethics and religion
Collier's views on religion and ethics are interesting for their comparison with the views of Thomas and Julian Huxley, both of whom gave Romanes lectures on that subject. Collier (1926) explains
 * "It [the book The Religion of an Artist] is mostly concerned with ethics apart from religion ... I am looking forward to a time when ethics will have taken the place of religion ... My religion is really negative. [The benefits of religion] can be attained by other means which are less conducive to strife and which put less strain on upon the reasoning faculties."

On secular morality:
 * "My standard is frankly utilitarian. As far as morality is intuitive, I think it may be reduced to an inherent impulse of kindliness towards our fellow citizens."

His views on ethics, then, were very close to the agnosticism of T.H. Huxley and the humanism of Julian Huxley.

On the idea of God:
 * "People may claim without much exaggeration that the belief in God is universal. They omit to add that superstition, often of the most degraded kind, is just as universal."

And
 * "An omnipotent Deity who sentences even the vilest of his creatures to eternal torture is infinitely more cruel than the cruellest man."

And on the Church:
 * "To me, as to most Englishmen, the triumph of Roman Catholicism would mean an unspeakable disaster to the cause of civilization."

And on non-conformists:
 * "They have a superstitious belief in the actual words of the Bible which is very dangerous".

Publications

 * A primer of art
 * A Manual of Oil Painting, 1886
 * The Art of Portrait Painting, 1905
 * The religion of an artist, 1926

title: John Collier (painter)


text:
John Collier (fiction writer)

John Henry Noyes Collier (3 May 1901 – 6 April 1980) was a British-born writer and screenwriter best known for his short stories, many of which appeared in The New Yorker from the 1930s to the '50s. Most were collected in The John Collier Reader (Knopf, 1972); earlier collections include a 1951 volume, Fancies and Goodnights, which won the International Fantasy Award and remains in print. Individual stories are frequently anthologized in fantasy collections. John Collier's writing has been praised by authors such as Anthony Burgess, Ray Bradbury, Roald Dahl, Neil Gaiman, Michael Chabon, Wyndham Lewis, and Paul Theroux. He appears to have given few interviews in his life; those include conversations with biographer Betty Richardson, Tom Milne, and Max Wilk.

Life
Born in London in 1901, John Collier was the son of John George and Emily Mary Noyes Collier. He had one sister, Kathleen Mars Collier. His father, John George Collier, was one of seventeen children, and could not afford formal education; he worked as a clerk. Nor could John George afford schooling for his son beyond prep school; John Collier and Kathleen were educated at home. He was privately educated by his uncle Vincent Collier, a novelist. Biographer Betty Richardson wrote:

"He began reading Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales at three; these began a lifelong interest in myth and legend that was further stimulated when, in his teens, he discovered James Frazer's The Golden Bough (1890–1915). An uncle, Vincent Collier, himself a minor novelist, introduced the boy to 17th and 18th century literature. Collier particularly admired Jonathan Swift, and an 18th-century satirist's view of life became his own. From his first work to his version of Paradise Lost, Collier saw humans, flawed but with potential, everywhere contaminated by narrow creeds, institutions, coteries, vanities, and careers."

When, at the age of 18 or 19, Collier was asked by his father what he had chosen as a vocation, his reply was, "I want to be a poet." His father indulged him; over the course of the next ten years Collier lived on an allowance of two pounds a week plus whatever he could pick up by writing book reviews and acting as a cultural correspondent for a Japanese newspaper. During this time, being not overly burdened by any financial responsibilities, he developed a penchant for games of chance, conversation in cafes and visits to picture galleries. He never attended university.

He was married to early silent film actress Shirley Palmer in 1936; they were divorced. His second marriage in 1945 was to New York actress Beth Kay (Margaret Elizabeth Eke). They divorced a decade later. His third wife was Harriet Hess Collier, who survived him; they had one son, John G. S. Collier, born in Nice, France, on 18 May 1958.

Poetry
He began writing poetry at the age of nineteen, and was first published in 1920.

For ten years Collier attempted to reconcile intensely visual experience opened to him by the Sitwells and the modern painters with the more austere preoccupations of those classical authors who were fashionable in the 1920s. He felt that his poetry was unsuccessful, however; he was not able to make his two selves (whom he oddly described as the "archaic, uncouth, and even barbarous" Olsen and the "hysterically self-conscious dandy" Valentine) speak with one voice.

