(This is the real Nelly Bly, circa 1887, whose real name was Elizabeth Cochran Seaman. She was an Pennsylvania adventurer with whom we thought we shared DNA until this morning!)

Morning, Gentle Readers! The Chairman was stunned this morning and burst into the Production Meeting with unexpected verve and energy. We are not kidding on that- you can view it as our usual shop-worn approach to building suspense in these little tales. You can see that they have migrated in time. We used to spend the afternoon work hours plotting out something to say the next day. The essays would then be ready to go with the intrusion of morning light, and the days could go on, framed in the context of yesterday’s afternoon.

But that is framing today based on yesterday’s assumptions. That timing slowly shifted in timing and now the daily essay bubbles up around lunchtime, too late for direct action on Brunch but still sometimes interesting. Like you, though, we are flexible. That was useful this morning.

You have kindly permitted us to drag you across the Atlantic in 1903 with Great Grandfather Socotra. It was an interesting snapshot of the otherworldliness of life more than a century ago. For context, he may have passed along the details of his trip in those little leather notebooks that slid neatly into the vest pockets of his utility-tailored working suit.

We will get back to that at some point, or not. What happened this morning was the realization that we are related to the famous novelist Jules Verne via composer Stephen Foster.

OK, OK, it is one of those coincidental relationships not including connection by direct blood . But it is quite real, and the Ladies who provide the link would be in their 150’s this year. Confused? Us too. We will try to make it simple for mid-morning consumption.

Her name was Elizabeth and she was a stately woman of impeccable bearing. We met her several times over the course of her later years. She had a nickname. We did not know that is what it was, nor where it might have originated. We called her ‘Aunt Bly.’ We didn’t know why. Sometimes it was a little longer in form, being rendered “Great Aunt Nellie (Bly). She lived in a stately residence in Martinsburg, West Virginia, and a visit there was akin to a trip to the antique store.

She died some fifty years ago, and there was a family frenzy at the time about division of the material effects she left behind. One of her elegant tables is around the corner in the hallway, so the division of her estate no longer qualifies as “new” or being “news.” We got some additional context this morning.

There was a courageous woman named Nellie Bly – her real name- and she was born on May 5, 1864 in the small town of Cochran’s Mills, Pennsylvania. America’s unpleasantness between the States was still in progress. That part of the Keystone state was not far from it, and the family lived on one of the roads General Lee traveled on the way to Gettysburg.

At the age of 15, Nellie- the real Nellie, Elizabeth Cochran Seaman- enrolled to take classes at Indiana Normal School (now Indiana University of Pennsylvania). She was a determined young woman, but had to drop out that same year due to the inability to cover tuition and board. Her circumstances echo one now common but unusual at that moment of social history: her mother and stepfather had divorced.

It required an adventurous personality to move forward, and her mother moved to Pittsburgh in 1880 to be closer to her two older brothers for a connection to family. It was a struggle as you might imagine, but young Elizabeth was determined to describe the world in which she lived. Her big chance was something she helped devise. She was living on Pittsburgh’s North Side in January 1885. She was twenty-one and there would be no stopping her advance in this world.

Cochran wrote a letter to Mr. George Madden, editor of the local Pittsburgh newspaper, The Dispatch. She was responding to a column arguing for a traditional role for women in society. Madden was intrigued by her unique voice and asked her to write an article for the newspaper. She churned one out with some passion, and he was impressed enough with it that he hired her to contribute with the lofty salary of $5 a week.

Times being what they were in the relations of our disparate genders, Madden and Elizabeth decided a pen name would be a sensible means of protection. They agreed a writer’s pen-name would be appropriate, and found one in a song by local composer Stephen Foster: Nelly Bly.

The tune adopted the hardships of running a household in Frontier times, and was set in Tennessee. The first verse went like this, adopting the vernacular language of the American working class and those who worked for them:

Nelly Bly! Nelly Bly!
Bring de broom along
We’ll sweep de kitchen clean, my dear
And hab a little song…
Poke de wood, my lady lub
And make de fire burn
And while I take de banjo down
Just gib de mush a turn…

That just sets the stage for Nelly’s flight to notoriety, and we will have to get to that tomorrow. But our actual blood-kin Great Aunt shared the kind of wild adventurism that set Nelly apart from her sisters trapped in the rigid social structures of their times.

We knew our Great Aunt had the sort of slightly imperious attitude and upright posture that signified the way she saw herself in her world. And as a demonstration of her determination in the world of commerce, men and adventure. We don’t know if she chose the pen-name as one she would share, or if the family applied it to her. But it was a story so good that it has lasted beyond her physical time on the planet. And to this very morning, it has recognized the accomplishments of a Literary Lady named Nelly Bly.

We will have to get to that tomorrow, since we are about to lose the morning. It is a rip-roaring tale about a young woman who would not allow the strictures of her times to stop her from something that would be an adventure today, much less in a time of carriages, puffing locomotives and steamships.

Around the entire freaking globe. We’ll take you there with Nelly Bly tomorrow!

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com