Obaysch (c. 1849-1878) was captured on an island in the White Nile, from which he took his name, when he was less than one year old and sent to London as part of an agreement between Abbas Pasha, the Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt, and Sir Charles Murray,[1] the British consul general, to exchange “exotic”[2] animals for greyhounds and deerhounds from Britain[3] . He was sent down the Nile to Cairo, accompanied by his keeper, an Egyptian named Hamet, and a herd of cows to provide him with milk—a detail that makes it clear he was indeed still a baby and for me underscores the cruelty of the arrangement, something that is often left out of accounts of his “stardom”.[4] After wintering in Cairo,[5] he traveled from Cairo to Southhampton on a P & O steamer that was outfitted with a special pool to accommodate its unusual passenger. Obaysch arrived at the Zoological Gardens in Regent’s Park in London on May 25, 1850; once there, he followed Hamet and a trail of dates into a cage with a heated pool.

Obaysch ca. 1855

Only those Londoners who had traveled to parts of the world where hippos were native would have seen a live hippo before Obaysch’s arrival. He was the first hippo in Europe since Roman times. (His predecessor was tormented in the amphitheater in Roman London—another kind of spectacle.) He was immediately a star attraction. On June 6, the Times carried a long account of his first experiences in the zoo. Other journals took up the story, including the comic journal Punch. Soon he was drawing up to 10,000 visitors each day, including Queen Victoria and a passel of her children[6] —doubling the number who had visited the Zoo the previous year. The press dubbed it “hippomania.”[7] His popularity led to an active trade in hippo memorabilia, including silver models of Obaysch—merch is not a new concept. He even was the inspiration for a dance tune, the “Hippopotamus Polka.”

Murray described Obaysch as being “as tame and playful as a Newfoundland puppy,” but in fact the hippo could be ferocious with humans. (And who could blame him?) On one occasion, he escaped from his enclosure. The zoo’s superintendent at the time arranged for a keeper that the hippo seemed to hate to act as bait. Once he had caught Obaysch’s attention, the keeper ran into the enclosure and then scrambled up a ladder to safety. The hippo ran after the keeper, and zoo employees slammed the gate behind him.

Abbas Pasha sent a second hippo to the zoo in 1854—a female named Adhela. Sixteen years later, the two produced a calf. It died two days later. A second calf, born in January of the following year, also died. A third baby hippo survived. She was named Guy Fawkes in honor of her birth on on November 5, 1872, Guy Fawkes Day.[8] She was the first captive-bred hippo to be reared by its mother Like her parents, she was wildly popular with zoo goers until her death in 1908.

Adhela and Guy Fawkes

****

If you are interested in learning more about Obaysch and how he fits into the larger history of animals in zoos and the natural history of hippopotumi in the wild, John Simons’s Obaysch: A Hippopotamus in Victorian London (2019) got good reviews when it came out.

If you want to learn even more, the ever fascinating Futility Closet offers a long list of related readings as an addendum to its podcast episode on Obaysch: https://www.futilitycloset.com/2021/07/26/podcast-episode-352-a-victorian-hippopotamus/

[1] Sir Charles became known as “ Hippopotamus Murray” for his role in the exchange, the main thing for which he is remembered despite a long and productive diplomatic career.

[2] As I mentioned in a recent blog post, exotic is is problematic term. I see a newsletter topic in my future.

[3] Ironic since greyhounds, or at least greyhound-like dogs, appear to have originated in the Middle East.

[4] In case it is not clear, I have mixed feelings bout zoos.

[5] Where he is said to have caused a milk shortage.

[6] The Queen compared his swimming to that of a porpoise—which seems really odd. Not that I have seen a porpoise swim in real life.

[7] A reporter may have thought he coined a clever new phrase, but the term dates from the late-eighteenth century. It referred to a passionate enthusiasm for horses and all things equestrian, and continues to be used occasionally with this meaning. The two-dollar word version of being horse mad.

[8] A British holiday commemorating the failure of the Gunpowder Plot of 1695, one of whom was named Guy Fawkes.

It’s election day in Chicago.  I just walked home from voting for a new mayor and a new alderman–and I miss my old neighborhood.

For ten years I lived in South Shore:  a white graduate student/small business owner/writer in a neighborhood dominated by the African-American middle class.  My neighbors were police officers, schoolteachers, fire fighters, electricians, and social workers. We didn’t have much in common most of the year–except on election day.

