Past is Present

The Question: Something Smells Fishy

If Abigail Adams were planning an Independence Day feast what would she make? According to a 1964 New York Times article: “green turtle soup, New England poached salmon with egg sauce and apple pan dowdy.” In fact, the article claims she served this fine menu to John Adams on the very first Independence Day. Is the story sounding a bit strange to you, too?

Edible Queens, a local food magazine for Queens, New York, tasked Sarah Lohman (author of the blogs F our Pounds Flour and Ephemera) with recreating an early Fourth of July menu. Research led her to the New York Times article but she had her own doubts: apples in early July? So she wrote to AAS with a question, was the article’s claim true or just a myth?

We call myth. As we all know, John was busy in Philadelphia that July 4th. And poor Abigail had an eye infection. In fact, she wrote John on July 13, 1776 from Massachusetts apologizing for a silence of nearly a month, “I have really had so many cares upon my Hands and Mind, with a bad inflamation [sic] in my Eyes that I have not been able to write.”

But dear readers, that is as far as we got. And now we need your help. Where did this myth come from? Is there truth to any of it? The New York Times article described the meal in context of its recreation for the 1964 World’s Fair.

At the Festival ’64 Restaurant in the Gas Pavilion, George Lang, director of the restaurant, came up with a meal served by Abigail and John Adams at their home on July 4, 1776. Actually the Adams family first served this meal in 1773. It was such a memorable meal that Mrs. Adams served it on the first Independence Day. (“Fourth of July Glorious as Usual, But Especially Glorious at Fair” by Philip Dougherty in the New York Times, July 5, 1964 page 44.)

Rumors of Abigail Adams’ 18th century handwritten cookbook float around, but does it exist? The Massachusetts Historical Society has an extensive digitized collection of Adams Family Papers, but we had no luck there. Given the success of our first reference question post, we’re trying again. Anyone have any answers or thoughts? As usual we offer the weighty prizes of admiration and praise.

Even if this mystery goes unsolved, be sure to look for Sarah’s article on a historically inspired Fourth of July feast in the summer issue of Edible Queens.

The Acquisitions Table: Ira Hill’s Memorial

Those of us who are located in the chilly Northeast are already beginning to dream of spring and gardens. Curator of books David Whitesell describes Ira Hill’s proposal for a very special garden for Washington D.C.

Hill, Ira, ca. 1783-1838. Ira Hill’s memorial, and remarks to Congress. [N.p., 1824]

Second recorded copy of this intriguing proposal for a ten-acre three-dimensional garden map of the world, in Mercator projection, to be built adjacent to the U. S. Capitol building. Hill was a Maryland schoolteacher best known for his theory that the enigmatic Dighton Rock bore inscriptions from an expedition sent to the New World by the Biblical King Solomon. Here he proposes a botanical novelty unsurpassed for its beauty and pedagogical utility. In Hill’s garden, “the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific will be one hundred and sixty feet” in length, and major topographical features such as oceans and mountain ranges would be depicted (albeit not so visually impressive even at this scale). Congress could have all this for only $10,000 up front, eventually refunded through a half share in future profits from ticket sales. Hill presented his petition in April 1824. Despite offering to scale the project back to a map of the United States alone, he failed to attract the necessary votes, and the garden remained unbuilt. Purchased from Savoy Books. General Library Acquisitions II Fund.

~ David Whitesell

Now Where Was I, Redux!

Last Friday we posted an entry about bookmarks describing the variety of scraps and ephemeral objects used by eighteenth and nineteenth century readers to mark their places in their books.

As that blog post was being edited, yet another bookmark was discovered, and a most curious one at that. A small letter was found tucked between the pages of the New York periodical The New Mirror of Literature and the Fine Arts for 1844. The note was written by Mrs. Gen. Macomb (Harriet Balch Macomb, 1783-1869, widow of General Alexander Macomb) to a “Mr. Abbott” and we transcribe it below in full:

July 20, 1844

Dear Sir,
I have been requested by a very poor and respectable young Lady to ask you to take one or two of the accompanying Book Marks. She is endeavoring to support herself by her industry. I have taken several as presents for my friends. Would not Mrs. Abbott like one? I do not urge the business as Miss Mountz does, ha ha. Your Friend, H. B. Macomb.