Being an admirer of James Joyce, Collier found a solution in Joyce's Ulysses. "On going for my next lesson to Ulysses, that city of modern prose," he wrote, "I was struck by the great number of magnificent passages in which words are used as they are used in poetry, and in which the emotion which is originally aesthetic, and the emotion which has its origin in intellect, are fused in higher proportions of extreme forms than I had believed was possible." The few poems he wrote during this time were afterward published in a volume under the title Gemini.

Fiction
While he had written some short stories during the period in which he was trying to find success as a poet, his career did not take shape until the publication of His Monkey Wife in 1930. It enjoyed a certain small popularity and critical approval that helped to sell his short stories. Biographer Richardson explained the literary context for the book:

"His Monkey Wife is the last among light early-twentieth-century fantasies that include G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday (1908), Max Beerbohm's Zuleika Dobson (1911), and Virginia Woolf's Orlando (1928). Collier's book, however, appeared immediately after the economic crash and the start of the Great Depression in 1929, when the tone of the literary and intellectual world darkened. While his novel was well received, it did not achieve the fame of the earlier fantasies. ... Much in this novel echoes, without Swift's bitterness, the contrast between Gulliver and the rational Houyhnhnms in Gulliver's Travels (1726). Collier's style, however, is playful; he borrows heavily from Joseph Conrad, parodies the style of Thomas De Quincey ... and otherwise sustains the light and artificial tone by literary borrowings throughout."

As a private joke, Collier wrote a decidedly cool four-page review of His Monkey Wife, describing it as an attempt "to combine the qualities of the thriller with those of what might be called the decorative novel," and concluding with the following appraisal of the talents of its author: "From the classical standpoint his consciousness is too crammed for harmony, too neurasthenic for proportion, and his humor is too hysterical, too greedy, and too crude." Author Peter Straub has done the same with fake, negative reviews, in admiration of Collier.

His second novel, Tom's A-Cold: A Tale (1933) was grim, depicting a barbaric and dystopian future England; it is mentioned in Joshua Glenn's essay "The 10 Best Apocalypse Novels of Pre-Golden Age SF (1904-33)." Richardson calls it "part of a tradition of apocalyptic literature that began in the 1870s" including The War of the Worlds: "Usually, this literature shows an England destroyed by alien forces, but in Collier's novel, set in Hampshire in 1995, England has been destroyed by its own vices—greed, laziness, and an overwhelming bureaucracy crippled by its own committees and red tape." John Clute wrote,

"Radically dissimilar to his most familiar work is Tom's A-Cold ... a remarkably effective post-HOLOCAUST novel set in the 1990s, long after an unexplained disaster has decimated England's (and presumably the world's) population and thrust mankind back into rural barbarism, a condition out of which the eldest survivors, who remember civilization, are trying to educate the young third generation. The simple plot plays no tricks on the reader... Throughout the novel, very movingly, [Collier] renders the reborn, circumambient natural world with a hallucinatory visual intensity found nowhere else in his work. Along with Alun Llewelyn's The Strange Invaders (1934), Tom's A-Cold can be seen, in its atmosphere of almost loving conviction, as a genuine successor to Richard Jefferies's After London (1885); and it contrasts markedly with [Collier's] earlier No Traveller Returns (1931) ... a harsh dystopian novella set in a deadened world.'"

The title refers to a line spoken by Edgar in King Lear; the outcast Edgar (the son of a fictional Gloucester) pretends to be a madman named Tom o' Bedlam and says to the deranged King, who is wandering on the windy heath, "Tom's a-cold."

His last novel, Defy the Foul Fiend; or, The Misadventures of a Heart, another title taken from the same speech in King Lear as Tom's A-Cold, was published in 1934.

He received the Edgar Award in 1952 for the short story collection Fancies and Goodnights, which also won the International Fantasy Award in 1952.

