Library Company of Philadelphia Blog

By Deeds of Peace

2017-06-08T13:45:00.000-04:00

Lewis Pingo (1743-1830). William Penn Medal, 1775. Silver. Gift of Dr. John Fothergill, 1775.

This commemorative medal shows a profile bust of William Penn in a plain coat with a cravat. On the reverse, Penn is shaking hands with a Native American who is holding a bow in his left hand with a legend that reads, “Deeds of Peace, Pennsylvania Setled (sic) 1681.” Stamped on the front is “L.P.” for Lewis Pingo (1743-1830), the maker. An English medalist, Pingo won many prizes from the Society of the Arts, London. He succeeded his father as Assistant Engraver at the Royal Mint in 1776, becoming Chief Engraver in 1779.

Reverse of the medal.

This medal came to the Library Company in 1775. The Directors’ Minutes record, "Mr. William Logan having in the Name and by Direction of Doctor Fothergill presented the Library with a silver Medal representing on the Face a striking likeness of William Penn the worthy Founder of this Province Legend 'William Penn. B 1644. D.1718.'" William Logan (1718-1776) was the son of James Logan, Penn’s secretary. James Logan amassed an extraordinary collection of books of over 2,600 volumes. He left this collection for the public through the creation of the Loganian Library, which was transferred to the Library Company in 1792. He served on the Common Council of Philadelphia from 1743 until its suspension by the Revolution. William, a Quaker and ardent pacifist, opposed the Indian wars and formed the Peace Association with his cousin Israel Pemberton.

Portrait of Dr. Fothergill. The American Universal Magazine. Philadelphia: Printed for Samuel F.L. Smith & Thomas Smith. Vol. 4, no. 2 (Dec. 22, 1797): frontispiece.

James Fothergill (1712-1780), also a Quaker, studied medicine in Edinburgh and had a lucrative medical practice in London. He had a great interest in botany and was a friend of Peter Collinson and John Bartram. Collinson, who was the Library Company's book agent, introduced Benjamin Franklin to Fothergill. When Franklin became ill after his arrival in London in 1757, he became Fothergill's patient. They remained close friends. When news of Fothergill's death reached Franklin, he wrote the "I think a worthier man never lived. For besides his constant readiness to serve his friends, he was always studying and projecting something for the good of his country and of mankind in general."[1]

Portrait of Peter Collinson. Lettsome, John Coakley. Memoirs of John Fothergill, M.D. London: C. Dilly, 1786, p. [260].

[1] Benjamin Franklin to Benjamin Waterhouse. January 18, 1781, in the Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Barbara B. Oberg (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). p. 290.

Intern Spotlight: Diana Myers of Masterman High School

2017-05-30T15:05:00.003-04:00

This month, Masterman High School senior Diana Myers has undertaken the study of one remarkable item during a brief internship at the Library Company. According to Diana:

Manipulated photographs, as explained in Faking It: Manipulated Photography before Photoshop (2012), are any photographs where “the final image is not identical to what the camera ‘saw’ in the instance at which the negative was exposed.” By this standard, most early photographs had been manipulated, because it was very hard to control the exposure for multiple subjects and landscapes Photographers often combined separate images to get one good photograph. Their techniques included: taking multiple exposures on a single negative, retouching the negatives with paint or ink, and combination printing. William Notman, whose photography studios created “Eminent Women,” was a master of combination printing—a way to get group photographs without making everyone come to the studio at once. Notman’s combination photographs were primarily made from the “paste-up” technique, which involved cutting up negatives and pasting them in an arrangement together, before rephotographing the whole thing so it would look more realistic.

“Eminent Women,” a combination photograph of twelve notable American women, was composed in Notman’s Montreal studio in 1884 by a talented assistant, Eugene L’Africain. It was originally made as a cabinet card (similar in size to a postcard). Cabinet cards were common collectors' items. "Eminent Women" is part of a series Notman created as advertising for Travelers Insurance Company in Hartford, Connecticut. The twelve women never got together as a group, and may not have known each other. All the women were photographed separately in Notman’s Boston studio at some point in their lives. Notman and L’Africain likely pulled the photographic negatives held on file for each woman and combined them without asking for permission. The background of the photo is composed of four separate interior shots from George Stephen’s home in Montreal (he was a wealthy railway financier). Although L’Africain tried to leave no trace of his work, there are some hints that this photograph was composed. If you look closely at the fourth woman from the left (Grace Oliver), you’ll see that she seems to be cut off by the bottom edge of a mirror or frame.

The twelve women were all well-known at the time for their writing, although several of them were also lecturers and editors. Some of the women, like Julia Ward Howe and Mary Livermore, were also very involved in the temperance and women’s rights movements. Helen Hunt Jackson was known for her work advocating for the rights of Native Americans, and Harriet Beecher Stowe is remembered as an abolitionist (she wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin). There are a few women included in the photo whose writings are almost unknown to us now, such as Nora Perry and Grace Oliver; while others, like children’s authors Louisa May Alcott and Frances Hodgson Burnett, continue to have their work republished and enjoyed.

For more information, see Faking It: Manipulated Photography before Photoshop (2012) by Mia Fineman, and The World of William Notman: The Nineteenth Century through a Master Lens (1993) by Roger Hall, Gordon Dodds, and Stanley Triggs.

Portrait of James Logan Conserved

2017-04-05T14:33:00.000-04:00

Our portrait of James Logan by Thomas Sully is back on display after recently being restored. The story behind this painting is fascinating.

Thomas Sully. James Logan, 1831. Oil on canvas. Commissioned by the Library Company, 1831.

Thomas Sully (1783-1872) was one of the most prolific early American painters. A popular portraitist, he painted notable people, such as Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette, and Queen Victoria. The Library Company is fortunate to have eight of his works in the collection.

James Logan (1674-1751) served as William Penn's secretary and became an influential public figure in Pennsylvania. He amassed an extraordinary collection of books of over 2,600 volumes. He left this collection for the public through the creation of the Loganian Library. In 1792, the Loganian Library was transferred to the Library Company.

The Library Company commissioned Sully to paint this portrait of Logan to replace one which had just been ruined by fire. On January 6, 1831, a fire broke out in the Loganian Library section of the Library Company. The fire destroyed some books, a portrait of Logan, a bust of William Penn, a clock, a print of the Sortie of Gibraltar, and damaged some maps. The Directors wrote that "the destruction of an original portrait of James Logan...and a bust of the venerable Founder of Pennsylvania, is however, a subject of great regret to them."¹

They ordered an investigation of the blaze and recruited John Evans, a carpenter, to investigate. The fire started with the installation of a coal grate to replace a Franklin stove. It ignited what they thought was a brick pillar but was actually a wooden beam encased in a veneer of masonry. Evans reported that, "it appeared that the wooden Column which supported the clock case had been for many years enclosed in Brick work, put up originally to accommodate an open or Franklin stove-- But a coal grate having been placed in lieu of the stove about three months since, in doing which it became necessary to cut away a part of the Brick-work adjoining the columns (which appeared to be solid masonry) and which must have covered the mortar in that part, say in each joint, the heat from the grate communicated to the column from time to time, until at length the Southern one became ignited, & the fire progressed & such an extent, that about one third of the Galleries, and the lining on the east side of the Room, with many valuable & scarce books were destroyed."² After the column lit up, "the fire ran up the clock, and along the corridors."³ Ironically, the Directors had removed the Franklin stove for a coal grate, because they thought it would be safer. "The fire originated in the breastwork of the chimney, from a grate recently fixed in the Loganian Library, with a view to the greater security afforded by coal fire."⁴ Fortuitously, the fire occurred during a Directors' meeting at the Library. "The presence of the Directors, at one of their state meetings, in an upper room...fortunately prevented any delay in the introduction of water."⁵ The Library Company still has a set of six fire buckets, purchased in 1797, that may have been used.

Library Company Fire Bucket, 1797. Leather. Purchased by the Library Company, 1797.

Also credited was the "prompt and energetic exertions of the Fire and Hose Companies, particularly the Pennsylvania and Fame, whose location enabled them to bring their powerful apparatus into almost immediate action, the preservation of the Library is chiefly attributable."⁶ Both fire companies were housed in the lot adjacent to the Library Company on Fifth Street.⁷ These efforts stopped the progression of the fire and kept it contained, saving the Library Company and its collection.

Additionally, the Directors' meeting cleared Librarian John Jay Smith and enabled "them to exonerate their Librarian, and those employed by him, from any imputation of negligence." Smith was the great-grandson of James Logan. He had the task of sorting through the mess with former Librarian George Campbell's help.⁸ In total, 392 books were totally destroyed, 158 were repaired, and another 1,403 had to be rebound.⁹ These books had their binding removed and the damaged charred edges trimmed. Many had to be rebound horizontally. We have a number of examples of these titles.

Priestley, Joseph. Letters to the Members of the New Jerusalem Church. Birmingham: J. Thompson, 1791. Am 1791 Nic Log. 1878.O.1

Books in the Circulating Library at Leeds. Leeds: James Bowling, 1790. Am 1792 Win Log. 1849.O.1. This book has a number of pamphlets bound together. A large portion of the tops of the pamphlets have been burnt away.

Hexham, Henry. A Copious Englisg (sic) and Netherduytch Dictionarie. Rotterdam: Arnout Leers, 1660. Wing H 1650 (1)Log. 332.Q. The title page begins with the word And as the top of all the pages has been burnt off. Notice how all three books had to be bound horizontally.

The Library Company had another matter to deal with: its policy with the American Fire Insurance Company. A dispute over what items the policy covered needed to be resolved. The Library totaled its loss to $3,293.55. The insurance company objected to covering the following: "The Clock valued at $200, Damage to the Maps $25, Portrait of James Logan $100, Bust of William Penn $50, Print of Sortie of Gibraltar $20." After reexamining the policy, the Library Company's directors "were induced to give up the claim for the portrait of James Logan."¹⁰ Horace Binney, a Library Company shareholder and noted lawyer, was asked to decide about the other objects. The argument hinged on what was covered by the term "&c." Binney ultimately decided, "the Policy is on Books, Maps, &c; the latter Instrument being perfectly clear and a mere extension of orders...The words et caetera (&c) comprehend other things of the like kind with those before described, but not things similar. Manuscripts-which are not in the popular sense books -- plans of buildings towns & forts which are not in the popular sense maps, would be included within the et caetera and things also less similar than these. But I am of opinion that the words do not include a Clock, nor any furniture of the Library, still less a Bust... The American Fire Insurance Company ought to pay to the Library Company the amount of damage to maps $25 and the value of the large print and plan of the Siege of Gibraltar $20 but that they ought not to pay for the clock or the Bust of William Penn. Signed H. Binney Feby 26, 1831."¹¹ In the end, the Library Company had to deal with a total cost of $3,540.64 of which the insurance covered $2,943.55. The Library had to absorb $350 for the loss of the bust, portrait, and clock and needed to pay another $247.09 for the labor in drying the books and paying appraisers.

Thanks to antiquarian John Fanning Watson, the original Logan portrait has been documented. In 1830, Watson asked to reproduce the portrait for his upcoming book, Annals of Philadelphia. The Library Company's minutes record that "John F. Watson of Germantown desired the use for a few days of the portrait of James Logan for the purpose of copying the same to insert in his forthcoming annals of Philadelphia. The request was granted provided the portrait be not taken out of the Library building."¹²Watson noted in his book the origin of the illustration: "The engraved portrait is taken from a family piece now in the Loganian Library."¹³

Watson, John Fanning. Annals of Philadelphia. Philadelphia: E.L. Carey & A. Hart; G. & C.H. Carvill, 1830, engraving opposite p. 506.

Likewise, Pierre Du Simitiere made a drawing in 1770 of the original bust of William Penn done by Sylvanus Bevan. John Hall used the drawing to engrave this image of Penn in 1773.

Hall, John, engraver. William Penn. London: Richard Penn, 1773.