The letter was not accompanied by any other bookmarks, but instead was used as one itself.

The fact that the note was found the same morning the blog post was written and was being edited just illustrates again the wonderful sense of kismet found under the generous dome of the Antiquarian Society.

Now Where Was I?

If you were lucky enough to be the recipient of multiple books this holiday season, all of which beg to be read immediately, you may be in need of a crucial tool . . . the humble bookmark!

At the Antiquarian Society, as books are catalogued they are checked over carefully by our staff and often reveal between their pages the bookmarks of previous owners. These slips and bits are removed for conservation reasons and make their way to the desk of the Curator of Graphic Arts where they are added to the bookmark collection. Yes, we have a bookmark collection which includes handmade needlework, slips of paper, assorted ephemera and any flat item which may have been used to mark the pages of a book.

We have religious-themed markers that were removed from the bible collection, including a cut-out of the head of Christ which caused much conversation by those passing my desk (“I don’t see it! Where is the nose?”), and the expected needlework crosses, doves and chalices. An 1833 edition of William Cowper’s poems gave up a scrap of fringed silk, a ladies periodical included an advertisement for a rose nursery, and a mechanic’s manual shed a lone playing card (the five of clubs). In early days, the provenance of these small items was lost and so we how have a folder of stray bookmarks marked as “removed from nineteenth-century novels,” which includes a blank tax receipt for the town of Ashburnham, an undated note from Martha to her friend Jane asking her to “come sup and call with me on Mrs. Chester Wilson,” and a homemade marker of ferns inscribed on the verso “1876, A happy New Year to all yours, as ever, Clara.”

Before we chide these earlier owners for their untidy use of found material and bits and scraps to mark their place in their books, an assessment of contemporary practices should be considered. A quick survey of the books stacked by the bedsides in my house revealed the following being used as bookmarks: one of those annoying rectangular magazine advertising inserts, a scrap of newspaper torn from the morning paper, a feather, an actual bookmark given out by the public library to raise awareness for an upcoming building campaign, a postcard of a panda bear from a recent trip to Washington D.C., and, inevitably, a length of sparkly Christmas ribbon.

The Acquisitions Table: Scripture Scenes

If the holiday leftovers are still lurking in our refrigerators, we figure there’s still time for one more Christmas-themed post, courtesy of Curator of Children’s Literature Laura Wasowicz. The charming engraving below raises two interesting questions you might want to mull over as you finish off the pecan pie. First, where would Anderson have seen the image upon which this engraving is based? I’m guessing it was reproduced in a book or as a print he saw. Second, what is that object in front of the kneeling Magus? Perhaps it has to do with gold, frankincense or myrrh? Or is it his turban? Is it a recognizable part of the iconography of the Magi?

Fawcett, John, 1740-1817. Scripture Scenes. Cadiz, OH: H. Anderson, 1829.

This is a scarce early Ohio imprint; it is rarer still in that it contains nine hand-colored metal engravings probably executed by its publisher Hugh Anderson (1782-1866), who worked as an engraver in Philadelphia prior to his move to Ohio. Anderson based this engraving of the Adoration of the Wise Men upon a painting by the 16th-century Italian master Jacopo Bassano, shedding new light on the types of access that American children living in the Old Northwest had to Renaissance art. Purchased from David M. Lesser. Ruth E. Adomeit Book Fund.

~ Laura Wasowicz

Do you hear what I hear?

Within the roughly 60,000 pieces of sheet music in the AAS collection, a devilish and spry Santa Claus waits for just this time of year. At the first talk of Christmas, he appears, dancing on a chimney while playing the violin. This 1846 incarnation of Santa Claus stands on the cover of the Santa Claus Quadrilles, painted by the anonymous Spoodlyks. The accompanying music was composed by Harvey B. Dodworth.

Separated into five parts and characterized by sections of eight measures, the quadrille was intended as popular dance music. The 6/8 beat of two of the parts encouraged intricate steps and was a forerunner to the square dance.

