Mary Bledsoe

[Bernice Moore]

For WTAW......

Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits

http://www.history-matters.com/archive/con...contents_wh.htm

Exhibits are in Volume XV1 FWTAW

http://www.history-matters.com/archive/con...ntents_wh16.htm

B.........

[Steve Mcdonagh]

Thanks B - Steve

Here you go Steve......

B.....

[Greg Parker]

She was a member of the Daughters of the Confederacy, a member and former President of the Dallas Naval Mothers Club and a member of the Camellia Club and the Archer Sunday School Class of the Oak Cliff Methodist Church.

United Daughters of the Confederacy<br style="line-height: 1.25em; ">Richmond, Va.

Formed in 1894 from the remnants of local memorial associations affiliated with Confederate veterans camps, the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) is open only to women related to Confederate veterans of what the UDC still calls the "War Between the States."

Although the UDC promotes an image of genteel Southern ladies concerned only with honoring their ancestors — and is, in fact, the least political of the neo-Confederate groups — its publications sometimes belie that benign appearance.

In a 1989 article in UDC Magazine, for instance, Walter W. Lee minimized the horrors of the Middle Passage by pointing out that "the sixteen inches of deck space allotted each slave is not all that smaller than the eighteen inches the Royal Navy allowed for each sailor's hammock and the slaves rapidly had more room due the much higher death rate."

Lee also argued that "the worse suffering group among those engaged in the trade" were "the crews of slave ships." Other victims of slavery Lee cites are "the purchasers of slaves" who "found themselves locked into a form of agriculture that could not compete with the new machines."

Other UDC articles praise an array of neo-Confederate ideologues such as Michael Andrew Grissom, author of Southern by the Grace of God (a book which portrays the original Klan favorably) and a member of two racist groups, the Council of Conservative Citizens and the League of the South.

The UDC has also worked directly with these kinds of groups in erecting monuments and staging Confederate battle flag rallies. Most recently, the UDC's president, Mrs. William Wells, shared the podium with League president Michael Hill and white supremacist lawyer Kirk Lyons.

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2000/summer/the-neo-confederates?page=0,2

[David Josephs]

In case people are still looking for that document...

and the U-R-A-F-I-N-K is what we get when we replace the numbers under the "General Offense Report" with the letters in that numerical place in the alphabet....

"...His name was actually Alek Hidel" !?!?!?

Must have gotten that info from one of the 4 wallets he carried

Edited February 3, 2011 by David Josephs

[Duke Lane]

Given the discussion regarding the lodgers at 1026 North Beckley on the Hank Killam thread, I thought it might be worthwhile having a look at Mary Bledsoe and 621 N. Marsalis.

Remembering that Oswald stayed a short time at this rooming house in October and if it wasn't for Bledsoe not liking Oswald, he would not have had to relocate to North Beckley.

Mary Bledsoe is a very interesting person. A member of the Daughters of the Confederacy and the Camillia Club, plus she was the President of the Dallas Navy Mothers Club. She was married to J.E. Bledsoe (friend of G.B. Dealey) and who was an official at Southern Pacific Railroad. They had two sons, Porter and Dick Bledsoe.

During the late 1940's and early 1950's, Porter attended the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington D.C.

Her brother was James 'Pete' Germany who attended the Lubbock Flying School and at the time of the assassination was plant manager of Taylor Press Inc.

....

The Camillia Club is either a horticultural society, a "garden club" if one prefers the term (see for example http://www.pensacolacamelliaclub.com/; plants of the genus camillia) or a cosmetics club (see for example http://www.us.shisei...ovations/04.htm): "The Camellia Club was inaugurated in 1937 for regular Shiseido customers. Members were women who regularly used Shiseido cosmetics, and its purpose was to spread correct beauty methods to enhance feminine beauty and cultivate the tastes and culture of the modern woman."

The Dallas Navy Mothers Club is presumably a chapter of the Navy Mothers Clubs of America (http://www.navymothe...sofamerica.org/), and given the membership criteria, would probably mean that one of her sons was in the Navy at some point.