Unfortunately, there is no image of the clock, but an article in the Philadelphia Gazette the day after the fire describes it as being "made by a French artist, so constructed as to ring an alarum (sic) at the going down of the sun on every day of the year." It further says that the "clock was the only one of the kind in the world."¹⁴

Thomas Sully based his portrait on one by Gustavus Hesselius that James Logan's descendant Deborah Logan held at their ancestral home Stenton. Deborah granted permission to the Library Company to borrow the portrait in April 1831 for the copying.¹⁵ This painting is now in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Collection at the Philadelphia History Museum. As payment for the painting, Sully received two shares in the Library Company. Sully have one share to Ashbel G. Ralston, one of his fellow directors at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the second share to George D. Wetherill, who was a dealer in paints.¹⁶ James S. Earle (1807-1879) made the frame for the portrait. The Library paid him $6.50 for the frame and cleaning the borrowed portrait from Deborah Logan.¹⁷ Earle, a restorer and frame maker, in partnership with Thomas Sully ran a commercial art gallery that sold paintings, prints, and mirrors, and operated from 1819 to at least 1846.¹⁸

The Library Company, through donations and purchases, replaced some of the other items destroyed in the fire. In 1833, John Jay Smith presented the Library with a bust of William Penn. The Library Company purchased a clock from John Child in 1835 for $125 that would chime at sundown, which was the Library's closing time. But the print of Gibraltar does not seem to have been replaced as there is none in the collection currently.

John Child. Tall Case Clock, 1835. Pine. Purchased by the Library Company from John Child in 1835.

The conserved painting has once more returned to the room named after him, the Logan Room. We hope that you have the opportunity to come and see it in person.

Linda August
Curator of Art & Artifacts

1 Register of Pennsylvania, vol. 7, no. 3 (Jan. 15, 1831), p. 47.

2 Library Company Directors' Minutes, vol. 5, April 7, 1831, p. 317-318.

3 Philadelphia Gazette and Daily Advertiser, vol. 54, no. 12,953 (Jan. 7, 1831).

4 Register of Pennsylvania, vol. 7, no. 3 (Jan. 15, 1831), p. 47.

5 Register of Pennsylvania, vol. 7, no. 3 (Jan. 15, 1831), p. 47.

6 Register of Pennsylvania, vol. 7, no. 3 (Jan. 15, 1831), p. 47.

7 Scharf, J. Thomas and Thompson Westcott. History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884. Philadelphia: L.H. Everts & Co., 1884, p. 1901-1902. In 1808, the directors of the Library Company granted to the Pennsylvania Fire Company the right to use the northwestern portion of a lot adjoining the Library. The Fame Hose Company was founded in 1818 and soon also obtained permission from the Library Company to use the adjacent lot, building their house next to the Pennsylvania Fire Company.

8 Library Company Driectors' Minutes, vol. 5, January 7, 1831, p. 309.

9 Library Company Driectors' Minutes, vol. 5, March 3, 1831, p. 315.

10 Library Company Driectors' Minutes, vol. 5, March 3, 1831, p. 312-313.

11 Library Company Driectors' Minutes, vol. 5, March 3, 1831, p. 314-315.

12 Library Company Directors’ Minutes, vol. 5, Apr. 1, 1830, p. 278.

13 Watson, John Fanning. Annals of Philadelphia. Philadelphia: E.L. Carey & A. Hart; G. & C.H. Carvill, 1830, p. 509.

14 Philadelphia Gazette and Daily Advertiser, vol. 54, no. 12,953 (Jan. 7, 1831).

15 Fisher, Sydney G. to George Abbot, July 1, 1899, letter bound in Library Company Directors’ Minutes, vol. 5, between p. 308-309.

16 Library Company Directors' Minutes, vol. 5, November 3, 10, 1831, p. 330-331.

17 Loganian Library Minutes, vol. 1, November 10, 1831, p. 202-203.

18 Worcester Art Museum, Biography of Thomas Sully, http://www.worcesterart.org/collection/Early_American/Artists/sully/biography/ . The Library Company has the auction catalog of the sale of items in Sully & Earle’s Gallery in 1848. M Thomas & Sons. Catalogue of Valuable Paintings, Framed Engravings, Enamlled Stained Glass… Philadelphia: King & Baird, 1848. Am 1848 M Thomas 114805.O

Then and Now: Cataloguing Aero Service Negatives using Google Maps

2016-11-04T12:01:00.000-04:00

What I love about cataloguing images is that it provides a chance to breathe life into seemingly static artifacts. Quality cataloguing information is essential to facilitating access to images like those found in the Aero Service Corporation Negative Collection. This includes most generally information such as titles, creators, dates and physical characteristics of an image. But my role as cataloguer is also to provide added value by identifying and adding information that enhances a photograph’s potential relevance within the wider context of LCP’s collections.

In order to include this kind of information in the catalogue, it is necessary, of course, for me as the cataloguer to understand exactly what I am looking at so that my descriptions orient the viewer spatially as well as historically. I might rely on any number of secondary sources to find information about the location depicted. But the most essential tool for understanding the Aero Service negatives is the ability to employ Google Maps to compare aerial views of what is pictured ca. 1920s-1930s versus what an area looks like currently. Aero Service images are often of something big and recognizable, such a bridge. But understanding these images also includes recognizing features such as the curve of a road or a bend in the river, to match those unchanging (or slower-changing) features of the land. It is this comparison of “then vs. now” that makes cataloging this collection interesting and relevant for any number of reasons.

Take a look at some of these then-and-now comparisons of Aero Service negatives showing construction of Philadelphia area bridges and try to identify what has changed in the past 90 years:

Tacony-Palmyra Bridge construction, Tacony, Philadelphia (P.8990.8496): The “Y” formation of the roads in the image (above) was identified in the Google Maps view (below) in order to identify that the image is looking southeast towards New Jersey at the earliest stages of bridge construction.

Tacony-Palmyra Bridge construction, Tacony, Philadelphia, 1928. (P.8990.8496)

Google Maps view of the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge captured October 11, 2016.

University Avenue Bridge under construction, connecting the Grays Ferry and West Philadelphia neighborhoods, Philadelphia. 1932. (P.8990.15778n): In the images below, the bend in the river becomes the geographic feature that allows for identification of the University Avenue Bridge in-the-making. Notice the development that has taken place on the "peninsula" that is labeled as "Forgotten Bottom" in the Google Maps view.

University Avenue Bridge under construction, connecting the Grays Ferry and West Philadelphia neighborhoods, Philadelphia. 1932. (P.8990.15778n)

Google Maps view of the University Avenue Bridge captured October 11, 2016.

Pennsylvania Railroad, Manayunk Bridge, Spanning Schuylkill River & Green Lane, Manayunk, Philadelphia. ca. 1928 (P.8990.8844): This view showing the Manayunk bridge construction almost at completion. The shapes created by both bridges make this area easy to identify on Google Maps. But what is perhaps more interesting are the somewhat ramshackle strip of row houses and other development in the lower right corner, all of which was likely lost during the creation of the Schuylkill Expressway, if not before.

Pennsylvania Railroad, Manayunk Bridge, Spanning Schuylkill River & Green Lane, Manayunk, Philadelphia. ca. 1928 (P.8990.8844)

Google Maps view of the Pennsylvania Railroad and Manayunk Bridges captured October 11, 2016.

Cheryl Klimaszewski

Library Company of Philadelphia Volunteer

Mellon Scholars Program: Preparing for Success

2016-07-18T12:42:00.001-04:00

In a series of occasional blog posts, participants in our Mellon Scholars Internship and Workshop programs will introduce themselves, discuss their experiences at the Library Company, and share their goals for pursuing careers in the field of early African American history. This program is generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

How do I create a competitive graduate school application? What are some ways for me to excel as a graduate student? How do I conduct research at a historical archive? These are some of the questions we set out to answer during the Mellon Scholars Program Workshop. This marks the program’s third year in operation. As in previous years, we had a talented group of students from an array of different academic and personal backgrounds. The common thread among all eight participants was a passion for African American history.

Lasting June 13-June 17, the workshop equips students with the tools required for careers in academia. Specifically, the program includes an intensive series of lectures, trips, and professional development exercises: all activities geared toward preparing students to pursue advanced degrees. I work alongside Program Director Dr. Erica Armstrong Dunbar and Library Company Curator Krystal Appiah to produce this unique experience for the Mellon participants.

Dr. Vanessa Holden

At colloquia scheduled throughout the week, students were introduced to the process of historical investigation. Speakers such as Dr. Psyche Williams-Forson and Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson shared their scholarly work and demonstrated how to effectively convey research findings. Dr. Vanessa Holden, who was also the keynote speaker at LCP’s Juneteenth event, held a special session for the workshop participants. At the meeting, Dr. Holden challenged students to interpret and analyze primary source materials relevant to her own work. In this manner, the Mellon Scholars were challenged to enter the mind of a historian at the nascent stage of a project. The culmination of these seeds of evidence was later revealed at the subsequent Juneteenth lecture, where Dr. Holden explained her research conclusions. This gave students an expansive look at a research project from start to finish.

Katherine Ponds

Students were also assigned independent research topics for the week. Katherine Ponds, for instance, chose to examine the ways in which studying and teaching the Classics reflected Octavius Catto’s black political agenda. Participants then used the collections of the Library Company to shed light on their individual topics. Throughout the week, the staff worked with students to help them navigate the archives and think critically about source materials. Participants were asked to contextualize, interrogate, and analyze primary and secondary sources to reveal the significance of their subjects. Their work culminated in presentations delivered on the final day of the workshop. The colloquium was run in formal academic fashion to familiarize students with communicating their conclusions, receiving feedback, and answering audience questions.

Serkaddis Alemayehu, Public History
Coordinator and Digital Archives Specialist
at the Blockson Collection

A sizable amount of the students’ time was spent outside the walls of LCP as well. We took the group on a number of trips throughout Philadelphia to acquaint participants with some of the other institutional resources the city has to offer. For instance, we visited Temple University’s Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The Mellon Scholars also spent time at the historic Mother Bethel AME Church where they learned about the institution’s background and its role as a pillar of Philadelphia’s black community. Together the trips helped to enrich students’ understandings of African American history.

Lastly, much of the week was dedicated to demystifying the graduate school application process. Dr. Kimberly Saunders from the University of Delaware taught students how to craft strong applications, while LCP Librarian James Green explained how to effectively apply for fellowships. I also led a session on personal statement development and editing. Furthermore, we spent time speaking with students about the expectations of graduate study. For example, I led a meeting focused on navigating graduate school. During the session, I shared lessons I learned through my experiences as a graduate student, and I attempted to address the participants’ questions and concerns. Similarly, Dr. Dunbar led a graduate seminar class so participants could experience how a graduate course operates. Collectively the preparation sessions, research projects, enrichment trips, and speakers worked to empower students to achieve their aspirations. Historical investigation, archival exposure, and application formation: more than mere topics, these themes comprise skills integral to young students entering the world of academia. The Mellon Scholars Program was fortunate to furnish this already talented group of students with these pivotal skills. It was extremely rewarding to work with another cohort of gifted participants, and it was a pleasure to be part of the Mellon Scholars Program another year.

Michael Dickinson

2016 Mellon Scholars Graduate Research Advisor

Doctoral candidate in history, University of Delaware

Curator's Favorite: A Tunnel Book by Any Other Name ...

2016-07-13T08:30:00.000-04:00

A View of the Tunnel under the Thames, as it will Appear When Completed (London: S. E. Gouyn, 1828)

Perspective view, peepshow, and tunnel book are all words that have been used to describe our recent acquisition A View of the Tunnel under the Thames, as it will Appear When Completed. (London: S. E. Gouyn, 1828). The enchanting optical device purchased with funds from our Visual Culture Program represents the long and complicated history of the interrelationship of the study of optics with popular culture.

Front view of extended tunnel book A View of the Tunnel under the Thames, as it will Appear When Completed (London: S. E. Gouyn, 1828).

Collector and scholar Richard Balzer dates peepshows’/tunnel books’ beginnings to around the 15th century in Europe when box-like devices with peepholes were created to learn about the mechanics of vision. The instruments, often used by Renaissance artists to recreate perspective, became primarily associated with the itinerant showman by the 18th century. Later in the century peepshows entered the parlors of the affluent as the perspective box in which a set of prints was arranged to create a three-dimensional view designed to entertain the eye and mind. By the 1820s peepshows more closely resembling the subject of this essay became items of more general consumption when professionally printed and assembled for introduction into the market as souvenirs. A channel being constructed under the Thames River made the ideal subject for an optical device that created a “tunnel” perspective.

