Paul Erickson

Randolph G. Adams Director

William L. Clements Library

This issue of The Quarto is a companion to the upcoming Clements Library exhibit that takes up the theme of the Fall 2023 semester here at the University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts: “Arts and Resistance.” The United States is often described as a nation that was born out of resistance–resistance to oppression of dissenting religious beliefs, resistance to taxation without representation, take your pick. When we think about what that resistance looked like in the late 18th-century colonies, public demonstrations might be the first things that come to mind. Sometimes these were acts of destruction of property, such as the Boston Tea Party in December 1773, or pulling down the statue of King George III at Bowling Green in Lower Manhattan in 1776. Other demonstrations crossed the line into violence, such as tarring and feathering tax collectors, or the street protest in March 1770 that turned into the Boston Massacre. And if we think about the arts of resistance, we may think of visual representations of these events, such as Paul Revere’s famous engraving of the Boston Massacre. But there were other visual traditions of resistance circulating at the time as well. 

The Repeal, Or, The Funeral of Miss Ame-Stamp (London?, 1766) shows a funeral procession on the banks of the Thames, carrying a small coffin, containing the remains of the Stamp Act, toward an open vault. At right are the large unshipped cargoes destined for America that had accumulated during the period when the act was in force. 

Many readers of The Quarto will be familiar with the satiric prints that appeared in the period of the colonial crisis in the 1760s, often expressing resistance to particular British policies, such as the 1766 print, The Repeal, Or, The Funeral of Miss Ame-Stamp. While some of these satiric prints were produced in the North American colonies, the majority of them were created in London and were thus expressions of internal British political division over its colonial policies. Even so, they circulated widely on both sides of the Atlantic and provided an important visual dimension to resistance against British colonial rule. 

But aside from visual materials, we don’t often think about the role of arts in the rising tide of resistance to Britain’s colonial rule in the 1760s and 1770s. We’re familiar with more contemporary art forms that have been put to use in political struggles, art forms that have histories of their own. For instance, there is a long tradition of protest songs in American music. Scholars have drawn a direct line from the Hutchinson Family Singers’ abolitionist album “Get Off the Track!” of the 1850s to the African American spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” to Billie Holiday’s haunting anti-lynching song “Strange Fruit” of 1939 to Public Enemy’s bracing 1989 call to “Fight the Power.” Similarly, American literature has a long tradition of protest writing in many genres. With the publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1851, the novel supplanted the pamphlet as the primary popular prose genre of political resistance, whether protesting conditions for workers in Chicago’s meat-packing plants (Union Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle) or the oppression of African Americans on Chicago’s South Side (Richard Wright’s 1940 novel Native Son). 

But there were no protest novels (that we know of) written in the North American colonies during the 1760s and 1770s. And while there were likely many popular drinking tunes that had rowdy lyrics written at the time, very few of them survive. So what were the arts of resistance to British rule in the run-up to the American Revolution? It should come as no surprise that political opposition was expressed in the most common contemporary genres of what we now call creative writing: sermons and poetry.

This Portrait of Phyllis Wheatley Peters was issued in the 1950s or 1960s by Associated Publishers, a company established by Dr. Carter Woodson to publish books on Black history and portraits of important African-Americans, enlarged and suitable for framing. This half-tone print was based on the iconic and only known portrait engraving of Wheatley Peters issued as a frontispiece to Poems on Various Subjects (London, 1773).

Along with sermons, poetry was the written genre most often put to use in colonial America to both respond to current events as well as offer commentary on more enduring questions. A particularly striking example of the first case was the large broadside titled Bloody Butchery by the British Troops: Or, The Runaway Fight of the Regulars. Printed by Ezekiel Russell (1743-1796) in Salem Massachusetts, immediately in the wake of the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, the broadside was surrounded by a heavy black border, with two rows of twenty black coffins across the top, each bearing the name of on the Massachusetts dead. The last line of the broadside’s title advertised an added bonus: “a funeral elegy on those who were slain in battle.” In his History of Printing in America (Worcester, Mass., 1810), Isaiah Thomas loosely attributed this poem to a young woman who lived with printer Ezekiel Russel’s family, although this is far from certain. The beginning of the verse lament appears to be modeled on the opening of the Iliad: “AID me ye nine! my muse assist,/ A sad tale to relate,/ When such a number of brave men/ Met their unhappy fate.” The poet listed each town in Massachusetts that lost men in the battle, while highlighting the unexpected tragedy that the battle (and the upcoming war) would visit on colonial families: 

Words can’t express the ghastly scene

That here presents to view,

When forty-two countrymen

Sure bid their friends adieu.

To think how awful it must seem, 

To hear widows relent

Their husbands and their children

Who to the grave was sent. 

The poetry of Phyllis Wheatley Peters (1753-1784), now hailed as one of the most important American literary figures of the 18th century, would seem to have little in common with this elegy from Salem. And from her first published poem (which appeared in the Newport Mercury when she was only 13) to the title of her 1773 book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, readers would have expected her work to be suffused with polite piety, not political resistance. But it would have been impossible for a book of poems written by an enslaved Black girl to not have been interpreted as a sign of resistance to the accepted social order. And even more, the erudite, polished verses in Poems on Various Subjects (published when she was perhaps 19) did contain some thorns. Perhaps her most explicit expression of protest was the ode “To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth,” who had been newly appointed secretary of state for the Colonies. The poem opened with the colonists’ hopes that they would receive better treatment from the Earl of Dartmouth than from his predecessor: 

Hail, happy day, when, smiling like the morn, 

Fair Freedom rose New England to adorn:

The northern clime beneath her genial ray, 

Dartmouth, congratulates they blissful sway

The poem’s third stanza answered a question that the poem imputed to Dartmouth, and likely to other readers: why would an enslaved young woman be writing about freedom? Wheatley’s answer did not pull any punches:

Should you, my lord, while you pursue my song,

Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung,

Whence flow these wishes for the common good,

By feeling hearts alone best understood,

I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate

Was snatch’d from Afric’s fancy’d happy seat:

What pangs excruciating must molest,

What sorrows labour in

My parent’s breast?

