The Diary of Patty Rogers

With wedding season upon us, and love and relationships at the forefront of many minds this time of the year, it’s fun to wonder what courting, love, and relationships were like, and how they’ve evolved over the past couple hundred years.  We all have ideas in our minds,  probably placed there through novels and films.  I know my stereotypical view of  love in the 18th and 19th century always looks like a Jane Austen novel, and is either overly formal or overly dramatic.

The diary of Martha “Patty” Rogers, in AAS’s manuscript collection, proves to be an interesting look at love, and life, in the late 18th century.  Patty’s diary is unlike many diaries of the time, with their simple recordings of the weather and the day’s activities.  Patty did not hold back her emotions, and wrote extensively about her daily life, and included all the wonderful details that help make life back then much more relatable to us today.

I’ve transcribed one of my favorite entries from Patty regarding love below.  On Saturday, March 19th, 1785, Patty ran into an ex, “Portius,” whom she appeared to still have feelings for –

I with trembling hand [?] to meet him – he with an eye of pity, gave me an expansive look – A look of soft intelligence which indicated a wish to know how I had been this month – this cruel month, that has passed, since I saw him – my eyes eagerly met his and betrayed the tenderness I felt at seeing him. – I seated myself but turned pale and faint…I could not bear to see him without emotions, whose lovely person once (not to say now) was the whole object of my affection – but be silent he is anothers…He is my friend, and I’ll be content.

Quite beautifully written, the true emotion and pain of encountering an ex, especially one who still has a hold on her heart, comes through in Patty’s writing.  And how familiar is this scenario to us today?  Almost anyone can relate to the feelings Patty is conveying, and this is what really brings Patty into the present, and what helps us see how little has changed over the centuries.

The courtship process may have been different, perhaps more formal, more reserved, but the feelings people had for one another, and the emotions brought upon by relationships – the excitement, the pain, the passion, the joy – all remain the same.  Ah, love is (and always has been) a splendid thing.

If you’re interested in learning more about Martha “Patty” Rogers, there are additional resources at AAS, aside from her diary, that shed light on her life.  Linda Kerber features Patty and her diary in her book, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (link to catalog record.)  Also, it is believed that Patty may have been the model for the character of Dorcasina Sheldon in Tabitha Tenney’s novel Female Quixotism (link to catalog record), written in 1801.  Finally, you can learn more about Patty and her family through the Roger’s Family Papers (link to catalog record.)  This collection features not only Patty’s diary, but the diary of her father, Daniel Rogers, as well as family correspondence.

City Living, or “One Vast Masquerade Entertainment”

It must have been personal interest that drew my eye to this one item on the shelf, “The Temptations of City Life: A Voice to Young Men Seeking a Home and Fortune, in Large Towns and Cities,”  Tracts for the Cities — No. 3 (New York, 1849) [AAS online catalog record].  While I am not a young man seeking a home and fortune, my husband and I are currently debating purchasing a home in the Worcester area.  I am firmly on the side of city living.  He, however, is advocating for a rural retreat.  The conversation goes something like this:

Me: “Look at this one — it’s perfect!”

Him [glancing at the computer screen before quickly turning away]: “There’s no yard.  Your neighbors are going to be looking right in your windows.”

Me: “But we would be able to walk to the grocery store and to work and to the museum.”

Personally, I have come to love the arts and culture available in Worcester.  We have wonderful restaurants and vibrant events like stART on the street.  We have beautiful Elm Park, a world-class art museum, and a similarly world-class historical research library for the study of early America (if I do say so myself).   But enough Worcester boosterism.

These are the factors I find most tempting about city life.  What were considered the urban temptations 150 years ago?

A Night on the Town

Worcester is no New York City (and NYC is always “the city” in these type of tracts), but the author of this pamphlet assures his readers that his description can be more widely applied to other large towns and cities.  While I turn to Worcester Magazine or Worcester Living to make my plans for weekend events in the city, this tract describes a similar start to the evening for a typical young clerk in the city in 1849:

“After his evening meal, he may read the following, or some similar advertisement in the paper: ‘Citizens and strangers wishing to spend an hour comfortably, in a quiet and beautifully-furnished retreat, where the best of liquors, wines, and segars [sic], are offered, and where they can have access to all the papers of the day, besides the English and American pictorials, are respectfully solicited to drop in at No. _, _ street.'”

To find out what a real young clerk did with his city evenings in 1849, you can read our Clerk and the City blog which contains the daily diary entries of a clerk in Philadelphia named Nathan Beekley (you can also follow Nathan, or The Iron Clerk, as he is known on Twitter).  According to the tract “The Temptations of City Life,” this is what a young clerk like Nathan would have found to tempt him on the streets of a city like New York or Philadelphia:

“On almost every corner, some saloon brilliantly lighted, opens its attractive portals. It is furnished on a scale of the richest luxury, with splendid mirrors, costly divans, easy lounges, and tables covered with late journals and pictorial works. Paintings of great artistic merit, arranged on the walls, and exhibiting the nude and seductive forms of female beauty, appeal to the ardent passions of youth; and corresponding music in sweetest strains steals upon his senses. Often, to add to the attractions of these places, varying entertainments, of the buffoon, danseuse, and the ballad-singer, are furnished. Captivated by such scenes, unsuspecting youth repeats his visits, finds other similar resorts, and finally is in the habit of being abroad every night, and is found at his boarding-house only for his meals and late lodgings. He visits all the distinguished saloons, refectories, bowling-alleys, theatres, gambling-hells, and other abodes of affiliated infamy.”

