To mark February 29, 2012, we selected a few items from the collection to display in our Reading Room.  For those of you who can not make it to Worcester in February, this post will have to substitute.  The two invitations to Leap Year parties date from the 1860s, with one featuring a quadrille band and dancing until 3:00am.  The play Leap Year is a comical farce published around 1860, and was performed in Boston in 1862 as shown in the broadside playbill.  The 1872 McLoughlin publication, although part of the Society’s children’s literature collection, was likely intended for an adult audience.  The humorous illustrations feature all sorts of unmarried women seeking marriageable men in banks, taverns and on the street.

A search in the American Historical Newspaper database resulted in hundreds of articles and essays in January and February issues of leap years, often satirizing unmarried women and bachelors.  An article in an 1804 issue of the Dover, New Hampshire Sun states:

It has from time immemorial been considered a rightful prerogative of the ladies in LEAP YEAR, without subjecting themselves to any imputation or want of modesty, to make the first advances in negotiations for matrimonial alliances.

An 1820 headline reads “Old Bachelors, Look Out!” and a mock “Bachelor’s petition” appeared in The American Citizen from Jackson, Michigan in 1852, encouraging “unmarried ladies of all kinds, sizes, and ages” to propose because most bachelors were really just shy and would make good husbands.

All of this raises interesting questions about gender roles, marriage, and American society – especially after 1860, when eligible, unmarried men were in extremely short supply due to the Civil War. The war resulted in over 600,000 male deaths in this country, knocking social mores on their heels. It is all well and good to make fun and joke, but it is very likely that for a few leap years (1864, 1868, 1872, 1876), women took advantage of the relaxation of the rules and proposed to those men that could help them build a family and a future in the healing nation.

Invitation: 379150 (in ABE)

Invitation: 468160 (not scanned)

Play: 471672

Play Bill: 377623 (in ABE)

McLoughlin book: 214451 (not scanned)

I browsed through a volume belonging to Augusta M. Boyds Tilgham of Baltimore, dated 1860.  Ms. Tilgham’s book is filled mostly with recipes for cakes and other desserts, as well as a few household items such as whitewash and cold cream.  What’s most interesting about her book are the recipe names.  This personal touch is what makes manuscript cookbooks stand out from their published counterparts.  Ms. Tilgham named many of her recipes after the women who shared them with her.  She also seems to have been on a presidential kick, including recipes for Taylor pudding, Washington cake and Harrison cake.

The numerous cake recipes – Poor man’s cake, Washington cake, a cheap cake, Ellen’s wedding cake – seem to differ only slightly.  They all call for the standard flour, eggs, milk and sugar, but one might call for nutmeg, the other for molasses.  I’m going to give the Old Colony cake a try, whose special ingredient is lemon.  Also, I couldn’t resist trying a recipe that, in 1860, was already called “old.”  I’ve transcribed the recipe below.  I’ll be trying it out this week and will be reporting back soon with the results.  Feel free to bake along and share your results!

Old Colony Cake

3 eggs – 2 1/2 cups of sugar / 1 cup of butter – 1 ts of milk / 4 cups of flour – season with / Lemon – sift sugar over the / cake after it’s in the pan

A Conversation with Ronald J. Zboray & Mary Saracino Zboray

In this issue, Public Address Division members Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray discuss their study of an eight-page letter by Eliza Bancroft Davis (1791–1872) of Worcester, Massachusetts, written to her husband, John Davis, a U.S. Senator, on 18 June 1840. The original letter is in Box 1 (“Family Correspondence”), Folder 7 (“1840”), in the John Davis Papers at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts. The Zborays’ transcription of the letter appears below as Appendix 1, and a facsimile of the original letter accompanies this conversation on the Public Address Division’s Web site. The transcription and facsimile of the original appear by courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.

A transcription of Eliza Bancroft Davis’s letter of 18 June 1840 appears as pages 7–9 in the PDF of the Zborays’ conversation, available here:
2012-01-VibrantVoices

What do you find especially compelling about this artifact?

We located this letter by Eliza Davis, the wife of a Whig U.S. Senator, in 1994 while researching a book about nineteenth-century reading practices. All about politics, the letter said nothing about reading. But it stuck with us, and it inspired our 2010 book, Voices without Votes. According to the “woman’s sphere” paradigm, women of the antebellum era were not supposed to voice partisan allegiances. To be sure, a few pioneering activists spoke out for women’s rights, the abolition of slavery, and other moral reforms. But hard-core electoral party politics? That was thought to be in the sphere of men. Eliza Davis showed us otherwise. As we contextualized the letter with newspaper reports, we learned that the partisan press and some speakers used it as 1840 campaign propaganda. Truly, we concluded, such personal letters can be the stuff of public address.

What do you believe are the most important contexts for understanding the rhetorical functions of this artifact?

The artifact captures a crucial moment in the birth of American mass politics, with all the hoopla that Robert Gray Gunderson sketched in his Log-Cabin Campaign (1957) on the 1840 election. Whigs, more so than Democrats, recruited nonvoters, including women, for campaigning. Yet would they be anything more than faces in the crowd? This letter, a self-revelation of the partisan activities of one disfranchised woman, portrays Eliza Davis as she steps from her private world into the political limelight. The document can be read as a testament of women’s fluency in the new argot of mainstream party politics and as an argument that they could and should be part of it.