In the spirit of Dodworth’s Quadrille Band, the AAS Readers’ Services Follies offer you a small sampling of the music: No. 5 of the Quadrilles played by Andrew Bourque. We’ve provided the music itself, but you’ll have to bring the dancing. Happy Holidays!

Santa Claus Quadrilles No. 5

[book id=’10? /]

Type Findings: Introducing the AAS Printers’ File

Avis G. Clarke, cataloger-cum-researcher of early American imprints and printers, filled hundreds of AAS card catalogue drawers with the AAS printers’ file. Detailing the lives and works of virtually every printer working in America before 1820, the printers’ file is a masterpiece of indexing. Comprising 134 drawers of biographical, printing, and publication history for a vast number of printers before 1820, and 11 drawers for the post-1820 period, the printers’ file represents the perfect merger of detailed research and scholarly vision on the world of early American printing.

As I methodically enter Ms. Clarke’s carefully compiled data into a series of spreadsheets that translate her print index into digital format, I imagine that Ms. Clarke’s own curiosity must have been piqued by printers like James Draper Bemis. Sued for libel by Micah Brooks in 1811, Brooks was one of the earliest surveyors of New York state and would go on to become U.S. Representative in the Fourteenth Congress. Bemis’ own newspapers, the Western Repository (1804-1809), the Ontario Repository (1809-1828), and the Onandaga Register (1814-1817), all at AAS, leave no record of the libel suit. (For further information on the libel suit, click here). Just as mysterious is Bemis’ commitment to the Utica State Hospital in 1848, release in 1849, and re-commitment to the Vermont Asylum for the Insane in 1850, where he died in November of 1857. Clarke never pried into Bemis’ life, yet her cards consistently tug at the curious researcher.

Ms. Clarke had to combine the skills of historian, genealogist, and bibliographer as she created the printers’ file. She never judged or discriminated against the printers: each printer received his own set of cards, in some cases one or two and in others a half-drawer full. Ms. Clarke had to sort through some complex histories of printing families, such as the Adams family. James Adams, patriarch and first printer in Wilmington, DE, was father to John Adams, publisher of the Delaware Courant. James Adams’ firm, James Adams & Sons, comprised James, John, James Jr. and Samuel. Samuel and John published the Delaware and Eastern-Shore Advertiser from 1794-1799, while Samuel and James Jr. printer together in 1786. The whole family printed together from 1788-1789. Sorting through the interwoven histories of family history and newspaper publishing seemed to become one, but only one, of Ms. Clarke’s specialties.

The printers’ file is an AAS treasure, and Ms. Clarke’s excruciatingly detailed work remains an exemplar of AAS cataloging, scholarship, and research. Keep reading PastisPresent for more from Type Findings.

The Acquisitions Table: “U.C., or, How to Keep Sharp in Dull Times”

As we celebrate the holiday season it’s also good to be mindful of those less fortunate than ourselves. 2009 has no monopoly on hard times, as Curator of Books David Whitesell’s account of a recently acquired 1873 pamphlet shows. This very curious little item also carries a mystery in its title, U.C. There is nothing in the pamphlet to suggest what “U.C” stands for. We welcome your suggestions.

Hyde, Walter. U. C., or How to keep sharp in dull times. New York: Yorkville Monitor, 158 86^th Street, 1873.

Stock market crashes and bank failures? Yes, 1873 was a very bad year for the American economy. After serious but unspecified business reversals, Walter Hyde tried to make ends meet as a knife sharpener on New York’s Upper East Side. He also produced this unrecorded example of mendicant literature: a small pamphlet of his verse reflections on the times, with frequent references to sharpening and grinding:

For I have been rich;–

Am now in the ditch,

And trying to keep my poise.

And as I go

I sharpen so,

That the angry hardened steel,

Becomes sharp as wit,

By the flying grit,

And illustrates how I feel.

(Purchased from Ian Brabner at the RBMS Preconference Book Fair, Charlottesville, VA.)

Santa Claus Exposed

AAS’s The Children’s Friend: A New Year’s Present is one of just two known copies of the 1821 pamphlet. Fifteen centimeters tall and eight pages deep, the paper-covered volume stood little chance of survival in the hands of generations of American children. But there was one family fastidious enough for the task, and by chance they would be among AAS’s most important benefactors.