One can almost hear the jolly ballads, smell the wafting aromas, and see the bright light all spilling out onto the city streets as each of these temptations is described in full sensual detail.  Later, the tract goes on to describe the necessary components for a night out on the town.

  • Food for the “besotted epicure”:

“Undue relish for the luxuries of the table is catered to by the productions of all climes served upon the most approved methods of the culinary art, and at all hours of the night and day. “Restaurants,” “cafes,” refectories,” and “oyster-saloons,” in every grade of meanness or respectability and splendor, are found on almost every corner of the streets… At length he becomes a miserable dyspeptic, a besotted epicure, and is devoted to all sensual excesses.”

  • Drink in “porticoes of perdition”:

“Appetite for ardent spirits is appealed to from scores of splendid saloons and low porter-houses. The devote of the cup has no trouble, as in the country, to keep his sideboard supplied with the choicest liquors. They are sold in a hundred places within as many rods, and he can, by turning a comer, or walking a few blocks, replenish his stores or obtain a single glass. These places, made attractive by fine paintings, music, and diversified entertainments of wit, and song, and dance, have introduced so many upon the broad road to ruin, that they are recognised as the porticoes of perdition.”

  • Entertainments for “another class of passions”:

“Hundreds of abodes of infamy are opened throughout the city, appealing to another class of passions; their hired emissaries are abroad in the city and country, to decoy the unwary and the friendless. Directories and cards are secretly distributed in offices, places of business, and to strangers as they reach the city. Placards along the streets, and advertisements in the journals, assure the passionate and adventurous youth that crime and villany may be pursued at reduced hazards. And fascinating but fallen women wait at the corners of the streets, and with honeyed words make the overtures of damning sin.”

All the earlier places of vice lead up to the last one, that number-one worry of the tract’s author and nineteenth-century mothers everywhere: the brothel.  It represented the ultimate extension of what was perceived of as the primary danger of the city, and its sharpest contrast from rural life: the anonymity its streets offered. Anonymity could allow one to slip into sin among “the dark mazes and perilous labyrinths of a modern Sodom.”  The city tract describes the unique character of a city thus:

“In its disguised activity, gayety, and unrestrained license, a city is one vast masquerade entertainment. Through its spacious avenues, gardens, and parks — its splendid saloons and halls of amusement — thronging multitudes pass and repass, unknowing and unknown, like those in the gay dance; and often the attitudes, airs, and looks assumed, exhibit a degree of wantonness, or want of circumspection, that are preliminary to, and abet every course of vice.”

Yet, if you leave out the wantonness and vice, does this description really sound that bad?  Or, to put it another way, does it sound likely to dissuade a young man?  While this tract is ostensibly directed at encouraging young men in particular not to leave the safe influences of their families and rural homes, the evocative language must have produced the opposite effect on at least some of his original audience.

Arguments like those presented in this city tract certainly didn’t deter the real life clerk, Nathan Beekley, mentioned above.  His diary in AAS’s collections [AAS online catalog record] describes his first year living in Philadelphia.  It shows he sampled a wide variety of entertainments on offer, but also the same names of companions consistently appear.  This seems to indicate that, in actual experience, the anonymity of the city was less absolute than the city tract would lead us to believe.  (Of course, Beekley was in Philadelphia, a city whose population in 1850 (121,000) was closer to the population of Worcester in 2010 (183,000) than it was to New York in 1850 (696,000), according to the federal census records.)

The question of whether the cultural attractions and convenience of living in a crowded city outweighed its dangers and hassles appears to be a perennial one, although the changing cultural perceptions of what those crowds mean is historically interesting.  As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, my husband’s main complaint about the city today is that you’re so close to your neighbors that people will be looking in on you.  Ironically, when “The Temptations of City Life” was written in 1849, the population density of the city was seen as a problem for the exact opposite reason: the anonymity of the crowded streets and the separation from your family of birth was understood to mean that people would not be “looking in on you” to keep you honest and virtuous. The same fact, population density, was deployed to represent opposite ideas (although both were presented as arguments against city living).

On the positive side, if the city is “one vast masquerade entertainment,” it means you’ll never get bored. The 1849 city tract declares, “Entrance upon city life is not merely one great change, but an introduction to a perpetual succession of changes.”  Perhaps this is true not only for individuals coming to the city, but also for our cities themselves.

And isn’t the ever-present possibility of change and renewal a great argument for city living?  At least I’ll try to convince my husband it is.

Lee Pardon Aldrich and the Trial of Daniel Sickles

In February of 1859, a scandalous event shook Washington D.C., involving two prominent politicians, betrayal and murder most foul.  How intriguing!

Hon. Daniel E. Sickles, Congressman from New York, shot and killed Philip Barton Key, U.S. District Attorney (and also, interestingly enough, son of famed composer Francis Scott Key), after discovering an affair between Key and his wife.  The murder took place in the middle of the afternoon on Pennsylvania Avenue, in clear view of the White House.  Sickles was tried for murder and was found not guilty.  Sickles’ trial was the first to successfully use the plea of temporary insanity.  Who could convict a man with a broken heart?  Apparently not a jury in 1859.