Davis wrote from her home in Worcester to her husband John, the day after the Massachusetts Whig nominating convention, with its 30,000 attendees, was held there on 17 June 1840. She was heavily involved because John was to be nominated for governor of Massachusetts, at the same time that presidential nominee William Henry Harrison’s state electors were to be selected. She knew her letter’s importance to her husband. Being in Washington, he relied upon her overall persuasive effectiveness in responding to the situations that she faced. As she explains, her rhetorical activities involved meeting with convention committee members, accepting calls from Whig movers and shakers in town, and, ultimately, standing up before a parade of 10,000 to acknowledge cheers to “the Lady of John Davis.” One line about her publicity in this parade reveals her transition to self-conscious partisan efficacy: “[A]fter the first five minutes I forgot myself entirely; and received it only as a part of the enthusiasm of the day in which, such is the power of sympathy, I fully participated.” She had become part of the machinery of political persuasion.

Davis, like many political wives, was “on” all the time, and she had to strategize rhetorically before the public. For example, she was challenged to a verbal duel before a delegation of 150–200 Whigs. When its leader supposed that she would forget them, she admitted, “my memory was poor for names,” and quickly added, “but at such a time the name of Whig was enough.” Her adversary retorted that the opposition candidate, Martin Van Buren, “never forgets any one,” to which she parried, “I hope . . . I am as unlike Van Buren in every thing else as that.” The delegates applauded her. It was a verbal performance not unlike stump speaking, where the ability to respond extemporaneously to challenges from the crowd demonstrated character and tested one’s mettle. We would not have known about this unpublished, yet public rhetoric if we did not peer into “private” letters.

After being moved to tears by her letter, John Davis gave it to renowned Senate orator Daniel Webster, who deemed it the best letter he had ever read. It reached William Halstead, a New Jersey Congressman, who used it in a speech at a Whig rally in New Brunswick. Replete with misquotes about unexpected delegates who devoured her food, the speech also fabricated Webster’s tears. After excerpts appeared in the papers, Democrats had a field day. The Ohio Statesman proclaimed on 23 September: “The Great Whig Boobies, Daniel Webster and John Davis, crying!” due to “the guzzling propensities of a band of two hundred hungry Federals.” Other newspapers attributed Webster’s tears to envy of Eliza’s superlative rhetoric.

How would you characterize your critical approach to the artifact? Why have you chosen this approach?

This letter’s public afterlife shows that a critical reading of such rhetorical artifacts is contingent upon the context of their creation, as well as their dissemination and reception. If we had stopped at the text of the letter, we could not have known just how much Davis addressed the public from the confines of her home.

Woman’s sphere scholarship dating from the 1970s had left the impression that women’s partisanship was so proscribed that our finding of even a few nineteenth-century women writing such “personal” material in a partisan register was significant. That women could be political transformed our understanding of woman’s sphere from a discourse constitutive of women’s “experience” to an admonitory and contingent rhetoric. It also altered our critical approach to interpreting women’s letters and diaries: we adopted a hermeneutic that assumed that their partisanship would manifest itself under close textual reading and contextual research.

Through this interpretive practice, supported by chasing down (through online newspapers and other resources) unidentified politicians and events tossed into letters, we have constructed a sense of a vernacular of partisan awareness and activity that can apply to other marginalized groups engaged in their own forms of public address beyond the podium and pulpit. At least for the women we have studied, the vernacular rhetoric of partisanship turned out to be not just possible, but quite prevalent, sustained, and often eloquently expressed.

Such partisanship on the margins prompts a reimagining of what being marginalized means from a civic perspective. Is it a way of countering exclusion—by resisting civic alienation through thinking, expressing, and acting oneself into a sense of inclusion—or is it playing the hand one is dealt as best as one can? Or both?

Using a different lens, we wonder to what degree and under what conditions dominant groups recognized the vernacular political culture of the disfranchised. When interpreting speeches by privileged nineteenth-century white politicians, for example, should modern critics pause and consider that these speakers may have been addressing women as well as men?

How would you incorporate this artifact into a class?

We believe that historical manuscript letters and diaries have special pedagogical value in classes on the history of American public address, women’s rhetoric, and political communication. They show how vibrant political life was among groups whose members could not vote or easily obtain access to the podium. Granted, such materials by white, lower- to upper-middle-class women are easier to find than, say, those of African Americans or working-class people. But digging in archives can prove beneficial. Many letters appear in digital collections such as the North American Women’s Letters and Diaries database, North American Immigrant Letters and Diaries, and American Civil War Letters and Diaries. Several archives post facsimiles or transcripts of manuscript letters and diaries (e.g., Historical Journals and Diaries Online).

For this artifact specifically, one classroom activity might involve dividing the class into six groups, all of which read the Davis letter but in conjunction with a different piece of scholarship on women’s public address. Questions for discussion could be: What light does the scholarship throw upon the Davis letter and vice versa? In what types of political rhetorical activity did nineteenth-century American women engage, as seen in the scholarship and the letter? How did their roles as daughters, wives, and mothers shape their rhetoric? What kind of roles can private letters play in the study of American public address?