The Salisbury family provided AAS, notably, with two of its presidents, 67 boxes and an additional 100 bound volumes in manuscript materials, and the land for the library’s current home. In 1897 the Society also received the childhood book of one of those presidents, Stephen Salisbury III. Six-year old Stephen received The Children’s Friend in 1841 as a gift from Kitty Lawrence.

What makes this little book so important? Put simply it is believed to be the first American Christmas picture book. But we asked Laura Wasowicz, Curator of Children’s Literature, and Gigi Barnhill, Director of CHAViC for a few more details.

~The publishing location, New York City, is important. The brick chimneys visible as “Old Santeclaus” lands his sleigh indicate an urban environment.

~The pamphlet falls within a set of attempts by well-to-do New Yorkers to domesticize the holiday from a time for rowdy alcohol-infused parties and mob revelry to a safe, family-focused holiday. The Children’s Friend joined efforts by New York Historical Society founder John Pintard and Clement Clarke Moore (author of the poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” first published in 1823).*

~The story offers the first visit by St. Nicholas on Christmas Eve (instead of his Saint’s day December 6th), as well as the first appearance of his reindeer.

~While the “long, black birchen rod” left for parents with naughty sons might seem a harsh ending to modern readers, it was in keeping with the parlance of the day. In a time when a children’s book might conclude with a child burned to death for playing too close to the fire, The Children’s Friend is in fact a gentle cautionary tale.

~The Children’s Friend is considered the first American example of a completely lithographed book. Lithography (the practice of drawing on limestone with waxy crayons to create a master image that absorbed ink) was introduced in the United States in the early 1800s.

~Unlike engraving, lithography did not require the same high level of skill to execute and could make up to 100,000 impressions with one stone. But the technology did require special equipment and a specific type of printing press.
~Barnet and Doolittle, the firm that likely lithographed the pamphlet, was the first commercial lithographic printing shop to be established in the U.S.

~The publishers used lithography as an inexpensive alternative to engraving and avoided the expense of multiple presses by lithographing both illustration and text (you can see that the text looks handwritten).

~The color, added by hand after printing, suggests the pamphlet was expensive to buy.

*Historian Stephen Nissenbaum discusses The Children’s Friend and explores the transition to a family-oriented holiday in The Battle for Christmas (New York, 1996). Nissenbaum did much of his research at AAS as a long-term fellow.

The Acquisitions Table

In 1834, AAS librarian Christopher Columbus Baldwin wrote: “Some philosopher has said that his unhappiest moments were those spent in settling his tavern bills. But the happiest moments of my life are those employed in opening packages of books presented to the Library of the American Antiquarian Society. It gives me real, substantial, and unadulterated comfort. It is then that like glorious Tam O Shanter, I am ‘O’er the ills of life victorious.’”

I can report that 175 years later the source of Baldwin’s joy continues to give “real, substantial, and unadulterated comfort” to those of us who are fortunate enough to see what arrives daily for the AAS library.

The Acquisitions Table

The acquisitions department staff (Peg Lesinski, Sarah Barnard and Anne Hendrickson) and the curators (Vince Golden, Lauren Hewes, Laura Wasowicz, David Whitesell and myself) are all involved in various aspects of acquiring and processing material for the collections. We order from dealers via catalogs and quotes, we purchase at auction (including many items from eBay), and we receive gifts, sometimes unsolicited (more on that below) and sometimes after much work with potential donors.

On arrival all of these things land on the acquisitions table. It is an unassuming table, three and a half by eight feet. It is located in the acquisitions department, and it is on this table that each day’s arriving mail is first sorted, and packages from the post office and other carriers are brought to be opened. Frequently, its twenty-eight square feet aren’t sufficient to hold our newly received booty and it is a continuing challenge to the acquisitions department staff to keep up with new acquisitions and send them along for eventual cataloging, shelving, and use by readers.