The start of the construction in 1825 of the Thames Tunnel, the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” made international news. On August 23, 1825, the Philadelphia newspaper the National Gazette wrote about the underground tunnel that would connect the opposite banks of the Thames River for commercial purposes as “the commencement of [a] novel undertaking, which will be read with interest.” Constructed after the revolutionary designs of Marc Brunel (1769-1849), the novel undertaking led not only to persons reading about it with interest but to the production of novelties. From the onset of construction and despite floods and collapses in the 1820s and 1830s, visitors flocked to see the tunnel. Merchandise vendors selling all manner of souvenirs, including peepshows, quickly followed. The engineering feat spurred publishers to issue over fifty different designs of Thames Tunnel peepshows between 1825 and the early 1860s. No other subject comprised as many of them. By probable consequence, the contemporary term “tunnel book” soon thereafter superseded “peepshow” in our lexicon for these devices.

Interior view of tunnel book A View of the Tunnel under the Thames, as it will Appear When Completed (London: S. E. Gouyn, 1828).

The first Thames Tunnel peepshow issued in 1825 by London publisher T. Brown served as the model for the graphic design of the devices, including S. E. Gouyn’s, through the 1830s. Comprised of the imagined Eastern and Western archways, a look through the book’s peephole reveals pedestrian and vehicular traffic, including men on horseback, carriages, and horse-drawn wagons. A prime article for the transatlantic book trade, our newly-acquired peepshow may likely be the “perspective view of the tunnel under the Thames” advertised in the New York newspaper American in April 1828 by New York publishers and print sellers Behr & Kahl. However, once the tunnel officially opened to only pedestrian traffic in 1843, the design evolved. Vehicular traffic no longer appeared.

Handmade tunnel book showing an enclosed thoroughfare (United States?, ca. 1850).

This change in design provides further clues to better understand a circa 1850 “homemade” tunnel book added to our collections in 2011. The similarities in the graphics depicting the interiors of the tunnels of Gouyn’s and our 2011 acquisition, particularly the style of a covered wagon, lends credence to our conjecture that the earlier acquired piece is modeled after a Thames Tunnel book, probably issued before 1843.

After 1843 and through the 1850s, “perspective view manufacturer” Bondy Azulay (b. 1813) became the primary manufacturer of these Thames Tunnel novelties. His manufacturing of the devices proved a more crude construction than earlier ones. His books also often included two to three peepholes on the front board. The design provided views of the tunnel traffic, as well as the river. Although the Library does not hold a Thames Tunnel book published by Azulay, we do hold his complementary 1851 eighteen-foot long Grand Panorama of London and the River Thames.

Oblique view of extended tunnel book A View of the Tunnel under the Thames, as it will Appear When Completed (London: S. E. Gouyn, 1828).

By the early 1860s Azulay ceased to manufacture Thames Tunnel books. In 1865 the East London Railway Company purchased the tunnel. Pedestrian traffic halted and the tunnel became a part of the railway. Nonetheless, the “novel undertaking” of the Thames Tunnel still endures as novel. The numerous tunnel books created in its image continue to serve as novelties rich for the study of Trans-Atlantic visual culture during the Victorian era.

Erika Piola

Associate Curator, Prints and Photographs

Co-Director, VCP at LCP

Sources:

American, April 3, 1828

Richard Balzer, Peepshows: A Visual History (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998)

Ralph Hyde, Paper Peepshows: The Jaqueline and Jonathan Gestetner Collection (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors’ Club, 2015)

Mellon Scholars Program: Ruminating on the Research Path

2016-07-06T10:35:00.001-04:00

Whilst typing this, I asked myself “is this experience really coming to a close?” The thought startled me, and I had to assure myself I had not spoken aloud. The Reading Room is for deep concentration, not interpersonal musings. Of course, my month at The Library Company of Philadelphia cannot be encapsulated by a blog post, but alas, I’ll try!

I’m Chandra. In May I graduated from Scripps College in Claremont, California with a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations and History. In September, I will move to France for seven months to work as an English Teaching Assistant. At the Library Company, I have split my time conducting my own research, transcribing, drafting lists of potential graduate schools, and introspection. This internship has been an immense privilege, and every interaction I have had at the Library Company has been a positive one. Often, I am struck by the fact that new insights exist only a call slip—or conversation—away.

I discovered this program through an archivist at Spelman College. Last summer, I received a grant to conduct a ten-week long project in preparation for my senior thesis. Spelman’s was the first archive I had ever visited. Before the end of my first day, the archives—and research—were no longer relegated to academics but instead were feasible career options. Upon finding my new love affair, I hounded the archivist with questions about how to gain more experiences related to history. She suggested I apply for the Library Company’s internship program, I applied, and was accepted.

This program interested me because of my passion for Afro-diasporic cultures. Through classes on Afro-diasporic communities in the Americas, I realized that rigorous historical study is a critical place of learning, resistance, progress, and art. Furthermore, the colonial period can tell us much about current perceptions of race, class, and gender and how some are treated abysmally because of their differences in these categories. The African Americana Collection at the Library Company holds a plethora of materials integral to remembering and learning from the experiences of people of African descent in the early United States. Obviously, this was an experience I could not pass up.

From Loring Daniel Dewey. Correspondence Relative to the Emigration to Hayti,
of the Free People of Colour, in the United States (New York, 1824).

While here, I have done research on the African American emigration movement to Haiti during the early 19th century. More specifically, I have questioned why African American men outnumber African American women in discourses surrounding the movement, and the often masculine rhetoric emigration literature presented as it gained support. My project has involved looking at pamphlets and letters promoting African American resettlement in order to understand the political and social climate that pushed free black Americans to seek opportunities abroad. Along with this, I have integrated a few articles that grapple with the relationship between nationalism and masculinity into my research. Often, historians do not use theoretical texts to frame their arguments, but I feel that theory has allowed me to further understand the significance of the primary and secondary source documents I have handled.

This experience has pushed me to think critically about what I’d like to prioritize in my career. My interests in Afro-diasporic cultures, gender studies, and art will certainly be at the forefront of whatever I do. At present, I would love to bring art and history into communities often disconnected from them. Thus, I believe a PhD program or Master’s in History or Africana studies would allow me to successfully merge a variety of my interests.

My month at the Library Company has been phenomenal, and I am excited to see what paths the skills I have gained here will take me in the future.

Chandra Dickey

Scripps College, Class of 2016

2016 Mellon Scholars Intern

The Digital Paxton Project: Where the 1760s meets Modern Technology

2016-06-29T13:54:00.002-04:00

Hi there! I’m Hunter Johnson, the Summer 2016 Digital Paxton intern at the Library Company of Philadelphia (LCP). Now that you’ve read my fancy title, I suppose you’re wondering what I actually do here. Well, put on your scholar glasses, because I’m about to give you a brief tour of this project.

How did I get here? Long story short, I read about this internship online, loved the description, applied, and got accepted! I’m a rising senior at the University of South Carolina Honors College (Go Gamecocks!!). My research interests include the discovery and colonization of the New World by European settlers, and the wars and political disputes that subsequently followed. As you can imagine, an internship focusing on the 1760s, a time period that was the apex of British hegemony in North America, was very appealing to me. Also, Philadelphia is an awesome city, and is rich with colonial legacies and museums.

The Digital Paxton Project is a collaboration between LCP, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP), and an outside scholar (Will Fenton). Will came up with the idea for this project, and the rest of us have gladly helped him out. So what does this project involve? Basically, it involves the digitization and transcription of dozens of pamphlets and cartoons concerning the Paxton Riots/Massacre. In 1763, a group of settlers on the Pennsylvania frontier, called the Paxton boys, were upset at the presence of Native American villages in their territory. They decided to target a village called Conestoga Manor, and killed all of its inhabitants, mostly women, children, and the elderly. After this, they marched towards Philadelphia, intending to kill any Native American found in the city. Battle was narrowly avoided after Benjamin Franklin negotiated a deal with the Paxtons. However, the inhabitants of Pennsylvania were still sharply divided over this issue, and published many works, both vilifying and praising the Paxtons. These publications are relevant to colonial history, as they illustrate the religious, political, and social divides among settlers, many of whom were not from England, despite belonging to an empire ruled principally by and from England. The settlers of Pennsylvania included people of a mixed Scottish-Irish background (so called “Scotch-Irish”), Swedes, Dutch, Germans, and multiple religious groups. As you can imagine, the inhabitants often violently disagreed with each other. The divide was sharpest between the pacifist Quakers and the not-so-pacifist Presbyterians, both of whom published pamphlets insulting the other side.

Example of a scanned pamphlet. This one is from a poem titled “The Paxtoniade” (Am 1764 Gym [795.D.24]). The title and content are meant to parody the epic poetry genre (Homer’s Iliad being a famous example). The poem describes the events leading to the Paxton Massacre. It mocks the Paxton Boys and their motivations, with a clear anti-Paxton bias from the author.

That’s the historical background. Now onto the actual work. Like I said, the project involves digitizing and transcribing publications, in preparation for their online publication. It requires a lot of technology, so I’ll take you through it step by step.

The first step is pretty simple. You take a pamphlet, and place it upside down on a digital scanner (we use an Epson 10000 XL). The pages are supposed to touch the scanner’s surface, since we want to capture everything that’s written there. Once the pamphlet is placed, you load a special program to do the scanning. Scanning itself is easy: click the scan button, and let the scanner do its job. Then, you flip to the next page, and keep scanning until you’re finished with the pamphlet. We scan two pages at a time, and save each scan as a tiff. Some of the pamphlets are only 8 pages and very quick to scan, but others are over 50 pages and take a while!

After that, we use Photoshop to crop the tiffs into jpegs. The tiffs contain two pages each and are a broad view, but we want a narrower view of the pages too. So each tiff is cropped into 2 separate jpegs. Each jpeg represents a single page of the pamphlet at high resolution, so it’s easy to read. We use two different kinds of images, because it’s better to have multiple options for reading documents. The tiff serves as the archival digital file with the lower resolution jpeg intended for web use. Also, it’s smart to have multiple images of the same page, in case some images get accidentally deleted or won’t open. LCP follows best practices for digital preservation by storing a copy onsite as well as a backup offsite to ensure the long-term stability of the digital content.

After the images are Photoshopped, they need to have metadata appended. This sounds complicated, but only involves a couple clicks of the mouse. You enter a program called Adobe Bridge, and click “append metadata.” This puts information on each image file that contains the LCP address, email, and other things that register us as the creator of this image. It’s something that is used for technical reasons, as the metadata doesn’t actually appear on the image. It appears in the image files, and is essentially digital record-keeping. It sounds way more complicated than it actually is.

The next step is uploading the images onto our servers. This requires two different steps. First, all of the images are copied and pasted into folders on our computer. This transfers the images from an individual computer to the entire LCP network, so anyone in LCP can access it from their work computers. Second, the jpegs are uploaded using a file transfer tool called Core FTP. This is another complicated-sounding program that involves a few easy clicks. This uploads our images to the servers of the website. These images are intended for online publication, and this ensures that they are uploaded onto the servers for the Digital Paxton website. The Digital Paxton Project will launch in early 2017, so information on the website is forthcoming.

With the pamphlets scanned and images uploaded, there is only one step remaining: transcription. This is the longest and most time consuming step. While the images are helpful and contain the original text, they are often difficult to read. This occurs because spelling and grammar were not standardized. Letters also look different; for example, the letter S looks like the letter F, which makes it hard to read. Handwriting was also very sloppy, and in cursive, which makes it nearly impossible to read a handwritten letter at a normal pace. For historians who want to use these documents in their research, it’s more convenient to provide a transcription. This is a plain Microsoft Word document that reproduces a pamphlet’s written content, retaining the original spelling, punctuation, spacing, and inaccurate grammar. Transcription is simple: sit down at a computer and start typing! It’s very time consuming and requires much patience, but it goes fairly smoothly. It’s also very interesting, as I inevitably start listening to the author’s argument and agreeing (or disagreeing!) with their opinion. Some of the pamphlets use quite colorful language, and it’s clear that the two sides did not agree about much.