Writing style
David Langford described Collier as "best known for his highly polished, often bitterly flippant magazine stories... [His] best stories are touched with poetry and real wit, sometimes reminiscent of Saki's. There are moments of outrageous Grand Guignol; the occasional sexual naughtiness is far beyond Thorne Smith in sophistication." Langford praises Collier's "smiling misanthropy". Similarly, Christopher Fowler wrote in The Independent, "His simple, sharp style brought his tales colourfully to life" and described Collier's fiction as "sardonic". John Clute wrote, "He was known mainly for his sophisticated though sometimes rather precious short stories, generally featuring acerbic snap endings; many of these stories have strong elements of fantasy..." E. F. Bleiler also admired Collier's writing, describing Collier as ""One of the modern masters of the short story and certainly the preeminent writer of short fantasies", and stating that The Devil and All was "one of the great fantasy collections".

Other media
In the succeeding years, Collier traveled between England, France and Hollywood. He continued to write short stories, but as time went on, he would turn his attention more and more towards writing screenplays.

Max Wilk, who interviewed Collier for his book Schmucks with Underwoods, tells how, during the 1930s, Collier left the home he owned in England, Wilcote Manor, and traveled to France, where he lived briefly at Antibes and Cassis. The story of how Collier wound up going to Hollywood has been mistold sometimes, but Collier told Wilk that in Cassis,

"'I saw a fishing boat I rather liked, and I wanted to buy it. They wanted 7000 francs. And I wondered where on earth I could find that much money. And would you believe, right then, some little girl came riding up on a bicycle to hand me a telegram....[sic] It was my London agent wanting to know, would I go to Hollywood to work for eight weeks, at $500 per week?... And I went out to California, and they were waiting for me. Delightful experience. A picture called Sylvia Scarlett, at RKO. George Cukor was the director. I'd scarcely seen a motion picture in my life; I didn't know a thing about screenwriting. In point of fact, it was something of a mistake. Hugh Walpole had told George I'd be right for the job. George thought Hugh was talking about Evelyn Waugh.'"

The film Sylvia Scarlett starred Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Brian Aherne, and Edmund Gwenn; it was the comic story of a widower, his daughter Sylvia who disguises herself as a boy, and a con man; Collier's collaborators on the script were Gladys Unger and Mortimer Offner. Wilk writes that the film was considered bizarre at the time, but decades later, it enjoys a cult following.

Collier landed in Hollywood on May 16, 1935, but, he told Wilk, after Sylvia Scarlett he returned to England. There, he spent a year working on Elephant Boy for director Zoltan Korda.

"'Korda took me into a projection room, and we sat there watching hours of film that had been shot in Burma...[sic] without the advantage of any script! Just a director with his crew, shooting film of elephants. So we saw elephants coming this way, elephants going that way, charging, retreating...[sic] Endless elephants! And there were some shots of a little boy, about three feet tall, a charming little creature. That would be Sabu.... Korda and I saw all this huge amount of film, and after about three hours of it, he began to utter hideous cries! What could he possibly do with all this goddamned film?'"

Collier suggested a way to make the footage cohere into a story and to make "a star out of that little boy, Sabu." After these two unorthodox starts to screenwriting, Collier was on his way to a new writing career.

Screenplays
Collier returned to Hollywood, where he wrote prolifically for film and television. He contributed notably to the screenplays of The African Queen along with James Agee and John Huston, The War Lord, I Am a Camera (adapted from The Berlin Stories and remade later as Cabaret), Her Cardboard Lover, Deception and Roseanna McCoy.

 * Sylvia Scarlett (1935)
 * Elephant Boy (1937)
 * Her Cardboard Lover (1942)
 * Deception (1946)
 * Roseanna McCoy (1949)
 * The African Queen (1951) (uncredited)
 * The Story of Three Loves (1953) (Collier wrote two of three segments: "The Jealous Lover" and "Equilibrium")
 * I Am a Camera (1955)
 * The War Lord (1965)

Teleplays

 * The Man in the Royal Suite — Adapted by Collier from a novel by Edgar Wallace for The Four Just Men, 27 April 1960 (Season 1, Episode 27).
 * I Spy — Adapted by Collier from the play by John Mortimer (of Rumpole of the Bailey fame) for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 5 December 1961 (Season 7, Episode 9), starring Kay Walsh and Eric Barker.
 * Maria — Written for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 24 October 1961 (Season 7, Episode 3), starring Norman Lloyd and Nita Talbot.
 * The Magic Shop — Adapted by Collier and James Parish from the 1903 story by H. G. Wells of the same title, written for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, 10 January 1964 (Season 2, Episode 13), starring Leslie Nielsen and Peggy McCay.