The Daughters of the Confederacy (or United Daughters of the Confederacy; see Texas chapter's website at http://www.txudc.org...estorindex.html) is still thriving today. The Texas site lists an "Ancestor Roster Book" indicating the names of the Texas Confederate Soldiers to whom a member must presumably trace their ancestry. This might be Thomas Arthur Germany, based on Mary's brother's surname and presuming a paternal lineage. The UDC's website says that it "is the oldest patriotic organization in our country because of its connection with two statewide organizations that came into existence as early as 1890 -- the Daughters of the Confederacy (DOC) in Missouri and the Ladies' Auxiliary of the Confederate Soldiers Home in Tennessee. The National Association of the Daughters of the Confederacy was organized in Nashville, Tenn., on September 10, 1894, by founders Mrs. Caroline Meriwether Goodlett of Nashville and Mrs. Anna Davenport Raines of Georgia. At its second meeting in Atlanta, Ga., in 1895, the Organization changed its name to the United Daughters of the Confederacy." Its membership is open to "women no less than 16 years of age who are blood descendants, lineal or collateral, of men and women who served honorably in the Army, Navy or Civil Service of the Confederate States of America, or gave Material Aid to the Cause."

Mary was 67 in 1964, meaning she was born in or about 1897. Her sons could have been born in the 1920s, which might well put one or both of them in the Navy during the 1940s, and make Porter somewhere around 80 in 2005. Mary would have been born only about one generation removed from the War Between the States.

The School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University was founded by Father Edmund Aloysius Walsh, S.J. An entry at Wikipedia gives this summary:

Fr. Edmund Aloysius Walsh, S.J. (October 10, 1885 – October 31, 1956) was an American Jesuit Catholic priest, professor of geopolitics and founder of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, which he founded in 1919–six years before the U.S. Foreign Service itself existed–and served as its first regent.

He directed the Papal Famine Relief Mission to Russia in 1922, which also succeeded in securing for the Vatican the Holy Relics of St. Andrew Bobola (they were actually transported to Rome by the Walsh's Assistant Director, Louis J. Gallagher, who later wrote books both about Walsh and about Bobola).

Later, Walsh worked on behalf of the Vatican to resolve long-standing issues between Church and State in Mexico in 1929, and negotiated with the Iraqi government to establish an American College in Baghdad in 1931.

After the Allies' victory in World War II, Walsh served as Consultant to the U.S. Chief of Counsel at the Nuremberg Trials. During that task, he interrogated the German geopolitician General Karl Haushofer to determine whether or not he should stand trial for war crimes, eventually finding that Gen. Haushofer ought not stand trial.

Strongly anti-Communist, it is alleged that Walsh was the man who first suggested to Senator McCarthy that he use this issue in order to gain political prominence. Walsh vigorously promoted anti-Communism thought throughout his career.

He is also listed as one of the 25 "most evil people of the 20th century" (http://one-evil.org/people/people_20c_Walsh.htm).

Edited February 3, 2011 by Duke Lane

[Don Jeffries]

I find the death of Porter Bledsoe, as it seems as if he must have been Mary's son, to be very interesting. How many people are murdered by an axe? Yet another brutal, quite unnatural death, for someone who is at least tangentially related to the JFK assassination. Could be a coincidence, but it certainly provides food for thought.

Yeah, I know, the general trend among assassination researchers is that all those deaths connected in some manner to the events in Dealey Plaza are much ado about nothing. Some of us still think they are significant.

[William Kelly]

I find the death of Porter Bledsoe, as it seems as if he must have been Mary's son, to be very interesting. How many people are murdered by an axe? Yet another brutal, quite unnatural death, for someone who is at least tangentially related to the JFK assassination. Could be a coincidence, but it certainly provides food for thought.

Yeah, I know, the general trend among assassination researchers is that all those deaths connected in some manner to the events in Dealey Plaza are much ado about nothing. Some of us still think they are significant.

I must have missed that.

Can you provide some more details of Porter Bledsoe's death or links to it?

Some years ago I tracked him down to a job he had as a motel desk clerk on the graveyard shift, and to a bar he used to frequent on the edge of the West End Marketplace, but not patronized by tourists or the West End Yuppies. It was called the Green Glass, a triangle shaped neighborhood bar with the door at the point of the triangle and the bar running along the right side wall. There were booths, a pool table and a juke box, but that was it. No kitchen and everybody drank shots and cheap draft beer. Bledsoe wasn't there when I was, but they all seemed to know him. The owner and her daughter were behind the bar, and they had owned the joint for decades. She said Jack Ruby named the place because of the dirty green glasses.

It was a rough and tumble place, of mixed races, both black and white, all working class people, and his job as a night manager of a motel would make it seem that he lived on the edge of the dredge of society, so such a death could have been possible.