That’s the entire process from start to finish! It’s a lot of work and clicking, but it’s really fun to engage with these historic documents. My last day of work is July 1st, and I’ll be very sad to depart this awesome project! It’s intended to be accessible to just about everyone, from researchers and students to anyone with an interest in colonial Philadelphia. Keep checking our website for more updates, images, and transcriptions!

Hunter Johnson

Summer 2016 Digital Paxton Intern

Fun in the Sun Archives: Preparing for Graduate School at the Library Company of Philadelphia

2016-06-24T10:23:00.000-04:00

I recently graduated magna cum laude from Hunter College with a B.A. in History with departmental honors and a Certificate in Human Rights. I was an Eleanor Roosevelt Scholar, McNair Scholar, and a Student Guide at Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute. In the fall, I will matriculate at Northwestern University as a Ph.D. student in the Department of African American Studies.

The Mellon Scholars Internship Program at the Library Company presented an indispensable opportunity to hone the archival skills necessary to achieve my academic goals. Likewise, the chance to strengthen my writing and presentation skills by producing an original research paper and sharing my research with others attracted me to this program. Although I plan to specialize in 20th-century African American history in graduate school, I understand that the events and intellectual ideas in one century are not independent of those in the previous one. Therefore, I welcomed the opportunity to learn about early African American society from historic documents and from leading scholars in the field during this program. The Mellon Scholars Internship Program exceeded all of my expectations.

My career goals include teaching at a research intensive university while making significant interventions in the study of black education in the urban North. I look forward to understanding the complexities of educational inequality not just in terms of race, but also in terms of gender and class. My hope as a future professor is to partner with women, faculty of color, and allies in addition to helping students advance their own goals.

A significant portion of my time at the Library Company was spent researching black women educators in Philadelphia in the antebellum period.

From Pennsylvania Abolition Society. Statistics of the
Colored People of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1856).

I focused on the contributions of Sarah Mapps Douglass (1806-1882) and Fanny Jackson Coppin (1837-1913) toward uplifting the black race by providing free blacks with education. Both women had ties to the Institute for Colored Youth, where black pupils received instruction equal, if not superior, to white children in their community, complete with lessons in the Classics, arithmetic, the sciences, and English. These women taught young black girls at a time when literacy was illegal in the South and slave catchers threatened the freedom of black people in the North; yet, these black women educators were convinced in the humanity and high intellectual capacity of their people. I have consulted several primary sources from the Library’s collection, such as Statistics of the Colored People of Philadelphia (1856), which was published by the Pennsylvania Abolition Society's Board of Education. The Objects and Regulations of the Institute for Colored Youth, with a List of the Officers and Students and the Annual Report of the Board of Managers from the 1860s have also been very helpful to my research. I feel more prepared to commence doctoral study this fall.

Ashley Dennis

2016 Mellon Scholars Intern

Mellon Scholars Program: "Obscure details" and the Pursuit of History

2016-06-17T10:51:00.001-04:00

Obscure details...There’s a title for my memoirs! For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved history and as long as I’ve loved history, I’ve found interest and passion in what some would call the most obscure subjects and questions and their most peculiar facets while connecting them to greater historical themes...What were Winston Churchill’s best quips and did they add to England’s finest hour? What was the 19th century development of Germantown like and how did it reflect greater trends of Philadelphia’s and America’s suburbanization? Was W.E.B. DuBois a snob and did that affect his commentary on both black and white society?

I love the “nitty-gritty” and have spent much of my free time reading on these “dusty” subjects and sharing these tidbits with unprepared friends and family members (either to their amusement or anguish). I satisfied my craving for research in high school by working in my school’s archives. For years I lived with the fact that I was a keeper of specialized knowledge, a connector of dots, who was seen as appreciated but at times a novelty. I knew that there were others like me but it was not until I got to college that I met people who were equally interested in scholarly pursuit with the level of detail that always interested and frustrated me. I realized that my interests were not novelties or a hobby but rather an ideal foundation for scholarly development. Last summer was my baptism into collegiate research, and I won a grant to study the role of the black middle-class in the upper South from the early nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth century using my own family history as a subject. The research focused on themes of respectability and ultimately what it meant to be black and middle-class in one of the nation’s most segregated corridors.

When recommended to apply for the Mellon Scholars Internship at the Library Company of Philadelphia, I could not think of a better way to spend a summer. I figured I will be surrounded by others who share my love for digging deep into history, answering the questions, and connecting themes. I will have the opportunity to work for a leading organization in the pursuit of both American and African American history. I will hear some of the foremost scholars on black history and gain professional advice and strategies from a noted historian. To apply was a no-brainer and to be accepted was a blessing. I hope to use these skills to both refine my research and writing skills but also help in charting my professional course. I have an interest in politics and hope to enter

Constitution and Rules to be Observed and Kept
by the Friendly Society of St. Thomas's African Church,
of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1797).

government. But as a lover of history, the potential to research and share my knowledge with others like me is the greatest career temptation.

During my research this summer, I will be focusing on themes of black respectability in Philadelphia from the late eighteenth century to the 1830s, specifically highlighting the community role of the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, the first black Episcopal Church in the country and a leader in both political and social life in antebellum black Philadelphia. I plan to look at the generational divides amongst Philadelphia’s black leadership, highlight the relationship between denomination and class, and ideas of early nineteenth-century racial uplift.

I’m excited to see where my research takes me and look forward adding some useful research and career skills and more obscure details to my intellectual rolodex by the end of the internship.

Ken Anderson

University of Richmond, Class of 2017

2016 Mellon Scholars Intern

Common Touch: An Artist’s Multi-Sensory Exhibition Exploring the History of the Education of the Blind at the Library Company of Philadelphia

2016-06-07T08:00:00.000-04:00

A version of this post was originally published on the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities blog on May 16, 2016.

View of exhibition gallery. Photo by Gary McKinnis.

As the co-director of the Visual Culture Program (VCP at LCP) at the Library Company of Philadelphia, the collections with which I work daily document the visual construction of history. In preparing for our current VCP exhibition, Common Touch: The Art of the Senses in the History of the Blind, the experience has purposefully challenged my conceptions of the privileged role of vision in visual culture studies. Funded by the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, the multi-sensory exhibition on display through October 21, 2016, is an unconventional and benchmark one for the Library Company. Curated by Philadelphia artist Teresa Jaynes, the installations, inspired by the Michael Zinman Collection of Printing for the Blind, explore the history of the nineteenth-century education of the blind and the nature, foundation, and limits of perception.

Embossed map of Boston in Fifth Annual Report of the Trustees of the New-England Institution for the Education of the Blind, to the Corporation (Boston, 1837). Michael Zinman Collection of Printing for the Blind.

The Zinman Collection, the core of the Library’s printing for the blind holdings, contains primarily nineteenth-century raised and embossed printed texts and ephemera. Raised images of maps, scientific diagrams, and musical scores often comprise the texts that range in subject matter from natural history to religion, music, and literature. The collection also contains nineteenth-century personal narratives and textbooks, as well as reports, pamphlets, and magazines issued by educational institutes for the visually impaired, such as the Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of the Blind.

Printed throughout the Victorian era in several styles denoted as alphabetical or arbitrary, raised-print materials embody a rich and complex history. By the mid-nineteenth century, alphabetical systems mimicking Roman letters (e.g. Philadelphia line) predominated in the United States over arbitrary-denoted systems of dots and symbols (e.g., braille). While produced to serve as tools to educate through touch, the line systems still fostered an embodied culture of looking that inevitably privileged sight for their presumed sighted teachers. In 1932 authorities accepted Standard English braille as the uniform reading system for the blind in the United States. Line types faded into obscurity and are the shadows of the visual culture of the sighted and those who are visually impaired.

Case of historical materials related to mathematics and natural history in the nineteenth-century education of the blind. Complements Teresa Jaynes, Gift #5, 2016. Photo by Concetta Barbera.

The overall concept of Common Touch examines variable natures of perception in relation to the history of the education of the blind. Visitors explore an exhibition with installations informed by historical first-person narratives and abstract and geometric forms—the style of active learning tools, often influenced by the Froebel educational system—used in curricula at schools for the blind.

Jaynes’s works, named in homage to the Froebel tools known as Gifts, engages four of the five senses—sight, sound, hearing, and smell. Among the seven installations, visitors interact with Gift #4, a series of nine silkscreen printed patterns representing a visual transmutation of the noted 1880 composition March Timpani by Victorian African American blind musician Thomas “Blind Tom” Wiggins; Gift #5, a topographic map with a key of porcelain geometric forms and embroidered grid that represent the travels of the prominent eighteenth-century English blind surveyor John Metcalf; Gift #6, an olfactory mechanism that immerses visitors into a cocoon of sound and scent conveying micro-narratives of the lives of Metcalfe and Wiggins; and Gift #7, an artist book of raised prints after embossed diagrams of snowflakes in the Perkins’ School for the Blind adaptation of the 1845 science text The Rudiments of Natural Philosophy.

Integral to the creative process for Common Touch was Jaynes’s Vision Council. These advisors have experienced varying degrees of vision loss at different stages of life, and Jaynes incorporated their professional and personal experiences into the design and concepts of the exhibition through its granular historical themes. The artist-curated exhibition also hearkens back to the nineteenth-century inquiries about the hierarchy of the senses, vision, and the means to knowledge explored by optics scholars such as Charles Wheatstone, as well as brings into physicality the arguments of contemporary scholars examining the sensory turn of visual culture.

Without the touch element provided by Jaynes’s works, essential to the artistry of the exhibition, the aura of the original prints, forms, and devices on which they are based would be impotent. This essential element to the exhibition design connects the visitor with the multiple under-recognized and hidden histories represented by the collection material on display, which inspired the exhibition itself. The accessibility of Jaynes’s art works transfers to more transparent access to such hidden histories of the raised printing process, as well as the education of the blind in the nineteenth century and the historical collections documenting the role of persons with visual impairments in society.

Through this immersion, Jaynes’s art serves as a bridge to appreciate what disability does, not just what it is, as proposed by disability studies scholar Amanda Cachia. Cachia served as curator of Haverford College’s Hurford Center’s 2012 art exhibition What Can A Body Do? In describing this curatorial work in the 2014 Disability Studies Quarterly, Cachia states she purposefully strove to avoid the possible pitfall of reductionism that assumes all people with disabilities have the same experience. Similarly, Jaynes’s multi-sensory exhibition is grounded on the non-homogeneity of experience more typical of art, as opposed to special collections exhibitions. Common Touch profoundly facilitates that no two visitors have the same experience by privileging the embodied culture of looking in an exhibition that intersects art, historical collections, and disability studies.

Teresa Jaynes, Gift #7, 2016. Book with embossed paper. Photo by Gary McKinnis.

This embodied culture of looking is evoked through the disabilities of blindness and visual impairment that underlie the artistry inherent in the embossed prints, teaching tools, and sculptural forms that are on display. This “touch art” of the present and past iterates the genesis and perpetuation of kinesthetic experiences that powerfully acknowledges disability as intrinsic to their creation. Consequently, the Library Company works on display abstractly exemplify what disability aesthetics scholar Tobin Siebers acknowledged for artists as “the discovery of disability as a unique resource, recouped from the past and re-created in the present, for aesthetic creation and appreciation” (Siebers, Disability Aesthetics, 2010, 5). Jaynes’s art serves as an equalizer and even a redefinition of disparate but complementary sensory experiences with archives. The archival material has not only been transformed into art but is often art itself.

As discussed, Cachia, the curator of What Can A Body Do?, wrote of her experience curating her kindred in nature exhibition to Common Touch. With her co-authors and fellow disability studies scholars Kristin Lindgren and Kelly George, they concluded disability studies develop through disorientation, defamiliarization, and destabilization. The Library Company exhibition, a transdisciplinary expression of art, disability studies, and historical collections, similarly destabilizes cultural assumptions about seeing, the history of blindness, and the literal and figurative untouchability of historical collections. Internal and external dialogues about our evolving connotations of sight are cultivated while the perception that the Library Company is inaccessible, as a special collections library, is challenged.