Adaptations of his stories
Collier's short story "Evening Primrose" was the basis of a 1966 television musical by Stephen Sondheim, and it was also adapted for the radio series Escape and by BBC Radio. Several of his stories, including "Back for Christmas", "Wet Saturday" and "De Mortuis", were adapted for the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The short story "Green Thoughts" may have inspired Little Shop of Horrors.

 * De Mortuis — Adapted by Fred Coe for Lights Out, 1 September 1946 (Season 1, Episode 3), starring John Loder.
 * Mary, Mary Quite Contrary — Adapted by James Lee for Lights Out, 27 March 1950 (Season 2, Episode 29), starring George Englund and Gaye Jordan.
 * Duet for Two Actors — Adapted for The Billy Rose Show, 20 February 1951 (Season 1, Episode 21), starring Frank Albertson and Cyril Ritchard.
 * De Mortuis — Adapted for Suspense, 12 June 1951 (Season 3, Episode 42), starring Olive Deering and Walter Slezak.
 * Bird of Prey — Adapted by Nelson S. Bond as Birds of Prey for Gruen Guild Theater, 19 June 1952 (Season 2, Episode 7), starring Bill Baldwin, William Challee and Billy Curtis.
 * De Mortuis — Adapted for Star Tonight as Concerning Death, 17 February 1955 (Season 1, Episode 3), starring Edward Andrews and Jo Van Fleet.
 * Back for Christmas — Adapted by Francis M. Cockrell for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 4 March 1956 (Season 1, Episode 23), starring John Williams and Isobel Elsom.
 * Wet Saturday — Adapted by Marian B. Cockrell for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, September 30, 1956 (Season 2, Episode 1), starring Cedric Hardwicke and John Williams.
 * De Mortuis — Adapted by Francis M. Cockrell for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 14 October 1956 (Season 2, Episode 3), starring Robert Emhardt, Cara Williams, and Henry Jones.
 * None Are So Blind — Adapted by James P. Cavanagh for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 28 October 1956 (Season 2, Episode 5), starring Hurd Hatfield and Mildred Dunnock.
 * Youth from Vienna — Adapted, directed, and hosted by Orson Welles as The Fountain of Youth, a 1956 television pilot for a proposed anthology series, broadcast on September 16, 1958 as an episode of Colgate Theatre (Season 1, Episode 5).
 * Anniversary Gift — Adapted by Harold Swanton for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 1 November 1959 (Season 5, Episode 6), starring Harry Morgan and Barbara Baxley.
 * The Chaser — Adapted by Robert Presnell Jr. for Twilight Zone, 13 May 1960 (Season 1, Episode 31), starring John McIntire, Patricia Barry and George Grizzard.
 * The Small Elephants — Adapted by Russell Beggs for G.E. True Theater , 12 March 1961 (Season 9, Episode 21), starring Ronald Reagan as Host, Jonathan Harris of Lost in Space fame, Barbara Nichols, Cliff Robertson, and George Sanders.
 * Evening Primrose — Adapted by James Goldman as a 1966 television movie directed by Paul Bogart, starring Anthony Perkins, Dorothy Stickney and Larry Gates, with songs by Stephen Sondheim.
 * Special Delivery — Adapted by Michael Ashe and Paul Wheeler as Eve for Journey to the Unknown, 26 September 1968 (Season 1, Episode 10), starring Carol Lynley, Dennis Waterman and Michael Gough.
 * Evening Primrose — Adapted by Jon Bing and Tor Åge Bringsværd as Nattmagasinet, a 1970 Norwegian television film.
 * Sleeping Beauty — Adapted by James B. Harris as Some Call It Loving, a 1973 feature film starring Zalman King, Carol White, Tisa Farrow and Richard Pryor.
 * Back for Christmas — Adapted by Denis Cannan for Tales of the Unexpected, 31 May 1980 (Season 2, Episode 14), starring Roald Dahl (Introducer), Richard Johnson, Siân Phillips and Avril Elgar.
 * De Mortuis — Adapted by Robin Chapman as "Never Speak Ill of the Dead" for Tales of the Unexpected, 24 May 1981 (Season 4, Episode 8), starring Colin Blakely, Warren Clarke and Keith Drinkel.
 * Youth from Vienna — Adapted by Ross Thomas for Tales of the Unexpected, 2 July 1983 (Season 6, Episode 13).
 * Wet Saturday — Adapted by Collier for Tales of the Unexpected, 7 July 1984 (Season 7, Episode 8).
 * Bird of Prey — Adapted by Ross Thomas for Tales of the Unexpected, 4 August 1984 (Season 7, Episode 10).
 * In the Cards — Adapted by Ross Thomas for Tales of the Unexpected, 14 July 1985 (Season 8, Episode 2), starring Susan Strasberg, Max Gail (famous for his role as Detective Stan "Wojo" Wojciehowicz on the television sitcom Barney Miller), Elaine Giftos, and Kenneth Tigar.
 * Anniversary Gift — Adapted by Rob Hedden for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 28 February 1987 (Season 2, Episode 6), starring Pamela Sue Martin and Peter Dvorsky.
 * In The Cards — (as Dead Right) Adapted by Andy Wolk for Tales from the Crypt, 21 April 1990 (Season 2, Episode 1), starring Demi Moore and Jeffrey Tambor.
 * His Monkey Wife, or, Married to a Chimp — Glam punk band The Bophins' song "Married to a Chimp" is based on the book.