The secondary public address scholarship to draw from offers such an embarrassment of riches, that it is difficult to choose which articles to assign. A small sample of six, selected for breadth, might include the following pieces. Analyzing the text of one abolitionist’s published letter, Stephen Howard Browne’s 1996 Quarterly Journal of Speech essay, “Encountering Angelina Grimké,” locates rhetorical public action in the epistolary form. Lisa M. Gring-Pemble’s “Writing Themselves into Consciousness,” published in the Quarterly Journal of Speech in 1998, argues that by corresponding, Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown honed a feminism that prefigured their women’s rights activism. In their 2002 Rhetoric and Public Affairs essay, “The Rise of the Rhetorical First Lady,” Shawn J. Parry-Giles and Diane M. Blair examine letters to find nineteenth-century precedents for the more activist contemporary political wife. Nineteenth-century partisan women’s more overt challenges to disfranchisement can be seen in Angela G. Ray’s “The Rhetorical Ritual of Citizenship,” published in the Quarterly Journal of Speech in 2007. Susan Zaeske’s “Little Magic: Martin Van Buren and the Politics of Gender,” in Martin J. Medhurst’s edited volume Before the Rhetorical Presidency (2008), demonstrates the power of women’s Whig rhetoric to disrupt the President’s agenda. Susan Zaeske and Sarah Jedd’s “From Recovering Women’s Words to Documenting Gender Constructs,” in Shawn J. Parry-Giles and J. Michael Hogan’s volume Handbook of Rhetoric and Public Address (2010), guides public address scholars through the archives.

Where can interested readers find additional information?

Zboray, Ronald J., and Mary Saracino Zboray. “Gender Slurs in Boston’s Partisan Press during the 1840s.” Journal of American Studies 34 (2000): 413–46 [See especially 422, 429, 430.]

——. Voices without Votes: Women and Politics in Antebellum New England. Durham, NH: University of New Hampshire Press, 2010. [See especially 50–63, 81–88.]

——. “Whig Women, Politics, and Culture in the Campaign of 1840: Three Perspectives from Massachusetts.” Journal of the Early Republic 17 (1997): 277–315 [Davis discussed on 285–95, illustration on 304.]

Contributors: Ronald J. Zboray (Professor of Communication, Affiliate Faculty in Women’s Studies, and Director of the Graduate Program for Cultural Studies), and Mary Saracino Zboray (Visiting Scholar in Communication), both at the University of Pittsburgh, have published extensively on women in antebellum political life and on nineteenth-century U.S. print culture. Their paper “I Have Said My Say: Ordinary Women and Partisan Speech Making in the Antebellum Era” won the NCA Public Address Division’s 2010 Wrage-Baskerville Award. Their book Voices without Votes won the 2011 Everett Lee Hunt Award of the Eastern Communication Association. Their other coauthored books include Everyday Ideas: Socioliterary Experience among Antebellum New Englanders (2006), Literary Dollars and Social Sense: A People’s History of the Mass Market Book (2005), and A Handbook for the Study of Book History in the United States (2000). Ronald Zboray also published A Fictive People: Antebellum Economic Development and the American Reading Public (1993). The Zborays’ articles have appeared in American Quarterly, American Studies, Journalism History, Journal of American Studies, Journal of the Early Republic, Libraries and Culture, Libraries and the Cultural Record, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, and Nineteenth-Century Literature. They are working on a new book, tentatively entitled “The Bullet in the Book: Reading Cultures during the American Civil War”; this work in progress is supported with a research grant from the American Journalism Historians Association and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Editor: Angela G. Ray, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University, is chair of NCA’s Public Address Division for 2012.

Martha Elizabeth Drew was born in 1839 in Kingston, RI. She married Walter Waterman of Bridgewater, MA. This collection consists of three journals written by Martha, and one by Walter. Martha’s journal entries detail daily weather and daily activities such as calling on friends, and attending singing school and sewing circles. Walter, who appears to have been a mechanic, records each day’s work in his journal, such as working at the forge or working on furnaces. He also includes daily records of the weather. In a typical entry from May of 1870, Walter writes of a hot summer day spent with his family, “Very warm for the season the thermometer stood at 90 above at twelve o’clock in the shade.  myself and family have been to Abington today to see Mary … got home quarter past nine.”

George Hull of Binghamton, NY, buried the statue on a friend’s farm in Cardiff after having a frustrating debate with a preacher about the presence of Giants on earth – Hull disagreed with the preacher’s too literal reading of the Bible.  In probably one of the most extravagant practical jokes ever, Hull decided to find an over 10 foot piece of gypsum, have an artist carve the slab into a statue, and cart it all the way to Cardiff for a proper burial – not an easy feat for 1868!  However, hoax or not, people were still interested.  People still wanted to see the Giant, not only because some might have thought it the real thing, but because of the controversy it was stirring.  Hull made a fortune charging people to view the statue, as well as exhibiting it across the state.

Many people over the years made offers to buy this piece of practical joke history.  P.T. Barnum actually offered Hull $60,000 just to lease the Giant for three months (after being turned down, he went ahead and carved his own and displayed it as “The Original of all ‘Cardiff Giants’” much to the dismay of Hull).  The Giant was eventually purchased by Calvin O. Gott of Fitchburg, MA, who kept the Giant in storage with his friend, Sumner Lawrence.  The Giant stayed in the Lawrence family until the early 20^th century, when the storage bills were not being paid.  Newspapers had a field day with the story, saying the Cardiff Giant was behind on his rent, being evicted, etc.  By 1948, the Giant found a final resting place at the Farmers’ Museum in Cooperstown, New York.