It was at the Green Glass where I heard the story of one of Jack Ruby's girls who used to hang there too, I think it was Penny Dollar, though I might have that name wrong. She was a dancer who married a Dallas policeman. Her husband, the cop, said he went out to get some ice cream and returned to find her dead from ingesting some industrial cleaner like drano, a story that I found to be too bizarre to have been made up, though I never checked it out any further.

The last time I was in Dallas I went by there and the Green Glass is gone and it is now strictly a take out liquor store.

BK

Edited February 3, 2011 by William Kelly

[Greg Parker]

Subject: Bledsoe, Texas Of course, you will note my last name from my e-mail, and realize that there is a connection. More than fifteen years ago I completed the Bledsoe family tree, which by most accounts, traces all Bledsoes back to George Bledsoe, who migrated from Birmingham, England, to SW Virginia, in 1655.

From my work I knew of the small town in Texas by the name of Bledsoe. My tree, Levi Bledsoe, is the second generation that also saw Anthony and Isaac move over to Tn. There are many things in Tn. named after the Bledsoes, including Bledsoe County, Bledsoe State Forest, and Bledsoe's Salt Lick, just to name a few. The Texas Bledsoes came out of the Tn. clan, when I do not know. I have spoken with Drew Bledsoe's(NFL QB) father, and I know that his grandfather is a retired admiral and lives in Texas. They came out of the Texas Bledsoes.

Now, the surprise that I got on Sat. was when I started reading a book about the famous Chuck Wagon Gang, and noted in the first chapter that they spent a lot of time in Bledsoe, Texas. In fact, most of the children went to school there. I was in Arizona two years ago visiting in the Sierra Vista area, near the border with Mexico, and decided to visit a bird sanctuary while there, named The Ramsey Canyon Preserve. As I read a flyer that I had picked up regarding the history of the preserve, I noted that the property had been donated by a Dr. Nelson C. Bledsoe, a prominent Tucson surgeon, in 1974. Considering that there are only some 25,000 Bledsoes, the name shows up in lots of places.

Even so, I was totally surprised to see the town of Bledsoe show up in the history of the Carter family, who made up the Chuck Wagon Gang that still exist some 70+ years later. I am guessing that with nine children in that family, that there are descendants still living in Bledsoe, Texas, probably more Carters than Bledsoes. - Otis N. Bledsoe, June 26, 2005

Mary's brother Porter German enlisted into WWI but for unknown reasons was discharged after just 3 months on Dec 9, 1918. Mary had another brother named Ernest who died as a toddler.

Mary's father was a Dr J.W. German.

Unless she lived in Japan, she was in a horticultural group, not a beauty therapy group.

James Richards mentioned at the start of the thread that there was a possible connection between Edwin Walker and an (alleged) member of Mary's family (alleged only because I haven't been able to verify it). I would be amazed if the Our Ladies of the Confederacy were not Walker's numero uno fans. In the DPD assassination files, there is ample evidence of the number of elderly female admirers he had... and I dareso Mary and friends were not heart broken by the assassination.

Forget the Bledsoe document. Why bother wasting time on a fake document?

[Greg Parker]

Subject: Bledsoe, Texas Of course, you will note my last name from my e-mail, and realize that there is a connection. More than fifteen years ago I completed the Bledsoe family tree, which by most accounts, traces all Bledsoes back to George Bledsoe, who migrated from Birmingham, England, to SW Virginia, in 1655.

From my work I knew of the small town in Texas by the name of Bledsoe. My tree, Levi Bledsoe, is the second generation that also saw Anthony and Isaac move over to Tn. There are many things in Tn. named after the Bledsoes, including Bledsoe County, Bledsoe State Forest, and Bledsoe's Salt Lick, just to name a few. The Texas Bledsoes came out of the Tn. clan, when I do not know. I have spoken with Drew Bledsoe's(NFL QB) father, and I know that his grandfather is a retired admiral and lives in Texas. They came out of the Texas Bledsoes.

Now, the surprise that I got on Sat. was when I started reading a book about the famous Chuck Wagon Gang, and noted in the first chapter that they spent a lot of time in Bledsoe, Texas. In fact, most of the children went to school there. I was in Arizona two years ago visiting in the Sierra Vista area, near the border with Mexico, and decided to visit a bird sanctuary while there, named The Ramsey Canyon Preserve. As I read a flyer that I had picked up regarding the history of the preserve, I noted that the property had been donated by a Dr. Nelson C. Bledsoe, a prominent Tucson surgeon, in 1974. Considering that there are only some 25,000 Bledsoes, the name shows up in lots of places.

