"Names make news." Last week the following names made the following news:

There is a Rockefeller Family Association. It was founded in 1905, when John Davison Rockefeller's name was large in the news as charitarian and anathema* Then 110 less-known Rockefellers gathered at Germantown, N. Y., laid the foundation. Their purposes: "Fellowship . . . acquaintances . . . assisting children of Rockefeller descendants to obtain an education . . . by making them loans of money . . . without interest." Initiation fee was $2, annual dues $2. More recently they have published the R. F. A. News, an eight-page quarterly which runs gossip on Rockefellers; family genealogy and such information as: "This name [Rockefeller] was chosen after the name of their chateau [at Creyssels, France], which was called Roca-folio. . . . The greater part . . . of the rocks of Creyssels . . . were found to be of petrified leaves." Many issues of the News carry articles about the Rockefeller Foundation, John Davison's educational stimulant. To the Family Association's educational fund John Davison has given nothing but his dues.

John Davison joined early but never attends meetings. He has sent busses to convey one district of R. F. A. membership to a picnic on his Pocantico Hills estate, absenting himself the while. Last year, when twelve persons qualified for a badge signifying 25 years of membership, John Davison, who has paid his dues several years in advance, was sent a special Rockefeller coat-of-arms (leaves, rocks, horns of plenty quartered) signifying the sole life-membership in R. F. A.

The Association has prospered, has had to be divided into nine districts across the land. Each year each district holds a picnic; each year the national organization holds a dinner in a Manhattan hotel. These are not apt to be attended by such members as Mrs. Edith Rockefeller McCormick, Mrs. David Hunter McAlpin or Percy Avery Rockefeller. More likely to be present are Professor William Henry A. Rockefeller, music teacher of Newark, N. J.; Albert Rockefeller, 45, operator of the Boston Shoe Repair Shop on Academy st., Poughkeepsie, N. Y.; Traveling Auditor George C. Rockefeller of United Engineers & Constructors, Inc.

Last week the Greater New York district R. F. A. held its picnic in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, N. Y. It was an overcast, showery day. Few attended besides the organizing committee and the family of grey-mustached, bespectacled Dr. Henry Oscar Rockefeller, national president of the R. F. A. Perhaps because of the weather, there was no hilarity. The picnic at Troy, N. Y. last year heard Grace F. Rockefeller speak on "Rockefellers in the Battle of Saratoga." The fourth district (New Jersey) often listens to an entire family of Rockefeller musicians. Sample game played in the second district: "We . . . formed two lines facing each other. With the outer covers of two penny matchboxes decorating the noses of the two leaders, we started on a relay race. The box was relayed from nose to nose the length of the line."

Next national meeting of the Rockefeller Family Association: at Hotel Lincoln, Manhattan, Nov. 14.

Suit was brought in London against Mrs. Alfred Noyes, wife of the poet, by a Mrs. Lillian Westby, who wanted $4,160 for her services in bidding up a rare manuscript, the Bedford Book of Hours, then owned by Mrs. Noyes, in an auction in July, 1929, against an agent for John Pierpont Morgan. The Morgan agent finally bought the manuscript for $165,000. Mrs. Noyes testified that Mrs. Westby simply had acted upon her suggestion that someone start the bidding, that no fee had been stipulated.

Mariposa, after California's Mariposa County, locale of Forty-niners' gold scrambles, was the name given first of three liners ordered by Matson Navigation Co. from Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp. at Quincy, Mass. Christened with a bottle of water from Sydney Harbor, Australia, terminus of her run from San Francisco, the Mariposa was launched by Mrs. Wallace Alexander, wife of Matson Line's vice president.

At the imminent marriage in Bucharest of Princess Ileana of Rumania and Prince Anton von Habsburg, the bride's sister-in-law, Queen Helen of Rumania would be obliged to 1) appear with her eccentric, unfaithful husband King Carol, or 2) hide away. Last week she avoided both embarrassments by going to the home of her mother, onetime Dowager Queen Sophie of Greece, at Ascot, England. In October she will return to Bucharest for her son, Prince Mihai's tenth birthday.

*See Marcus Monroe Brown's Rockefeller in Education & Religion, 1905 (charitarian); Ida Minerva Tarbell's The History of Standard Oil, 1904 (anathema).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.