What struck me most while looking into the story of the Cardiff Giant was the wealth of information I was able to find.  Researching a topic such as this serves to remind me of what incredible resources can be found at AAS.  A single topic as esoteric as the Cardiff Giant actually has a presence across all collections.  I was able to find newspaper articles about the Giant, written days after its discovery all the way until the early 20^th century when it made news again.  I could read a poetic tribute to the Giant written in 1871, and even see advertisements for exhibitions.  Scrapbooks (believe it or not, we have two scrapbooks devoted to the Giant!) in the manuscript collection bring together multiple mediums and show how the topic held the interest of everyday people.  Even modern takes on the subject have been written and are available at AAS.  As James Taylor Dunn of the Farmers’ Museumwrote in his pamphlet about the Giant in 1948, “a fake, well established, is long lived.”  Fortunately for us, the hoax created so much debate and speculation, many resources were left behind so that the Giant’s memory can live on at AAS.

This first question is a relatively easy one: the donor, Emma DeForest Morse, bequeathed her collection to the Society in 1913, evidently feeling that the American historical scenery found on the faces of the plates would prove to be well-matched with AAS’s notable collections (and even more so with the impressive visual record found in the Graphic Arts holdings).

The second question is one which Ruth Ann Penka, AAS volunteer and curator of the newest online exhibit Beauties of America: The Staffordshire Pottery of John and William Ridgway, has been working on for years. It has been no easy task, since she is willing to do it only with gold-standard results. Penka wanted maps, illustrations, corresponding prints – and most importantly – documentation to follow the trail. So while on a Kinnicutt Fellowship in the United Kingdom, she found a treasure: the journal potter John Ridgway made during his journey to the United States in 1822 to accumulate views for his new series, The Beauties of America. Ridgway’s journal introduced Penka to some of the period’s cosmopolitan artists and allowed her to follow – through a Staffordshire potter’s own hand – the making of what would become an entire dinner service. This journey is preserved in her well-researched Curator’s introduction. Indeed, in Penka’s narrative and work the three big archival pieces of evidence – manuscript, books and graphics – coalesce. But they unite under an unusual medium: pottery. To this end (and in the hopes of providing the best surrogate for research possible) we have photographed the fronts and versos of the pieces, as well as the corresponding prints – painstakingly located by Penka – and we have made available her text-rich descriptions. The site also features photographs of the original set-up of Penka’s talk, at which this material was first presented, complete with dynamic maps of the places Ridgway visited.

In 1821, Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote A Defense of Poetry, which just happens to be the same year Ridgway took his journey abroad (saying nothing of his comparable British roots). In Shelley’s Defense, he made candid his thoughts on beauty, goodness and the inexplicable connection between the two. He states that the poet’s functions are twofold:

One it creates new materials of knowledge, power, and pleasure; the other it engenders in the mind a desire to reproduce and arrange them according to a certain rhythm and order which may be called the beautiful and the good.

Shelley’s posthumously published essay, written in response to a piece calling for more reliance on sciences and less on arts, is one heightened by the poet seeing and making visible through his gift language ideas about the world. The poet’s purpose is of language favoring this impulse – towards a pattern, rhythm and order. Indeed, Penka’s project underscores (and preserves) this fact – that is, seeing the work of Ridgway as facilitator and pattern-finder, she brings together the beauty and elegance of his work and time by charting his course and showing his vision of the new nation. It seems only fitting that the project was originally destined to be on display at the 2010 CHAViC conference “History Prints: Fact and Fiction” where participants were able to see and engage with these fascinating pieces and the print culture surrounding them.

Seem a stretch to relate poetry to pottery?

Good. I was hoping you’d say that.

The lasting effect of this seemingly inoffensive piece of dishware is well-played in American poet Gwendolen Haste’s 1946 poem entitled “Dorchester Plate”.  In the piece, she describes the problematic history represented on a plate’s face – a scene which ignores the grass darkened by death and the sweat in the voiceless mill. In fact, Haste seems to take issue with Shelley who felt that “poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted” whereas she concludes this Dorchester plate (itself a creation) is instead a “mirror of the unreal.” Overall, Haste’s poem bridges this gap and highlights a challenge of historic scenery – that being how the representation is played out (and for what audience).

I guess I cannot help myself: I see a certain cadence, arrangement – and yes, poetry – in cataloging and in this exhibit. Perhaps it’s because there is sense being made of items – and allowing caverns of human knowledge and experience to come within reach. The twenty-two plates featured in the exhibit are just a taste – only a small part of the Society’s collection. Beauties of America will be augmented this year and a visual catalog of 100 plates will be made available by the end of 2012. So we encourage you to engage with this new site – and feast your eyes on this dinner service.

A new addition to the Music Book Collection, this volume contains handwritten bars of both religious and secular music with no corresponding lyrics. Most songs are German hymns, and are simple compositions. Occasionally throughout the volume, the owner of this book transcribed more complicated pieces of music (Rondo Allegro, Trio, and Sonatina, for example). Some of the German hymns include “Now Rejoice Dear Christians,” “Dear Jesus We Are Here,” and “If You Fulfill Your Duty.” Also included is a German Christmas song. In the back of the volume is an alphabetical index of songs

Frank Leslie (1821-1880) was a British native who immigrated to North America in 1848. He was a well known engraver, publisher, and illustrator and the work that he and his associates undertook of illustrating the Civil War received much praise. The collection contains clippings from Budget of Fun beginning in 1859 and ending in 1867.  Excerpts from this publication which are present in the collection depict an entire range of subjects from excessive drinking among soliders to Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis parodies. One theme that really stands out is that of recruiting Union Soldiers, as seen in the two full pages illustrated to the right (click on the full pages bottom right to view larger images). 