Even so, I was totally surprised to see the town of Bledsoe show up in the history of the Carter family, who made up the Chuck Wagon Gang that still exist some 70+ years later. I am guessing that with nine children in that family, that there are descendants still living in Bledsoe, Texas, probably more Carters than Bledsoes. - Otis N. Bledsoe, June 26, 2005

Mary's brother Porter German enlisted into WWI but for unknown reasons was discharged after just 3 months on Dec 9, 1918. Mary had another brother named Ernest who died as a toddler.

Mary's father was a Dr J.W. German.

Unless she lived in Japan, she was in a horticultural group, not a beauty therapy group.

James Richards mentioned at the start of the thread that there was a possible connection between Edwin Walker and an (alleged) member of Mary's family (alleged only because I haven't been able to verify it). I would be amazed if the Our Ladies of the Confederacy were not Walker's numero uno fans. In the DPD assassination files, there is ample evidence of the number of elderly female admirers he had... and I daresay Mary and friends were not heart broken by the assassination.

Forget the Bledsoe document. Why bother wasting time on a fake document?

[Duke Lane]

... It was at the Green Glass where I heard the story of one of Jack Ruby's girls who used to hang there too, I think it was Penny Dollar, though I might have that name wrong. She was a dancer who married a Dallas policeman. Her husband, the cop, said he went out to get some ice cream and returned to find her dead from ingesting some industrial cleaner like drano, a story that I found to be too bizarre to have been made up, though I never checked it out any further. ...

I just tripped across this name - Penny Dollar - in the past few days. There was a Commission Document I'd referred to in the "Bus 1213" thread (near what is now the end), and I'm thinking that's where I'd tripped across this interview, as I recall it was.

If my memory serves me on the details, what struck me about this deal is that the woman who was being interviewed said that her daughter went to work as a stripper at one of Ruby's clubs. There was some story about that which I don't recall, but the interesting thing was that this woman said that she, too worked as a stripper for Ruby: mom and daughter in the same line of work for the same guy (but apparently not as a team). Wow.

Ah, here we go: CD86, pp289-91 regarding Mrs. FANNIE BIRCH. Penny Dollar was her daughter Patricia, who was by then married as Patricia Kohs. Fannie (mom) performed only on Friday nights for about two months in 1960 as FRANCINE.

In this report, Fannie tells the interviewing agents that she had "noticed a group of about six or seven men seated at a table and she also noticed these men to have a tattoo design of what she took to be a dagger, located between their thumbs and forefinger" which she took to be a "pachuco mark."

She also told the agents that she believed herself to be a psychic, that she "wasn't surprised" by JFK's assassination or Oswald's murder, and that she was also "undergoing treatment for a nervous condition" under the care of a doctor named in the report (and probably contacted the next day by the agents!), and that she's "required to remain very quiet and does not normally leave her husband except to visit the doctor and an occasional trip to the store."

Ah, the connection and why I was looking at this: the only active-duty police officer she said she knew by name was one Billy Swafford, whom someone else connected (in the "JD Tippit: Was he part of the conspiracy?" thread) to the "estate" guarded by Harry Olsen on 11/22/63 (a tenuous and probably incorrect connection, btw).

[Duke Lane]

Mary's brother Porter German enlisted into WWI but for unknown reasons was discharged after just 3 months on Dec 9, 1918. Mary had another brother named Ernest who died as a toddler.

Mary's father was a Dr J.W. German.

Unless she lived in Japan, she was in a horticultural group, not a beauty therapy group.

James Richards mentioned at the start of the thread that there was a possible connection between Edwin Walker and an (alleged) member of Mary's family (alleged only because I haven't been able to verify it). I would be amazed if the Our Ladies of the Confederacy were not Walker's numero uno fans. In the DPD assassination files, there is ample evidence of the number of elderly female admirers he had... and I daresay Mary and friends were not heart broken by the assassination.

Was the family name "German" or "Germany?" I found both in the Ancestry Rolls of the United Daughters (not "Ladies of") the Confederacy's Texas division.

Forget the Bledsoe document. Why bother wasting time on a fake document?

