Carleton Mabee

1914 - 2014  (99 years)

• Name	Carleton Mabee
  Birth	25 Dec 1914	Shanghai, China
  Gender	Male
  Anecdote	Jun 1917  [1]
  	Fred C. Mabee, 33, Male, Married, Teacher; Miriam B Mabee, 30, Female, Married, Housewife; Ruth B. Mabee, Female, Single; and Fred C. Mabee, Jr, 2, Male, Single; all Canadian citizens of English origin, last residing in Shanghai, China; departed Hong Kong, China 9 Jun 1917, aboard the SS Empress Asia, and arrived in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on 25 Jun 1917 en route to Brookline, Massachusetts
  Anecdote	Sep 1924  [2]
  	Fred Carleton Mabee, 40, Male, Married, Missionary; Miriam Bentley Mabee, 37, Female, Married, Housewife; Ruth B. Mabee, 18, Female, Single; Fred Carleton Mabee, 9, Male, Single; and Irving Hart Mabee, 3, Male, Single; all Canadian citizens of English origin, last permanent residence was Shanghai, China; departed Southampton, England,30 Aug 1924, aboard the SS Mauretania, and arrived in arrived in New York, New York on 5 Sep 1924 en route to Brookline, Massachusetts
  Anecdote	5 Sep 1924  [3]
  	The following family departed Southampton, England on the SS Mauretania on 30 August 1924 continuing a trip from Shanghai, China and arrived in New York on 5 Sep 1924. They were Canadian citizens destined for Brookline, Massachusetts: Fred Carleton Mabee, 40 Years 9 Months, Male, Missionary Miriam Bentley Mabee, 37 Years 2 Months, Female, his wife Ruth B Mabee, 13 Years 5 Months, Female, his child Fred Carleton Mabee, 9 Years 8 Months, Male, his child Irving Hart Mabee, 3 Years 7 Months, Male, his child
  Census	24 Apr 1930	221 Campbell, Harrisonburg, Rockingham County, Virginia   [4]
  	Fred C Mabie, Head, rents at $40, M, W, 46, M, age at first marriage 26, Canada, Canada, Canada, Teacher, State Teacher's College Marion R Mabie, Wife, F, W, 42, M, age at first marriage 20, Rhode Island, Canada, Ohio, Teacher, State Teacher's College Ruth B Mabie, Daughter, F, W, 19, S, China, Canada, Rhode Island Fred C Mabie Jr, Son, M, W, 15, S, China, Canada, Rhode Island Irving H Mabie, Son, M, W, 9, S, China, Canada, Rhode Island
  Census	2 Apr 1940	509 F Street, Washington, DC   [5]
  	Fred Mabee, Lodger , M, W, 25, S, attended school, completed 5 years college, born in China, American Citizen, Residence in 1935 - Lewiston, Maine
  Census	11 Apr 1940	378 College Street, Lewiston, Androscoggin County, Maine   [6]
  	Fred C Mabee, owns home worth $4000, Head, M, W, 57, M, completed 5+ years college, born in Maine, Teacher, College, earned $3500 in 1939 Marion Mabee, Wife, F, W, 53, M, completed 5+ years college, born in Rhode Island Carleton Mabee, Son, M, W, 25, S, completed years school, completed 5+ years college, born in China Irving Mabee, Son, M, W, 19, S, completed 2 years college, born in China
  Residence	1942	378 College Street, Lewiston, Androscoggin County, Maine   [7]
  	Fred C Mabee, (Miriam B) professor, Bates College Fred C Mabee Jr, employee Government Irving H Mabee, Student Ruth B Mabee, YWCA Secretary, Jackson, Mich
  Census	5 Apr 1950	Buckbridge Road, Potsdam, St Lawrence County, New York   [8]
  	Carleton Mabee, Head, White, Male, 35, Married, born in China, citizen, Liberal Arts Instructor, College Norma D Mabee, Wife, White, Female, 35, Married, born in Iowa, parents born in US, completed 5 years college Timothy I Mabee, Son, White, Male, 3, never married, born in Pennsylvania Susan Mabee, Daughter, White, Female, 1, never married, born in Michigan
  Anecdote	In 1944 Carleton Mabee won a Pulitzer Prize for Biography with his book, American Leonardo: A life of Samuel F. B. Morse (Knopf 1943). The Seaway Story was published by Macmilllan in 1961. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War." (Macmillan, 1970) which received an award from Anisfeild-Wolf human rights foundation in Cleveland and the Saturday Review, Black Education in New York State: From Colonial to Modern Times (Syracuse University Press, 1979) which won the John Ben Snow Prize from the press for outstanding work among books it published that year. Recently he has been recognized for Sojourner Truth: Slave, Prophet, Legend (New York University Press, $35, June 1993). Carleton was aided by his daughter, Susan Mabee Newhouse, a psychologist in Baltimore on this book. Before Carleton Mabee soldiered through six years of basic researcher on Sojourner Truth, authors copied the same overblown myths and mistakes from one book to the next, historians and reviewers say. ... "He's done a beautiful job, says Town of Esopus Historian Dorothy DuMond. I think he is going to be the absolute reference for her. He spent so many years digging out the facts. He made her come alive to me." Purple Mountain Press, Ltd. , Main Street, P. O. Box E-3, Fleischmanns???, NY 1240-0378, advises us that this October they will have available a new book by Carleton Mabee, entitled The Wallkill Valley Railroad. This new book is about the railroad that once stretched from Montgomery to Kingston.