One of the images is a cartoon entitled “The Conscription in Prospect – The Would-Be Exempts” from May 1863 and it parodies evasion of the Enrollment Act of 1863. The Enrollment Act was passed by the Federal government to supply new troops to the Union Army, but this form of conscription caused a lot of unrest in the North and led to the New York Draft riots. The law allowed for men to pay substitutes to enlist in their stead, but this led to widespread desertion.

It seems that there was still a great need for more soldiers, because the next tactic depicted in Budget of Fun encouraged women to make the men in their lives feel obligated to go and fight. In “The art of inspiring courage” which appeared in October 1863, Leslie parodies this task of women. Most of the methods tout emasculation as an effective means of persuasion. In one scene you will see a woman has dressed up in her husband’s clothes and threatened to go to war in his stead. There are also two scenes with an older man encouraging his son to fight. The more efficient way to do this is by convincing your son that joining the army is a way for him to support himself, then there is the “less economical means,” which suggests you buy him a commission in the army.

Based on these examples, it seems that for some young men the main impetus for going to war was tied up with a personal sense of honor and masculinity rather than only the stated need to preserve the Union or serve one’s country.

We commenced baking to issue bread every day instead of every other day on new years day it toke [sic] nearly 800 loaves per day.  It is no easy job for three of us…to do the work it takes us from sunrise till after dark to do it.

He later writes proudly, “I have got so that I mix and mould same and am getting to be quite the baker.”

The winter seems to be setting in, and Henry hopes this will be the last winter he sees away from home.  We unfortunately know Henry was still in service through the next winter.

I don’t know how long this fighting trade is going to continue but hope not long I would like to get home but do not want to come until the comp’y returns for good which I hope will be before another winter comes on.  We had a little snow this morning not but a little though.

The tone of this letter is certainly different from the previous.  All seems calm for the moment, and Henry is relishing in his new task.  Not quite what one may expect from war letters.  We’ll catch up again with Henry soon!

This carrier’s address came to AAS with a large group of New Jersey newspapers. Written at the end of 1863, the central poem, topped by a cut of a U.S. Mail train, focuses on the nation’s weariness with the Civil War, calling America “our troubled country” and “our dear, blood-washed land.” Much of the poem takes the form of a prayer to God, asking Him to “cause war’s rude alarms to cease, and wrap the trembling earth in robes of peace.” With the battles of Vicksburg and Gettysburg behind them, the writers of the address must have hoped the end of the war was close. It would be sixteen more long months to the surrender at Appomattox.

Below are transcriptions and copies from a diary from AAS’s Unidentified Diaries Collection.  The diary belonged to a woman from Andover, Massachusetts.  Her diary, with entries beginning in 1852 and continuing through 1855, describes her life as a teacher, and also includes many reflective entries about her experiences in church.  Her entries of December 29^th and January 1^st show this reflective spirit, and how the changing of the year has inspired her.

In reflecting on a sermon delivered on December 29^th, 1854, the woman writes

Oh! That I might rule my own spirit.  It seems to be perfectly beyond my control.  I hope this year may commence in a better manner than past years have been.

A few days later on January 1^st, after the arrival of the year 1855, she writes

A new year has commenced.  The old one has gone never to return.  How many sins has it borne to the judgment, with a new-year may I commence a new life – one of self denial, one of active preserving effort to do good…What can I do for my scholars to induce them to commence a new year aright?  May God enable to say something which shall affect their hearts.

Even though it seems more dramatic than many of our resolutions today (lose weight!  save money!) it all still boils down to us wanting to be better people, and do better things, for the benefit of both ourselves and for those around us.

So make those resolutions, and write them down.  Who knows, someone 150 years down the road might be interested to see what kind of self reflection and self improvement we were embarking upon in the year 2012.

This bound volume of The Californian begins with the first issue of May 28, 1864. It was primarily a weekly literary periodical with some local news thrown in. Charles Henry Webb started the paper but Bret Harte soon succeeded him as the editor. One of the contributors hired by Harte was Mark Twain—this volume contains at least 11 articles penned by Twain.

Indeed, the continentals had it all over their American counterparts, for mummies had long been a very public institution, particularly in England, where it was not uncommon for a mummy unwrapping to be a high society event, accompanied by an elaborate dinner, after which the unfortunate relic would be unceremoniously despoiled of its linen cerements in hopes that something along the lines of valuable collectables, such as amulets or jewelry, might be found. How many of these ancient Egyptians suffered this indignity and to what fate their remains were eventually consigned is not known, but it may well have been hundreds or more.

In the United States, fewer mummies were imported, owing chiefly to a ban on their export by the Pasha in 1835, and what unwrappings were performed were chiefly public events in front of medical or scientific audiences. The first such unwrapping was in December 1824, at New York’s Castle Garden, where a mummy procured by Captain Larkin Thorndike Lee was unwrapped and pronounced genuine and female. Lee then consigned the mummy and exhibition rights to a Mr. Bishop, who briefly exhibited the mummy in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and then absconded with both the artifact and the money. In the mid 1830’s Rubens Peale and John Scudder, rival museum entrepreneurs in New York each advertised a mummy unwrapping, which would be limited to audiences of adult men only, the subject being deemed inappropriate for women and children.