Awards

 * Poetry award granted by the Paris literary magazine This Quarter for his poetry collection Gemini.
 * International Fantasy Award for Fiction (1952) for Fancies and Goodnights (1951).
 * Edgar Award for Best Short Story (1952) for Fancies and Goodnights (1951).

Death
Collier died of a stroke on April 6, 1980, in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California. Near the end of his life, he wrote, "I sometimes marvel that a third-rate writer like me has been able to palm himself off as a second-rate writer."

Collections of Collier's papers

 * The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin's papers "represent his transition from a poet to writer of novels, short stories, and screenplays. The bulk of the papers are manuscripts covering several genres, although a substantial amount of correspondence is also included."
 * University of Iowa Libraries, Special Collections
 * Colliers' son, John G. S. Collier

Novels

 * His Monkey Wife: or Married to a Chimp (1930) (currently in print, ISBN 0-9664913-3-5)
 * No Traveller Returns (a chapbook, 1931)
 * Tom's A-Cold: A Tale (1933) (published in the U.S. as Full Circle)
 * Defy the Foul Fiend: or, The Misadventures of a Heart (1934)

Short fiction

 * Collections
 * Green Thoughts (1932)
 * The Devil and All (1934)
 * Variations on a Theme (1934)
 * Presenting Moonshine (1941)
 * The Touch of Nutmeg, and More Unlikely Stories (1943)
 * Fancies and Goodnights (1951) (New York Review Books paperback reprint [2003] currently in print, ISBN 1-59017-051-2) (Note: The first edition contains fifty stories, as do some paperback editions, including the Bantam paperback and the New York Review Books paperback edition. The one now in print is the latest version, including all later additions. Note that Pictures in the Fire and The John Collier Reader contain a few stories not in any edition of Fancies and Goodnights. Also, a story appears in both The Devil and All and The Touch of Nutmeg, but is in no later collection.)
 * Pictures in the Fire (1958)
 * The John Collier Reader (1972) (includes His Monkey Wife in its entirety, chapters 8 and 9 of Defy the Foul Fiend, and selected stories)
 * The Best of John Collier (1975) (paperback containing all the short items from The John Collier Reader, but without His Monkey Wife, which was issued as a separate volume)
 * Stories

Poetry

 * Collections
 * Gemini (1931)

Screenplays
———————
 * Paradise Lost: Screenplay for Cinema of the Mind (1973)
 * Notes