Erika Piola

Co-Director, VCP at LCP

New Context for Teaching Science to African American Girls in Early Philadelphia

2016-05-18T10:18:00.002-04:00

The Library Company recently acquired an important copy of Jane Kilby Welsh’s two-volume Lectures on Mineralogy and Geology (Boston, 1832-33) inscribed by William Lloyd Garrison, editor of The Liberator and proponent of immediate emancipation, to Grace Bustill Douglass (1782-1842), African American educator and founding member of the biracial Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. It is furthermore inscribed by Grace’s daughter and fellow abolitionist, Sarah Mapps Douglass (1806-1882). These volumes not only complement the Library Company’s existing holdings related to Sarah Mapps Douglass, but help to flesh out an important historical gap regarding the nature of science pedagogy at Sarah’s school for African American girls.

Inscription on flyleaf by to G. [Grace] Douglass from
W. L. [William Lloyd] Garrison. Lectures, v. 2.

Jane Kilby Welsh (1783-?), Scientific Writer

Independent of the volumes’ provenance, Welsh’s Lectures on Mineralogy and Geology is an uncommon title that can be useful for thinking about the history of women and science in early America. Although a relatively obscure figure, Welsh’s scientific interests and aims can be discerned from her pedagogical writing and provide important context for reconstructing the Douglasses’ use of her work.

Jane Kilby Welsh was probably the daughter of John Welsh, a Boston merchant who died in 1789. She spent part of her adult life in Northampton, Massachusetts. Her earliest known written work is A Botanical Catechism: Containing Introductory Lessons for Students in Botany (Northampton, Mass., 1819), a rudimentary question-and-answer introduction to the Linnaean system of classification. Renowned science educator and author Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps (1793-1884) admired her predecessor in scientific writing, believing the work to be “the first attempt by an American lady to illustrate the science.” This was not Welsh’s only work on botany. A review of Lectures on Mineralogy and Geology appearing in The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal identifies Welsh as the author of The Pastime of Learning, with Sketches of Rural Scenes (1831), a dialogue book documenting the botanical pursuits of “Mr. and Mrs. G” and their children. Sophisticated botanical knowledge is disseminated through a domestic narrative that would have been compelling to young readers.

Lectures on Mineralogy and Geology continues the story of the “G” family as they learn how to collect and evaluate rocks, minerals, shells, and fossils. To write Lectures, Welsh corresponded with prominent geologists, including Edward Hitchcock (1793-1864) of Amherst. Like many women scientific writers of her time – and indeed, men like Hitchcock -- Welsh believed the pursuit of scientific knowledge was a spiritual process that confirmed intelligent design. Paraphrasing Alexander Pope in her preface, Welsh hoped that “the youthful mind, while thus exploring the works of nature, will be elevated with gratitude, adoration, and love, to the view of Nature’s God.”

Garrison and the Douglass Family

Masthead from The Liberator (Boston, 1831).

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-79) was a recent convert to immediatism when he met the Douglasses, a relatively well-off African American family from Philadelphia, in the early 1830s. Through both activism and teaching, Grace Douglass and her daughter Sarah had worked to improve educational opportunities for free African Americans in Philadelphia. In 1819, Grace Douglass and James Forten (1766-1842) co-founded a school, where Sarah Douglass may have taught for the first time as an assistant teacher. When Sarah was twenty-one years old, she took control of a school established by the Augustine Education Society. Thus, by 1831, when Sarah took up a collection for Garrison’s newly-founded abolitionist paper, The Liberator, she was already an experienced teacher.

Grace and Sarah Douglass may have first met Garrison in June 1831, when he was traveling to Philadelphia to address the free African American community. Correspondence between Sarah Douglass and Garrison regarding the Female Literary Association, a Philadelphia writing group for African American women, suggests that Garrison and the Douglass family were on friendly terms by early 1832. That summer Garrison was back in Philadelphia, visiting with the Douglass family. By the end of the year, Garrison had likely learned of Sarah and Grace’s scientific interests and teaching strategies.

Inscription on flyleaf by William Lloyd Garrison. Lectures, v. 1.

In late 1832, someone at The Liberator, possibly Garrison, read and favorably reviewed Jane Kilby Welsh’s Lectures on Mineralogy for the November 3 issue. Few books were reviewed for the paper, although there was a running commentary on a Boston-based journal called The Naturalist. Although the reviewer occasionally dissented with The Naturalist’s characterization of race – the reviewer refused to believe that the condition of African Americans was biological, but rather was the product of poor treatment – he generally commended the work. Welsh’s book may have been highlighted because it was consistent with The Liberator’s practice of reviewing didactic or useful works of science. Welsh’s theological perspective, too, may have been appealing; her geological narratives supported a single-origin, universal creation of man that would have resonated with the reviewer who found fault with The Naturalist’s support of polygenesis. Regardless of the reason, Garrison seemed sufficiently pleased with the work that he gave it to Grace Douglass as a gift. Perhaps he gave her the very copy that was reviewed for The Liberator.

Inscription on title page by
S. M. [Sarah Mapps] Douglass.
Lectures, v. 2.

The second volume of Welsh’s Lectures appeared in early 1833. Garrison also gave this to Grace Douglass. Sarah Mapps Douglass’s name appears on the title page of the Library Company’s copy, identifying her as a former owner. That same year, Sarah Douglass left Philadelphia to teach at the African Free Schools in New York. She returned in 1834 and founded a school for African American girls that opened in 1835. In 1852, Sarah would become the first African American student at the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, maintaining an interest in practicing and teaching science throughout her lifetime.

Sarah Mapps Douglass’s Mineral Cabinet and Teaching Science

Hand-colored plate. Lectures, v. 2.

Given how little we know about the specifics of her pedagogy, Sarah’s personal copy of Lectures on Mineralogy is an exciting discovery. Sarah Mapps Douglass very probably used Welsh’s books in her classroom. Newspaper accounts from the 1830s report that Sarah maintained a mineral cabinet to teach mineralogy to her students. This cabinet, or a similar one, followed her to the Institute for Colored Youth, where she later taught. Sarah would have curated this cabinet herself, collecting and labeling specimens before presenting them to her students for analysis. She may have learned to do this from Welsh’s books, in addition to using them as the basis for lectures. As a private institution serving the city's recently freed black population, Sarah’s school struggled to raise revenue to maintain operations, often seeking aid from the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society to keep the institution afloat. With funds dear, Garrison’s gift would have been a welcome resource. Furthermore, a book written by a woman may have seemed an appropriate choice for teaching girls.

While nowadays we might look askew at scientific justification of creationism, it is important to remember that Welsh’s intermingling of science and religion was not unusual for this period, and this should not detract from any sound instruction regarding the practice of mineralogy in Lectures. Welsh is our best opportunity to reconstruct the complexities of Sarah Douglass’s scientific process. Sarah Douglass did not simply pick up rocks; she would have known how to read the landscape, using contextual geological clues to locate prized specimens.

Diagram of shears. Lectures, v. 1.

She also would have known how to use a variety of mineralogical tools. Welsh’s discussion of scientific instruments reveals the labor and knowledge used to create Sarah’s mineral cabinet. Mineralogists considered many factors when identifying specimens. One such factor is a mineral’s cleavage, the tendency to break along smooth planes. Welsh’s text depicts instruments meant to facilitate mineral analysis, including illustrations of shears used to break rocks along cleavage lines and a goniometer to measure crystal angles. Teachers often used such tools in practical demonstrations to familiarize students with technical language. It is one thing to

Diagram of a goniometer. Lectures, v. 1.

abstractly define cleavage – it is another to demonstrate what it looks like in class. While teaching her students the rudiments of mineralogy, Douglass likely reminded her students that learning science could bring them closer to God. It seems clear that she shared Welsh’s theological outlook, as a report of her school in the December 2, 1837 issue of The Colored American echoed the preface to the book:

“Miss Douglass has a well-selected cabinet of shells and minerals; well-arranged and labeled. She has, also, a mind richly furnished with a knowledge of these sciences, and she does not fail, through them, to lead up the minds of her pupils, through Nature, to Nature’s God.”

Scholars will be able to make a more nuanced assessment of the meaning of this comment through a close reading of Welsh's writing, coupled with a reconstruction of how her book may have been used in its day.

Annotations and Afterlife

In addition to the inscriptions identifying Grace and Sarah Mapps Douglass as former owners, the books contain pencil annotations commenting on the text. The annotator appears to be knowledgeable of early geological and paleontological discoveries, adding his or her thoughts on trace fossils, trilobites (extinct marine invertebrates from the Paleozoic Era), and the general nature of petrifactions (the process in which organic material is converted into a fossil). The annotator also approved of biblical scholar Granville Penn’s theories of Mosaic geology, praising his work in the book's margins. There is consistency here regarding the interrelationship between science and religion that makes one hopeful that the annotations belong to Grace, Sarah, or one of their students. Penn’s theological take on geology was most certainly out of vogue by the time the book ended up at David McKay’s Old Bookstore in the late nineteenth century, making subsequent owners a less likely fit.

Annotation on trilobites from Lectures, v 2.

Perhaps a reader can identify the handwriting sample? Could these inscriptions be in an informal hand belonging to Garrison or the Douglasses? Do they belong to one of Sarah Mapps Douglass’s students? If you have any insight, leave a message in the comments below.

Jessica C. Linker

PhD Candidate in History, University of Connecticut

Exploring the World of Marriot C. Morris

2016-04-01T10:04:00.000-04:00

Elliston Perot Morris Jr. and Marriott Canby Morris Jr. on Pocono Lake, 1909. P.2013.13.361.

The Marriott C. Morris Photograph Collection is now available online in two ways. Almost 2500 photographic prints, negatives and lantern slides from the Morris Collection are accessible on ImPAC, the Library Company’s digital collections catalog. From September 2014 through the summer of 2015, Alison Van Denend, the Assistant Project Manager for the Morris Collection, processed and digitized these photographs as part of an effort to preserve, organize, and research the work of amateur Philadelphia photographer Marriott C. Morris. The Library Company’s entire collection of Morris’s work, including new materials generously donated by Morris’s grandchildren David Marriott Morris, Eleanor Rhoads Morris Cox, and William Perot Morris, is now accessible in one searchable database. Each record contains a high quality jpg file as well as information regarding the date, location, and subject of the photograph gleaned from Morris’s meticulous journals.

In addition to the resources available on ImPAC, the Morris Collection can be explored further via the project’s website. The website includes a family tree, copies of Morris’s photographic journals, a link to ImPAC records, and all of Alison Van Denend’s blog posts about the collection, as well as links to other repositories with Morris’s work. Please visit http://www.morriscollection.librarycompany.org/ to learn more.

Mt. Rainier, Washington. August 5, 1921. P.2014.69.31.

"I Read as Much as I Dare"

2016-03-17T16:00:00.000-04:00

At the Library Company’s 2015 Annual Dinner, speaker Jill Lepore talked about her recent biography of Benjamin Franklin’s sister, The Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin. We learned that in a letter to her brother, Jane Franklin penned the words, “I read as much as I dare.” Digital Outreach Librarian and Curatorial Assistant (and artist) Concetta Barbera used Jane Franklin’s bold words to design a new Library Company T-shirt. Printed in either blue or dark red text, the white and off-white T-shirts are available for $20.00 (plus $6.00 shipping) by contacting the Library Company at 215-546-3181 or cknight@librarycompany.org.

Jane Franklin’s words also inspired me to I look through our collection for photographic portraits of people with books or other reading material.

Books appear as studio props with relative frequency even in some of our earliest photographs. Sitters may have felt that being portrayed next to books stacked on a table or posing with a book in one’s lap lent an air of education or sophistication to a portrait. In her portrait, Juliana Randolph Wood, a member of a prominent Philadelphia Quaker family, pays little heed to the daguerreotypist taking her image. Her attention is completely occupied with the book opened on the table next to her.

Montgomery P. Simons, Julianna Randolph Wood, ca. 1847. P.8928.2. Gift of Radclyffe F. & Maria M. Thompson.

Providing children with a book or a toy to ensure cooperation in the tedious process of sitting for a portrait has long been a staple in the portrait photographer’s arsenal. Although the child on the left seems a tad bored with the letters “F” and “G” in the image below, both children in this turn-of-the century image sit quietly with the large book opened on their laps.