Steel’d was that could and by no misery mov’d

That from a father siez’d his babe belov’d:

Such, such my case. And can I then pray

Others may never feel tyrannic sway?

By explicitly comparing the colonists’ complaints about “tyranny” with her own experiences of having been stolen from her parents, brought across the ocean, and sold as a slave, Wheatley used poetry–the most popular literary form of the Revolutionary era– to support the colonies’ cause while at the same time undercutting the colonies’ complaint by highlighting the difference between colonial oppression and chattel slavery, between taxation without representation and her parents’ loss of their child. Wheatley Peters’ pen proved an eloquent means of resistance against persecution, both personal and political.

I hope that you enjoy this issue’s exploration of the theme of Arts & Resistance, and that you will visit the Clements later this fall to see the exhibit in the Avenir Reading Room on this theme.

Angela Oonk

Director of Development

James Sayer produced this etching in 1788 of Alderman John Sawbridge holding out his hat in supplication with a paper inscribed, “Motion for a Reform in the Representation.”

The tradition of passing the hat reflects the power of grassroots fundraising. Now, we can be part of a community like the Clements Library Associates even when we are too far apart to place our contributions into a physical hat. As new needs arise at the Clements, online crowdfunding campaigns have brought people near and far together as they pool their resources in a virtual contribution box.

We invited you to throw your hat in the ring by participating in a recent crowdfunding campaign, “Bit by Bit: Digitizing Clements Collections.” These donations help make invaluable primary sources available online, anytime, anywhere, for free. To do this critical work, we need specialized, state-of-the-art digitization equipment that costs $50,000. This machine is specifically designed to be safe enough to work with fragile and valuable collections like those at the Clements. This is just one example of the power of coming together and passing the hat to bolster the work at the Clements Library. Hats off to our supporters and friends!

As you may know, I wear many hats in my role at the Clements. Once a month, I look forward to hosting The Clements Bookworm gathering together on Zoom to discuss books and historical topics. The virtual circle is further strengthened through engaging conversations and thought-provoking questions among participants. Our west coast friends deserve a feather in their caps for arising at the crack of dawn to join us for the live broadcast. We’re not talking through our hat — this year, the registrations for the Bookworm surpassed 2,500.

In other news, hold on to your hats, because we have begun marking important milestones in celebrating the U.S. Semiquincentennial like the upcoming student-curated exhibit marking the 250th anniversary of the publication of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. The Clements collections offer a rich array of materials to better understand the conflict and follow the variety of individuals impacted.

Please invite your friends to visit the Clements — there is no reason to keep the information under your hat. (As an aside, do you know that Abraham Lincoln kept important papers in his top hat?) After all, it’s not too late to visit even if you graduated and threw your cap in the air!

Longtime Head of Reader Services Terese Murphy retired in early August. Terese first joined the Clements as a volunteer, and then later joined the staff, processing and cataloguing maps before spending fifteen years managing the library’s reading room and remote reference requests. Of more relevance to readers of this publication, she also served as editor of The Quarto. She has been succeeded by Joshua Sulser, who joined the staff in late August. Josh previously served as the Librarian of the Ingalls Library at the Cleveland Museum of Art. An Ohio native, Josh received his BA from Ohio Wesleyan University and his MLIS from Kent State University. We’re delighted to have Josh as a member of the Clements Library team! And congratulations to Terese on her retirement!

Curator of Books and Digital Projects Librarian Emiko Hastings published a review of Kate Ozment’s The Hroswitha Club and the Impact of Women Book Collectors in the September 2025 issue of The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America.

Curator of Maps and Graphics Sierra Laddusaw attended the 2025 annual meeting of the Western Association of Map Libraries (WAML) in Moscow, Idaho. She co-led a pre-conference session on the future of the Online Guide to U.S. Map Collections. She also gave a presentation titled “Come to dwell among us”: Maps, Monsters, and a First Year Literature Course.” The presentation focused on how map librarians can adapt techniques students are learning in class for thinking about and critiquing literature to cartographic materials.

Associate Curator of Manuscripts Jayne Ptolemy presented at the Organization of American Historians conference in Chicago in April. Jayne was part of a panel called “Joy and Pleasure in the Early Republic,” organized by the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. Her paper, “Interrupted Histories,” looked at evidence of interruption in manuscript sources to consider how people overcame (or at least acknowledged) the ever-present reality of distraction, and showed how irritating annoyances can shift into moments of community and connection.

Librarian for Instruction and Engagement Maggie Vanderford was awarded the University Librarian Recognition Award at the annual faculty awards ceremony on October 30. The award recognizes active and innovative early career achievement in library, archival or curatorial services. The award is a wonderful recognition of Maggie’s standing as a campus leader in library instruction.

This fall semester, the Clements Library has fourteen student workers and interns working at the library—an all-time high. (You can read about them on the Clements Chronicles blog.) They include undergraduates (majoring in fields from public policy to statistics to German) as well as graduate students in U-M’s School of Information. Thanks to all of the members of the Clements Library Associates whose gifts have helped support these important work opportunities.

Brian Leigh Dunnigan

Many members of the Clements Library community will share our deep sadness at the passing of Brian Leigh Dunnigan, Curator Emeritus of Maps. Brian passed away in Spring Arbor, Michigan on April 10, 2025, following a struggle with Parkinson’s disease.