That same year, a carpenter and builder from Worcester, Massachusetts, was briefly transplanted to Washington D.C., and devoted himself to keeping a daily journal of his experience in the city.  Lee Pardon Aldrich did just that, recording daily the weather, his health, and the goings on of Washington D.C. religiously from January 1st, 1859 through June 7th, 1859.  His diary [link to online record] can be found in AAS’s manuscript collection.

While looking through Aldrich’s diary, his entry for February 28th, 1859, caught my eye-

Monday has been quite a great day for Washington the shooting affair last evening was the most wicked a thing that was now done in Washington for some time.  Mr. Key was shot near the Pres. House by a member of the House of Representatives from the State of New York.

My interest piqued, I looked into this shooting affair and found all the details in Felix G. Fontaine’s report, The Trial of Hon. Daniel E. Sickles, for the Murder of Philip Barton Key, for the Seduction of His Wife, Sunday, Feb. 27th, 1859 [link to online record].  This record of the murder and ensuing trial, published the same year as the trial itself, tells us Sickles was found not guilty thanks to the “…defenses of justification of homicide in consequence of provocation, and of insanity.”

While Aldrich’s entries are short and not elaborate, as was the style of many diaries and journals of the day, it is interesting to trace the trial through his entries.  We can see how the public was reacting to the trial through his entry of March 7th, 1859:

I have heard about the court met this morning but adjourned until tomorrow at 10 oclock then Mr. Sickles will be tried for shooting Mr. Key on Sunday of last at corner of Pa and 16th Street about two and half oclock it has made a great  talk in all kinds of society in Washington.

Apparently the trial was the talk of the town.  Aldrich also fills us in on what people were saying in his entry from April 9th, 1859:

Great excitement at the City Hall the case of Mr. Sickles takes up all of every mans time of talking this thing and that thing some think he deserves to be hung for his murder.

Well, Mr. Sickles was not hung, nor found guilty, as Aldrich reports on April 26th, 1859:

Mr. Sickles was discharged this afternoon of not guilty the noises in the court was great when the jury said to the court he was not guilty.

Whether these were noises of pleasure or displeasure, I suppose we’ll never know.  Although, according to Fontaine’s report, after being declared not guilty, Sickles was released from custody “amid the cheers of the audience…”  But what is the reliability and possible bias of this resource?  Again, we may never know.  Even though Aldrich’s diary can’t be considered cold hard facts necessarily, it gives us an interesting take on an historic event seen from an ordinary person’s perspective.

I’ll leave you with my favorite entry, from April 10th, 1859, which sheds light on what I like to interpret as Aldrich’s sarcastic sense of humor.  It is the sense of a person we can discover through diaries, along with a loose interpretation of history, which makes diaries such fun resources!

I have not been out this day any to speak about I think it best to keep at home then I shall be safe and not get shot before I know it.

A History of Books

Purely physical love for a book can sometimes be a book’s worst enemy.  By fingering the books, prints, manuscripts, and newspapers in AAS collections, each reader and researcher contributes to the slow death of our materials.  In his novel In the Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco writes that the saliva and dust left behind by such readers cause pages to lose their “vigor.”  He writes:

“As an excess of sweetness makes the warrior flaccid and inept, this excess of possessive and curious love would make the book vulnerable to the disease destined to kill it.”

Click on the image above to read what William Dean Howells wrote to Mrs. Earle in his “Literary Friends and Acquaintance”

Thankfully, not every reader can lay claim to having owned and left a truly personal mark on an AAS book.

Charles L. Nichols, a Worcester physician and president of AAS from 1917 until his death in 1929, sought to document just one kind of personal mark on AAS books: the autograph.  During the year following a 1922 report to the council on some of the great “association libraries” at AAS, including those of Isaiah Thomas, the Mathers, and Alice Morse Earle, Nichols documented the vast number of inscriptions in AAS association copies.  His research resulted in a 1,500 card catalog file listing 598 names in pre-1800 AAS books.  With the help of Tom Knoles, the Marcus A. McCorison Librarian, I was able to locate this file and compare the cards with Nichols’s notes for the project.

While most of the association copies remaining in AAS collections have been cataloged in the AAS online catalog, Nichols’s notes and writings still have relevance for the researcher studying association copies at AAS. Nichols’s notes are housed in AAS manuscripts [catalog record], and reveal the mind of a book-lover trying to make sense of early libraries and their owners, with lists of “curiosities,” “books of interest for a paper on AAS library + its autographs,” and “Mather library in AAS.” In the 1924 AAS Proceedings, Nichols states:

“These autographs and inscriptions reveal friendships, verify dates and localities, and bring to mind many interesting details of the lives and interests of the owners.”

Most especially significant, Nichols says, the Mather Family Library inscriptions reveal the “passage of…books from father to son through several generations.”

Through democratizing digital initiatives such as Readex’s Archive of Americana, EBSCO’s AAS Historical Periodicals Collection, and Gale’s Sabin Americana, AAS has made treasures from its archives readily available to students and scholars alike—while protecting and preserving the original documents.  But personal interactions with AAS books remain possible for those who visit the AAS reading room, with clean hands and a pencil, of course.

Further Information:

The webpage for The Jay Fliegelman Library of Association Copies at Stanford University is still under construction.  Fliegelman, past AAS Mellon Distinguished Scholar in Residence, was working on a history of association copies before his untimely death in 2007.

The Acquisitions Table: Sophia Morgan’s Poetry Journal

Morgan, Sophia.  Poetry Journal, 1824-1827.