As far as I’m concerned, voting is thrilling.  My South Shore neighbors agreed.  Voting in South Shore felt like a small town Fourth of July picnic.  Like Mardi Gras.  Like Christmas Eve when you’re five-years-old and still believe in Santa Claus.   No matter what time of day I went to vote, my polling place was packed.  Voters and election judges greeted each other–and me–with hugs, high fives, and “good to see you here, honey”.  First time voters proudly announced themselves.  Elderly voters told stories about their first election.  People made sure they got their election receipts; some pinned them to their coats like a badge of honor. An older gentleman sat next to the door and said “Thank you for exercising your right to vote” as each voter left.  The correct response was “It’s a privilege.”

Except for occasional confusion when the machine that takes the ballots jams, my current polling place is low key. Election judges are friendly and polite, but hugs are not issued with your ballot.  When the young woman manning the machine handed me my receipt, she told me to have a good day.  I said “It’s always a good day when you get to vote.”  In South Shore, that would have gotten me an “Amen.”  In politically active, politically correct Hyde Park, it got me an eye-blinking look of surprise and a hesitant smile.

I started home, thinking maybe I was the only one in the neighborhood whose pulse beat faster on election day.  A block from the polls I ran into a young man walking with a small boy, no more than six years old.  The little boy stopped me, with a grin so big that he looked like a smile wearing a woolly hat.

“Did you vote yet?” he asked.  “My dad is taking me to teach me how to vote.”

“It’s a privilege,” I said.

He gave me the highest five he could manage.

*   *   *

So tell me, did you exercise your right to vote?   It is indeed a privilege.

From sixth century Athens on, who has the vote and why has been a touchy and evolving subject in democracies.  People who already have the vote have hesitated to extend it to others for two basic reasons.  Those with the vote don’t think those without the vote have the capacity to make good choices.  Those with the vote fear they will lose power.

Over the centuries, people in power have come up with plenty of reasons not to extend the franchise to those who don’t yet have it.  Here are a few of the classics:

You can’t vote because

• You’re a slave
• You’re a woman
• You don’t own property
• You don’t own enough property
• You don’t practice the right religion
• You are the wrong race or ethnicity
• Your father or grandfather couldn’t vote

The United States presidential election is next Tuesday.  If you’re lucky enough to have the vote, use it.*

*This is a handy primer on exercising you voting rights in the United States:  https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/voting-rights   Pass it on to anyone you think might need it.

“Women! Millions of men without work. Millions of children without a future. Save the German family. Vote for Adolf Hitler!”

I’m still working my way through the articles Sigrid Schultz published under her by-line in the Chicago Tribune as part of my research for the new book. I’ve reached the days just after the run-offs for presidential election of 1932, in which Paul van Hindenburg defeated Adolf Hitler by a margin of 6,000,000 votes. People thought it was all going to be okay. Schultz quoted more than one politician who said something along the lines of “The republic is saved!”

Writing on April 11, 1932, Schultz reported that five people died on the day of the run-off. (Many more had died during the campaigns leading up to the election.) Her description of one of the deaths caught my attention for a number of reasons, including the fact that it wasn’t a result of the frequent street battles between Nazis, Communists, Steel Helmets (veterans of the German Imperial army who longed for the good old days of the Kaiser*) and the Reichsbanner men (armed civilian supporters of the Weimar Republic). Instead:

The wife of a 67 year old Munich laborer struck her husband with his cane when he attempted to tell her how to vote and he fell dead.

Women gained the right to vote with the revolution that established the Weimar Republic.  Thirteen years later, Hitler and his minions wanted to take away women’s right to vote and offered them marriage and “chivalrous devotion”in its place.** Apparently one woman took her right to vote seriously.

* When push came to shove, most of them voted for a Fascist dictator since they couldn’t put the Kaiser back on the throne.

**As Schultz pointed out in an article dated March 12, it wasn’t clear how the Nazis were going to organize enough husbands and “chivalrous devotion” to go around, given that women outnumbered men in Germany by more than two million.

Here we go:

David Robert, painted by Robert Scott Lauder. 1840

David Roberts was a prominent Orientalist painter during his lifetime: one of those artists who was well-known in his time, but is relatively unknown today. Even as a tourist in Egypt, you will see prints of his work everywhere but won’t necessarily learn anything about him.