The accompanying photograph shows the table as it was at 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, December 10. The piles of books in the background are 149 volumes just given to us by a university library. These are odd volumes, many of them parts of incomplete sets. It will be our job to check each volume against our holdings, and with luck we will add a number of things we don’t have, fill in gaps in broken sets, or identify variant bindings or copies in better condition than the ones we currently have. But before we do anything else, we need to vacuum them because they’re very dusty!

To the left of the front row is the manuscript account book of a gin distiller in Enfield, Massachusetts in the 1820s. Enfield no longer exists. It was one of the “Quabbin Towns” flooded in the late 1930s during the construction of the Quabbin Reservoir. Moving right we see a small tintype showing a rather cross looking baby girl; a partly printed 1859 certificate stating that an African American sailor named Aldridge Sanders is an American citizen; John Keegan’s new military history of the Civil War, and some recently received U.S. government documents (we are a depository library, in fact the first one to be so designated by Congress—in 1814).

Although much comes in, there is still plenty for us to seek out and acquire. We are omnivorous in our appetite for material printed in the United States before 1877—if we don’t already have it, we want it, and even if we do have it, we might want another copy if it is slightly different or in better condition than the one we have. We also add secondary materials to the collections to support research here.

Once in a while a gift arrives that we can’t really use, such as the suitcase that we found on our doorstep early one morning a few months ago. There was no name or note with it, and on opening it we found that it contained newspapers with stories about the JFK assassination and the first Moon landing. We’ll try to find a good home at another institution for the newspapers, although I’m less sanguine about the future of the suitcase.

Since you, dear reader, do not have the opportunity we do to stop by acquisitions and see what’s on the table today, we want to offer you a chance to experience some of the excitement we feel about newly acquired items. Every week or so Past is Present will highlight a recent arrival. Our curators will explain why each one is interesting and why we want it for our collections. I hope you will find these items as wonderful, interesting, and sometimes quirky as we do.

Christmas Treasures: Flip through the pages of The Children’s Friend

It’s that time of year. Time to take ornaments out of boxes, shake the dust from stockings, and hang wreaths on front doors. The holiday season is no different at AAS. December is the one month when it’s appropriate to pull out all of our wonderful Christmas treasures– after all who wants to see Santa Claus in July? We hope you will enjoy (or bear with us) as we share these seasonal gifts from our collections.

And we’re starting big with the 1821 Children’s Friend. Curator of children’s literature, Laura Wasowicz, gives this little softcover book a heartfelt endorsement, “I never get tired of looking at it.” Read it now and check back with us next Monday for a behind-the-pages discussion with our curators.

N.B.: Clicking on the corner of any page below will turn the page, and double-clicking on one of the amazing illustrations will zoom in for a more detailed view. Hope you enjoy this treasure as much as we have!
[book id=’9? /]

You say “Shah-vick,” I say “Chay-vick”: An Introduction to the Center for Historic American Visual Culture

Inadvertently, three graduate students were responsible for the creation of the Center for Historic American Visual Culture (CHAVic). Two appeared at AAS asking if we had 18th century prints or lithographs of wedding ceremonies. Another spoke of the struggle to convince her dissertation committee that a history thesis could focus successfully on stereographs. Between the printed word relied on by historians and the fine art prized by art historians lies a world of visual culture often misunderstood or overlooked in the study of America’s past.

Established in 2005 by the AAS Council, CHAViC’s mission is to provide opportunities for educators to learn about American visual culture and resources, promote the awareness of AAS collections, and stimulate research and intellectual inquiry into American visual materials. The Center received major funding in the spring of 2008 that has enabled AAS to undertake some great initiatives. To see the full panoply of activities from the first teacher workshop held in 2006 to the most recent conference held in October, visit the newest AAS website: http://www.chavic.org.

For readers of this blog, perhaps the most visible aspect of CHAViC is the enhancement of access to collections previously available only in Antiquarian Hall. Even within the library, many of the collections lacked finding aids and were accessible only on the suggestion of the curator of graphic arts or readers’ services staff. Now that AAS has staff to catalog separately published prints and to produce inventories, the situation has changed dramatically. Searching on the phrase “American Art Union” in the online catalog for example, will bring up over 30 detailed catalog records for the prints in the collection. In due course, images will be linked to these records. There are also records of 385 gift book illustrations! In the past three months over 650 engravings have been carefully described with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The most recent collection inventory to be created is European Political Prints. There are now fully illustrated inventories of:

–Photograph Portraits of Native Americans

-Cased Photographs (Daguerreotypes, Ambrotypes, and Tintypes),

-the David Claypoole Johnston Collection

–Hawaiian Engravings

–Drawings

–Portrait Paintings and Miniatures

–Photographs of Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Structures in Massachusetts taken by Harriette Merrifield Forbes.