Then in 1850, George Gliddon, Egyptologist, former consul in Egypt and lecturer, proposed a mummy unwrapping in Boston at Tremont Temple. He had obtained the mummies with much difficulty and expense from Egypt and London, after losing a dozen mummies, previously purchased, to the vagaries of the Egyptian Customs Office, which had lagged so long in their deliberations about allowing Gliddon to take them out of the country that they crumbled to bits in a storage shed. Nevertheless, Gliddon was able to scrounge up four mummies, which he used as an adjunct exhibition to his “transparent” Panorama of the Nile. The Boston unwrapping was a means to promote both the panorama and Gliddon as an authority on Egypt.

 The announcement featured representations of two mummies and their coffins, and Gliddon postulated that the one he was going to unwrap in Boston was a priestess of Thebes, as evidenced by the inscriptions on her coffin, which gave her name as ASCH-ph*****, some of the hieroglyphics being unreadable. This was seized upon with serious interest as the Bostonians signed up for the three-day course of lectures during which the unwrapping would occur. One anonymous poet even penned a lengthy ode in which he describes the beautiful young woman’s untimely death, and how her beloved “weeps upon the broken stem of the lily of the Nile.” By the time of the opening, the priestess was also a princess and excitement was rife. Various notables were in attendance, including Louis Agassiz, who helped with the unwrapping. All went splendidly until the third and final evening, when Gliddon got the surprise of his life as the mummy turned out to be male, “exhibiting in its fossil state the erected unequivocal mark of its sex.”  Quick-thinking Gliddon had an explanation, blaming the gaffe on drunken coffin makers and embalmers, but he never quite lived down that moment of infamy.

Shortly thereafter Gliddon packed up the Panorama of the Nile and the mummies, and went to Philadelphia, where on 23 November 1850, underneath a picture of the coffin and mummy of Got-Mut-As-Anch, he issued a similar proposal to the one he had issued in Boston, except that he would unroll TWO mummies, the other one being a nameless child. He also issued a small handbill printed in red ink, advertising the display of the Panorama of the Nile, in the Lower Saloon of the Chinese Museum. Before the lectures, Gliddon exhibited the mummies and some visitors were startled to hear the words coming from the one which had been unwrapped in Boston!

          “Open the box! Open the box!”        

echoed throughout the room. There followed a dialogue between the observers and the mummy, which covered the decline of the Egyptian Empire and strongly hinted that the ancient inhabitants thereof had migrated to Mexico, there to continue their pyramid building habits. This was of course, a hoax, perpetrated by the famous ventriloquist Bobby Blitz, who reaped such fun from his folderol that he later incorporated a mummy in his performances.
The lectures and unwrappings went without a hitch, and one anonymous onlooker was able to obtain a length of the linen wrapping of Got-Mut-As-Anch, carefully recording the authenticity of the piece before folding it in a copy of the small broadside as a souvenir. The American Antiquarian Society now owns both the flier and the linen, a remarkable acquisition under any circumstances.

After his sojourn in Philadelphia, Gliddon eventually made his way to New Orleans where he unwrapped the final mummy. He then presented the mummy to the University of Louisiana, to be placed in the museum of the medical school—later Tulane University.

This mummy was given the name “Nefer Atethu” or  “Beautiful youth” many years later during a radiological study of her and Got-Thoti-Aunk (the mummy unwrapped in Boston), who had also been given to the museum in 1851 by Gliddon and Josiah C. Nott (who had collaborated on the writing of Types of Mankind).

The two mummies and their coffins were stored in various locations, including a space under the bleachers in the football stadium. They attended three Super Bowl games (and numerous college games) before being rescued, in the mid 1970’s,  and placed in a somewhat more appropriate setting at the college. According to Samuel Morton’s catalogue of skulls, the head of Got-mut-as-Anch was given to him for that collection. It is not known what happened to the rest of the body, nor to the child’s mummy unwrapped in Philadelphia.

A more extensive telling of this story appears in the chapter “Unholy unrollers” in my book Mummies in Nineteenth Century America; Ancient Egyptians as Artifacts (McFarland, 2009) which is a discussion of how Egyptian mummies came to America and what happened to them after they got here as they progressed from being viewed as curiosities, to being exploited as commodities, and finally their ongoing role as cultural connections to a world long past.

By S.J. Wolfe, senior cataloguer and serials specialist, American Antiquarian Society.

Up until about 1820, The New England Primer, with its religiously inspired alphabet, account of John Rogers’s burning at the stake, and religious dialogues, dominated the American primer market. By the 1840s, secular primers like The American Juvenile Primer featuring pictures and large type became quite popular. Many of Dunigan’s cheap picture books would be reissued by the fledgling publisher McLoughlin Bros. some fifteen years later. Apparently, the title page illustration is a redrawn version of the frontispiece for Catherine Parr Strickland Traill’s Fables from the Nursery (1839).

Talk of the switch appears in newspapers and almanacs prior to 1750, when the Calendar (New Style) Act of 1750 was passed.  Below is an excerpt from the American Weekly Mercury, a Philadelphia newspaper, from 1745.  In an opinion piece, the author first comments upon the differences in units of measurement between Europe and the colonies, and goes on the support the proposed calendar change, stating it basically isn’t that big a deal.  And don’t even try to use holidays as an excuse, the author says, they’re messed up to begin with!