Here’s the version I would give you if you asked me about Roberts in a public question-and-answer session, or at a dinner party:[1]

Roberts was one of the most celebrated painters and travelers of his generation and a member of the Royal Academy. He is best known for his illustrated travelogue The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt, and Nubia.

That’s all true, but it leaves out the unusual path that led him to the Middle East and fame. Here’s the longer version:

The son of a shoemaker, Roberts began his artistic career in his hometown of Edinburgh as an apprentice to a house painter and decorator—a trade that included creating elaborate stenciling, trompe l’oeil effects, and faux wood grain and marble. After a seven-year apprenticeship, he took a job as foreman for the redecoration of Scone Palace in Perth. It was a respectable living, but Roberts had artistic aspirations and began to study art in the evenings.[2]

In 1816, Roberts began working as a scene painter and set designer (and occasional straight man for the clown acts) for James Bannister’s traveling circus. His work for Bannister ultimately led to work in theaters in Edinburgh and then London, where he moved in the early 1820s.

In the 1820s, while he continued to make a successful living as a scene painter, Roberts began to devote himself to oil painting, with an emphasis on landscapes. (Personally, I think his time working as a scene painter influenced his later paintings and drawings.) He first exhibited his paintings at the Fine Arts Institute in Edinburgh in 1821. In 1826, he hit the big time with a painting in the annual Royal Academy exhibit. By 1829, he was a full time artist.

Roberts’ early works depicted picturesque scenes from the Scottish and British countryside, or images inspired by books of engravings. But like other painters of picturesque topography , Roberts soon traveled in search of topics for his work. Unlike other painters, he traveled independently, without the support of a wealthy patron or a commission from a publisher for one of the illustrated travel books that were gaining popularity at the time.[3]

In 1832, Roberts traveled to Spain and Morocco—his first trip outside Britain. He returned with a portfolio of sketches that he turned into paintings and illustrations, tapped into the growing European and American interest in travel, armchair and otherwise, to what they thought of as “exotic” places.[4] In 1837, he took his first step into the world of travel books with a popular selection of lithographs titled Picturesque Sketches in Spain.

Moorish Tower at Seville.1833

In 1838, Roberts set off a nine-month-long trip through Egypt, Nubia, Sinai, Jordan, Lebanon, and the Holy Land. It was a defining moment in his career. He returned with what he described as “One of the richest folios that ever left the East.” Building on the style he had developed in his Spanish works, he created a distinctive style in which he set scenes of contemporary life in the Middle East against carefully delineated images of ancient monuments, Islamic mosques, and harsh landscapes.

The oil paintings based on sketches from his trip received critical acclaim, but his most influential work was the travel book he created, which was illustrated with 247 hand-colored and tinted large scale lithographs, produced in collaboration with Belgian-born lithographer Louis Haghe (1806-1885). The prints were published in a series of monthly parts between 1842 and 1849. As was generally the case with expensive and uncertain publishing ventures, the portfolios were sold by subscription.  Queen Victoria was the first subscriber, a fact which undoubtedly helped the publisher’s marketing effort. (Her complete set is still in the Royal Collection.)

A View in Cairo. 1840

Roberts visited Italy in 1851 and 1853. His last volume of illustrations, Italy, Classical, Historical and Picturesque, was published in 1859.

He spent the last years of his life on a series of views of London from the Thames. He had completed six of the series at the time of his death in 1864.

[1] Or at least I like to think I would show this type of restraint. Actually, as any of you who know me in real life can attest, if someone gives me an opening in company I’m comfortable with I’m apt to lean forward let fly my history nerd flag Iuntil I notice what I’m doing. Then I will shut up and apologize.

[2] Self-improvement was an important part of working class culture in Britain, and especially in Scotland, at this period. A big topic for another time.

[3] Think coffee table books with lithographs instead of photographs.

[4] With full recognition that exotic is a problematic term, with racist and imperialist overtones. Too big a topic to grapple with in a footnote.

As some of you may have noticed, I’ve been spending a a fair amount of time in recent months in New York City in the 1910s and 1920s, especially the corners of it dedicated to artists, bohemians, and modernists, self-declared and otherwise. Consequently, when All-Night Party: The Women of Bohemian Greenwich Village and Harlem, 1913-1930 by Andrea Barnett crossed my path, I immediately snapped it up.