  Anecdote	MABEE, Carleton 1914-2014 PERSONAL: Born December 25,1914, in Shanghai, China; son of Fred Carleton and Miriam (Bentley) Mabee; married Norma Dierking, 1945; children: Timothy Irving, Susan. Education. Bates College, A.B., 1936; Columbia University, Ph D., 1942. Residence: Gardiner, N.Y. Office: State University College, New Paltz, N.Y. CAREER: American Friends Service Committee, relief worker in Vienna, Austria, 1946-41; Olivet College, Olivet, Mich., tutor, 1947-49; Clarkson College of ethnology, Potsdam, N.Y., assistant to full professor, 1949-61; Keio University, Tokyo, Japan, professor of American civilization, 1953-54; Delta College, University Center, Mich., director of Social Studies Division, 1961-64; Rose Polytechnic Institute, Terre Haute, Ind., chairman of department of humanities and social sciences, 1964-65; State University College, New Paltz, N.Y., professor of history, 1965- Wartime service: Civilian Pub; Service, 1941-45. Member: American Historical Society, American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, American Association of University Professors, Phi Beta Kappa, Delta Sigma Rho. Awards, honors: Pulitzer Prize for biography, 1944, for The American Leonardo. WRITINGS: The American Leonardo: A Life of Samuel . B. Morse, Knopf,1943 [Pulitzer Prize for Biography - 1944] The Seaway Story, Macmillan, 1961 Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War." (Macmillan, 1970) Black Education in New York State: From Colonial to Modern Times (Syracuse University Press, 1979) Sojourner Truth: Slave, Prophet, Legend (New York: New York University Press, 1993 Listen to the Whistle: An Anecdotal History of the Wallkill Valley Railroad., (Purple Mountain Press, Ltd., Fleischmanns, New York, 1995) Contributor to professional journals, magazines, and encyclopedias.
  Anecdote	Historian and psychotherapist Carleton Mabee won the Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for his book, The American Leonardo: A Life of Samuel F. B. Morse. Mabee received his PhD in History from Columbia University. He is Professor Emeritus of History of the State University of New York College at New Paltz, N Y. Retired from teaching, Mabee is involved in the NY Sojourner Truth Institute and leads bus tours of sites historically linked to her. In 1993, he and his daughter, Susan Mabee Newhouse, wrote the first extensive biography of Truth, Sojourner Truth, Slave, Prophet, Legend. Mabee has said that his inspiration for his most recent work, Listen to the Whistle: An Anecdotal History of the Walkill Valley Railroad in Ulster and Orange Counties, came from hearing the whistles of the trains heading for the Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge, near where he lives in Gardiner, NY. His most Famous Works * The American Leonardo: The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse (1944) * Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 through the Civil War (1970) * Sojourner Truth, Slave, Prophet, Legend (1993)
  Info	Keith Warren Mabee, #113, Fred Carleton Mabee, Jr. "Carleton", #175
  Note	Maybee Society Member Number 175
  Witness-Obituary	27 Oct 1955	Birmingham, Alabama   [12]
  	Dr Fred C. Mabee, age 72, of 8528 3rd Ave S, passed away Wednesday P.M. at a local hospital. He is survived by his wife, Mrs Miriam Anna Bentley Mabee; sons, Dr Carleton Mabee. Of Potsdam, NY; Irving H Mabee, Of Lexington, Mass; 1 daughter, Mrs Charles Edwards, of Glem Mills, Pa; 1 brother, Lewis M Mabee, of Goderich, Ontario; 9 grandchildren. Memorial services will be held Friday at 11 am from the Ruhama Baptist Church, the Rev Carl Campbell officiating. Johns-Ridout's directing
  Residence	Between 1969 and 2014	2121 Route 44 55, Gardiner, New York   [13, 14, 15]
  Residence	16 Feb 2014	2121 Route 44 55, Gardiner, New York   [15]
  Obituary	20 Dec 2014	Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts   [16]