This small volume belonged to Sophia Morgan of Somers, CT. It is a collection of poems, both original and copied, entered into the volume by Morgan’s friends and relatives. Among the titles are “Withered Violets,” “Friendship,” “Time is Short,” and “Contentment.”

Purchased from Shelf Life Antiques.  John Thomas Lee Fund.

Join us tomorrow for: The Legacy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Please join us tomorrow evening, Tuesday, May 24th, at 7:30 p.m. for “Igniting the War: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Antislavery Politics, and the Rise of Lincoln.” Dr. David S. Reynolds, Distinguished Professor of English and American Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, will draw on materials from his forthcoming book, Mightier Than the Sword: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Battle for America (to be released in June 2011, but will be available for sale at tomorrow night’s program!). Further information and directions are available online here.

Describing why he pursued this project, Reynolds commented:

“I chose to write about a book about Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin because I felt the full story about this landmark novel–its roots, its impact on the Civil War, and its long-term influence–had never been told. My book shows that this novel had an influence on American race relations and on progressive movements abroad unmatched by any other work of imaginative literature. Also, the novel’s influence on many aspects of culture–theater, music, films, advertising, and mass merchandising–is immense.”

AAS collections offer insight into the “long-term influence” of Uncle Tom’s Cabin that Reynolds explores in Mightier Than the Sword. Of course, the Society owns numerous copies of nineteenth-century editions of the novel printed in English. But readers can also call for copies of Uncle Tom’s Cabin published in Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish, and Welsh. Thanks to the generous gift of James F. O’Gorman in 2009, the Society also owns a variety of twentieth-century editions of Stowe’s work. In addition to an extensive collection of books, the Graphic Arts department houses lithographs that depict scenes from the book, playbills that advertise productions of a stage version of the story, and even a set of playing cards that feature illustrations of the main characters.

Further Information:

  • Over 120 AAS online catalog records have the title Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
  • Over 240 AAS online catalog records have the keywords Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Dr. Reynolds has published a number of books on nineteenth-century American literature and history. Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biography, published in 1995, received the Bancroft Prize. He is also the author of Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson, Beneath the American Renaissance, and John Brown, Abolitionist.

AAS is pleased that “Igniting the War” is the 2011 James Russell Wiggins Lecture in the History of the Book in American Culture. Named for the James Russell Wiggins (1903-2000), this annual lecture honors the former chairman of the Society (1970-1977) and editor of the Washington Post.

The Acquisitions Table: Old England

Old England: a pictorial museum of regal, ecclesiastical, municipal, baronial, and popular antiquities. Ed. by Charles Knight. Boston: Samuel Walker and Co., [186-?]

A fine copy of a most unusual salesman’s sample book. This two-volume large folio (36 cm. high) history of England, profusely illustrated with hundreds of wood engravings and 27 full-page color-printed wood-engraved plates, was first published in London in 1845, then reissued several times with 13 additional color plates. Sometime in the 1860s, Samuel Walker of Boston published an American edition consisting of the English sheets with new title pages. This salesman’s sample consists of the tables of contents, index, ca. 100 sample pages of text, and no fewer than 14 of the 40 color plates. No ruled leaves are included for subscribers to sign their names, and no sample bindings are included—this copy is plainly bound in a “wallet” binding of black pebble-grain morocco—so this particular sample of what would have been an expensive book probably was shown to bookstore proprietors and other members of the trade.

Purchased on eBay. Janet & Marcus McCorison and Henry F. DePuy Funds.

More information:

  • More examples of salesman’s sample books (also calling canvasing books or dummies) can be found in the AAS online catalog by searching for the genre “dummies.”

Jesus Wants You to Send This to 20 People

Dear Past is Present readers,

Anyone who has an email account is by now all too familiar with the forwarded email, as well as the accompanying guilt-laden demands to keep forwarding it.

The promise: just forward this email to 20 of your closest friends and you will be happy, or rich, or blessed.

The threat: vague but ominous bad things will befall you if you fail to do so.

Handwritten version of "The Copy of a Letter..." from 1800 (click on image to enlarge)

But is this only a present-day phenomenon? Those of us of a certain age, who once upon a time sent and received actual letters, know that these forwarded emails are merely a modern take on a form from the not-to-distant past: the chain letter. Often religious in nature, chain letters were occasionally used for practical purposes. (In fact, I remember once getting a recipe chain letter in which I was asked to send one recipe to ten people and then, through the wonderful power of exponents, I would eventually receive 100 more recipes — or something to that effect.)

It turns out chain letters are nothing new to this century (or the last, for that mater). The American Antiquarian Society has a couple dozen copies of a very popular early chain letter titled: “A Copy of a Letter written by our Blessed Lord and Saviour.” Many were printed as pamphlets in America between 1761 and 1815 [see a list of AAS online records] and have been digitized in Readex’s America’s Historical Imprints. However, AAS also has a couple of handwritten copies of this letter in our miscellaneous manuscript collection (filed under Jesus, of course). One handwritten copy of the letter is signed and dated at the bottom: “August the 12 1800 JSH A true copy from the original.” The manuscripts collection also has an undated copy that appears to be from after 1800. In the miscellaneous broadsides collection there is a copy printed in New Orleans in 1820, which appears to be the latest printed copy at AAS.

