The Matsudaira Brothers: Diverging Paths After Rutgers

Host Family's House

While living in New Brunswick and attending Rutgers College, the Matsudaira brothers stayed with a host family on Albany Street, just a few blocks away from the main campus of the college. Here, they were able to learn more about American culture and understand familial and community traditions. The brothers could celebrate American holidays with a family, and had temporary parental figures to guide them through this massive transitional period of their lives.

Rutger's College

Old Queen’s is the original campus at Rutgers, where Tadanari would have studied after his studies at the preparatory school; Tadanari learned many useful skills and lots of knowledge which he would bring back to Japan. A gifted student, he was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa honor society, graduating in 1879. Tadaatsu, unlike his younger brother,  did not earn a degree from Queen’s College. Instead, he transferred to Harvard in Boston, MA to continue the pursuit of knowledge in the field of civil engineering. This divide created not just physical distance between the brothers, but distance within their sibling relationship as well. Tadaatsu was disobeying orders by staying in America, while Tadanari honored his mission and was determined to accomplish his goal of bringing back Western knowledge having help.

Prof Murray's House

Professor Murray’s house was frequented not only by the Matsudaira brothers, but also the larger Rutgers Japanese student body as a place where they could both learn and relax among the peerage of one of the brightest professors at Rutgers. Murray was responsible for overseeing the Rutgers scientificcurriculum, which was the curriculum of most interest to the Matsudaira brothers, as well as the other Japanese students, as Tadanari graduated with a degree from that curriculum, as evidenced by Rutgers records in the Griffis Collection, and Tadaatsu eventually transferred to Harvard to study engineering, where a scientific background would no doubt be useful. Prof. Murray also learned a lot about Japanese culture and society from the students at his house, and this in no small part resulted in his appointment as the superintendent at the newly established Ministry of Education in Japan.

Sampson & Morgan Bookstore

The Sampson & Morgan Book Store is the local New Brunswick bookstore that Matsudaira Tadaatsu frequented. While staying in America after attending Rutgers College, Tadaatsu married Carrie Sampson, the daughter of the bookstore owner, William Sampson. This bookstore acted as a gateway to allow the Japanese students studying in New Brunswick to read and learn from English texts about culture, literature, and history. Being only one of four bookstores in the city, Sampson’s is where American and Japanese Rutgers students alike came to buy their textbooks and leisure books. The bookstore itself is located right off the street that many of the Japanese students’ host family’s houses were on, making it an exceedingly convenient bookstore for any and all literary needs they may have had.

Ueda

A Japanese castle located in Ueda, northern Nagano Prefecture, Japan. The Ueda domain ruled the area surrounding Ueda, a small prefecture in Shinano Province (currently Ueda City, Nagano Prefecture) during the Edo period. Tadanari was the last daimyo of the Ueda domain. In 1879, Tadanari returned to Japan from the US, and from 1880 he worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Investigation Bureau. As a viscount (elected by the Peerage Order in 188), Tadanori was elected to the House of Peers at the first Imperial Diet in 1890. His education from Rutgers enabled him to return to high-ranking government positions with the disassembly of the domain to a prefecture. He died on March 19, 1895, at the age of 46.

Harvard

After Tadaatsu's stint at the Rutgers Preparatory School, he went on to study civil engineering at Harvard University in 1875.  While at Harvard, Tadaatsu received word from Tadanari, now the head of the Ueda clan, to return to Japan in order to assume a political position. Having already married an American commoner, Carrie Sampson, and allegedly divorcing his wife in Japan in doing so, Tadaatsu was already embroiled in scandal, and decided to remain in the United States with his wife, rejecting his brother's request to return. Tadanari then disinherited Tadaatsu from the clan for what he considered insolent behavior, and thus Tadaatsu would need to settle down in the United States on his own terms, without aid from his family. Not much else is known about Tadaatsu's experiences while studying at Harvard; he graduated in 1877.

Bradford, Pennsylvania

After having been disowned and removed from his family's inheritance during his studies at Harvard, Tadaatsu found work across the tri-state area, notably working on the Brooklyn Bridge, before eventually settling down in Bradford, Pennsylvania. Whilst in Bradford, Tadaatsu became the first Japanese person to hold an elected office as he was elected to the position of city engineer. Aside from his career, Tadaatsu became famous for another of his pursuits. Tadaatsu was known throughout the city for his excellent skill in making holiday cards, so much so that newspapers wrote articles about how beautiful his cards were, and that people should go to his house to see the brilliant display of art he had out for show. As such, while in Bradford, Tadaatsu seems to have been proficient in both the sciences and the arts. However, it was also in Bradford where Tadaatsu likely contracted and was diagnosed with tuberculosis, which forced him to move to the west of country.

Denver, Colorado

Denver was where Tadaatsu finally settled down after being diagnosed with tuberculosis, with the expectation that the dry country air would soothe his condition and prolong his life. Additionally, his father-in-law, William Sampson, already had a presence in Colorado since he was the superintendent of the state reform school in the city of Golden. His moving to Denver marked him being the first Japanese person to live in the city, and his presence would mark the beginning of a large Japanese community in Colorado. While in Denver, Tadaatsu continued his engineering career through working at the Colorado State Engineer’s Office where he was responsible for overseeing the inspections of the state’s mining operations. This occupation wouldunfortunately be his last as he died in 1888, likely from complications resulting from his tuberculosis. He was survived by his wife and two children, who moved to Maryland after his death. Interestingly, Tadaatsu’s son Kinjiro became the first Japanese-American to hold political office as the Mayor of Edmonton in Maryland.