But some may object, that an alteration in these things would so discompose the order and method in which affairs are carried on at present, that the propos’d [sic] remedy would be worse than the disease; so that of two evils we should chuse [sic] the least.  To which I answer, as to time: If it be required I can produce a calendar with plain tables, in which the days of the year, month and weeks, the change of the moon, the movable and immovable fasts and festivals, terms &c. will appear at first view for any time past, present, or future, as well as according to the old and new style now in use, as the Gregorian account now recommended.  And were the latter introduced into astronomy, tables depending on the sun’s place, &c. would not be soon out of date, as they are by the method now in use for calculation. 

Transposal [sic] of the holy days &c. can be no valid objection, since they are now so irregular as to be observed in different parts of Christendom, according as the new and old style is received; and in the same individual countries they are in such a fluctuating condition, that they insensibly revolve quite thro’ the year: so that in process of time Christmas will fall out at Midsummer, and May-day will come to the middle of Winter: but the method now proposed reduces the years, months, and days to a permanent certainty.

In another opinion piece from the Boston Evening Post in 1747, the author writes a letter “To the Author of the London Courant” addressing the “Design…on Foot for changing our Style.”  The author certainly seems to convey understanding and support, stating that the change

…has been a Thing often talked of, and, I believe, very much looked for; indeed, I have often wondered, that it was not done long ago, and have heard other Persons say the same, and that no good Argument could be assigned, why this Alteration has not been or should not be made, to prevent our being longer singular to such a Degree, as to be in some Measure ridiculous.

Jumping across the pond momentarily, London Magazine published an article in 1747 titled “Of the Confusion arising from the Uncertainty of beginning our Year.”  Hoping to find some complaints, or even evidence of the Brits’ reaction to loosing 11 days, I found only support.  “The absolute necessity there is for an Uniformity in the Dates of History is so obvious to every Man who makes that Science his study, or even his Amusement…” the authors states.  His only complaint is the confusion in dating (newspapers and decrees, he mentions specifically) that the switch may bring about.

These few sources, among others, show that while the changeover may have caused some inconvenience, it was understood as a necessity to be consistent with the rest of Europe.  No strong arguments were presented otherwise, but it must just be human nature to complain about change.  The fear of loosing a firm handle on one’s own history, insomuch as dates were wishy-washy, is understandable.  And it’s easy to see people fretting about losing 11 days, but, not to get philosophical, time is just an illusion anyways.  An article regarding the calendar change in the Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure from December 1^st, 1751 opened wisely with the following quote from the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius, perhaps as a reminder to those citizens who may have been worried about their time lost -

Time of itself is nothing, but from thought / Received its rise, by labouring fancy wrought, / From things consider’d; whilst  we think on some / As present, some are past, or yet to come; / No thought can think on time, that’s still confest, / But thinks on things in motion, or at rest.

First obtainable edition of this important Confederate and Texas songster; Allan had previous issued a much shorter compilation in 1863, now extremely rare. In his preface, Allan explains that during the Civil War he assiduously collected “a very important, but often neglected, portion of the history of those times,” the songs actually “sung in the Camp.” His plans to publish a larger compilation suffered a cruel blow in 1866 when Federal soldiers burned his property and archive “long after the war was supposed to be over.” Undaunted, he resumed collecting, here offering ca. 200 of his best finds, some with authors identified. Many were printed here for the first time, including several relating to the Texas Rangers. Of special interest are the 23 pages of local advertisements at the end, which highlight Galveston’s role in the cotton trade. The book closes with two pages of ads identifying Allan as a subscription agent and proprietor of the People’s Circulating Library.

The AAS curator of graphic arts, Lauren Hewes, recently purchased this circular letter, headlined “Price Current of Conjugal Goods from Mme. M. Simmons, & Co.” On one side, the letter advertises a wide range of condoms (male and female), “French Male Safes” (condoms made from a mixture of India rubber and gutta percha), “apex envelopes,” “womb veils” (an early form of diaphragm), and other contraceptive devices, along with “Male and Female Yarns, Ticklers rings, Surprises, 50 cents each.”

The other side of the letter describes a list of (presumably) pornographic or erotic prints that are also available for purchase via mail order, with long lists of titles of images, some specifically intended “for Ladies.” “There is no vulgarity in these fine works of art,” the letter proclaims, “although the skilful artist exhibits every form of the sweet and captivating being as her Creator made her,” adding that these prints “decorate the first galleries of art in New York.” In addition to prints, the letter also advertises items “just introduced into the States,” which are described as follows: 

They are glass of the size of a grain of Rice, and within exhibit to the naked eye a life-sized picture of bewitching and lovely attitude. … I sell them, nicely encased in pen holders at $1.00 each, one or more. There is but one person represented in each glass, and are not offensive.

These erotic novelty items, which apparently featured an image of a nude figure underneath a small magnifying lens, are of a piece with a wide range of similar goods that were available by retail in American cities (and by mail elsewhere) through much of the nineteenth century. (The letter’s italicized insistence that they only contain one figure is intended to underscore the fact that they only depicted naked individuals, and did not show actual sex acts.)

All of the goods advertised here—contraceptives, erotic prints, aphrodisiacs, and sexual novelty items—could be obtained by sending cash and postage stamps to Mme. Simmons at Station D, New York City (a post office in Manhattan located in “Bible House,” the headquarters building of the American Bible Society at 9^th Street and 4^th Avenue). Ordered items would be sent to purchasers “through the mail … in such a disguised manner that no one can detect or suppose the contents of the letter,” using “patent French letter seals proof against water and steam….” Even though information about contraception was relatively easy to find in mid-nineteenth-century America, this concern with discretion is understandable.