Printed version of "The Copy of a Letter..." from New Orleans, 1820 (click on image to enlarge)

All of these letters have only minor variations in wording. They start with a description of the letter’s provenance and the distance it has traveled:

“A Copy of a Letter written by our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and found eighteen miles from Iconium, fifty three years after our Blessed Saviour’s Crucifixion. Transmitted from the Holy City by a converted Jew. Faithfully translated from the original Hebrew copy, now in the possession of Lady Cuba’s family at Mesopotamia.”

The actual content of the letter is rather unremarkable if you’ve read Jesus’s words in the Bible, but it does include the prerequisite blessings and curses, in appropriately Biblical language:

“And he that hath a copy of this my own letter, written with my own hand, and spoken with my own mouth, and keepeth it without publishing it to others shall not prosper; but he that publisheth it to others, shall be blessed of me, and though his sins be in number as the stars of the sky, and he believe in this he shall be pardoned; and if he believe not in this writing, and this commandment, I will send my own plagues upon him, and consume both him and his children, and his cattle.”

It appears these words were taken to heart. AAS’s holdings can attest to the fact that many late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Americans were careful to be the one that “publisheth” this letter to others, in a variety of forms. I imagine printers were quick to assure buyers that the same blessing applied for purchasing multiple copies of the letter and then distributing them.

But Americans were not alone in this obsession. Turns out the copies of this letter at AAS are versions of what may be the longest running chain letter in human history. According to an amazing website called the Paper Chain Letter Archive devoted to all things chain letter (it even includes a mathematical explanation of the exponential growth!), the “Copy of a Letter written by our Blessed Lord and Saviour” is one of the earliest in a line of “Letters from Heaven” (or in German, “Himmelsbrief”). Daniel W. VanArsdale describes the spread of these letters in his discussion of the evolution of the chain letter:

“A letter which was said to have fallen from heaven existed in the third century AD (Hippolytos, Refutation of All Heresies). The oldest Letter from Heaven for which we have a full text is the Latin “Letter from Heaven on the observance of the Lord’s day,” the original of which dates from the close of the sixth century (Priebsch). St. Boniface denounced this as a “bungling work of a madman or the devil himself.” Eckehard (1115 AD) wrote that it had spread over the whole globe then known to man. It has circulated in English in many versions.”

VanArsdale then links to a 1795 English version printed by “J. Evans, 42 West-Smithfield, London,” the text of which is virtually identical to the copies at AAS. You can read VanArsdale’s transcription of the full text of the letter by clicking here.

One very interesting oddity about these letters, though: while the texts are nearly identical, each of the examples we have at AAS gives a different distance from Iconium at which the original of this letter was supposedly found — all the other details stay the same. The manuscript letter from 1800 lists the distance as 12 miles, the undated manuscript copy lists 18 miles, and the 1820 New Orleans printed copy lists 84 miles.

Perhaps the tendency to increase the distance from Iconium has something to do with the increasing distance these letters traveled, with the message becoming distorted over distance, like in the children’s game of telephone. Maybe it’s part of an ancient code and the numbers have to increase as part of a secret message being passed with the letters. Or perhaps you have a better explanation?

In closing, I feel I should warn you that you probably will want to forward this blog post to all your friends. You never know what may happen to you or your family or your cattle if you do not!

Wishing you peace and prosperity (which you certainly will have if you “like” this post on Facebook and/or email it to 20 people),

Your friends at Past is Present.org

Join us for “Liberty and Justice for All”

This Thursday, May 12, at 7:30 p.m., James O. and Lois E. Horton will present “Liberty and Justice for All: The Civil War as Blacks’ Second American Revolution.” Directions to AAS and further information about this and other public programs are available on the AAS website.

Describing the scope of their lecture, Professor Horton commented:

“We will be talking about the connection that African Americans made between the American Revolution and the Civil War. We will discuss black people’s expectations of the Revolution, especially in New England, the extent to which their hopes were realized, and what they saw as the Revolution’s unfinished business. African Americans, under siege in the 1850s, prepared for a war they believed would fulfill the revolutionary promise, and black soldiers played a decisive role in bringing slavery to an end.” At first rejected as soldiers by the federal government, about 200,000 blacks eventually fought in the Civil War, their courageous service was instrumental to the Northern victory of the conflict.”

Items in the AAS collections provide some insight into how abolitionists, white and black, looked upon the unfinished legacy of the American Revolution. William Cooper Nell, a black abolitionist and journalist, wrote two histories of blacks’ contributions to American conflicts: Services of Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 1812 [AAS online catalog record] and The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution [AAS online catalog record], both published in Boston in 1851 and 1855 respectively. In researching and publishing these experiences, Nell sought to bring attention to dozens of black men who contributed to the patriot cause but who had otherwise been forgotten. In his introduction, Nell asserted:

“Of the services and sufferings of the Colored Soldiers of the Revolution, no attempt has, to our knowledge, been made to preserve a record. They have had no historian. With here and there an exception, they have all passed away, and only some faint traditions linger among their descendants. Yet enough is known to show that the free colored men of the United States bore their full proportion of the sacrifices and trials of the Revolutionary War.”

Nell’s The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution featured Crispus Attucks, the ‘first martyr of the American Revolution,’ prominently in the frontispiece and as the first biographical sketch of the volume. Attucks, of African and Native American descent, grew up in Framingham, MA, and he was said to be a runaway slave who became a sailor and rope maker in Boston. He was also said to be a very tall, physically imposing figure. As a dockworker, Attucks became very familiar with the British Regulars who were in Boston, many of whom were working during their off-duty hours and taking away Americans’ jobs by undercutting their wages. In early March, 1770, these tensions were violently acted out between the Americans and the British. On March 5, a confrontation between townspeople and soldiers resulted in five dead and six wounded. Attucks was the first to be shot, and according to Nell’s research, was the ringleader of the townspeople.