Seth Pancoast Levis, Children Reading, 1909. P.9645.372. Gift of Matthew Schultz

The latest in women’s hairstyles seems to have completely captivated the attention of the little girl who posed with her magazine and perfect posture for a series of portraits by the well-known Philadelphia female artist Jessie Willcox Smith.

Jessie Willcox Smith, Unidentified Girl Reading, ca. 1920. P.9446.

Even an amateur photographer knew that having a relaxed sitter engaged in reading made the work of the photographer go the most smoothly. Here a boy looks down at a book while his brother or friend attempts to take his portrait.

Frank Berry, Boy Photographing Another Young Boy, ca. 1907. P.8986.40. Gift of Richard R. Frame.

For elderly sitters, a book may have represented the knowledge and wisdom acquired over a long life. These two older women, identified as sisters in their 80s, share a book in this portrait later given to a family member.

Ludecke Studio, Cousin Matttie Wright’s Aunts from Wilmington, 1912. P.2015.75.

In the earliest days of photography, books provided a familiar and comfortable prop during what might have been a person’s first experience of sitting for a daguerreotype. Even as photography grew commonplace, reading material gave sitters something to focus on to alleviate the self-consciousness that often accompanies sitting for a portrait session. Whether young or old, sitters with a book could at least give the illusion of being caught in a moment of quiet reflection.

Sarah J. Weatherwax
Curator of Prints and Photographs

Tickling the Ivories

2015-10-07T09:39:00.000-04:00

LCP has an enormous collection of sheet music. One could almost say that it is elephantine in size. Amidst this veritable jungle of well-thumbed-through pages are examples of the polkas and mazurkas of the 1840s, as well as twangy hillbilly and cowboy songs, circa 1940. There is a gaggle of Civil War patriotics, sad ballads (“oh if I could only be in my mother’s arms before I die!”), and raucous melodies made famous by now long-forgotten quartets. Some of the earlier works sport beautifully printed and hand colored front covers, produced by the eminent lithographers of the day.

Much of LCP’s music collection is composed of scores for the piano (known in 1840s lingo as the piano forte). Our allusion to “tickling the ivories” refers to the archaic term for “playing the piano.” At one time piano keys were made of ivory. Since ivory-yielding animal species are endangered and protected by international treaty, piano manufacturers now utilize plastics that are more durable than their ivory counterparts.

Of all the wonderful sheet music in LCP’s mammoth collection, J. W. Wheeler’s “White Elephant March” of 1884, depicting the forlorn animal seen in this simple crude illustration, has been chosen to be highlighted since it unravels a tale of duplicity and greed. It also has a strong Philadelphia connection.

White elephants are albinos. Most of the white variety actually have yellowish or reddish brown skin. Historically, the lower class populations of Laos and Siam believed the white elephants to be divine. The lords of these countries captured the gargantuan white creatures and housed them in huge stables, where they drank from golden water jars laced with perfumed flowers and were bedded upon gold inlaid floors. In 1884 P. T. Barnum purchased “Toung Taloung” (English translation: “Gem of the Sky”), a towering white behemoth from Burma. He was advertised as the “first and only genuine sacred white elephant ever permitted to leave his native land.”

Adam Forepaugh, born into an impoverished Philadelphia family, made his fortune during the Civil War dealing in livestock. He became a circus operator, opening a permanent circus building in Philadelphia. During his career, he actually owned more elephants than Barnum: 39 as compared to P.T.’s 36. Forepaugh, upon learning that Barnum was about to introduce his white elephant to the American public, formulated a dastardly plan to one-up the master showman. Six days before Barnum’s Toung Taloung was to appear in Madison Square Garden, Forepaugh trotted out his own white elephant, dubbed “The Light of Asia” (later renaming him “John”). While Barnum’s albino was actually a disappointing spotted brownish color, “The Light of Asia” was brilliant white since he had been painted that color by Forepaugh’s circus workers!

Upon Toung Taloung’s death, Barnum was quoted as saying “I was greatly disappointed in him. He was as genuine an animal as ever existed, but, in fact, there was never such an animal known. The white spots are simply diseased blotches… I can’t say that I grieved much over him.” The term “white elephant” has been handed down to us from Barnum’s era meaning something that has been given away, but is generally useless to the receiver.

Incidentally, Adam Forepaugh died in 1890 and was interred in the family vault at Laurel Hill Cemetery.

Gus Spector

Library Company of Philadelphia Volunteer

Rev. W.F. Johnson: Blind Phrenologist, Abolitionist, and Picture Show Lecturer

2015-09-30T08:00:00.000-04:00

Beginning in April 2016, the Library Company will host Common Touch, a multimedia and sensory exhibition curated by artist Teresa Jaynes. Generously funded by the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, the exhibition inspired by historical embossed and raised-letter documents for the visually impaired will explore the nature of perception. The following is a shared blog post from the CommonTouch website, where in anticipation of the forthcoming exhibition we have been showcasing relevant items from our historical collections documenting the blind and other communities with disabilities.

Camera Obscura! [United States, ca. 1853]. Printed handbill. 11.5 x 5 in.

Picture shows a handbill illustrated with a decorative border. The document will be described from the top of the page to the bottom. Text reads: Camera Obscura! [new line] There will be an Exhibition [new line] of [new line] Paintings! [new line] Given this [blank] Even[in]g, [new line] at 7 o’clock, [blank] 185[blank] [new line]. In the [blank] [new line] at [blank]. [new line] At which [new line] Prof. W. F. Johnson, [new line] A Colored Gentleman, of the N. Y. In-[new line] stitute for the Blind, will introduce to the citizens [new line] of this vicinity, and the public generally, without [new line] reference to Party or Politics, Fifteen Scenes, illus-[new line] trative of some of the features of the American In- [new line] stitution of Slavery, accompanied by some ap- [new line]propriate odes, “The Slave Mothers’s La-[new line] ment,” “Appeal to Christina,” “Un- [new line] cle Tom’s Religion.” To conclude with ten interesting Changing [new line] Views, magnified, active, and as large as life. [new line] Admission One Shilling. [new line] Children Under 10 years of age sixpence. [new line] [picture of pointed finger] Complimentary to Press and Clergy. [new line] Opinion of the Press.- Mr. Johnson, has been a re- [new line] sident of our village, when at home, for some 20 years, during much of [new line] which time we have been acquainted with him. Blind since his youth, [new line] he has, with untiring perseverance [sic], educated himself. During three [new line] years’ residence in New York Institute for the blind, he made him [new line] self acquainted with the science of Phrenology, under the instruction of [new line] Prof. Fowler. The independence and strength of character exhibited by [new line] Mr. J. in procuring an education, with the privilege of sight denied him, [new line] is worthy of admirati[o]n; and those who know him, stand ready at all [new line] times to attend his lectures and exhibitions. He has an instructive and [new line] entertaining exhibition. – Ithaca Journal. [End of description]

The Library Company has several collecting strengths and many often intersect and intertwine as in the case of this handbill advertising a circa 1853 picture show presented by the blind African American abolitionist, professor, and minister William F. Johnson. Pertinent to our African American history, visual culture, and disability studies collections, the print represents the career of a man whose profession was comprised of intertwined roles of educator, abolitionist, and phrenologist.

Born free in Baltimore, Maryland in 1822 and blind from a young age, Johnson is most remembered for his revered position as Superintendent of the Brooklyn Colored Howard Orphan Asylum from 1870 to his death in 1903. His earlier career as a lecturer, typically using a camera obscura to provide an illustrated presentation, is often overshadowed by his later calling.

Before movie theaters, camera obscura rooms provided a similar visual experience. Composed of a darkened room in which a light was shown through illustrated glass plates, the camera allowed for the images on the plate to be reproduced in color on an inside wall. During the 1850s Johnson not only informed his audience with an exhibition of paintings of “fifteen scenes, illustrative of some of the features of the American Institution of Slavery,” but also created a verbal picture “without reference to Party or Politics.” to deepen the understanding of their context for their viewers.

By promoting the non-partisanship of his exhibition, Johnson marketed his presentation to a diverse crowd that would likely not have attended his lecture if advertised more stridently. People curious to see a blind man lecture on illustrations, which he himself could not physically see, certainly comprised a segment of the audience. Enticed by the spectacle of Johnson, the curious there less to learn about the life of a slave and more to see Johnson, still received a visual, and more resonant, lesson of the injustices of slavery.

Audience members also typically partook of Johnson’s skills as a phrenologist. Phrenology, a pseudoscience that linked bumps on a person's head to certain aspects of the individual's personality, character, and mental capacity, had not only been taught at Johnson’s alma mater the New York Institute for the Blind, but also at the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Massachusetts. Based on touch, phrenology allowed Johnson, an African American man who was blind and likely educated through his fingers, to educate his audience, in a poignant manner, about their personal identity as well as their character in a society that permitted slavery.

Although absent itself of much illustration, this handbill provides a picture of the man, the culture, and the society that fostered its production. The printed sheet implies Johnson’s savvy understanding of the visual and popular culture of his time to facilitate his mission to end slavery through the power of sight and touch.

Selected Sources:

William Hanks Levy, Blindness and the Blind: Or A Treatise on the Science of Typhology. London: Chapman and Hall, 1872.

1870 and 1900 United States Federal Census, Ancestry.com

“From our Philadelphia Correspondent,” Provincial Freeman, June 23, 1855.

“The Howard Orphan Asylum,” New York Globe, June 14, 1884.

“New York and Brooklyn News,” Frederick Douglass’s Paper, February 2, 1855.

“Prof. W. F. Johnson,” The Christian Recorder, July 16, 1864.

“The Rev. W. F. Johnson,” New York Times, October 19, 1903.

Erika Piola

Associate Curator, Prints & Photographs

Co-director, VCP at LCP

The LCP Abolitionist Walking Tour: A Digital Humanities Intern Project

2015-09-23T10:00:00.000-04:00

As the Digital Humanities Intern at the Library Company of Philadelphia (LCP) this summer I had the opportunity to build an online Abolitionist Walking Tour. This tour is based on the original walking tour students took part in with LCP Director Richard S. Newman during the NEH Summer Seminar for School Teachers. This summer seminar is now available in digital form at www.abolitionseminar.org, a web-based educational tool designed for students and educators. The tour consists of fifteen historic locations around the city of Philadelphia and highlights buildings, people, and events that played a role in the Abolitionist Movement in the United States of America - from the initial public protest of Quakers against slavery in 1688 through the organization of Black regiment training camps for the Civil War in 1863.

Considering that the majority of materials were already identified and audio recordings produced, my starting point was to determine the best program or app to work with. The goal was to structure our materials in relation to a location on a map, which would link the GPS point to the audio descriptions and relevant graphics and texts. We needed something that would be able to clearly connect the present-day locations and experience of Philadelphia with the history and collections held at LCP. I reviewed over 15 apps and potential designs that combined maps, tours, and history - all offering a wide range of services and structures, prices and flexibility. Each app had its pros and cons, but izi.TRAVEL was the best suited to meet our vision for the project.

izi.TRAVEL has a number of clear benefits. First, LCP can utilize it to produce outside walking tours and internal gallery tours. It is exciting to have a new outlet for sharing our expansive collections in a curated manner with new audiences. We can create an unlimited number of tours throughout Philadelphia and within our facilities that can be accessed for free by anyone with a smartphone or internet access around the world. Second, the structure of viewing each stop simply incorporates everything we want the user to be able to experience: a walking route and directions, automatically (or manually) playing audio, and captions to the associated images with links to their official catalog records. Third, setting up the tour is quite easy on the creator’s end; while there are a few design quirks that I would prefer to make more consistent, it didn’t take much time to upload our materials in a clear format.

Learning about the different ways to organize and present LCP content to users is interesting in and of itself, but I was also fascinated by the information in the tour. In my academic research and previous work experience, I have largely focused on 20th century history, so looking intensely into 18th and 19th century materials was somewhat different. While searching beyond the already identified resources, I found (often with the support of helpful LCP staff) additional photographs, frontispieces of or promotions for relevant books, and original maps within the LCP collections that help tell a more complete story of the Abolitionist Movement in Philadelphia. I think that some tour stops will be familiar to most people, like the Liberty Bell, but other essential figures like Frances Ellen Watkins Harper or the Adelphi Building, where the American Anti-Slavery Society was formed, will highlight valuable information to Philadelphians, tourists, and history aficionados who are interested in the shifting understanding of slavery in the city and the nation.

