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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Silver Spring, Maryland—March 1945. Soon after Van Allen returned from the South Pacific, he pulled up to the intersection of Colesville Road and Georgia Avenue and waited for the traffic light to turn green. Suddenly, he felt a bump. Abigail Fithian Halsey, the driver in the car in front of him, accidentally backed into him when the light changed. Thecontactwasnegligible.NeitherVanAllennorHalseybotheredtocheckfordamage .Hepassedherontheright,andgave her one of those looks—male annoyance at a female driver written all over his face. • • • Their paths quickly crossed again as they checked through security at the Applied Physics Laboratory. “Who do you think you are throwing dirty looks at me?” she called out. Van Allen said nothing and moved on swiftly. But he was completely charmed. “I thought, this was a gal with real spunk. I liked that,” he said, recalling the incident nearly sixty years later. Halsey wasn’t hard to find. She worked at APL as a mathematical analyst. Despite her English literature degree from MountHolyokeCollegeinMassachusetts,shehadagoodhead for math and answered the call when the lab appealed to area colleges for graduates to join the war effort. Overcoming his shyness, Van Allen phoned her several days after their “collision ” to invite her to go bicycle riding the following Sunday. She accepted. Her roommates answered the door when he arrived and tried to get acquainted. Van Allen resolutely burrowed behind a magazine until Abbie appeared. “My roommates thought I was crazy,” Abbie recalled. But Abbie Halsey and James Van Allen fell in love. With war fever still in the air and young couples heading into marriage after only a few month’s acquaintance, Jim quickly proposed. Enter Abigail Fithian Halsey 5 Just as quickly, Abbie said yes. Abigail Halsey grew up in one of America’s oldest families. Thomas Halsey and a group of his Puritan friends fled England and came to America to escape religious persecution in the 1630s. He soon owned 100 acres of land in what became the town of Lynn, near Salem, Massachusetts. Persecution in Europe didn’t teach the Puritans tolerance, however, and their own inquisition and executions during the infamous Salem witch trials convinced Halsey and others to find a new settlement. An advance party reached Long Island near present-day Manhasset in May 1640, but the Dutch garrison arrested them in defense of New Amsterdam and then sent them back home. Halsey came with a second wave that reached the more isolated eastern end of Long Island and established the village of Southampton. The village anchored the first English settlement in New York State. Halsey helped establish a covenant signed by all the founders that “if he sell his farm he shall not divide it but sell it together.” The covenant didn’t stop boundary skirmishes between the Dutch and the New England colonies, however. Native Americans also threatened the new village, and constant raids cost lives on both sides. Halsey’s first wife died in a raid and he later married a woman named Phoebe. They had four children. Halsey was a prominent citizen who owned and farmed more land than anyone in the area, helped archive local court records, and served in the court and as a representative of the regional Connecticut Council. Self-reliant and opinionated, Halsey spoke his mind bluntly and sometimes rudely. “FromthetownrecordsitisplainthatThomasHalseywasnotonlyanactive citizen, but one possessed of independent spirit and a strong will, and not always respectful to his fellow townsmen. He had been well educated and, in accordance with the distinctions of those times, was styled ‘gentleman’ in the records,” wrote his ancestors in their biography of him. They noted that the first recorded instance of his independent spirit was dated March 25, 1643, when he was censured at a town meeting for “irreverent speech” to a magistrate . The house he built on South Main Street still stands, and Jim and Abbie’s daughter Cynthia Van Allen Schaffner, a researcher at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is the curator of the colonial Halsey House. Sevengenerationslater,onthesamestreetonthenorthsideoftown,Henry Halsey applied his trade as a carpenter to build the home at 49 North Main Street. His oldest son, Charles Henry Halsey, took over the house and brought his bride, Melvina Terry Halsey, there. Their children included Harry, Lizbeth, Abigail Fithian (Miss Abbie), and Jesse. Miss Abbie’s niece and namesake, Abigail Fithian Halsey II, was born in the family home on August 9, 1922, while her parents, Helen Isham and Jesse, vacationed there. 68 Enter Abigail Fithian Halsey At the time...

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