Boston Massacre
In 1856, the year after Nell’s publication, another Boston man told Attucks’ story though a lithograph. J. H. Bufford’s lithography company began publishing “Boston Massacre, March 5th, 1770,” based on an illustration by W. L. Champney. If this lithograph looks vaguely familiar, that is no surprise – it revised the story told in Paul Revere’s “Bloody Massacre” engraving of 1770. While Revere’s engraving did not include Attucks, Champney’s illustration put him front and center. Amidst the chaos, Attucks wielded a club as he was shot by a British Regular. The only black man in the lithograph, Attucks stood bravely against the British while surrounded by white men who would eventually gain their independence from Britain. Black and white abolitionists may have hung this lithograph in their homes to remind them of the work still to be done.

James and Lois Horton have been in residence at the American Antiquarian Society for the 2010-2011 school year as the Mellon Distinguished Scholars. They are primarily working on a project titled “A Documentary History of African Americans from 1619 to the Civil War.” James Horton is the Benjamin Banneker Professor Emeritus of American Studies and History at George Washington University. Lois Horton is Professor of History Emerita at George Mason University in Virginia, where she was also on the faculties of Sociology, Cultural Studies, Women’s Studies, and African American Studies. The Hortons have co-authored numerous scholarly studies, including Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory (New Press, 2006); Slavery and the Making of America (Oxford University Press, 2004); Hard Road to Freedom: The Story of African America (Rutgers University Press, 2001). Both professors have had distinguished careers in teaching and public history.

The Acquisitions Table: Snow White and Red Rose

Snow White and Red Rose. New York: McLoughlin, 1899.

This magnificent chromolithograph of “An Exciting Donkey-Ride at the Seashore” is taken from this collection of fairy tales and poems. It is an excellent example of McLoughlin’s turn-of-the-century idealized portrayals of children at play.

Purchased from Christopher Holtom. Harry G. Stoddard Memorial Fund.

More information:

Additions to David Claypoole Johnston Inventory

In August and December of 2010, the AAS received additional gifts to supplement the already delectable David Claypoole Johnston Family Collection.  (You can see a portrait of the artist and read a short bio as part of the online exhibition of Portraits at the American Antiquarian Society.)

Of the material which came (in the form of three gifts), one included several pieces by students who worked with David Claypoole Johnston. One of his more notable students?

Author Louisa May Alcott.

In 1933 the Society received (again by gift) much of the D.C. Johnston Collection, and in that bequest was a letter to Johnston from his young student.

The letter dated September 12, 1860 from Concord reads:

Dear Mr. Johnston,

Owing to a slight indisposition on my part, mother forbids my taking my lesson on Wednesday much to my disappointment, & I am sorely tempted to turn obstreperous & go but on further consideration think it better to yield to the decree of my “stern parent” & stay at home. I don’t get on at all, with the head of the little boy, & am in despair over it, as so far, it looks very badly, in fact, couldn’t look worse, so much is that I trembled at the thought of showing it to you, & am afraid I shall never have the courage to do so. If a week from Wednesday is convenient to you I will take my next lesson then, unless it should be very story, in which case Thursday will answer as well for yours very truly

May Alcott

Johnston’s reply, also included in the AAS collection, was careful, patient and kind. He writes to Alcott from Dorchester on September 18, 1860:

Dear Miss Alcott,

I received your favor to day and in reply allow me to say that my sorrow for your indisposition was very much increased when you came to mention your despair over the copy of the little boy’s head, and the dread you felt of showing it to me.

Now as this is a very early attempt I hope it will not discourage you for any body who can make a first-rate copy of a head even after a dozen complete previous studies in fortunate beyond the common lot. If you could only see how even the rest of artists labor over some of their works week after week and even after this give up the attempt and commence another failing in this, still another – I think the greatest encouragement I ever received was in seeing Mr. Rouse do this very […] you would certainly feel very much encouraged [and although the last seemed the work of a few hours it the labor or weeks].

I am sincere I assure you when I say that you do very well indeed considering the little practice you have had; you have to “learn to labor and to wait” – like the rest of us.

Tho’ very glad to see you so fastidious I pray you do not allow this desirably quality interfere with your advancement. I hope […] you therefore you will bring the little boy’s head next Wednesday or Thursday and let me see it and I promise that I will give you no reason to tremble for it.

Johnston’s letter itself seems a work-in-progress – as are many of his drawings. Constantly being tweaked, revised, amended…

There are many things we will never know about the exchange – or about whom Johnston’s students were. We do know David Claypoole Johnston taught a Mechanical Drawing School (see the advertisement at right), and that Johnston and his family collected students’ work, or were given them. But many of these new student pieces are unsigned (the same is true of the book item of student work in Box 6 Folder 1.49). And yet, like it or not, the temptation is there (how exciting would it be, if in this cache there was a piece drawn by the same hand that penned Little Women?) to find pieces and assign them – even without proper clues.