I like the concept of layering history on top of our current experience of place, the way this walking tour can; it allows the way we move through our surroundings to be transformed. It is important to consider how the world previously existed in the same spaces we now occupy, in part to give us a sense of how we came to this point. A quote from the izi.TRAVEL website about their goals aligns with the Library Company’s mission: “We believe that every site or work of art has a story waiting to be told. That stories bring art, streets and cities to life. And that stories connect people.” This tour will provide an innovative and exciting way to experience the history of the Abolitionist Movement in Philadelphia while connecting new audiences to the Library Company of Philadelphia collections.

Kate Philipson, 2015 Summer Digital Humanities Intern

From Common Touch : The Hostetler Family of Blind Musicians

2015-08-31T09:00:00.000-04:00

Beginning in April 2016, the Library Company will host Common Touch, a multimedia and sensory exhibition curated by artist Teresa Jaynes. Generously funded by the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, the exhibition inspired by historical embossed and raised-letter documents for the visually impaired will explore the nature of perception. The following is a shared blog post from the CommonTouch website, where in anticipation of the forthcoming exhibition we have been showcasing relevant items from our historical collections documenting the blind and other communities with disabilities.

Picture shows one woman and three men, seated next to each other, and holding instruments. The woman holds an accordion in her lap and she looks slightly down. To her left is a man, his eyes closed, who holds a viola perpendicular to his lap with one hand and a bow in his other. To his left is a man resting a cello between his legs. He holds a bow across the base of the cello with his right hand. To his left is the last man, his eyes closed, who holds a violin by his left shoulder and a raised bow in in his right hand. The woman, as well as the man who holds a cello, wear glasses. The woman wears a dark dash colored corseted dress with long sleeves and a long skirt. The men, who look toward the viewer, are bearded and wear dark dash colored suits. [End of description]

This circa 1866 carte-de-visite photograph of the musical Hostetler family represents a thread in the seams of the complex history of the representation of blind musicians in popular culture. Known in their local Fayette County, Pennsylvania newspapers as the “Blind Family,” the Hostetler siblings Catherine (1835-1890), Bartholomew (1845-1908), Jesse Samuel (1842-1923), and John Hostetler (1829-1911) were five of eight children born to their parents blind or visually impaired. The Hostetlers traveled throughout Western Pennsylvania performing in churches, schoolhouses, and the like, and by the early 1870s, were managed by their agent Prof. Buchinal.

The siblings appear to have received no formal music training. Nonetheless, such instruction was often strongly advocated by 19th-century educators of the blind, like Samuel G. Howe. Howe, director of Perkins School for the Blind in Massachusetts, strongly urged music education over handicrafts for his students. In 1833 he wrote “The accuracy of the ear gives to blind persons a very great advantage in music; they depend entirely upon it; …” This rationale supported his stance that playing and teaching music necessarily provided the blind with a more realizable livelihood based in excellence than handicrafts. For Howe, the sighted could not help but excel in the latter trades, but not so in music.

With music and public performance as their profession, the possibility of the Hostetlers’ exploitation cannot be overlooked. This most respectfully posed portrait could still be seen as an object of curiosity at the time it was taken as well as today. Did those who acquired the image want it as a souvenir of the singing talents of the Hostetlers or the novelty of a blind family of singers? Such questions raised by the photograph cannot help but challenge the viewer about their understanding of the role that music played in the education, portrayal, and life of individuals who were blind in the 19th century.

Erika Piola
Associate Curator, Prints and Photographs
Co-Director, VCP at LCP

Musings on Time and Place: The Marriott C. Morris Collection

2015-08-17T15:00:00.000-04:00

Two boys and woman in boat, Sea Girt
Marriott C. Morris Collection [P.2013.13.82]

What is it about these evocative images, that they impel an almost automatic response: the relaxed, unfocused gaze of remembrance and daydreams?

Perhaps that is what draws me to these images. They float into the present moment like a vapor. They speak in a whisper, both ephemeral and urgent, about something half-remembered, half-dreamed. They inspire questions and musings about our experience of place, both past and present.

Morris’s photographs are full of mystery, lost language, and people long gone from this earth. A ghostly trace of a shadow drifts past the woman. What draws the boy’s gaze? Yet the stark geometry of the landscape provides a familiar anchor, a connection to the here and now. By uniting earth, sea, and sky into a sharp point, Morris creates a composition that is timeless and universal, at least on our Earth. It's an instantly recognizable expression of place: the seaside.


Woman and dog in boat, Sea Girt Marriott C. Morris Collection [P.2013.13.142]

My sketch of a Morris image.
Words in place of objects, and just three lines are all that is needed to convey a very specific sense of place.

His photographs are composed with deliberation, and these mute, “permeable” images have a strong voice that carries through time. I like to think of them as encoded transmissions. Most came into the collections at the Library Company of Philadelphia in the form of glass-plate and film negatives, essentially unintelligible and inaccessible. Through the mediums of light, paper, and digital imaging, images of past-place have been decoded.

Boat "Scythian New York" adorned with several flags sailing among several vessels
Marriott C. Morris Collection [*P.9895.13.2]

Three masted schooner "Vanname & King" from beach

Marriott C. Morris Collection [P.9895.1025] “Looking into the sun”

Only partly decoded though. These photographs give rise to musings about communication, context, and the transmission of ideas. A common enough sight in the late 19th-century, but to describe them in words today would require a fair bit of historical research. What is the term for that particular form of boat, or the meaning behind the symbols on the flags? What are they saying to us, humankind, in the 21st century?

The Samuels' canoe. Mr. S. [Samuel], Patty Mellor, & Eli K. Price in it. [Sea Girt, NJ]

Marriott C. Morris Collection [P.9895.1151]

Through the process of digitizing the negatives, the effect of time is revealed in the imprint. In some cases creating an unintended conceptual overlay to Morris’s images. The cracked, curled, and missing emulsion reads as a patterned web that obscures the view, just as time obscures memory, and so it goes. These images, and the thoughts they provoke about place and the passage of time, serve as both fingerpost and inspiration for my visual art.

Beyond the donation of images, the Morris Family has generously, and wisely, provided the funds required for the digitization and record-level cataloging of the entire collection, work undertaken by Project Assistant Alison Van Denend. The artist continues to speak through this collection which is now accessible to everyone here. I am grateful!

Andrea Krupp, Conservator
Library Company of Philadelphia

August 2015

Mellon Scholars Program: An Intense Week of Professional Growth and Nurturing

2015-08-11T12:22:00.000-04:00

This essay concludes our series of occasional posts about the 2015 Mellon Scholars Internship and Workshop programs. This program is generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Dr. Kimberly Saunders

This summer the Program in African American History welcomed the second cohort of summer Mellon Scholars. These academic programs foster and support students from underrepresented backgrounds with interests in early African American history. The program consists of an internship spanning the month of June along with a weeklong workshop series, which lasted June 15-19. During the workshop week, three workshop participants joined the Mellon interns for a rigorous week full of professional development activities. The workshop held sessions on various topics centered on applying to graduate school and navigating academia. The students attended sessions on graduate school selection, personal statement writing, and curriculum vitae development led by Dr. Kimberly Saunders, director of the McNair Scholars Program at the University of Delaware. Participants also gained insight into the fellowship application process in a session led by the Library Company's Librarian Jim Green.

Michael Dickinson

As the program's Graduate Research Advisor, I led two of the professional development seminars. I spent time with the Mellon Scholars explaining my journey through graduate school and discussing how to navigate the challenges of graduate life successfully. The students were extremely engaged, asking a range of questions and expressing their own concerns as they look to their future academic journey. “How did you decide which school to attend?” “What was the biggest adjustment for you in transitioning from undergraduate study?” “How do you balance your academic obligations and personal life?” These were some of the questions participants energetically posed during our first session. Together, we explored the ins and outs of academia, both to inform students about how to successfully achieve their academic aspirations and to address their potential apprehensions. The second session I ran was focused on personal statement development and revision. This meeting gave participants the opportunity to receive feedback from me and their peers on their personal statement drafts, which they had crafted earlier in the week.

The workshop week included a number of presentations on African American history by notable scholars Dr. Maurice Jackson, professor of history at Georgetown University; Dr. Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Director of the Program in African American History; and Dr. Richard Newman, Director of the Library Company. The Mellon Scholars also attended the Library Company’s annual Juneteenth Freedom Seminar, which featured renowned political philosopher Dr. Danielle Allen. The students absorbed these presentations not only for their content but also for insight into effectively communicating research findings.

Jalyn Gordon and Shayne McGregor

The Mellon Scholars would draw on these lessons immediately as they were required to present their research at a colloquium held on the final day of the workshop. In addition to professional development lectures, the workshop week entailed a significant experiential learning component. The three workshop participants were each assigned a historical figure with a corresponding theme and were tasked with finding and interpreting at least three primary sources from the Library Company’s African Americana Collection that shed light on their topic. For example, one student was assigned the topic of African American activist Martin Delany and his relationship to black nationalism. Mellon interns similarly continued to unearth materials on the individual topics they developed in previous weeks. I worked with Library Company Curator of African American History Krystal Appiah to help guide the workshop participants as they searched the archives for relevant sources. At the colloquium, both groups provided presentations on their findings and research progress. The process helped familiarize students with finding and interpreting primary source material at a historical archive.

In addition to time at Library Company, I accompanied the students to educational trips to historical resources throughout the city including Temple University's Blockson Afro-American Collection, Mother Bethel AME Church, and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Therefore, I witnessed the intellectual enthusiasm and potential the Mellon Scholars demonstrated both inside and outside the walls of LCP. Though the Mellon Scholars frequently expressed their appreciation for the experience, my fellow staff members and I were truly fortunate to work with an incredibly talented group of students once again as the program completed its second year. I would like to thank our students for spreading their passion for learning and growth. Moreover, I would like to thank Dr. Dunbar and Krystal Appiah for the rewarding experience.

Michael Dickinson

2015 Mellon Scholars Graduate Research Advisor

PhD Candidate in History, University of Delaware

Mass Media and the Rhetoric of Technological Progress

2015-08-05T08:30:00.000-04:00

Not that long ago Bill Gates said that “the internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.” Although the internet has significantly impacted human communication, it is hardly the first form of mass media. More than 150 years earlier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. mimicked the tone of Gates’s remark when he called the stereograph “the card of introduction to make all mankind acquaintances” (744). Working with the Raymond Holstein Stereograph Collection at the Library Company this summer has made me think about the multiple moments throughout modern history in which new technologies have made communication more accessible to the general public. More significantly, this experience has made me ask the question: what rhetorical strategies do societies use to emphasize the beneficial aspects of media and technological revolutions?

Developed by Sir Charles Wheatstone in 1838, the stereograph was the great-grandfather of today’s 3D media. A stereograph card contains two nearly identical photographs which produce the illusion of depth when viewed through a stereoviewer. In the subsequent decades, other inventors improved upon Wheatstone’s design resulting in the commercialization of stereo photography.

A hand-held stereograph viewer, after the design popularized by Oliver Wendell Holmes, with a stereograph inserted. Creator: Davepape, 2006. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Holmes_stereoscope.jpg

Beginning in the middle of the 19th century, the stereograph quickly became a form of easily accessible media in the United States. While the daguerreotype, an early one-of-a-kind photographic process, used expensive silver plates, many early creators of stereograph views took advantage of paper processes like the albumen print, which allowed for multiple copies of an image. As a result, stereograph views had relatively low prices that increased both their production quantity and the size of their audience. Additionally, the mass-produced photographs facilitated a shift in subject matter. While many daguerreotypes were portraits of the wealthy and their families, many stereo photographers captured the images of landscapes and cityscapes to sell to the general public. The stereograph was one of the first technologies that allowed Americans to affordably glimpse the world around them from their home.