But we have some questions, which we were hoping this blog’s readers could help us answer. 

• When was this letter printed?

We know that it was after the end of the Civil War, as it refers to Simmons as the author of a pamphlet titled Fifteen Minutes Conversation with Married Ladies, revised in 1865. It also contains several references of a fairly topical nature—such as one to a print titled “Sinking the 290,” which most likely is a double entendre referring to the sinking of the Confederate warship Alabama in 1864.

But was the letter printed before 1873, when Anthony Comstock, the founder of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, persuaded Congress to pass the Comstock Act, which made it illegal to deliver through the mail any “obscene, lewd, or lascivious,” or any information or items related to birth control? That is, was Simmons operating in the more freewheeling period from 1865-73, or was she advertising and mailing her goods directly under the nose of the nation’s most tireless anti-obscenity crusader (or vigilante, depending on one’s point of view), when people were regularly paying stiff fines and serving long prison sentences for sending “obscene” material through the mail?

• And what are “yarns”? The letter advertises “yarns for males, yarns for females,” and “rubber yarns,” but offers few hints as to what they might be.
• Finally, do any of you know anything about Mme. Simmons (almost certainly not a real name)? Was this name a front for another operator in the nineteenth-century smut trade?

Think it not strange, mistress, if I should speak the truth, and tell you, that I have a long time been broiling on the flames of ardent affection towards your dear self.

[You can read the entire first page of the dialogue at the end of this post.]

A chapter on fortune enumerates signs of a successful marriage, describes the art of getting and keeping money in hard times, interprets dreams and moles, and lists which are the “evil or perilous days in every month of the year.”  Those beginning a journey on one of these days are in danger of death during the journey, and those who marry “shall either be quickly parted, or else live together with much sorrow and discontent.”  Planning ahead perilous days during the next three months are November 15^th and 19^th, December 5^th, 6^th, and 11th, and January 1^st, 2^nd, 4^th, 5^th, 10^th, 15^th, 17^th, and 19^th.  Hibernating for the month of January seems like a good idea for a lot of reasons.

But wait, there’s more.  Another chapter illustrates, with pictures and written instructions, “the silent language, by motion of the hands.”   With a bit of practice, or keeping the book at hand to follow the instructions, a gentleman could sign “Madam I am your humble servant.”   Also, and just in time for the holidays, there’s a chapter containing directions for “carving fish, flesh, and fowl, and other delicacies, after a decent and modish manner.”  And finally, the book concludes with “A collection of choice songs.”

Two editions of A New Academy of Compliments: or, Complete Secretary are known, published in New York City in 1799 and 1802 [AAS catalog record] (the illustrations in this post are from the later edition).  An earlier edition, printed here in Worcester by Isaiah Thomas in 1795, has title A New Academy of Compliments: or, The Lover’s Secretary [AAS catalog record]; the contents vary slightly.  A later edition with the title The American Academy of Compliments; or, The Complete American Secretary [AAS catalog record] was printed by Ashbel Stoddard at Hudson, N.Y. in 1804.  The Antiquarian Society holds the Worcester edition and the New York edition from 1802, which was purchased from the bookseller Benjamin Tighe for $22 in 1948.  There’s no indication how much the book originally cost but the preface states “tho’ but of a small price may yet nevertheless prove of great value.”

In another word, priceless.

An example of repurposing of books, Nancy Snow’s account book was composed within what was at one point a penmanship book, published in 1832. Nancy wrote her name on the inside cover, indicating she used this book as a student the Clapp School when she was 14 years old. Twelve years later, Nancy decided to use her old school book to keep track of her daily purchases. Her “Account of Sundry Things” includes a variety of purchases, such as lemons, a pair of gloves, having a horse shod, a paint brush, whale bones, and a trip to New Bedford. The volume is an excellent glimpse into the daily life of a young New England lady.

Within the Curwen Papers are letters with dates such as March 4th, 169 1/2, and February 15th, 174 3/4.  Take a look at some examples below.

These letters showcase the change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, which happened officially in the colonies in 1752, as decreed by Great Britain with the Calendar (New Style) Act of 1750.  Before this act, according to the Old Style calendar, the year officially began on March 25th.  Only after the switch to the Gregorian calendar in 1752 did the year begin on January 1st.  So during January, February and March, many people were probably very confused as to how to date their letters, especially when considering to whom and where they were writing, as countries were switching calendars at different times (Italy, France, Spain and Portugal adopted the New Style in 1582, and Greece was last to the party in Europe, adopting the New Style in 1923.)

It’s interesting to see how early these dates appear, and makes me wonder how the news of the switch was spreading, and how it was being received.  There is a historically unproven, but still telling, myth that Londoners rioted during the passage of the act in 1750 because they wanted their 11 days back that they lost during the change over.

If you’d like to see how the colonists were told of the change, almanacs are one way to go.  An Almanack of almanacks, collected from Poor Job, and others. For the year of our Lord 1752. … : With a small allowance fitted for the province of Massachusetts-Bay, New-Hampshire, Rhode-Island, and Connecticut. : With an abstract of the act of the Parliament of Great-Britain, for regulating the commencement of the year, and for correcting the calender [sic] now in use featured a three page explanation of the switch, which you can read here.

And stay tuned next week for more history behind, and reaction to, the switch.