Born in Detroit in 1949, Brian developed a lifelong passion for early American history—especially the French and Indian War, the Great Lakes, and the War of 1812. He was the son of Dorothy and James Dunnigan, one of Mackinac Island’s longest serving State Park Commissioners.

Brian spent his childhood and many summers on Mackinac Island, where he worked for ten seasons as a historic interpreter at Fort Mackinac and conducted research on the fort’s special collections related to the history of the island and its military outpost.

Brian earned both his undergraduate and graduate degrees in history from the University of Michigan, followed by a second graduate degree in museum management from Cooperstown Graduate Program in Cooperstown, New York.

He became the first Director of Historic Fort Wayne in Fort Wayne, Indiana, before moving on to direct and oversee the development of Old Fort Niagara in Youngstown, New York. During his tenure, Brian established numerous historical reenactment programs and publications, and fostered cross-border collaborations with Fort George in Niagara-on-the- Lake, Ontario, and Fort York in Toronto. He also served as an adjunct faculty member at the University at Buffalo.

Among his many accomplishments at Old Fort Niagara, one of the most significant was the return and restoration of the fort’s historic War of 1812 flag from Megginch Castle in Scotland to its home in Youngstown, New York. In 1996, Brian joined the Clements Library as the Curator of Maps.

In addition to caring for the map collections and pursuing his own research, Brian expanded his responsibilities to serve as the Clements’ Interim Director from 2007 to 2008 and was appointed Associate Director in 2010. He also provided leadership for the library’s fellowship programs and served as editor of The Quarto

His scholarly achievements were numerous, but among his most notable publications are Frontier Metropolis (2001) and A Picturesque Situation (2008), both of which reflect his deep expertise and enduring passion for early American history and cartography.

Brian retired from the Clements in July of 2019. In recognition of his many contributions, the Clements Library established the Brian Leigh Dunnigan Fellowship in the History of Cartography to support researchers using the library’s collections of maps. Brian is deeply missed by all of his former colleagues for his vast knowledge of the library’s map collection, as well as his thoughtfulness, generosity, and good humor.

Cheney J. Schopieray

Curator of Manuscripts

The word “baggage” carries with it a sense of weight, bulk, and burden. Travelers’ trunks, barrels, and bags were filled with toiletries, changes of clothing for different social and practical needs, and much else. Moving them required careful packing, management, and manual labor. When Lena Smith planned a Nebraska-to-California trip in November 1904, she contemplated taking the Burlington railroad from Omaha, which had a local ticket opportunity to see friends southwest of Lincoln. This required that she send her luggage separately on a noon train through Lincoln, visit quickly, secure a carriage ride to Fairmont in time to catch the “Flyer,” which would then allow her to meet up with her luggage at McCook, Nebraska, before continuing west to California. After assessing a flurry of potential options sent by a friend, she abandoned her social calls at Lincoln, avoided the complexity of connecting modes of transport, and took the Union Pacific overland directly to Sacramento instead.

Many soldiers, immigrants, indentured and other laborers, itinerant educators and ministers, and homeless people traveled with much less. Their knapsacks, haversacks, parcels, and bags carried what they needed to get to the next town, next bed, next meal, next job. Without the privilege of carriage drivers, porters, or servants, the weight of even a few rudimentary necessities becomes heavy over time. When George Starbird went off to fight in the Civil War in July 1862, he kept it light, with few extras: only needles, thread, labels, pharmaceutical pills, and medical salve.

By the time the Clements Library staff first removed Frederick Hubbard’s x 24 cm (~9.5″) x 108 cm (~42.5″) passport from its tin tube, it suffered from split seams; tears bit into its edges, small sections were missing, and the different types of adhesives had in places lost their hold. In 2014 Clements Library Conservator Julie Fremuth carefully addressed its many issues, and now it is safely accessible (outside its container!) in the Thomas, Robert, and Frederick Hubbard Family Papers, 1803-1902.

Travel documents and clothing and other personal effects took material forms that dictated the shape of the items that carried them. Trunks, suitcases, barrels, slipcases — all were designed to hold and protect particular things, and all required different forms of labor to move them around.

But the things that travelers in the past packed into containers were not always transported by strong backs, seasoned arms, and muscled legs. “Emotional baggage” is a modern term — its earliest currently known use in print is from around the time of Lena Smith’s trip from Omaha to Sacramento. Terms such as “intellectual baggage” and “political baggage,” with similar figurative concepts, reach back to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. They express how a person’s past actions, experiences, knowledge, feelings, attitudes, and beliefs encumber them in internal, interpersonal, and community relationships in the present.

Sometime in the 1850s, a young man — perhaps James R. Reeves of Kennebec County, Maine, or a family member — took a partially printed volume of blank receipts and turned it into a combination scrapbook, drawing pad, and handwritten storybook. The narrative portion follows the adventures of Ezekial and Hezekiah, both young scouts, and focuses on Ezekial as he wends his way through life’s challenges. Our protagonist suffers from despair and heartbreak as he and Hezekiah court the same young woman, Flora. The illustrator visualizes loss of hope through a remarkable yellow hat that spews “gas of hope” from the head of the despairing. This page shows the “Poor old maniac,

but once powerful scout, now dwindled away with sorrow for the lost Flora.” His bent body and tattered clothes are weighted down by the “grief bag” he shoulders, also presumably leaking hope from a tear in its fabric. His rival Hezekiah reaches out to offer the beleaguered young man something to eat, attempting to offer some solace. “Poor old fellow you must be hungry. Can I do anything for you, you seem to be weary of life. I guess I take you to a place of safety at once.” Ezekial responds “with great vigor”: “I’m not hungry it is grief that gnaws like hunger at my very vitals. No never. You are the man that ruined me, if I was a smart man as I … I would kill you.”

