100th Anniversary of World War I

100th Anniversary of World War I

100 years ago today, on April 6, 1917, the United States declared war on Germany.

Like other communities across the country, New Rochelle residents did their part to support the Americans fighting overseas by raising money for liberty bonds, buying War Stamps, mobilizing Red Cross volunteers to make bandages, conserving food and energy, and lending patriotic fervor to boost morale.

Unlike other American municipalities, New Rochelle’s World War I years were unique:

1. Fort Slocum, the country’s largest military recruiting depot east of the Mississippi, was located just off New Rochelle’s shore on Davids Island.
2. New Rochelle was home to a great number of the nation’s leading illustrators, many of whom lent their talent to the earliest, largest propaganda campaign the world had ever experienced.
3. The community’s historic ties to France and our “Mother City” of La Rochelle led to a wartime bond between the two cities, and an enormous war relief effort.

A hard cover book, New Rochelle: Her Part in the Great War, was published by resident Conde B. Pallen, the publisher of the Catholic Encyclopedia, in 1920. It included “historical and biographical sketches of individuals and organizations who rendered valuable service to their country during the great World War.” Two thousand copies were printed before the type was destroyed. Fortunately, a scanned version can be found on-line today. Copies are also available for viewing in the Library’s E.L. Doctorow Local History Room. The book concludes with a listing of New Rochelle men who served in the war and a listing of all those who died in WWI active duty. Scans of those pages can be viewed here. We’ve also included an annotated list of the New Rochelle men and the one woman who died while in active duty, can be found here.

Photographs of many of those who died in active duty are part of the Library’s Local History collection. Forty metal plate photographs of New Rochelle men killed in World War I were first exhibited at the former New Rochelle Public Library, on Main Street and Pintard Avenue, in 1938. The plates were created from professional studio portraits. In some cases, military uniforms were “added.”  In 2010 the Friends of the New Rochelle Public Library provided a grant to have digital reproduction made of the plates, and to have the plates professionally conserved. The digitized images, as well as scanned images of the original studio portraits can be seen here.

Barbara Davis, now City Historian, wrote an article about a unique and highly significant WWI event that occurred in New Rochelle in December, 1918. Click here to read her articles, which appeared in the Standard Star newspaper on December 15 and 22, 1994.

For fun, we thought we’d share a few recipes from the “Women’s Club of New Rochelle War Time Cookbook.”  Liver Balls or Baked Beef Heart, anyone?  A hard copy of the cookbook is part of the Library’s Local History Collection.