Selected short stories

 * Another American Tragedy — A man mutilates himself in order to murder an aged rich relative and impersonate him, to change the will in his own favor - only to discover he isn't the only one who wants the old man dead.
 * Back for Christmas — A man plots a foolproof way to murder his wife, but the murder is exposed because of an unexpected gift she left for him to find. Originally published in The New Yorker (October 7, 1939). (Grams erroneously cites a later publication: 13 December 1939 issue of The Tattler (sic - The Tatler was the magazine concerned). ) This story has been dramatised many times: once for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, three times for the Suspense radio series (Peter Lorre portrayed the main character in the first broadcast in 1943; the 1948 and 1956 broadcasts both starred Herbert Marshall), as well as once for an episode of Tales of the Unexpected.
 * Bottle Party — A jinn (genie) tricks a man into taking his place in the bottle.
 * Cancel All I Said — A couple's young daughter takes a screen test. The couple's lives are torn apart by the studio head's spoken offer to make the child a star.
 * The Chaser — A young man buying a genuine love potion cannot understand why the seller sells love potions for a dollar, but also offers a colorless, tasteless, undetectable poison at a much, much higher price.
 * Evening Primrose — Probably his most famous; about people who live in a department store, hiding during the day and coming out at night. Betty Richardson wrote that the store is "the Valhalla, of course, of a consumer society ... populated by acquisitive people who pose as mannequins by daylight; by night, they emerge to grab what they want": "Happy to sacrifice all human emotions—love, pity, integrity—for the sake of consumer goods, these denizens have their own pecking order and police. The primary duty of the latter is to suppress any rebellion against this materialistic society." The story was read by Vincent Price and recorded on an LP record by Caedmon Audio in 1980. The story also served as the inspiration for the 1984 music video "Prime Time" by the British progressive rock band The Alan Parsons Project.
 * Interpretation of a Dream — A man experiences disturbing and serial dreams of falling from the thirty-ninth story of the skyscraper in which he works, passing one story every night. In his dreams, he looks through the window and makes detailed and veridical observations of the real-life inhabitants as he passes.
 * Over Insurance — A loving couple puts nine-tenths of their money into life insurance and becomes so impoverished as a result that each spouse decides to poison the other, unaware that the other has made the same decision.
 * Special Delivery — A man falls in love with a department-store mannequin. This was later adapted for an episode of the 1960s TV series Journey to the Unknown, retitled "Eve", which starred Dennis Waterman and Carol Lynley.
 * The Steel Cat — An inventor uses his pet mouse to demonstrate his better mousetrap to an insensitive prospect who insists on seeing the mouse actually die.
 * Three Bears Cottage — A man tries unsuccessfully to poison his wife with a mushroom as retaliation for serving him a smaller egg than the one she served herself.
 * Thus I Refute Beelzy — An odiously rational father is confounded by the imagination of his small son.
 * The Touch of Nutmeg Makes It — A man tried for murder and acquitted for lack of motive tells his story to sympathetic friends.
 * Wet Saturday — Stuck indoors on a rainy Saturday, a family must deal with a problem. The problem turns out to be murder, and how to frame an innocent visitor for the crime.  Dramatised in the Suspense radio series broadcast on June 24, 1942 and December 16, 1943 featuring Charles Laughton, and as an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents broadcast on September 30, 1956. The episode was actually directed by Hitchcock himself. It was also later adapted for Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected.
 * Youth from Vienna — A couple, whose careers (tennis player and actress) depend on youth, are forced to deal with a gift of a single dose of rejuvenating medicine that cannot be divided or shared. This story was the basis for The Fountain of Youth, a 1956 TV pilot for a proposed anthology series, produced by Desilu and written, directed, and hosted by Orson Welles.

title: John Collier (fiction writer)


text:
James W. C. Pennington

James William Charles Pennington (c. 1807 – October 22, 1870) was an American historian, abolitionist, orator, minister, writer, and social organizer. Pennington is the first known Black student to attend Yale University. He was ordained as a minister in the Congregational Church, later also serving in Presbyterian churches for congregations in Hartford, Connecticut, and New York. After the Civil War, he served congregations in Natchez, Mississippi, Portland, Maine, and Jacksonville, Florida.

In the Antebellum period, Pennington was an abolitionist, and among the American delegates to the Second World Conference on Slavery in London. In 1850, he happened to be in Scotland when the Fugitive Slave Act was passed by the US Congress. As it increased the risk for fugitive slaves in the North, Pennington stayed in the British Isles while friends worked to buy his freedom from his former master and then from his estate. Pennington raised funds for the abolition movement on the public lecture circuit in England.

Pennington wrote and published what is considered the first history of blacks in the United States, The Origin and History of the Colored People (1841). His memoir, The Fugitive Blacksmith, was first published in 1849 in London.