L.M. Alcott is known today almost by her non-signer status, one of the tantalizing things about her is the mystery surrounding how many items she did author. Experts agree we will never know her entire canon. Her ‘anthologies’ will perhaps never be complete. Madeleine Stern and Leona Rostenberg, for example, discovered the thrill-ier side of Alcott, discovering some of her ‘nameless’ pieces in periodicals of the nineteenth-century in letters at Houghton Library, Harvard.

Even if the archive has the pieces listed now as ‘unidentified’ for artist, we still have all the pieces ready for the historian-cloaked version of Sherlock Holmes to just come and sleuth-ily put it all together. And that is part of the fun working in a place like AAS. We – in the back of the archive – compile, add-on, update and push out all the newest things so you can come into the reading room gasp, scream, sob, clap and enjoy history. While leaving “creator not known” can be frustrating, it can equally be the makings, the bread crumbs, if you will, of a future project for a researcher. Of the things unknown.

Interested yet? Take a look at the new pieces listed in the Additions section of the online illustrated inventory.

The Acquisitions Table: Donation Book of the Oakland Female Institute

Young Ladies Library and Literary Association of Oakland Female Institute. Donation Book, 1853-1855.

The Oakland Female Institute was opened in Norristown, PA in 1845. By 1853 the Institute had 186 students and a library of “over 500 volumes of standard value—all trashy literature being contraband,” as an 1853 circular states. The school closed in 1880. This fairly elaborately bound volume, with a binder’s ticket for W.G. Perry & Erety in Philadelphia, lists donations both in cash and books in the period 1853-1855. There are only four pages of entries, suggesting either that the association was short-lived or that its members lost interest in record-keeping. Purchased from DeWolfe & Wood. Harry G. Stoddard Memorial Fund.

Two Years Before the Book

Although the ship pictured above is not a brig like Dana sailed on, you can click on the image to see its description in AAS's Drawings Collection Inventory

In April 1836, the future attorney and activist Richard Henry Dana was busy binding books aboard the brig Alert.  Yes, binding books, not reading them.  Dana might have been reading had a bad case of the measles and an even worse case of myopia not forced him to leave Harvard for a couple of years.  To broaden his vision, Dana spent two years sailing to California, working as a “common sailor” in the merchant service, and experiencing the hide trade firsthand.

But Dana’s attempt to recuperate from illness by “taking a long absence from books and study” was a dismal failure.  It seems as though books, real and metaphorical, had informed Dana’s life and perception of the world so much so that he simply couldn’t escape from them: he began to ransack fellow sailors’ chests for books, devour the latest newspapers aboard ship, trade old books for new in Santa Barbara, and read Scott aloud to his fellow sailors.  As he prepared for his return trip home, Dana even helped to bind hides, the ship’s goods, into “books.”  He describes the process as such:

“[A] large ‘book’ was made of from twenty-five to fifty hides, doubled at the backs, and put into one another, like the leaves of a book.  An opening was then made between two hides in the pile, and the back of the outside hide of the book inserted.  Two long, heavy spars, called steeves, made of the strongest wood…were placed with their wedge ends into the inside of the hide which was the centre of the book, and to the other end of each, straps were fitted….”

Dana’s two worlds had become one, the physical labor of the jack-tar necessitating the very books he had so longed to leave behind and even producing a few in the process.

While AAS is not known for any special emphasis on maritime history, its collections nevertheless feature some significant Dana holdings.  Dana’s legal papers are housed in AAS manuscripts collections (the AAS catalog record and finding aid with a complete contents list are available online).  Featuring files on over 600 of Dana’s cases, this cache of understudied material was discovered by Scott Sandage at the Worcester Law Library during Sandage’s 1993-94 AAS Peterson fellowship.  Some may also be pleased to learn that our Reserve Collection, a restricted collection that houses one of only several extant copies of the Bay Psalm Book, contains both the first and second printing of Dana’s own book, Two Years Before the Mast.

Just for fun, see if you can spot the difference between the two printings from their copyright pages below before reading the online record that describes AAS’s copies of Two Years Before the Mast.

Copy 1

Copy 2

“Listen my children and you shall hear,/ Of the midnight ride of…” Dr. Samuel Prescott?

Each April here at the American Antiquarian Society, our thoughts turn to Patriots’ Day, a holiday which we celebrated last week here in Massachusetts. Patriots’ Day commemorates the famous battles of Lexington and Concord, the battles that started the American Revolution.  We

The Struggle on Concord Bridge, 1859.
envision minutemen firing muskets on Lexington Green and gun smoke clouding Concord’s North Bridge.  Our thoughts also turn to the patriot silversmith and engraver Paul Revere, whose work you can examine online in the illustrated inventory of AAS’s Paul Revere Collection.  Revere became famous for sounding the Lexington Alarm, an act that was immortalized in Longfellow’s poem “Paul Revere’s Ride”.  The fleet craftsman is also remembered by the image Grant Wood created in his painting, Paul Revere’s Ride, in which he figures Revere as a solitary rider galloping through the American countryside.  But did you know that Paul Revere went on multiple rides leading up to the Revolution?  That the Lexington Alarm was not his first ride?  That many men rode through the countryside to sound the Lexington and Concord Alarms?  Did you know that Revere was captured on Concord Road and that only a doctor named Samuel Prescott made it to Concord to sound the Alarm of the three original riders?  There is much to be learned about the true story behind Paul Revere’s Ride from the books at the American Antiquarian Society.