  	Pulitzer Prize winner and seasonal Oak Bluffs resident Carleton Mabee died Thursday, December 18, 2014 [after suffering a fall at his home in Gardiner, NY]. The author of numerous books and articles on American history, Mr. Mabee was Professor Emeritus at the State University of New York at New Paltz and had been a seasonal resident of Oak Bluffs since 1950. He was 99 and would have been 100 on Christmas day. Professor Mabee was born in Shanghai in 1914. His parents were teachers and missionaries. He was educated at Bates College and Columbia University. His dissertation, The American Leonardo: A Life of Samuel F. B. Morse, won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1944. Writing in the introduction, Allan Nevins said, "It is fortunate that the materials for a complete biography have fallen into the hands of a student so industrious and keen-sighted, and a writer so gifted, as Mr. Mabee." Other books followed: The Seaway Story (1961), Black Freedom: The Non-Violent Abolitionists From 1830 Through the Civil War (1970), Black Education in New York State from Colonial to Modern Times (1979, winner of several awards), Sojourner Truth: Slave, Prophet, Legend (1993, with his daughter Susan Newhouse). During World War II, Dr. Mabee took a pacifist position, spending the war years as a conscientious objector in Civilian Public Service. His assignments included working as an attendant in mental hospitals. Immediately following the war he spent a year in Austria working for the American Friends Service Committee relief effort. Subsequently, he led several projects for the AFSC in the US, including a voter registration drive in North Carolina in 1963. In 1945 he met and married Norma Dierking and the couple had two children, Timothy and Susan. In 1953, he was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to teach at Keio University in Japan. Over a long academic career, he taught history at Olivet College in Michigan, Clarkson College of Technology in New York, and Delta College in Michigan. He retired from the State University of New York at New Paltz. He considered his true calling to be research and writing. After he retired, he focused his efforts on New York State history. He wrote Bridging the Hudson: The Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge and Its Connecting Rail Lines (2001) and Listen to the Whistle: An Anecdotal History of the Walkill Valley Railroad (2009.) He served as historian to the Town of Gardiner, where he lived, and wrote Gardiner and Lake Minnewaska (2003). A final book on efforts to protect open space in the Shawangunk Mountains is forthcoming in 2015. Services were held Saturday at New Paltz United Methodist Church in New York.
  Death	20 Dec 2014	Gardiner, Ulster County, New York   [17]
  Obituary	22 Dec 2014	Washington, DC   [18]
  	Carleton Mabee, a historian who won the Pulitzer Prize for his scrupulous and often-scathing biography of the painter and telegraph inventor Samuel Morse, died Dec. 18 at his home in Gardiner, N.Y. He would have been 100 on Christmas Day. The death was announced by the State University of New York at New Paltz, where he had been a professor emeritus of history. The cause was complications from a fall, said his daughter, Susan Mabee Newhouse. The son of Baptist missionary teachers, Mr. Mabee (pronounced "maybe") spent his first nine years in China and later grew up in Maine. He spent his career focused on American social history, while also forging an independent path in politics and scholarship. He was classified as a conscientious objector during World War II and performed civilian public service work, including a stint as an attendant in mental hospitals. He quit one of his first teaching jobs over his sharp dissent with the college's administration over the purging of faculty for holding left-wing political beliefs. During the civil rights movement of the 1960s, he participated in sit-ins and voter registration drives in the South. Mr. Mabee was 30 when he earned the Pulitzer, which grew out of his doctoral dissertation at Columbia University and might have established him on a high-profile, Ivy League career path. "By choice he never was one to want that kind of status, and he hated to be called ‘Doctor,' " said his daughter. "What was important to him was his ability to do research, his ability to write and pursue social justice causes." For much of the 1950s, she said, they lived on a farm in Potsdam, N.Y., while he taught at the nearby Clarkson College of Technology. In his graduate studies at Columbia in the late 1930s and early 1940s, Mr. Mabee came under the tutelage of the Pulitzer-winning historian Allan Nevins, who encouraged the student's interest in Morse. The result was the publication in 1943 of Mr. Mabee's "The American Leonardo," about Samuel Morse, a cocksure painter and prolific inventor best remembered for creating the electromagnetic telegraph and lending his name to the code by which words were transmitted by taps representing each letter of the alphabet. After