Surf the AAS Collections Page for other tantalizing graphic arts collections!

For interpretative projects focusing on AAS collections, check out the online exhibitions portion of the CHAViC website. AAS archives all of its exhibitions.

I hope you will enjoy the new CHAViC website and that we will hear from you if you have questions or want to submit proposals for conferences or fellowships.

Georgia Barnhill, Director

Center for Historic American Visual Culture

Gbarnhill (at) mwa.org

The Answer, or what to do when Google doesn’t give it up easily

Ding, ding, ding… We have a winner! Our exercise in crowd-sourcing research questions was a success, and all the antiquarian glory goes to peterme for solving the reference mystery posed in our earlier post. The correct book our reader was looking for was (drum-roll please) “The Way Our People Lived: an Intimate American History,” by W.E. Woodward. Thank you to all who participated. You came up with great suggestions for further reading which I will forward to the reader who posed the question.

Personally, I was able to identify our mystery book through a Google Book search (so I knew I wasn’t sending you all on a wild goose chase), but trust me, the search was not an easy one! No matter what they say about online access, it still requires a lot of work to figure out the right questions to ask. If you’re sick of the Google bashing or if you think Google marks the end of civilized scholarly research (since we all know those are the only two options), then you may enjoy a recent exchange on the SHARP (Society for the History of Authorship and Publishing) listserv titled: “Do you use google books?“. You’ll find some great comments from scholars trained to think about book history and reading technology in intelligent ways.

Our new honorary antiquarian, peterme, describes his research process in his comments, but to give you the highlights: “in terms of finding it, Google was useless.” He went straight to his library’s catalog (yeah!) and was able to find the correct title. Check out our posts on “Anatomy of a Cataloging Record” or “The Embezzler Redeemed, Part I, Part II, or Part III” to see just how much behind-the-scenes work it takes from our catalogers to make the right titles show up in your searches. After peterme found what he thought was the right title, he continues: “I then googled that title, and found it was in the internet archive. I then searched the book to find that passage” i.e., the quote about the drinking babies. In case you want to check it out for yourself it’s on p. 40: “Babies were given beer and cider as soon as they were old enough to toddle.” So Google played an axillary role in his search strategy.

My own solution began with Google, starting with an “Advanced Book Search,” a feature I was unaware even existed until I was forced to resort to it in this desperate search. In the title line I put in the keywords “American” AND “Lived” (after playing around with a few different variations). I also set the date limit to between 1940 and 1990, assuming that while it certainly had to be published before our reader found it in the bookstore, it may have been older than he thought or have been republished. Turns out the book was originally published in 1944, which certainly threw me off a bit and perhaps some of you too, but it was republished just about every decade so our reader probably found a later republication in that bookshop in the 1980s.

The right title showed up, but I got that frustrating blank book cover Google teases you with when it has “no preview available.” (Although, you’ll notice Internet Archive does does have the full text available.) Fortunately, there was a link from JSTOR to a review in The American Historical Review (Oct. 1944), which summed up the book thus: “All in all, the book is a potpourri of every variety of odds and ends of information gleaned along American folkways” (p. 145). Everything was sounding good, so with my heart in my throat I checked AAS’s catalog, discovered we had a copy, and when I pulled it from our stacks my heart was strangely warmed to discover I had the right book in my hands! I confirmed this with our reader and he is happily searching out a used copy of his own.

All this research talk leads me to ask a slightly twisted version of the question from the SHARP list-serv: “How do you use google books?” Please reply with your own research tricks and go-to alternative research sites (Internet Archive is one of our favorites), horror stories and triumphs. If you’ve solved a similar research mystery of your own, how did you do it? Let’s make “crowd-researching” the next hot trend.