Because Dave Perry said it was a fake, which means it's not. Or so I gather the logic goes.

[Greg Parker]

Was the family name "German" or "Germany?" I found both in the Ancestry Rolls of the United Daughters

My bad. "Germany" is how it is in the information I've relied upon.

e.g. "GERMANY, PVT. PORTER L., son Dr. and Mrs. J. W. Germany. Enl Sept. 3, 1918; 138th Engineers; trained Ft. Benjamin Harrison, Ind. Disch Dec. 9, 1918."

http://www.rootsweb....xellis/eww1.htm

(not "Ladies of") the Confederacy's Texas division.

Sorry. That inner child again. Was taking the piss out of the way they portray themselves as saintly Southern Belles doing charitable work. Thought I'd give 'em a name more in line with that...

Edited February 4, 2011 by Greg Parker

[Duke Lane]

(not "Ladies of") the Confederacy's Texas division.

Sorry. That inner child again. Was taking the piss out of the way they portray themselves as saintly Southern Belles doing charitable work. Thought I'd give 'em a name more in line with that...

Well, at least you didn't say anything about them being white ...! Goose, gander, all that.

[Greg Parker]

(not "Ladies of") the Confederacy's Texas division.

Sorry. That inner child again. Was taking the piss out of the way they portray themselves as saintly Southern Belles doing charitable work. Thought I'd give 'em a name more in line with that...

Well, at least you didn't say anything about them being white ...! Goose, gander, all that.

They do have black members... courtesy of a couple of court actions forcing it on them... including one daughter of a housekeeper and a certain segregationist senator...

[William Kelly]

... It was at the Green Glass where I heard the story of one of Jack Ruby's girls who used to hang there too, I think it was Penny Dollar, though I might have that name wrong. She was a dancer who married a Dallas policeman. Her husband, the cop, said he went out to get some ice cream and returned to find her dead from ingesting some industrial cleaner like drano, a story that I found to be too bizarre to have been made up, though I never checked it out any further. ...

I just tripped across this name - Penny Dollar - in the past few days. There was a Commission Document I'd referred to in the "Bus 1213" thread (near what is now the end), and I'm thinking that's where I'd tripped across this interview, as I recall it was.

If my memory serves me on the details, what struck me about this deal is that the woman who was being interviewed said that her daughter went to work as a stripper at one of Ruby's clubs. There was some story about that which I don't recall, but the interesting thing was that this woman said that she, too worked as a stripper for Ruby: mom and daughter in the same line of work for the same guy (but apparently not as a team). Wow.

Ah, here we go: CD86, pp289-91 regarding Mrs. FANNIE BIRCH. Penny Dollar was her daughter Patricia, who was by then married as Patricia Kohs. Fannie (mom) performed only on Friday nights for about two months in 1960 as FRANCINE.

In this report, Fannie tells the interviewing agents that she had "noticed a group of about six or seven men seated at a table and she also noticed these men to have a tattoo design of what she took to be a dagger, located between their thumbs and forefinger" which she took to be a "pachuco mark."

She also told the agents that she believed herself to be a psychic, that she "wasn't surprised" by JFK's assassination or Oswald's murder, and that she was also "undergoing treatment for a nervous condition" under the care of a doctor named in the report (and probably contacted the next day by the agents!), and that she's "required to remain very quiet and does not normally leave her husband except to visit the doctor and an occasional trip to the store."

Ah, the connection and why I was looking at this: the only active-duty police officer she said she knew by name was one Billy Swafford, whom someone else connected (in the "JD Tippit: Was he part of the conspiracy?" thread) to the "estate" guarded by Harry Olsen on 11/22/63 (a tenuous and probably incorrect connection, btw).

Yea, that's an interesting doc Duke.

That sounds like the person I was told about at the Green Glass, which was owned by a mother-daughter team too.

That seems to be an honest, insider account of working for Ruby.

Except its hard to imagine Ruby going to a party and sitting down to read a book.

And I agree with you about the Bledsoe police report.

Greg wants to know why bother with something that's fake?

Well, for starters, its a crime to create a false police report, and Perry and those who have investigated it say it was created by three Dallas cops.

Who were they and what were their motives? To embarrase researchers? I don't think so.

It's a very sophisticated and intentional deception that I think is important.

And even if the statute of limitations is over for such a crime, those suspected of creating it can be required to testify under oath and if they lie,

they comit perjury and that's a crime too.

BK