On April 24, 2023, Yale awarded Pennington a posthumous M.A. Privatim degree

Early life
James was born into slavery in 1807, at a Tilghman plantation on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. When he was four years old, James and his mother were given to Frisby Tilghman, their master's son, as a wedding gift. They were taken by the younger Tilghman to his new plantation called Rockland, near Hagerstown in western Maryland. There James was trained as a carpenter and blacksmith. On October 28, 1827, at the age of nineteen, James escaped from the plantation, leaving behind his parents and eleven siblings.

Pennington reached Adams County, Pennsylvania, where he was taken in by the Quakers William and Phoebe Wright. They assisted the fugitive from slavery, and paid him wages for his work. As Pennington was illiterate, Wright began to teach him to read and write. Pennington adopted the middle name "William" after his benefactor, and the surname "Pennington," after Isaac Penington, an English man who was prominent in Quaker history.

Move to New York
Moving north to Brooklyn, New York, a year later in 1828, Pennington found work as a coachman for a wealthy lawyer. He continued his education, paying tutors out of his earnings, and teaching himself Latin and Greek. New York's law for gradual abolition of slavery did not completely free all adults until 1827. In the early 1800s Kings County and Brooklyn on Long Island still had many enslaved laborers, as they were important to the agricultural economy of the area at the time.

Pennington attended the first Negro National Convention in Philadelphia in 1829. He continued to be active in the Negro Convention Movement, becoming its presiding officer in 1853. Within five years he had learned so much that he was hired to teach school in Newtown (present-day Elmhurst, Queens, in western Long Island). It was he who married there Frederick Douglass and his fiancée.

He also became involved in the Shiloh Presbyterian Church, Manhattan.

Education
Pennington applied to Yale Divinity School but was denied admission due to the color of his skin. Yale administrators allowed Pennington to take classes at Yale University without formally matriculating, but under degrading conditions. He was not allowed to speak or ask a question in class, borrow a book from the library, or add his name to the Yale catalog, humiliations that he called "oppression." After completing his studies at Yale Divinity School, Pennington was ordained to the ministry of the Congregational Church, suggesting that the church recognized he had received a Yale education.

On April 24, 2023, Yale awarded Pennington a M.A. Privatim, acknowledging, "Although we cannot return to Pennington...the access and privileges [he was] denied when [he] studied at Yale, we recognize [his] work and honor [his legacy] by conferring on [him a] M.A. Privatim degree."

Ministry and social justice work
Pennington first served a congregation on Long Island, probably in Queens. Next Pennington was called in 1840 by the Talcott Street Church (now called Faith Congregational Church) in Hartford, Connecticut. While serving as minister, Pennington wrote what is believed to be the first history of African Americans, The Origin and History of the Colored People (1841), drawing on current works of the time.

He became deeply involved in the abolition movement. He was selected as a delegate to the Second World Conference on Slavery in London. While in England, he had been invited by churches to preach and serve communion as a matter of course as a visiting minister. After returning to Hartford, he told his white colleagues about this and persuaded them to include him in their pulpit exchanges. On this circuit, he was the first black pastor to preach in a number of Connecticut churches.

He became friends with John Hooker, one of his parishioners, confiding in him in 1844 his status as a fugitive slave and concern about his future. Hooker opened secret negotiations for purchase with his former owner, Frisby Tilghman. Hooker and Pennington did not then have the $500 demanded by the master, who died soon after.

Pennington was among those in the late 1830s who became involved in seeking justice for some West African Mende people illegally taken in slavery. After they mutinied and sailed their ship to Long Island, they were taken into custody by the United States. Spain, the ship's owners, the US, and the Mende, all had roles in the complex Amistad case, which was litigated from 1839 to 1841. The courts were called on to determine whether the Mende were the property of the ship's owners, or of Spain, or free. It was ultimately settled by the United States Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the Mende, saying that as free men (since the African slave trade had been banned), they had the right to defend themselves and try to regain their freedom. When the West Africans won their case and freedom, thirty-five chose to return to Africa. Pennington formed the United Missionary Society, the first black missionary society, to help raise funds for their return. Pennington happened to be in Scotland when the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was passed, which increased the risk to him as a fugitive from the South. It required even law enforcement and officials in such free states as New York to cooperate in the capture and prosecution of fugitive slaves, and was biased in favor of slave catchers and masters. Bounties were offered for slaves' capture and documentation requirements were light, making it easy for slave catchers even to take free persons. Although Pennington was called to New York in 1850 to serve the Shiloh Presbyterian Church, he feared returning while at such risk. Hooker worked with abolitionists in England to raise money to purchase Pennington from Tilghman's estate (the planter had died). Friends of Pennington in Dunse, Berwickshire raised the funds. Hooker briefly took legal "ownership" of Pennington in order to legally manumit him in New York.