You may have visited Paul Revere’s house in Boston’s North End or seen battle re-enactments in Lexington and Concord.  You might know that Paul Revere was a member of the Sons of Liberty and that he had sixteen children and at least fifty-two grandchildren.  You might not have known, however, that Paul Revere played many key parts leading up to the American Revolution, aside from the one Longfellow casts him in, the sounder of the Lexington Alarm.  Before 1775, Paul Revere made many rides conveying messages from the Whigs in Boston to other patriots at greater distance.  He rode to New York and Philadelphia to garner Whig resistance to The Intolerable Acts, a set of British laws colonists viewed as unfair.  Since Revere knew many different people and moved in many different circles, he was an excellent messenger for Whig purposes.  He took a leading part in getting the Stamp Act repealed.  He participated in the Boston Tea Party, dumping teas chests into Boston Harbor.  Revere also led a secret group of Whigs who Boston Massacremet in the Green Dragon Tavern in Boston.  He sounded an Alarm in Portsmouth, New Hampshire to warn colonists of imminent British seizure of Whig munitions.  He also influenced Whig sentiment by engraving the famous print, The Boston Massacre [pictured at right], which helped to depict the British as unjust in the eyes of the colonists.

When the British Governor Thomas Gage decided to attack the town of Concord, seize its munitions, and attempt to capture John Hancock and Sam Adams (who were staying five miles to the east in the town of Lexington), the person selected to warn Concord was none other than Paul Revere.  The Whig colonists resolved not to act first, to create an image of innocence, and therefore needed to mobilize quickly when the British made a move.  Historian David Fischer noted, “Everything for New England depended on careful preparation, timely warning, and rapid mobilization” (79).  Revere was clearly the man for the job since he could spread news throughout New England faster than Gage’s infantry could march.

In case the British cut off communication between Boston and outlying towns, Boston Whigs appointed messengers to slip past Gage’s men by secret routes and devised a system of lantern signals from Boston to Charlestown to alert the colonists to the Tories’ movements.  Revere got wind of British movement from a stable boy and passed the news on to Doctor Joseph Warren.  Warren verified the information with his Tory informant who was reputed to be Governor Gage’s American wife!

Revere enlisted two friends to put two lanterns in the Old North Church steeple, Boston’s tallest building in 1775, to warn Whigs that the British were coming by sea.  The Old North Church was officially named Christ Church at the time and its rector was a Loyalist.  Luckily Revere was friends with a vestryman, John Pulling, and a sexton, Robert Newman.  These two men climbed into the rafters of the Old North Church and hung the famed two lanterns while their friend, Thomas Bernard, stood guard.

As Revere set out across the Charles River en route to Concord, another rider, William Dawes, a Boston tanner, was already on the road to Concord ahead of him.  Two more little more known patriots, Joshua Bentley, a boat builder, and Thomas Richardson helped Revere cross the Charles River.  Upon landing, Revere borrowed a horse from John Larkin named Brown Beauty, known for its strength and swiftness.  Revere went north across Charlestown Neck and west on the road to Lexington.

When Revere arrived at the house where Hancock and Adams were staying, he shouted, “The Regulars are coming out!”  Notably, he did not say, “The British are coming!” since all colonists in revolutionary America considered themselves British.  William Dawes arrived a half hour later.

Revere and Dawes next headed to Concord.  Along the way, they met Doctor Samuel Prescott, a physician of Concord who joined them in warning the colonists.  The three men eventually encountered ten British Regulars on Concord Road.  The British soldiers quickly surrounded Paul Revere and took his horse.  Dawes escaped and went limping back to Lexington.  Doctor Prescott was the only rider of the original three who made it past the British to sound the Alarm at Concord.  Along the way, Prescott alerted many more Whig citizens who joined the Alarm.  Revere regained his freedom at three o’clock in the morning on April 19th in time to see some of the battle on Lexington Green.

Battle of Lexington

More information about Paul Revere’s ride and the battles of Lexington and Concord can be found in the books in the collections at the American Antiquarian Society.  So this month, we invite you to explore the many stories behind history and to learn more about Paul Revere, the brave silversmith who helped craft our country’s past.

For Further Reading:

Fischer, David Hackett.  Paul Revere’s Ride.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Morgan, Edmund S., ed. Paul Revere’s Three Accounts of His Famous Ride.  Boston:  Massachusetts Historical Society, 2000.

Join Us At the Book Fair!

An annual rite of spring for AAS curators is the Boston Book & Paper Exposition and Sale, one of two fairs sponsored annually by the Massachusetts and Rhode Island Antiquarian Booksellers (MARIAB). This spring’s fair will be held on Saturday, May 7, 2011 from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the Shriner’s Auditorium, 99 Fordham Road, Wilmington, MA (click here for directions). Over 80 MARIAB member booksellers will be offering a wide range of used and antiquarian books, ephemera, photographs, manuscripts, maps, postcards, and other paper collectibles. New this year is a day-long series of special lectures and exhibits, including a talk at 1:45 p.m. by John B. Hench, retired Vice President for Collections and Programs at AAS, on his recent book, Books as Weapons: Propaganda, Publishing and the Battle for Global Markets in the Era of World War II. More information can be found at the fair website.

AAS curators have always found this fair to be an excellent opportunity to acquire new treasures for the collection. If you like to collect, or are simply curious to attend the fair, dealers are more than happy to answer questions and let you browse their books. Even better, fair promoter Marvin Getman has generously offered free admission (normally $7 per person) to all who print a copy of the complimentary pass below and present it at the door.

Complimentary pass