Although changes in production helped the stereograph become a new mass media, it rested upon journalists, writers, and intellectuals to make it a symbol of positive societal advancement. As Edward W. Earle argues, in 19th-century America the stereograph gained ideological prominence through its association with the already celebrated ideal of mass democracy. Earle writes that “anything which allowed for the participation of more than one class came to be labeled democratic…A realistic social ramification of democratic tendencies was greater accessibility to information in the form of books, magazines, newspapers, and pictures” (9). For writers like Holmes, the varied views of stereographs offered a new and affordable form of visual education. With stereographs, more Americans could learn about the world through images and then make informed decisions that contributed to running the republic.

A stereograph showing an affluent middle-class woman using a stereograph viewer in her parlor. Title: “The Stereograph as an Educator.” Creator: Underwood & Underwood, circa 1901. www.loc.gov/pictures/item/20026740577

In addition to signifying mass democracy, the stereograph also became a symbol of America’s rising middle-class and consumer culture. In the mid to late 19th-century, increased industrial output made the purchase of luxury items possible for those who were not part of the wealthy elite. Americans associated the ability to purchase consumer products with a new type of middle-class fashion and culture, or a “vernacular gentry” (Bushman xiii). As Laura Schiavo maintains in her examination of stereographs and American social history, “the stereoscope belonged to an age in which the consumption of goods signified one’s taste,” and “consuming culture was represented as the road to social harmony” (235). Promoters of the stereograph portrayed the technology as a benign result of industrialization and mass consumption; an affordable form of cultural sophistication for many Americans. As more families purchased the new form of mass media, many believed that their ability to do so signaled a higher standard of living for the American middle class.

One of the many stereographs produced of the Centennial Exhibition of 1876 showing the grounds in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia. Massive temporary buildings were constructed for the exhibition, including the Main Exhibition Building, Machinery Hall, Horticultural Hall, and the Pennsylvania Railroad Depot. The exhibition celebrated ideals of democratic equality, consumer culture, and technological progress. Title: Bird’s Eye View of Grounds from Reservoir. Creator: Centennial Photographic Co., circa 1876. https://www.flickr.com/photos/library-company-of-philadelphia/19298070735/in/dateposted/

The Library Company’s Holstein Collection is filled with stereographs from the Centennial Exhibition of 1876. A 100th birthday party for the United States, the exhibition served as both a celebration of patriotism and showcase of new consumer products. Like the stereograph, the Centennial Exhibition was portrayed by its chroniclers as a symbol of the increased democratic equality and consumer power that came with technological progress. Today, we should continue to recognize the ways in which we idealize technological advancements and new forms of mass media. Technological development alone did not give rise to the claim that the internet places us at the dawn of a global society or that social media gives new power to public opinion. These claims reflect our crafting of the story of technological development in terms of ideals we associate with benefit and prosperity.

As my internship at the Library Company wraps up, I would like to thank the staff of the Library for being friendly and welcoming, especially those I worked closely with: Erika Piola, Sarah Weatherwax, and Nicole Joniec in the Print Department and Connie King in the Reading Room. I would also like to thank the Haverford College Hurford Center for the Arts and Humanities for funding my internship and its programs and administrative manager Emily Cronin for her support.

Sources:

Bushman, Richard. The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1992.

Earle, Edward W. “The Stereograph in American: Pictorial Antecedents and Cultural Perspectives.” In Points of View: The Stereograph in America—A Cultural History. Rochester, N. Y.: Visual Studies Workshop, 1979.

Gates, Bill and Collins Hemmingway, Business @ the Speed of Thought. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 1999.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell. “The Stereoscope and the Stereograph.” In The Atlantic Monthly (June 1859).

Schiavo, Laura. "'A Collection of Endless Extent and Beauty': Stereographs, Vision, Taste and the American Middle Class, 1850-1880." Diss. George Washington University, 2003.

David Zabliski, Haverford College '17

LCP intern, Summer 2015

Mellon Scholars Program: "A life changing and motivating experience"

2015-07-31T16:26:00.002-04:00

My name is Joshua Johnson, and I am a senior history student at Francis Marion University in Florence, South Carolina. In my own research I focus primarily on the time period from the end of the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. I have always aspired to be involved in history, whether it be in teaching, research, archives, or even something as deceptively simple as being a tour guide at a historic location. This is one of the reasons I applied for the Mellon Scholars Internship; this opportunity provided me personally not only with a wealth of previously unknown information but the skills and confidence to apply and hopefully get into a good graduate program.

I’m currently planning to apply for graduate schools with African American history and/or studies specialties where I hopefully will be able to continue my research on Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement. I believe this internship has provided me not only with a great boost to my CV, but has helped me craft a fantastic application packet, work on my personal statement, and write a marvelous writing sample dealing with African American history.

My research paper here has discussed the widely differing opinions of African-Americans throughout the early part of the 18th century focusing on statements regarding emigration to places such as Liberia, Haiti, Canada, and a number of other places. My research for this paper will help me counter the idea of the African American belief monolith: the popular perception that all African Americans believe and think the same way. This paper argues that within years of the end of the Revolutionary War and the nation’s founding, African Americans frequently debated whether to stay in the United States and fight for their rights, or to leave entirely.

These four weeks at the Library Company and working with esteemed and established scholars has been a life changing and motivating experience.

Joshua Johnson

2015 Mellon Scholars Intern

Mellon Scholars Program: The Final Verdict

2015-07-21T10:10:00.000-04:00

“That which grows fast, withers as rapidly. That which grows slowly, endures.”

My mother would always tell me to walk, don’t run before I fall. My mother meant that one day I would look up and ask “where has time gone?” As you can imagine, the concrete marks will show I was not an expert in waiting. Today, I find myself asking that very question, “where has time gone?”

Four and a half years ago, I graduated from Jack Yates Senior High in Houston, Texas, and continued to the University of Houston, where I received my Bachelor of Science in Political Science. This journey redefined my purpose in life. With a passion for law, I knew I wanted to be a lawyer before I graduated high school. Other aspirations include teaching higher education and becoming a U.S Senator. During my undergraduate career, I chose courses that allowed me to incorporate my passion for law and public policy. Minoring in African American Studies, I focused on public policy regarding race and social justice. This led to my interest in the 2015 Mellon Scholars Internship Program, where I knew I would gain experience that would enhance my studies. Undecided between graduate school and law school, I applied to the program with the hope that it would help me to figure out which was the better option for me. Whether it would be law school or graduate school, I needed to gain experience in conducting research. Participating in the program is helping me to determine what I ultimately want to accomplish and leave as my legacy.

Researching the historical collection of archives at the Library Company of Philadelphia provided many ways to follow my interests in law, public policy, and race. For my research project, I chose to research how activists from Northern states influenced anti-slavery legislation. Previously unaware of the impact the North had on the Reconstruction Amendments, I structured my research to analyze the roots of activism in 18th- and 19th-century literature and rhetoric by black reformers and abolitionists in Philadelphia.

During my journey, I have alternated between the decision of going to law school or graduate school but now realize that I have the capability to do both.

Dominique Washington

2015 Mellon Scholars Intern

My First SDS Conference

2015-07-14T13:00:00.000-04:00

"Disability Arts on Display" panel at Society for Disability Studies Annual Meeting, June 10-13, 2015.

Picture shows view of a panel of people from the perspective of an audience member. Three women and a man sit at a table covered with a black fitted tablecloth. A paper coffee cup with lid, metal water pitcher, a pile of lanyards, and a water bottle are on the table in front of the panelists. Two screens, including one with closed captioned text, and a podium pushed against the wall are visible. In the foreground, audience members, including a female wheelchair user, are seated. The room contains beige paneled walls and patterned carpeting.

A few weeks ago, hundreds of disability studies scholars, advocates, and activists gathered for the 28th Annual Meeting of the Society for Disability Studies, June 10-13, 2015. I was fortunate to be one of the attendees on behalf of the Library Company, a recent institutional member in the Society as a result of the Common Touch project.

I looked forward to my attendance not only for the multiple sessions related to art and disability, but for the experience of a conference that proactively strove to be as universally accessible as possible. Images for power point presentations needed to be verbally described, closed captioning was standard, and large print copies of presentations were available for distribution.

Through my work with Common Touch project partners, I have become increasingly aware that accessibility standards are a benefit to everyone, disabled or not. Case in point for me at the conference was that more than a few times I glanced at the closed captioning for a word or name I missed while taking notes. Nonetheless, even the most concerted efforts for accessibility can sometimes fall a bit short as did the microphone cords for the Q&A’s. As one disabled panelist noted, even the disabled community can be unintentionally unaccommodating as she asked an audience member, who had vertigo, to come to the front to use the mic.

Not surprisingly, insights also abounded from the subject matter of the panel sessions. The panels on art and disability ranged from dialogues about self-representation of disabled persons in art; the nuts and bolts and challenges/ triumphs of organizing professional Disability Arts festivals; and the social/cultural implications of the stories and relationships pervading the materiality, aesthetics, and concepts of works of art by, depicting, or representing persons with disabilities to the benefits of subjective audio descriptions over objective ones.

To conclude my post, instead of expounding on one or two of the themes from the various panels, I thought I would share some of the snippets and jottings from my notes that continue to resonate with me:

Disability as relationships as opposed to a medical versus social model

If disability is framed; disability frames us

Disability as transformation of “normal” body

Privileging disability vs. bridge building through disability in art

An original non-disabled body is non existent

Erika Piola

Associate Curator, Prints and Photographs

Co-director, VCP at LCP

The Female Physician: A Deviation from 19th-Century Gender Roles?

2015-07-07T08:30:00.000-04:00

This is the tenth anniversary of the Library Company first working with an intern from Haverford College’s Hurford Center for the Arts and Humanities. In their summers at the Library Company, each one has helped increase the digital resources we offer significantly. They have brought their own training in history, literature, anthropology, sociology, or art history to their projects in useful and thought-provoking ways. This summer we are very pleased to be working with history major David Zabliski, and look forward to another great outcome.

David Zabliski, Haverford College '17

For his internship, David Zabliski has two projects. One is working with Curator of Women’s History Cornelia King on the “Making, Maintaining, and Mending: Women’s Work in Early American Homes” project. Here’s what David writes about an item he has selected, in the process of identifying original materials that can be digitized to enrich the K-12 curriculum for the study of American history:

This 19th-century image of a lone female physician making a heroic midnight visit seems out of context for a time in which the majority of women worked inside the home cooking, cleaning, and raising children. However, it illustrated a book by a male writer who supported traditional conceptions of gender. In his 1870 publication, Woman: Her Rights, Wrongs, Privileges, and Responsibilities, Linus P. Brockett argues that despite dangers like “midnight rides in dark nights and over rough roads,” the more delicate and nurturing qualities of women, especially their “tact … skill … [and] … knowledge how to manage … a child, which seems almost intuitive [to them],” gave women the potential to be excellent physicians (p. 160-165).


*Illustration from Woman: Her Rights, Wrongs, Privileges, and Responsibilities* (Hartford, 1870).**

This summer I have been looking for images of 19th-century American women that could be used as tools for teaching students American history. I’ve learned that even when women did venture outside of their homes, they could not escape the conceptions of domesticity and sentimentality that characterized them in their private lives. These conceptions shape both Linus P. Brockett’s arguments for and reservations against female physicians. Brockett explains that women’s domestic experience and sentimental capabilities would give them a leg up providing comfort to the sick and undertaking pediatric care. At the same time, he expresses the fear that female physicians might neglect their own motherly duties and that their sentimentality might make them ill-equipped to handle the harsh realities traveling physicians would face (Brockett, p. 158-166). From the debate over their role in temperance movements to the debate over their work with benevolent organizations like orphan asylums, the conversation by male writers about women’s role outside of the home often involved arguments formulated around women’s domestic qualities.

David Zabliski, Haverford College '17

LCP intern, Summer 2015

For his second project, David Zabliski is cataloging stereographs in the Raymond J. Holstein Stereograph Collection. In the late 19th and early 20th century, looking at stereographs in stereoviewers to create the illusion of 3D was a common form of home entertainment, and the Holstein Collection joins our already considerable holdings of stereos depicting scenes in the Philadelphia area. Stay tuned for David’s next post on that project!