I expected it to be a companion to Hotbed, Joanna Scutts’ account of radical women in Greenwich Village during much the same period.  And in many ways, it is. Barnet discusses many of the women who appear in Hotbed, and makes an occasional passing reference to Heterodoxy, the social club that stands at the center of Scutt’s account. But where Scutts focuses on the radical activism of the women she discusses, using their personal lives as means of entry to the larger social story, Barnet’s account is driven by what she describes as “Creative dissent, whether expressed as artistic innovation or as liberating lifestyle.” Where Scutts’ radical women were for the most part white, with one or two carefully noted exceptions, Barnet divides her subjects evenly between Greenwich Village and Harlem, and the often uncomfortable intersection between the two.

That said, Barnet’s careful attempt at looking at both the white bohemians of Greenwich Village and their Black counterparts in Harlem underlines the fundamental differences between the two worlds. The white women whose stories she tells include poets, artists, magazine publishers, activists, journalists, a photographer, the dancer Isadora Duncan, and at least one woman who seems to have been famous for being famous. With one exception, the Black women she discusses are blues singers. The only place at which their experiences overlap is at the level of the wealthy salon hostesses Mabel Dodge and A’Leila Walker—and the contrast between the two is striking.

I have mixed feelings about All-Night Party, though that may say more about me than it does about the book. I could easily imagine myself as part of the world Scutts depicts in Hotbed; the lives Barnet shares seemed totally alien, even when there is considerable overlap between the two sets of characters. Nonetheless, reading the two in conjunction gave me a richer picture of a complex and fascinating time and place than either book would have provided alone.

Worth the time if you are interested in the period.

In Daughters of Chivalry: The Forgotten Princesses of King Edward Longshanks, historian Kelcey Wilson-Lee tells the stories of the five daughters of Edward I of England and his first wife, Eleanor of Castile, who survived into adulthood: Eleanora, Joanna, Margaret, Mary, and Elizabeth.

I’ve got to say the book has a shaky start.  Wilson-Lee sets up a questionable and unnecessary straw woman in her introduction:  a “popular” vision of medieval princesses as powerless and passive that she describes as built on “an empire of fairy stories, Hollywood films, theme parks and cheaply produced ball gowns.”  Personally, I’m not sure anyone believes in the powerless princesses she describes–not the little girls who wear those ball gowns with attitude* and certainly not anyone who would chose to read a book titled Daughters of Chivalry.  Maybe that version of princesses existed once upon a time, but my own memory of fairy tales includes a fair number of princesses who used every ounce of power they held to control who they married–something only one of the real-life medieval princesses in Daughters  of Chivalry managed to control.

That quibble aside, Daughters of Chivalry is an excellent book.

Like even the most elite medieval women,  Wilson-Lee’s  princesses left a spotty trail in the historical record, most often appearing in official chronicles in the context of their relationship with one of the men in their lives.   She fleshes out the picture of their lives using a variety of sources—most notably the account records for the various royal households**—plus a certain amount of informed speculation.

Wilson-Lee uses her sources to good effect.  She creates portraits of five clearly defined individuals. Joanna, for instance, frequently defied her father and took full advantage of the opportunities accorded to a young, wealthy widow in medieval society. Mary, who entered the convent of Amesbury at the age of six, had a taste for luxury and a gambling habit at odds with her vow of poverty. She also places the sisters within the larger context of royal women in the late medieval period, exploring questions of education, marriages (political and otherwise), widowhood, property, travel, and the role of royal women as political intercessors. Like the women she describes, Wilson-Lee never loses sight of the fact that what power these women enjoyed was derived from their relationship to the king, but she fully explores the nature of that power and how they used it.

*A year or two ago, I saw a little girl stomping through the aisles of my local grocery store wearing hiking books with a princess gown and carrying a sword.  I’m pretty sure she didn’t share Wilson-Lee’s “popular” vision of princesses.

**The nature of her sources means there is a lot of description of real-life princess dresses.  This is not a complaint.  Just an observation.

Back in March, I celebrated Women’s History Month here in the Margins with a series of mini-interviews with people who are involved in creating and studying women’s history. A lot of you seemed to enjoy it.  (I know I did.) So I’m thinking about doing it again in 2020.  If there is someone you think would be a good fit, let me know.

Two sentences early in Virginia Postrel’s The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World caught my imagination:

“What we usually call the Stone Age could just as easily be called the String Age. The two prehistoric technologies were literally intertwined.”