long struggle, Morse publicly unveiled his telegraph in 1844 and sent the oft-quoted first message on an experimental line from Washington to Baltimore: "What hath God wrought? Morse died in 1872 at 80. A few years later, an acquaintance named Samuel I. Prime wrote a hagiographic biography that stood for 50 years as the standard reference work on Morse. It took Mr. Mabee to ferret out other dimensions to his life. Morse co-founded the Journal of Commerce and was an early master of the daguerreotype. But his personality could be dreadfully off-putting, including his pro-slavery politics, his anti-Catholic vitriol and his run for mayor of New York on an anti-immigrant platform. He was also apparently a horrid husband and father. Critics hailed the book as darkly illuminating. "Mr. Mabee whitewashes nothing," science journalist Waldemar Kaempffert wrote in his New York Times review. "He gives us Morse the narrow Calvinist who loathed Unitarians and saw in the Catholic Church only an evil political system; the chauvinist who hated England and raised his voice in political campaigns to plead for the expulsion of foreign-born citizens from the United States; [but also the] businessman who had so high a sense of social responsibility that he wanted to sell his invention to the government and thus prevent the wild speculation that he foresaw. "It is a very human Morse that emerges from Mr. Mabee's pages." Mr. Mabee wrote that he titled his work "The American Leonardo" in homage to the Renaissance painter Leonardo da Vinci because he wanted him to "be known as more than a telegrapher." It won the 1944 Pulitzer for biography or autobiography. Fred Carleton Mabee Jr. was born Dec. 25, 1914, in Shanghai, where his parents were teachers and Baptist missionaries. His father was from Canada and the family name was of Huguenot origin. The younger Mabee — who later legally changed his name to Carleton Mabee — was mostly raised in Lewiston, Maine, where his father taught chemistry at Bates College. Mr. Mabee graduated in 1936 from Bates College and then entered Columbia, where he received a master's degree in 1938 and a doctorate in 1942. After World War II, he was a relief worker in Vienna with the American Friends Service Committee and then joined the faculty of Olivet College, a school in Michigan with a student body of less than 300. He seemed drawn by Olivet's reputation for accommodating socialists, pacifists and other idiosyncratic voices among the faculty; for years, it was nicknamed "little Bohemia." But the arrival of a new president, Aubrey Ashby, a former executive at NBC, provoked conflict when he accused teachers of "indoctrinating students with their peculiar ideas of democracy" and labeled his administration "a period of sanitation." Ashby dismissed several members of the faculty, and many others left in protest in 1949, including Mr. Mabee and Tucker Smith, who had been the Socialist ticket's vice presidential candidate in 1948. Mr. Mabee spent the next dozen years teaching at what is now Clarkson University in Potsdam, and he subsequently chaired the department of humanities and social sciences at what is now Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Ind. He joined SUNY at New Paltz in 1965 and retired in 1980. He was married to Norma Dierking from 1945 until her death in 2004. Survivors include two children, Timothy I. Mabee of Naperville, Ill., and Susan Mabee Newhouse of Baltimore; two granddaughters; and two great-grandchildren. Mr. Mabee wrote a shelf of well-regarded books, including "The Seaway Story" (1961), about the St. Lawrence Seaway; "Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War" (1970); and a biography of the 19th-century abolitionist Sojourner Truth, "Sojourner Truth: Slave, Prophet, Legend" (1993), the last co-written with his daughter, who has a professional background as a psychotherapist. He also wrote several histories focused on the Hudson Valley of Upstate New York. Among the last was "Promised Land" (2008), about Father Divine, the black spiritual leader who started interracial communities in Ulster County, N.Y., starting in the 1930s. "Intentional, utopian communities fascinate me," he wrote in the preface. "I am attracted to their idealism. I want to understand their successes and their failures." He added that the book shared a theme many of his others, namely "the struggle for racial integration and the application of non-violence to social change."