Horace P. Bigelow peppered his correspondence with illustrations, including this parcel of “regrets” offered to the recipient. His correspondence, along with a wealth of sources pertinent to the intermarried Bigelows, Huntingtons, Van Vechtens, Christies, and Danns are available for research thanks to gifts from family member and former Clements Library Director John C. Dann.

Naomi Yu

Clements Library-UMSI Intern

If you go into any family home in the United States where children live, the odds are very high that you will encounter portraits of those children in some form: framed and arranged on a table, attached to the refrigerator with magnets, populating the hallways, etc. The U.S. tradition of displaying portraits of one’s children is a long-standing one. These images often serve two purposes: first, to present children at their best, inviting admiration from visitors; and second, to complement the home’s decor, neatly filling empty spots on the wall. With these familiar motivations in mind, I will focus here on a truly unique example of child portraiture that recently arrived at the Clements Library.

This past July, the Clements was delighted to purchase from noted rare book and periodical dealer Richard West his personal collection of illustrated humor periodicals from the last three decades of the 19th century, a collection that he assembled over the course of over 40 years. The centerpiece of any collection of illustrated humor is Puck, a monthly magazine of satirical political cartoons published by an Austrian immigrant named Joseph Keppler in New York. The magazine was published in German at its inception in 1876, but was subsequently published in English from 1877 onwards. Keppler gained fame for the caustic wit of his political satires and for his pioneering use of chromolithography.

The painted portrait of Joseph Keppler, Jr. measures only 17 x 13 inches. Its incredibly ornate frame more than doubles the size of the portrait, at 37 inches long by 26 inches wide. The carved figure at the top of the frame is almost 6 inches deep.

became a sailor and made his way to the United States, serving in the Civil War before becoming a photographer. By the late 1870s Kurtz was quite well-known as a photographer, and was a pioneer in popularizing the halftone process in the United States, which permitted photographs to be reproduced in print. Both men were German-speaking immigrants and belonged to an affluent German-American singing group known as the Liederkranz that also functioned as a fraternal organization. Though Keppler Sr. was himself a talented artist and could have painted his son himself, commissioning Kurtz may have been a gesture of friendship or professional respect — an act of fraternity within their elite social circle.

Keppler Sr. had risen from modest Austrian immigrant to a man of substantial means, building a large house on top of a hill in Inwood, at the far northern tip of Manhattan. His home would have been richly decorated, filled with luxurious furnishings and objects meant to communicate his family’s status. In the late Victorian era, every item in the household was a statement of social standing. This portrait — likely hung in a formal space such as a parlor or drawing room — would have blended into the surrounding finery. This display of wealth would have been unusual at the time, as cartoonists historically did not make much money. Keppler Sr. was really the first cartoonist in the U.S. to achieve such monumental financial success. True to the spirit of the Gilded Age, even smaller and previously less profitable industries — like cartooning — suddenly found opportunities to expand and thrive on a much larger scale. The frame, as well as the origin of the painting, can be read as a symbol of Gilded Age prosperity and performance, all centered around one golden-haired child.

The portrait is a well-executed likeness, showing the young boy’s cheeks glowing with health, a full head of fluffy, golden curls. He wears a white suit with a blue necktie, accessorized with a fine gold necklace. This child is obviously well cared for, raised in comfort. The 19th century is commonly known as the birth of childhood, the first period in which children were seen as innocent and set apart, deserving of care and special attention. Before this era, children were often seen as small adults, and children from the lower classes were put to work at a very young age and expected to shoulder the responsibility of financially contributing to the household. With this context in mind, we can observe that not only is the frame a display of wealth, but also a display of care. Practically, frames are meant to protect paintings from harm. They are also tools to contain the visual field, and enhance it. They have a remarkable ability to elevate or lower a visual moment, acting as a strong signal to the viewer. For instance, if this portrait had been put in a plain, cheap frame, our viewing experience would immediately change, and we would come to different conclusions about the painting. We would assume, for instance, that this was not a precious painting, and therefore perhaps the child was not especially valued. The frame provides an emotional, cultural, and socioeconomic context that fundamentally changes the viewing experience, and this portrait of young Keppler is an excellent example of these contexts and signals.

In the end, the portrait of young Joseph Keppler Jr. — lavishly framed and lovingly rendered — fits squarely into the social and cultural context of a Gilded Age Manhattan mansion. It is the product of a father who had risen swiftly from immigrant beginnings to the peak of professional and social success, eager to surround himself with symbols of both status and sentiment. What might seem garish by today’s standards was, in its time, a potent expression of pride: in wealth, in artistic networks, and, most poignantly, in one’s children. The ornate frame does more than simply house a likeness — it magnifies the message of care, identity, and arrival. Though we will never fully know the emotional dynamics between Joseph Keppler Sr. and his son, the legacy speaks for itself: the younger Keppler honored his father by not only adopting his name but also following his artistic path, continuing the family’s imprint on American satire. This portrait, then, is more than decorative — it is a statement of lineage, ambition, and perhaps an enduring familial bond.

Maggie Vanderford

Librarian for Instruction and Engagement

Imagine that you have two items on a table in front of you. One is an impressively formal manuscript wedding certificate, dated May 14, 1838, and signed by various witnesses — many of whom were leaders of the abolitionist movement in the antebellum United States. The other item is a small ivory moiré silk wedding purse, hand-painted with popular, sentimental engravings depicting the plight of enslaved women. Now take a moment to think: Which item tells you more about that wedding day? Which one would you use as “evidence” in a research paper about the wedding? Which gives you better insight into the bride? The groom? Their relationship?

