The OHIO
HISTORICAL Quarterly
VOLUME 64 ?? NUMBER 1 ?? JANUARY 1955
The Correspondence of George A.
Myers
and James Ford Rhodes, 1910-1923
Edited by JOHN A. GARRATY*
In the eighteen eighties, when James
Ford Rhodes was still a
Cleveland ironmaster, he was in the
habit of being shaved and
having his formidable "Picadilly
Weepers" trimmed by a young
Negro barber named George A. Myers.
Later, after Rhodes had
retired from business to take up his
distinguished career as a his-
torian, Myers continued to serve him,
and gradually took on the
task of bringing Rhodes the books
necessary for his work from the
library of the Case School of Applied
Science. "Me and my partner
Jim are writing a history," Myers
once told a mutual friend who
had inquired about an armload of books
the barber was carrying.
"Jim is doing the light work and I
am doing the heavy."
In 1891 Rhodes moved East to Cambridge
and Boston. Myers, by
that time owner of the Hollenden Hotel
Barber Shop, went on to
become a power in Negro Republican
politics in Ohio. But
the two did not forget each other, and
an occasional correspondence
(now lost) continued for some years.
Every six months or so
Rhodes made a practice of sending his
friend a selection of his old
ties, which Myers refurbished with a
combination of "energine and
elbow grease" and put to his own
use.
But beginning in 1910 and especially
after 1912 the pace of their
correspondence quickened and obviously
became more important to
both, for each began, quite
independently, to save most of the other's
* John A. Garraty is associate professor
of history at Michigan State College. He has
recently written a life of Henry Cabot
Lodge, a contemporary of Rhodes.
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