  Occupation	Clarkson College, Potsdam, St Lawrence County, New York   [19]
  	Professor, historian, author
  Reference Number	175
  Person ID	I175	Maybee Society
  Last Modified	7 Apr 2024

  
  

  Father	Fred Carleton Mabee,   b. 28 Nov 1883, Vittoria, Norfolk County, Ontario, Canada d. 26 Oct 1955, Birmingham, Jefferson County, Alabama (Age 71 years)
  Relationship	natural
  Mother	Miriam Anna Bentley,   b. 28 Jun 1887, Central Falls, Providence County, Rhode Island d. 13 May 1971, Glen, Mills County, Pennsylvania (Age 83 years)
  Relationship	natural
  Marriage	23 Jun 1910	Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts   [20, 21]
  	Frederic C. Mabee, a grad of McMaster University in Toronto, who has been engaged in research at Harvard for the past four years, married Miss Miriam A. Bentley, Radcliffe '09, daughter of Charles A. Bentley of Cambridge, 24 Jun 1910. His brother, L. M. Mabee of Goderich attended. Couple will leave for China where groom will be a professor
  Family ID	F498	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	Norma Arline Dierking,   b. 17 Jul 1914, Sioux City, Woodbury County, Iowa d. 23 Sep 2004, Gardiner, Ulster County, New York (Age 90 years)
  Marriage	21 Dec 1945	Sioux City, Iowa   [22, 23]
  Children	+ 1. Living   2. Living
  Family ID	F499	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	7 Apr 2024

  
  

• Sources

  [S1] Ancestry.com online; Url: http://www.ancestry.com/, Canadian Passenger Lists, 1865-1935; and U.S., Border Crossings from Canada to U.S., 1895-1960. [S1] Ancestry.com online; Url: http://www.ancestry.com/, New York, Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957. [S1] Ancestry.com online; Url: http://www.ancestry.com/, New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957. [S302] 1930 United States Census; Url: ancestry.com, Harrisonburg, Harrisonburg (Independent City), Virginia, Roll: 2467, Owns house worth $20B, Enumeration District: 1, Image: 929. [S455] 1940 United States Census; Url: ancestry.com, Washington, District of Columbia, Roll T627_565, Page 61A, ED 1-359. [S455] 1940 United States Census; Url: ancestry.com, Lewiston, Androscoggin, Maine, Roll T627_1469, Page 7A, ED 1-28. [S1] Ancestry.com online; Url: http://www.ancestry.com/, Lewiston, Maine, City Directory, 1942. [S526] 1950 United States Census; Url: https://1950census.archives.gov/, Potsdam, St Lawrence, New York, ED 45-28, Dwelling 39. [S128] Information printed in the Maybee Society Communicator, From article in the Poughkeepsie Journal, written by Laura J. Toler, sent to us by our member, #94, Evelyn Mabie Danilevics. [S396] Alice Edith George, Submission by Maybee Society Member, Susan Edginton, #102. [S192] Information taken from the Internet by John MayBee #8, http://www.answers.com/topic/carleton-mabee. [S483] Newspapers.com; Url: https://www.newspapers.com/, The Birmingham News (Birmingham, Alabama), 27 Oct 1955, Thu, Page 65. [S1] Ancestry.com online; Url: http://www.ancestry.com/, U.S. Phone and Address Directories, 1993-2002 and U.S. Public Records Index. [S438] Old Fulton NY Post Card Website; Url: fultonhistory.com/Fulton_New_form.html, The Kingston NY Daily Freeman; Saturday evening, August 15, 1969 (daughter's engagement. [S325] From a letter sent to the Maybee Society by, from Carleton. [S439] Google Alerts from Kim Mabee MS# 78, from The Martha's Vineyard Times, Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts, Dec 20, 2014. [S439] Google Alerts from Kim Mabee MS# 78, obit from The Washington [DC] Post, By Adam Bernstein December 22 2014. [S439] Google Alerts from Kim Mabee MS# 78, from The Washington [DC] Post, By Adam Bernstein December 22 2014. [S10] Royal A. Mabee, Royal A Mabee's notebook. [S241] Barbara Miller, Emails from Barbara Millar; Compiler Address: millarbje@sympatico.ca, "Wedding Bells" in British Colonist 1910,06,29, from Boston Herald. [S1] Ancestry.com online; Url: http://www.ancestry.com/, Massachusetts, Marriage Records, 1840-1915. [S396] Alice Edith George, Submission by Maybee Society Member, Fred Carleton Mabee, Jr. "Carleton", #175. [S483] Newspapers.com; Url: https://www.newspapers.com/, Sioux City Journal, Sioux City, Iowa · Wednesday, December 19, 1945.