These questions, developed with Associate Curator of Manuscripts Jayne Ptolemy, are ones we regularly pose to students in History 202 as part of their introduction-to-the-archives experience on their visits to the Clements Library. Of course, no “right” answer exists. Our only goal is to push them to make an argument — any argument — about the role of community in religious ceremonies, fashion as personal advocacy, the use of visual images in the abolitionist movement, or any number of other approaches depending on their interests and questions. As they learn in this class and in their future archival work, sources will not often explicitly tell you which historical arguments they can be used to support. It is often the work of the historian to, as our colleague Dr. Rebecca Scott describes it, “get the documents to speak.” More often than not, students leave their first archival visit with more questions than answers: When did women begin carrying wedding purses? When did they stop? Was it common to use fashion as a political statement in the 19th century? Why was William Lloyd Garrison at the wedding? This organic, genuine curiosity inspired by the in-person encounter with material artifacts from the past has always seemed to me an ideal way to initiate a relationship with the archive and its possibilities. Both the wedding certificate and the purse are indeed part of a cornerstone collection at the Clements Library, the Weld-Grimké Family Papers. These specific items relate to the marriage of the famous abolitionist-activist couple Theodore Dwight Weld and Angelina Emily Grimké Weld.

The Clements Library holds the wedding certificate documenting the marriage of Theodore Dwight Weld and Angelina Emily Grimké Weld, celebrated on May 14th, 1838. The certificate bears the signatures of many prominent abolitionist attendees from around the country, including William Lloyd Garrison.

At least, they might be? As I sat in my office after a recent class session (pleased as punch with our innovative approach to primary source instruction and patting myself on the back for a job well done), I took a closer look at the finding aid for the Weld-Grimké Family Papers. While the wedding certificate is undoubtedly the genuine article documenting their wedding day, the purse is described as “possibly Angelina’s wedding purse.” Suddenly, I found myself drawn into the same rabbit holes I regularly ask our students to climb down. Possibly? Had we been asking the wrong question all along? And had I been misleading our students about the origins of this purse

As it turns out, little evidence exists to definitively affirm or deny the possibility that Angelina walked down the aisle or attended the reception with this specific bag in hand. Newspaper articles about the wedding did describe her wardrobe — a brown dress, reminiscent of the Quaker imperative regarding “plain dress” — made with “free cotton,” sourced from producers that did not use enslaved labor. The wedding itself was an unprecedented abolitionist spectacle and was strategically designed to employ only vendors who supported the cause. The wedding confectioner was a baker of color who used “free sugar” in the cake itself, and the event invitation featured a letterhead with the famous “kneeling slave” motif designed by Josiah Wedgwood — the very icon painted on our silk purse. The wedding certificate indeed lists the names of dozens of prominent abolitionists attending what was as much a high-profile advocacy gala as it was a celebration of love.

Materially, the purse certainly makes a statement in line with the ethical goals of the wedding. On one side of the purse is a hand-painted version of an engraving by English designer Samuel Lines, depicting a female slave holding a child in her arms and seemingly in distress. On the reverse is the iconic kneeling slave symbol, modified from Wedgwood’s original medallion design to portray a female slave. The medallion was originally produced in 1787 for the Committee for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, but reproduced in 1828 to bring attention to the plight of female slaves. Both images were powerful, popular, and immediately recognizable images meant to evoke the intensity of feeling that drove the abolitionist movement. As such, they were printed and distributed on all sorts of materials, from pincushions to jewelry to prints and even bags. The silk purse in the Clements collections is nearly identical to other drawstring purses produced by the Female Society for Birmingham, which created and sold these fashionable accessories to wealthy abolitionist women in Britain. However, while other similar versions exist, no known version is actually identical to the Clements purse. Other purses held by the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and various historical societies all feature anti-slavery poetry printed on the back of the purse, rather

than a verso image. Moreover, the close eye of Clements Library Conservator Julie Fremuth detects that the Clements purse appears not to be printed, but hand-painted and embellished with an iron gall ink to add dimension and tone. If not completely unique, it is at the very least distinct.

And thus, more questions arise. Did Angelina receive the purse as a special gift, or did she purchase it as a keepsake on one of her speaking circuits? Did she carry it at her wedding, or did it live in her armoire as a collectible item? What did owning a luxury item like this mean to a woman who lived her life in muted browns, blacks, patterns, and other “plain dress”? How did she understand the political implications of fashion? Even if she didn’t carry it at the wedding, how would she have used it or looked at it? If someone living 100 years from now plucked an item from your closet, could they learn something about you from studying it? Research questions, one and all.

Even as I am frustrated and humbled by the ways in which this particular document won’t speak to me as I wish it did, I realize how productive it is for archives to push back on our preconceived notions of the past, dispelling easy conclusions and adding complexity back into conversations. But this complexity can also sometimes be disappointing. I have questions about what Angelina carried in this purse — questions that I can’t answer. But I also have questions about what I’ve asked this purse to carry, both for me and my students. Thinking that Angelina carried the purse at her wedding gave me license to think about what it could tell me about her, about that day, and about her life. But not knowing whether it was used in this way sends those assumptions sideways. I had asked the purse to carry intellectual baggage that it can’t actually hold. This is a difficult lesson of teaching with archives, but also one of the most important.

Sierra Laddusaw

Curator of Maps and Graphics

Gavitt’s Stock Exchange was issued in a classic tuck box.