I was predisposed to enjoy the book, which combines two of my favorite things—history and textiles—in a big picture exploration of commerce, technology, and civilization itself. But with those two sentences I was hooked. And I remained hooked for the entire book. If I had been reading in a hard copy instead of an e-galley, I would have put lots of exclamation marks in the margins and stuffed it full of sticky notes.

The Fabric of Civilization is a story of innovation, or more accurately a series of stories. Postrel convincingly argues that textiles have played a central role in the histories of technology, commerce, and civilization itself. She describes innovations in the creation of textiles, from the game-changing discovery of string in the Stone Age to current efforts to engineer “smart textiles.”* She explains the fundamental principles of spinning and weaving, and the unexpected relationship between weaving and binary code.** She considers how changes in textile manufacturing shaped the larger world, including the textile mills that sparked the Industrial Revolution and the search for better dyes that created the modern chemical industry. She looks at the development of information technologies as a result of long-distance textile trades: business letters in ancient Assyria, regular mail service in medieval Italy, double-entry bookkeeping in Renaissance Italy and the roots of modern banking in the need for international credit arrangements in the early modern era.

Postrel is writing history on a global scale, but she never loses sight of the people in her story. A woman weaver in ancient Assyria responding to changing market demands, the teenaged Niccolo Machiavelli*** mastering the “new math” of Hindu-Arabic numerals, paleoanthropologists attempting to reproduce prehistoric fibers, and modern textile chemists and engineers all play a role.

Combining exhaustive research with an accessible writing style, The Fabric of Civilization will appeal to both fans of micro-histories and to textile junkies interested in the history of their passion.

*I doubt that I’ll be an early adopter.

**She describes weavers as “visually trained people with strong number skills.” This was reinforced in my research for a piece on Afghan war rugs for MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History. When one scholar asked an Afghan weaver how she translated images into rug patterns she said: “I don’t see it as a picture. I see it as numbers and I make it a song.” But I digress.

***I assume that most of you recognize the name Machiavelli, or at least the term machiavellian. A minor fifteenth century Italian diplomat, he is best known as the author of The Prince, a work of political philosophy that argues princes must see things as they are and take action accordingly, rather than act based on ideal principles.

When Nazi troops marched into Paris in June, 1940, the city surrendered without firing a shot.*

In When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation, 1940-1944 , historian Ronald C. Rosbottom explores face-to-face interactions between occupiers and occupied, the effect of the Occupation on daily life in Paris, its psychological and emotional impact on Parisians and its legacy of guilt and myth.

Drawing from official records, memoirs, interviews and ephemera, Rosbottom tells a story that is more complicated than simple opposition between courage and collaboration, though he offers examples of both. He discusses the fine line between survival and collaboration, the distinction between individual acts of resistance and the Resistance, and how occupiers and occupied utilized the hide-and-seek possibilities of Parisian apartment buildings. He considers the act of waiting in line both as an illustration of the difficulties of everyday life and as a replacement for forbidden political gatherings. Above all, he describes the Occupation as gradual constriction of Parisian life within ever-narrowing boundaries.

Rosbottom does not limit his discussion to the Parisian perspective. Some of the most interesting sections of When Paris Went Dark deal with the German experience in the city, a complex mixture of tourism, conquest, envy and isolation. His account of Hitler’s early-morning tour of the capital soon after its surrender is particularly illuminating about the Nazi Party’s ambivalence toward cities in general and Paris in particular.

When Paris Went Dark is an important and readable addition to the social history of World War II.

*I will admit with only the slightest embarrassment that when I think “Nazi occupation of Paris” the images that come to mind are straight out of Casablanca. That will probably never change. Because putting pictures in our heads–accurate or not–is one of the things great art does.

Take it away Caroline!

What path led you to Cornelia Hancock and why do you think it’s important to tell her story today?

I first encountered Cornelia Hancock through the paperback edition of her Civil War letters titled Letters of a Civil War Nurse, published by Bison Books in 1998.  Cornelia Hancock’s Civil War correspondence, letters mostly written to family, were published without context as a collection of her Civil War correspondence ten years after her death in 1937 and titled South After Gettysburg. In 1956 they were republished with a foreword by Bruce Caton. This edition contained some of her Reconstruction correspondence and again became a best seller.   Cornelia Hancock’s observations about war, politics, people and the events around her were acute, astute. and perceptive—she wrote in a voice singularly devoid of the Victorian flourishes that permeated the age.