Please join me in congratulating peterme for his perspicacity, and if anyone wants to give him a run for his money, maybe you can help me find a book another reader asked about that’s way beyond our scope at AAS? The clues I’ve been given are that it’s called “The Emperor” and it’s about how Japanese emperors are raised from early childhood. Happy hunting!

The Question: See if YOU can solve this reference mystery

I was in a bookstore in the ’80s and started reading a book about Puritans feeding their babies ale but now I can’t remember the title. Can you help me find the book?

This is the kind of question we live for at AAS: the test that can make or break you as a professional. Succeed and you will glow with a satisfaction almost akin to discovering gold at the end of a treasure hunt. Fail and it will haunt you for years to come. You may find yourself wandering the aisles of bookshops and libraries muttering about “Puritans,” “babies,” and “ale,” which believe you me will attract some strange sideways glances from the other patrons.

The Rules:
How would you discover the answer to this question? We hope you will share with us your research strategies, tips for searching online resources like Google, and the results you come up with. There is a right answer and I will post it next week, hopefully after we’ve heard some of your suggestions. Basically, this post is an exercise in crowd-sourcing and if it works we may have to begin outsourcing some of our toughest questions to you all. In fact, I already have one lined up which I wasn’t able to figure out. Can a group solve a mystery like this faster than an individual? Let’s find out…

The Clues:
1. The title was something like “How We Lived” or “How Americans Lived.”

2. It was a social history of America from the Puritans into the early 20th century and included something about taverns and the common substitution of ale among Early Americans for often-contaminated water. The book described the practice of weaning Puritan babies with ale (I guess to ease the let-down).

3. The book was spotted in the ’80s (the 1980s, I should clarify) and our questioner thought it had been recently published.

The Attempts:
Like any good researcher, my first instinct was to run right to the welcoming arms of that search-engine-to-the-stars: Google. After all, why do all the work if the milk (or in this case perhaps the ale) is free? However, when an initial search of Google didn’t yield easy success, I dug my heels in for a tougher fight. No matter what they say about online access making this generation lazy and less skilled researchers, it still requires a lot of work to figure out the right questions to ask of all these amazing resources. When I was still unable to find anything, I passed the buck to Diann who also struck out. Diann sent around an ALL-STAFF email asking if any other AAS staff members could help. We received some great suggestions, but none quite fit. Then my own competitiveness kicked in. I decided I was not going to let this be the one that got away so I went back in for another try and ultimately hitting the jackpot. How’s that for a paragraph full of mixed metaphors?

The Challenge:
Test yourself to see if you have the detective skills and research chops it takes to succeed. Finding the answer is all about figuring out the right questions to ask — and isn’t that a good skill to have in life? If you like your puzzles straight-up or want to find your own solution, you’ve been given exactly the same information we had. If you’d like a little extra help, click here for some hints based on how I found the book. Also, I should warn you there is at least one slight red herring in the information given, but what mystery doesn’t have at least one twist?

The Prize:
All the best intangibles: satisfaction and bragging rights.

Good luck, and I can’t wait to hear what you all come up with!

(Click here for The Answer)

It’s all in the timing

Proof that humor is not a modern invention: a joke to lighten our Wednesdays direct from John Davis to AAS Librarian Christopher Columbus Baldwin in the close of a February 4, 1832 letter.

Can you tell why a catterpillar [sic] is like a woman churning butter?

Do you give it up?

Because she makes butterfly.

No groans please. This joke comes from a very dignified source. In 1832, John Davis was serving his third term in Congress. He would go on to become governor of Massachusetts as well as a senator. And most importantly (of course), he served as AAS president from 1853 until his death in 1854.

Known as “Honest John,” Davis distinguished himself as an uncompromising anti-slavery Whig, an adversary of President Andrew Jackson, and a staunch opponent of the Compromise of 1850. After his death at sixty seven, one newspaper described him as a “very practical and honest” statesman. In the April 1854 AAS Proceedings, council member Thomas Kinnicutt remembered him warmly as, “social in his habits, genial in his disposition, and constant in his friendships.”

The papers of John Davis are held in the AAS manuscript collection.