The humble game box hasn’t changed much since the 19th century. If you enter your local board game store today, you will find a variety of games housed in colorful tuck boxes and two-piece boxes. Tuck boxes are most often used for card games and are made by folding thick paper and tucking in the ends. Gavitt’s Stock Exchange (Gavitt Publishing & Printing, 1903), a card game where players trade “stock” in an attempt to corner the market, was issued in a tuck box printed on all sides in a variety of typefaces and sizes. Two-piece boxes, as the name implies, are two separate boxes that when put together form a lid and base. The lid box is slightly larger than the base box and slides over it when closing the box. Milton Bradley’s 1898 game Conette is a good example of a two-piece box, with the illustrated lid fitting tightly over the base. Bradley is often credited with creating the modern board game industry, and it should come as no surprise that he was a pioneer in producing games with appealing boxes, since his first commercial venture was as a

The box for Madame le Normand’s Mystic Cards of Fortune is illustrated with a fortune teller and her cat.

the box for Conette, which shows shoppers how the game is set up and a group of three adults playing. Other box designs were more fanciful, creating an entirely fictional scene. Madame le Normand’s Mystic Cards of Fortune (McLoughin Bros., 1887) is illustrated with a fortune teller decked out in medieval garb and accompanied by a black cat, reading someone’s fortune. In both cases, shelf appeal was the point.

While game boxes are designed to be durable, inevitably the boxes of frequently played games fall apart, as most boxes are made from paper or cardboard. The corners get dented in when dropped. The seam holding the box together separates. The entire box gets smashed, with the sides collapsing out. Today, you might use tape to repair a broken game box. The previous owner of one game at the Clements, a set of picture puzzle blocks (Klee, circa 1940), repaired the game’s box by wrapping and gluing cloth around the box. Other games in the collection are housed in boxes made at the library. Abbott’s Drawing Cards (Saxton & Miles, 1845) was originally issued in a tuck box. Over time, that box has fallen apart, and all that remains are two sides. To store and protect the cards and what remains of the original box, the Clements Library conservator built a custom tuck box for the game.

Abbott’s Drawing Cards lack their complete original box and are now stored in a custom-made tuck box made by the Clements Library’s conservator.

Jayne Ptolemy

Associate Curator of Manuscripts

Admit it. When going through your mail, besides a cursory glance, you don’t really pay much attention to the envelope. We rip it open to get to the good stuff (or the bill. These days it’s usually a bill.) Regardless, the envelope isn’t the point; it’s just the packaging. In the library world, we’re guilty of this, too. Browse our finding aids, and you’ll see detailed descriptions of a collection’s content and then the ubiquitous phrase “… and empty envelopes.” We’ll count them, sure, but we absolutely will stack them in a folder at the back of the box and expect almost no one to look at them seriously. Like most things in life, though, once you shift your perspective and look more closely, give attention to the smaller or seemingly insignificant things, there’s so much more to learn.

An envelope can reveal a lot about the sender’s personality or intentions. Before the nineteenth century, postal charges were largely calculated by the number of sheets being sent. To save money, most letters were simply folded upon themselves and sealed with wax, and the address was written on the blank panel of the back page. By 1845, postage charges were being calculated by weight and distance, meaning that using an envelope made far more sense. With literacy booming and populations becoming more dispersed, by midcentury, letters safely nestled in their envelopes were being sent in record numbers. To meet the demands, machines were built to automate the production and gumming of envelopes. A correspondent’s trip to the local stationer would reveal a whole range of options in how to write and send mail.

The Patricia Wilczak Funeralia Collection includes boxes of mourning stationery, with their black-edged envelopes, which would have been used by those who had experienced a loss.

As part of elaborate 19th-century death practices, the bereaved could purchase writing paper and envelopes with black borders whose width signaled the “nearness of the relationship, and the recentness of the bereavement.” The chilling effect of seeing a postal delivery of such an envelope quickly entered the cultural lexicon. The illustrated sheet music for “The Letter Edged in Black” shows a mail carrier holding the dreaded black-edged envelope. The refrain homes in on this visual cue’s impact: “As I heard the Postman whistling yester-morning coming down the pathway with his pack, O he little knew the sorrow that he brought me, when he handed me a letter edged in black.” This tradition was one that lasted, as Hattie Nevada’s song would be recorded by numerous artists, including Marty Robbins, Slim Whitman, and Johnny Cash.

While options for printed envelopes were becoming increasingly available throughout the 19th century, if a writer’s talents and inclinations allowed, some chose to embellish their envelopes themselves. Examples of drawings,

The beautiful embossed envelope lends additional romance to this rhyming Valentine’s poem from 1858 in the Women, Gender, and Family Collection.

These three envelopes from the Pen-and-Ink Collection were hand-illustrated by different writers, but they’re united by their desire to stand out amid a flood of other correspondence.

By the 1860s, the combination of chromolithography and new mechanical processes to produce envelopes changed the game. Patriotic covers became a way to declare your political allegiances in times of upheaval; businesses could advertise themselves on the outside as well as the inside of their mailings; and people’s creativity blossomed to take advantage of the medium. If you have the option to expand the scope of your message, and it’s cheap to do so, why not use every square inch of paper? Bright colors, smart designs, dense text—in the late 19th century, innovative printers revolutionized people’s ideas of what an envelope could be.

Letters, and their envelopes, can tell us grand narratives about postal history and the steady advance of industrialization, technology, and communication, but they’re also a reminder that it’s only by looking at all the evidence before us that we can really get a glimpse of the people who came before us. So zoom in and be curious. Look closely, for example, at all the mail just this one U.S. Postal Service employee from Detroit was carrying with him: newspapers, letters bundled together with twine, parcels wrapped in paper, and many envelopes with stories of their own to tell. After all, a library like the Clements is a testament to just how much people have written down in the past, and all the ingenious ways they’ve devised to carry, save, and treasure these records.

These printed envelopes from the Postal History Collection advertise the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, and the memorable visual messaging surely underscored the public’s awareness that it was happening in BUFFALO, New York.