The larger background picture of her first-hand account of a nation at war and the suffering it caused were evident, but—who were many of the people she was writing about? The famous were easy to know or find, but the common men and women, the nurses and doctors, her patients, each had a story I wanted to know.  What were the specific day-to-day events that surrounded her as she wrote that gave insight and depth to her Civil War world?

I wanted to know more about Cornelia’s world and Cornelia herself.  I thought other readers of her letters would want to know as well.  Her story today is valuable to readers and historians as a primary witness and acute observer of the Civil War.  In many histories of the period, and the Army of the Potomac, Cornelia is quoted. She writes from a woman’s perspective with eyes wide open.  The path she took, and the ground she broke, as she nursed the men of the Army of the Potomac, paved the way for other women to leave their homes and dedicate their lives to great causes.

Writing about a historical figure like Cornelia Hancock requires living with her over a period of years.  What was it like to have her as a constant companion?



I lived with Cornelia for many years.  Cornelia’s letters captivated me.  I finally decided to write a Civil War biography of her that would frame her letters and illuminate the world she navigated while revealing the determination, courage, and compassion of an extraordinary woman.  Periodically over the years, before my publisher gave me a contract to write, I would reread the letters.  I would travel to places she had worked during and after the war.  I contacted family members from her hometown in Hancock’s Bridge, New Jersey. Periodically between other projects, I would take up the search to locate the people she wrote about, to travel to the battlefields where she served, to try to understand Cornelia and her world.  After I received the contract from the publisher, I, like many biographers, submerged myself in research. She was a force to be reckoned with, but one that did not broadcast her accomplishments or publicize her work.  I often wondered what she would have thought about me writing a biography of her.  Would she have been pleased? Would she have wondered why she had become an object of fascination?  Would she have shunned the project? Would she have been flattered? Would she have found merit in her story? Even after all this time, I think she would have been ambivalent.

How did Cornelia Hancock fit into the larger history of nurses in the American Civil War?   What role did she play in the culture of social reform that followed the war?

To be a nurse during the Civil War took great courage.  Women who nursed during the war defied the norms of society.  Before the war, nursing took place in the home.  There were no trained nurses in America except a handful of Catholic nuns.  Army nurses were men– private soldiers “detailed” or ordered to nurse other soldiers. After the horror and mass casualties of First Bull Run, Dorothea Dix induced the Surgeon General to issue Circular No. 8, which gave the requirements for hired female nurses.  Women would step into the breach.  But “Good Women” did not seek to care for others outside their own homes. “Good Women” did not go out among strange men in the army to touch them, wash them, comfort them. Nursing outside the home was a low-brow, low-class, nasty thing to do.  Nursing called into question the virtue of the nurse.   Throughout the war Cornelia would be forced to defend her choices and her reputation.  Cornelia and women like her crashed through the Victorian mores that dictated a women’s life was confined to her home. Everywhere female nurses served survival rates improved.

After the war “female” nursing became an honorable profession.  After the Civil War, Cornelia, and many of these women, continued their contributions to the nation, working outside the home, and they would never turn back. Cornelia herself worked for the rest of her life as an educator, social worker, and urban engineer fighting to improve the lives of freed people, neglected children, and the underprivileged. Women’s work during the Civil War inspired new ways of thinking about women’s place in society.  Women like Cornelia paved the way for the women’s fight for full citizenship, legal and civil rights, social mobility, education, and a professional female work force. The war work of these women laid the foundation for women’s fight for female equality and the vote.

What was the most surprising thing you learned doing research for your work?

Not a surprise, really, but a hope that was dashed. I retrieved all of Cornelia Hancock’s existing personal correspondence and papers from Clements Library at the University of Michigan and The Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College. I combed through every bit. I was hoping to find answers to several open questions I had about her life, her relationships, and her world that her previously published correspondence did not shed light on. In writing the book I included some of her previously unpublished letters, and unpublished letters from family and friends, and wrote about the events that surrounded her as she wrote. I wanted to give the reader a fuller picture of her life and service.  Unfortunately, there were no real surprises in her unpublished letters, and some questions will go unanswered. We can speculate that Cornelia herself, and her literary executor, took pains to ensure that certain aspects of her life will forever remain hidden.

What is your favorite research tip for people interested in writing about less well-known women of the nineteenth century?