While remaining in the British Isles for nearly two years for his safety, Pennington traveled widely there and in Europe, speaking and raising money for the abolition cause. He had completed writing his memoir, The Fugitive Blacksmith, which was first published in 1849 in London. This slave narrative recounted his journey from slavery to the status of educated minister.

While in Europe, Pennington was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Heidelberg, becoming the first African American to be so honored.

After returning to the United States, Pennington helped form a committee to protest the segregation of the New York City public transit system. Schoolteacher Elizabeth Jennings had been arrested in 1854 for using a street car reserved for whites. Several private companies operated all the street cars; they required blacks to sit in segregated seating. Defended by young attorney Chester A. Arthur, Jennings won her case in February 1855 in the Brooklyn Circuit Court, after a three-day trial covered by the New York Times.

When Pennington was arrested and convicted in 1859 for riding in a "white only" street car operated by another company, he was represented by the Legal Rights Association. It had been formed by Elizabeth's father Thomas L. Jennings. He challenged the system successfully and on appeal, gained an 1855 ruling by the State Supreme Court that such racial segregation was illegal and must end. By 1865, after starts and stops, all the street car companies had desegregated their systems.

Civil War and after
Pennington identified as a pacifist, but during the American Civil War (1861-1865), he helped recruit black troops for the Union Army. When the war was over, he served for a short time as a minister in Natchez, Mississippi. Next he was called to Portland, Maine, where he served for three years.

Early in 1870, he returned to the South, where he had been appointed by the Presbyterian Church to serve in Florida. He organized an African-American congregation in Jacksonville. He died there on October 22, 1870, after a short illness.

Legacy and honors
In 1849 the University of Heidelberg awarded Pennington an honorary doctorate of divinity. The university has created the James W.C. Pennington Award in his honor. It is given to scholars who have done distinguished work on topics important to Pennington. The first recipient was Albert J. Raboteau. The award has also gone to Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Laurie Maffly-Kipp and William L. Andrews.

In 2016, Yale Divinity School renamed a classroom for Pennnington and hung a portrait of him in their common room. In 2023, the Yale Graduate and Professional Student Senate passed a resolution that made Pennington an honorary senator and commissioned a portrait of Pennington to hang in their Senate center, at Gryphon's Pub.

Also in 2016, Pennington was inducted into the National Abolition Hall of Fame, in Peterboro, New York.

In 2023, Yale University conferred a posthumous M.A. Privatum on Pennington, alongside Rev. Alexander Crummell, nearly two centuries after they attended Yale. This happened in large part due to the advocacy of the Pennington Legacy Group, led by Yale Divinity School students, the Yale Graduate and Professional Student Senate, Yale Divinity Student Government, Yale College Council, and other Yale student clubs.

Works

 * A Text Book of the Origin and History, &c. &c. of the Colored People (1841), considered the first history of African Americans. He directly challenged published statements by former President Thomas Jefferson as to the "inferiority" of black people.
 * A two years' absence, or, A farewell sermon : preached in the Fifth Congregational Church / by J. W. C. Pennington. Nov. 2d, 1845.
 * The Fugitive Blacksmith, or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington, Pastor of a Presbyterian Church, New York, Formerly a Slave in the State of Maryland, United States (1849), his memoir, a slave narrative, was published first in London.
 * The reasonableness of the abolition of slavery at the South : a legitimate inference from the success of British emancipation : an address, delivered at Hartford, Conn., on the first of August, 1856.
 * A Narrative of Events of the Life of J. H. Banks, an Escaped Slave, from the Cotton State, Alabama, in America (Liverpool, 1861)

title: James W. C. Pennington