Emiko Hastings

Curator of Books

Earlier this year, the Clements Library Book Division made an exciting acquisition with the purchase of the Garrett Scott Collection of Vernacular Bindings. Scott, an antiquarian bookdealer in Ann Arbor, coined the term “vernaculopegy” to describe the art of vernacular bindings, derived from the term “bibliopegy” for the art of bookbinding. His working definition of “vernacular binding” is “an alteration or addition to the book, pamphlet or leaf, when this alteration is made by an owner whose vocation is not bookbinding or associated book arts, when this modification is meant to enhance, protect, repair, or reinforce the structure of the item.” In other words, these are books that have been modified and repaired by their former owners. Amendments such as handmade book coverings and visible repairs are evidence of the ways that these books were used and cared for by previous generations.

The intention of the vernacular binding collection, as Scott writes, is to “open the doors to historical everyday users.” His manifesto urges book dealers and owners to notice and value these bindings in their own right, and not simply discard them as ugly or clumsy repairs. In this respect, it is as much a collection of evidence of reading and book ownership as it is of books. Including more than 300 volumes, the collection contains numerous examples of overcovers, added paper wrappers, and non-professional repairs such as rebacking and visible sewing.

Stack of cloth overcovers

The new vernacular binding collection complements existing examples in the Clements Library collections and bolsters a long-standing interest in describing these types of bindings. A number of years ago, the binding historian Julia Miller did a survey of the library’s bookbindings and wrote descriptions of many of them that have been added to the library’s online catalog. Some of this work is discussed in Miller’s Books Will Speak Plain: A Handbook for Identifying and Describing Historical Bindings, first published in 2010 and revised and enlarged in 2023. Miller encourages readers to notice and appreciate ordinary or plain historical bindings as well as decorative ones, and respect repairs made to a book as evidence of the history of that particular book. She writes, “A book with its mends is, like a life, much worked upon, as we strive to continue whole and productive. Historical bindings, even broken and mended, still have a lot to tell us.”

Window cutouts

While repairs are more common for cheaper books, they do not necessarily indicate that the owner did not value the book. As Miller notes, amateur repairs are common in “working books” like dictionaries, textbooks, and manuals that would have been heavily used and needed to remain functional. Vernacular bindings are also seen on well-loved but tattered books that were “read to pieces,” such as children’s books and music books, as well as personally meaningful volumes like prayer books and Bibles. The elements most likely to need repair are the hinges of the book, which sustain damage over time as the book is opened and closed repeatedly. This can be handled by crafting an overcover to hold the boards onto the text block, by repairing the spine with new material, or by stitching the boards back to the text block.

Removable cover showing original binding and overcover

Rebacking

Rebacking a book is a technique by which a damaged book spine is replaced and the boards reattached. In traditional bookbinding, this usually involves inserting new spine material underneath the existing cover material, and the original spine is often pasted back over the new spine to preserve its appearance. The examples of amateur rebacking in this collection differ in that the new spine material is pasted or sewn over the primary cover rather than inserted underneath, making the repair more obvious but still functional. This repair method is a straightforward solution to a problem, similar to the way a modern book owner may use adhesive tape to repair their book.

Repairing a page with sewing

Books with exposed exterior stitching repairs are also colloquially known as “Frankenbooks,” a term coined on Instagram by the American Antiquarian Society. A post by Galter Special Collections says, “Similar to Frankenstein’s monster, Frankenbooks are books that have been stitched back together to give them new life.” The stitching may look crude compared to what a trained bookbinder would have done, but if done carefully, it can still prolong the life of the book and restore its function.

Embellishment

Lastly, the definition of vernacular bindings can encompass other decorative additions to the book made by an owner, such as cover embellishments or artwork on the endpapers. These can range from doodles likely done by a child to exquisitely detailed ownership inscriptions and embroidery work.

Added wrappers

Traditionally, rare book collectors such as our founder, William L. Clements, prioritized books in pristine condition or with decorative bindings made by skilled craftspeople. Likewise, librarians and book historians have often focused their attention on the most lavish or unusual binding examples rather than the ordinary styles of bindings most often encountered on library shelves. While plain bindings and folk repairs have always existed in the Clements book collection, they were not necessarily considered worth describing in detail until binding scholars like Julia Miller began to generate more interest in the subject. Today, those who study book history and bookbinding have come to appreciate such repairs and other traces of former ownership, part of a growing interest in marginalia and other provenance evidence of past readers and owners of books. Far from detracting from the value of a book, these alterations can help us learn how readers of the past used their books in everyday life. We are excited to begin cataloging the Scott Collection so that it can be made available for study and to encourage similar collecting efforts by other institutions and private collectors.

Paul J. Erickson

Randolph G. Adams Director

William L. Clements Library

People ask me all the time what my job is like. Directing a rare book library and archive of early American history is not something that a lot of people realize is a thing that someone might get to do. And I usually tell them the truth: my job is a huge amount of fun. It’s deeply satisfying to help students, researchers, and instructors find ways to answer questions by using one of the best collections of early Americana in the country.

But I don’t usually tell them the complete truth. Because, if I were being honest, I would tell them that a lot of my job is about something that they might not find so exciting: Boxes. I spend a lot of time thinking about boxes. A good portion of every week is dedicated to opening boxes, which is exciting, since that usually means new additions to the collection. But it can also be a lot of boxes. This past year I bought my own personal box cutter — it’s bright purple, so I won’t lose track of it — and using a tool that is fit for purpose has made the box-opening work more pleasant.

you? Because the theme of this issue of The Quarto is “Contain Yourself.” It’s about the things that hold (or held) the things in our collection that researchers come to use. The frame around the picture, the envelope that carries a letter safely to its destination, the printed box that holds a board game, homemade bindings on books.

Most of the time, these containers are, for us at the Clements, of secondary interest to the things they hold. It is true that when we’re buying things like 19th-century board games, we look for examples with intact boxes, not least because the game instructions are often printed on the box. But we don’t usually collect empty game boxes, just as we don’t collect empty daguerreotype cases or envelopes without letters (although there are many people who do).