I don’t really have a favorite research tip.  I’m not a very methodical researcher either. Something I search for one thing or person and find something else entirely. Not dismayed, I know I will make use of unexpected research somewhere—for me the unexpected sometimes pays off.  I am a dogged researcher, though, and that has paid off many times.  I endure and continue to seek that one missing link, trying different avenues, and sometimes I do find the pot of gold under the rainbow.  When I’m looking for an obscure personality or even deepening my research on my subject I try to cast a wide net.  Of course, Newspapers.com and Find-A-Grave often provide some very interesting paths to explore that can yield great finds.  I also like to search out contemporary accounts—published diaries, letters, and memoirs of people from the era who may have had contact or similar experiences with my research subject.  Of course, I use genealogy sites, and sometimes a google search will strike an unexpected nugget.  I sometimes return to the old school and search bibliographies and indexes.  There is no one specific research tip I can recommend from my own experience except to keep at it– sometimes relentlessly.  We all know that no matter how hard you seek, sometimes you cannot find– and that’s hard to accept. Nevertheless, for me research is often the most enjoyable part of the journey in writing a book.

What do you find most challenging or most exciting about researching historical woman?

The most challenging aspect of researching historical women, or anyone really, is getting to the heart of their motivations and what drives them and their relationships with the people they interact with during their lives.  Sometimes you cannot find what you are looking for and, therefore, you cannot write about it.  For example, there is circumstantial evidence that points to Cornelia Hancock having attended the dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, when Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address.  This was one of the things I sought to find evidence of in my research.  I could not definitively substantiate her attendance through any hard evidence; therefore, it was left out of the book.  Regarding Cornelia’s relationship during the war with Dr. Dudley, whom she mentioned in so many of her letters, and her reasons for remaining unmarried—two questions I sought answers to—neither could be definitively answered.

It is evident from a close and systematic evaluation of her extant letters that there are gaps in the correspondence.  Perhaps these existing gaps can be surmised due to letters that simply did not survive, however, in some instances it is quite likely that Cornelia herself, or her literary executor scrubbed the correspondence.  It is certainly no secret that some letters were deliberately burned after Cornelia’s death by her niece before handing them over to her literary executor, Henrietta Stratton Jaquette, who subsequently published them in 1937.  This cleansing of personal correspondence is seen repeatedly in researching historic personalities.  We always decry the great loss to history, but the action is driven by a deep human need for privacy.

In addition to writing about the Civil War, you are actively involved in Civil War education and preserving Civil War battlefields. When did you first become interested in the Civil War and what sparked that interest?

I have been a member of the American Battlefield Trust and all its predecessor organizations since very early in the preservation movement.  In 2003 I was chosen as teacher of the year for the Civil War Trust.  In my personal life and in my teaching career I always supported preservation and place-based learning for my students.  The land can teach us so much.  Once these battlefields and historical properties are developed, they become lost forever.  I first became interested in preservation with the advent of the preservation movement in the late 1980s as reckless development began to roar through the nation.  As a teacher of American history, I was always an advocate of the National Parks and historical sites and places.  As for the history of the Civil War, the war is an enduring a lynch pin in the history of our nation. It was a war that preserved the nation. Cornelia Hancock’s letters provide an unforgettable panorama of suffering and endurance, grief and sacrifice, heroism and tragedy of that war. From overcrowded hospitals to battle scarred landscapes, she chronicled the human cost of war with honesty, compassion, and courage.  At the center of her world is a nation in crisis—and a young woman whose fearless devotion to the wounded and dying left an enduring legacy. The world Cornelia Hancock inhabited during the Civil War may seem distant, yet its echoes continue to shape our nation today.  We are still searching for a national unity that the war seemingly preserved with our country, but we Americans are still victims of so many of the divisive issues that the war failed to resolve.

Carolyn Ivanoff is a retired high school administrator, author, and independent historian.  She writes and speaks frequently on American history in a variety of formats and venues.  As an author, researcher, and presenter much of her work focuses on 19th century America including social, medical, and material culture, the American Civil War, and Connecticut.  At the heart of her research and published works are firsthand, primary source accounts of the people of the Civil War generation.  Carolyn Ivanoff is the author of two books, We Fought at Gettysburg-Firsthand Accounts by the Survivors of the 17th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry and Cornelia Hancock’s Civil War-A Heart Touched by Fire from Gettysburg to the Grand Review. As a presenter her programs include educational and historical presentations for museums, libraries, schools, community organizations, Civil War round tables, and living history venues.