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March 14: On this date in 1870, Alfred Van Derwerken was born; he died in 1906 and this monument was placed in his memory.

March 13: Leon Javelli, tightrope walker and mime, was born on this date in 1821; he died in 1854 after eating lobster salad.

March 12: William M. Tweed, the “Boss,” died in this date in 1878 at the Ludlow Street Jail, where he was being held on a civil judgment arising from his massive theft of public funds.

March 11: The Great Blizzard of 1888 hit New York City on this date; Henry Bergh, the founder of the ASPCA, the first humane organization in the Americas, was already ill, but when a doctor was summoned he could not reach Bergh because the roads were impassable; Bergh died the next day.

March 10: On this date in 1915, Charles Schieren, who had served as mayor of the City of Brooklyn, died. On the next day, his wife Mary, who had been nursing him, also died. A bronze sculpture, by Solon Borglum, “The Angel of Death,” was erected at their graves.

March 9: Do-Hum-Me, daughter of a chief of the Sac tribe, became the toast of New York City but was soon struck down by disease and died on this date in 1843. P.T. Barnum paid for her gravestone.

March 8: “The Great Divine,” Rev. Henry Ward Beecher of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights, who, according the the Pulitizer Prize-winning biography had been “The Most Famous Man in America” only to be diminished by scandal, died on this date in 1887.

March 7: Susan Smith McKinney-Steward, who was the first black woman to be licensed as a doctor in New York State, died on this date in 1918.

March 6: On this date in 1957, fire destroyed Louis Comfort Tiffany‘s magnificent mansion, Laurelton Hall, in Oyster Bay on Long Island; much of his art there was destroyed, but a good deal of it was salvaged.

March 5: The “Mad Poet,” McDonald Clarke, died in his jail cell on this date in 1842 by drinking water until he drowned.