An Esperantist President in Washington

Big man in the Esperanto movement

Despite Edwin C. Reed’s fairly central role in the U.S. Esperanto movement of the early twentieth century, there is no entry for him in the Esperanto-language Wikipedia, even though there is one for his wife, Ivy Kellerman-Reed. In a way, they seem to be Esperanto’s first power couple, she being a writer, editor, translator, and teacher, and he being guy who organized things. Organizing things can be less enduring; even if you put your stamp on an organization, organizations can quickly go from vibrant to nonexistent. While Dr. Kellerman-Reed’s books can still be found on bookshelves, her husband’s organizations are all now defunct.

Reed (and throughout, I’m going to distinguish them by referring to him as Reed and her as Kellerman-Reed) was the first secretary of the Esperanto Association of North America, but as the role of president seemed to be largely ceremonial, the actual administrative duties fell to the secretary. This probably hampered the organization’s ability to capitalize on its early growth, since it the actual presidents weren’t the slightest bit interested in being strong leaders, and the first two (while Reed was secretary) weren’t even Esperanto speakers. From about 1909 through 1913, Edwin C. Reed was pretty much the central figure in the U.S. Esperanto movement.

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Esperantist Couple Studied Law Together

That second period after "Mrs." isn't the only mistake

To anyone who has sweated their way to a law degree, it might be galling, that Edwin C. Reed and Ivy Kellerman-Reed took up law school as a recreation, obtaining their law degrees simultaneously on May 28, 1913. It would seem that after the end of the 1910 Universala Kongreso, and many months to come before their only child was conceived, they needed something to fill up the time. So they studied at the Washington College of Law.

In a way, the Reeds were the American Esperanto movement’s power couple. She was a noted linguist, and the author of one of the first American textbooks on Esperanto, A Complete Grammar of Esperanto (despite the title, it’s a textbook, not an analysis of the usage patterns of Esperanto), and an editor of Amerika Esperantisto. He was the secretary of the Esperanto Association for North America, but as the presidency was pretty much an ceremonial position during the first four years of the organization (during the presidencies of George Harvey and John Barrett), the secretary was responsible for the day-to-day operation of the EANA.

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The North American Review Abandons Esperanto

All the way to the wilds of Hoboken

The timing should have raised some alarm, but if it did, that alarm was not raised to any great volume. On May 27, 1908, the Pacific Commercial Advertiser of Honolulu, Hawaii, had noticed that Esperanto had come to an end in the North American Review. With the first United States Esperanto congress coming later that year, wasn’t this a cause for concern?

Let’s consider the timeline here.
1. March 16, 1905 The American Esperanto Association is founded in Boston.
2. November 1906 The North American Review starts promoting Esperanto.
3. May 1908 The North American Review stopped its support of Esperanto (according, at least to the Pacific Commercial Advertiser).
4. July 19, 1908 The first North American Congress begins.
3. July 22, 1908 George Harvey is asked to be president of the new Esperanto Association of North America.

Why did they do that? Admittedly, although volume 187 of the North American Review (January to June, 1908) has no reference to Esperanto, there are plenty of references to Esperanto in the succeeding volumes (188–191, and others), and in part, the set of lessons that the magazine published had come to an end. Imagine your position if you’re a subscriber who wasn’t particularly interested in the Esperanto lessons (say an ardent Volapükian). How are you going to feel if they started the whole thing up again? Or if you got to the end of the lessons (and had joined the Esperanto Society). Did you need them again?

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The Other Kellerman

Karl F. Kellerman
Biologist and Esperantist

In his day, Edwin C. Reed was probably the busiest person in the United States Esperanto movement. Sure, in their turns George Harvey and John Barrett were president (first and second) of the Esperanto Association of North America, but during their tenures, Mr. Reed was the general secretary, the person who actually took care of EANA business. Let’s face it, Mr. Harvey and Mr. Barrett were titular presidents, hampered by their actual lack of commitment to the Esperanto movement.

At the same time, Mr. Reed’s wife, Dr. Ivy Kellerman-Reed[1] was the editor of Amerika Esperantisto, taking over those duties from the magazine’s founder, Arthur Baker, and making it wholly a magazine of the EANA.[2] But the Evening Star made clear that there was a Kellerman at the head of the District Federation of Esperantists. But not a Kellerman-Reed.

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Which Miss Fernald Spoke Esperanto?

The press didn't actually review the play/

I don’t usually start these off with questions, although in this case I think I’m safely away from being clickbait[1] It’s a real (and, based on the resources on hand) unanswered question. In Washington, D.C. in 1911, there were two unmarried women names Frances Fernald, one a teacher, the other a clerk at the War Department. Which of these two spoke Esperanto?

At least one of them did. We know this because one Miss Frances Fernald got her name in the papers on February 7, 1911 concerning a play that she and her friends put on at the Washington, D.C. YWCA. The play was in Esperanto, which leads to the question of how many people in the audience of the play understood the play. (I suppose it also raises the question of how many were in attendance at the play, although in the years around 1910, there was a fairly large amount of Esperanto activity in Washington, D.C.)

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Esperanto’s Femme Fatale

La danĝera virino

On January 24, 1910, the Washington Evening Star made reference to an attempt to push Edwin C. Reed from his position as the secretary of the Esperanto Association of North America. There had been no earlier articles in the Star, which brought the crisis in medias res, not telling what the issue at hand was. Two days later, we find out, but not from the Star.

Esperanto was a hot topic in the Washington papers of 1910, perhaps because the Universala Kongreso was coming to the city, or perhaps because that’s where the headquarters of the fledgling EANA were located at the time. Just to give an indication, the site Chronicling America has 236 hits for “Esperanto” in the D.C. newspapers for 1910 (that comprises the Evening Star, National Forum, National Tribune, Washington Herald, and Washington Times). I have to go elsewhere to see what they were saying in the Washington Post. If you were an Esperantist in 1910 Washington, your newspaper choices would be the Herald or the Times, both of which gave fairly extensive coverage of the EANA.

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Trouble for Reed in Esperanto-Land

Sinjoro Reed,
grava Esperantisto

While John Barrett may have been the titular head of the Esperanto movement in the United States, his greatest contribution seems to have been that he had Arnold Christen lecture his staff (on a Saturday!) about Esperanto. The actual day-to-day activities of the movement were handled by Edwin C. Reed, whose official position was that of secretary of the Esperanto Association of North America. You couldn’t really expect John Barrett to do these things; after all he was too busy to even learn Esperanto![1]

Judging from an article in the January 24, 1910 Washington Evening Star, there was a moment when Mr. Reed’s position as secretary seemed to be at risk, even though he had been the only person to have held the job, since he had taken the post at the founding of EANA. Prior to the founding of EANA, he had been on the board of the American Esperanto Association, the short-lived predecessor, which was described in Amerika Esperantisto as “not considered adequate or sufficiently democratic in its organization.”

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