Still, just because these containers are not our primary collecting interest does not mean that they don’t have a lot to tell us about how people in the American past lived with books and images. When people looked at the books on their shelves, they saw the bindings, not the contents. Visually, people experienced much of the world of words indirectly, through the containers that held and organized those words. The way that people in the past framed pictures of loved ones can tell us a lot about what those relationships meant, just as the way that people decorated envelopes they sent through the mail can tell us a great deal about how they felt about the person they were writing to.

“Contain” is a word that can mean a lot of different things. To take the example of the acid-free boxes that we buy at the Clements, we use those to contain manuscript collections, newspapers, prints — things that we want to keep organized, but even more so things that we want to protect. If old letters or newspapers were just kept in piles on the shelf, their edges would get snagged and torn every time someone walked past. We put those things in containers to protect them from harm.

But to contain something is also to keep it from harming us. We work to contain oil spills, or forest fires. We also put things in containers to protect us from what’s inside. Old letters and photographs can be painful. They can remind us of heartbreak, of the death of loved ones, of ways that we failed those we care about. Many of us probably have at least one box of letters or pictures on a shelf in a closet that we can’t bring ourselves to throw away, but that we also probably never open. By keeping them in a container, we keep ourselves safe.

One of the standard stops on any tour of the Clements Library is a visit to two big boxes, at the west end of the reading room. On the bottom shelf of a two-tiered wooden stand is Henry Clinton’s uniform trunk, an elaborately embellished leather-covered piece of luggage created for the commander in chief of Britain’s forces in North America. We talk more about the box on the shelf above it, a more prosaic square wooden trunk covered in heavy canvas. It is one of twelve document trunks that held the correspondence of General Thomas Gage during his stint as commander in chief, from 1763 to 1775 — one trunk per year. (We only have three left, which is a story for another Quarto.)

As many of you have seen, the Gage trunks are organized into two layers of cubbyholes, which are labeled according to geography. While the manuscripts in the Gage Papers are essential to understanding the coming of the American Revolution, I’d argue that the trunk is essential to understanding Thomas Gage. He was a man who was responsible for a continent — all of Britain’s colonial possessions in North America. How he physically contained his letters tells us a lot about how he organized his thoughts, and about how he approached his job. Maybe the box business isn’t so boring after all.

Angela Oonk

Director of Development

✷ Look to Clements to understand the big moments of history and the details of humanity.

I am always humbled to work with family members entrusting us with their ancestors’ recorded memories that provide precious details of humanity. Lee Rucker Keiser not only donated her mother’s WWII letters, the Marion E. Grusky Rucker Collection, but also proofread the finding aid and wrote a fantastic blog introducing the collection. Each date memorized by students in American history class has as its foundation the individual experiences of real people in the past. Everyday individuals are key to a full understanding of the events that shape our present and future.

✷ Look to Clements online resources for world-wide access to rare historic materials.

Almost every research project today has its beginning online. Catalog records, finding aids, and digitized items are often a researcher’s first point of access to the collections. Scanning fragile Clements materials requires individually handling each piece, making the process expensive and time consuming. With the various 250th anniversaries of the fighting of the American Revolution and the founding of the United States coming up, we were pleased to receive two important grants to aid with the digitization of the papers of the British generals Thomas Gage and Henry Clinton.

✷ Look to Clements fellows to uncover the stories of those we’ve rarely heard from.

The best way to encourage research in unique topics is to provide awards to support visiting fellowships. A new offering for the upcoming fellowship year, the Charles R. Eisendrath Fellowship in Early American Journalism, will enhance the journalism profession by encouraging scholarly work on aspects of journalism in early America. Partnerships with donors to create fellowships on a wide range of topics also enhance the intellectual atmosphere while scholars are onsite.

✷ Look to Clements catalogers and reference staff for a roadmap to the collections through multiple access points.

The quiet, important work of catalogers and reference staff is behind the scenes and often taken for granted. Not only is it difficult to secure funding for additional positions, but the need is never-ending as new materials are constantly being added to the collection. Grants from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation and the Frederick S. Upton Foundation, as well as additional matching funds from individual donors, provided funding for a two-year Historic Visual Culture Graduate Assistant from the U-M School of Information. Annika Dekker is serving her second year in that role and has completed a wide range of projects, including organizing over 3,000 postcards and writing a finding aid for rewards of merit.

For a literal look to the stars, this stereoview from the recently acquired Vogel collection shows “The wonderful Universe Explorer, the great 36-inch Equatorial Telescope, Lick Observatory, Mt. Hamilton, California” (Underwood & Underwood, 1902). Manufactured in France, upon its completion in 1888 the telescope was the largest in the world.

✷ Look to Clements conservators for top-notch, long-term stewardship of unique historical materials.

Our in-house conservator, Julie Fremuth, works closely with curators to ensure that materials are stabilized, protected, and usable. Conservation materials like acid-free folders, mylar sheets, and specialized papers are expensive. Through the “Adopt a Piece of History” program, donors can help sponsor conservation projects, like a photograph album from Oberlin, Ohio, containing 11 studio portraits, including several images of family members and friends apparently related to a biracial family. This particular item has been adopted by Cinda-Sue Davis. Conservation will include removal of photos, creation of facsimiles to replace originals, stabilization of the binding and torn pages, new housing for the original photos, and a three-part wrap for the album.

✷ Look to Clements curators for the acquisition of historic documents to tell a well-rounded story of American history.

I met Robert Vogel early in my tenure at the Clements and heard about his life-long collecting of images related to engineering and industry. His organization, research, and meticulous notes provided a basis for a finding aid that will serve researchers far into the future. As with many archival materials, there are important layers to uncover as well. While Robert was primarily interested in documenting engineering and technology, these images also often include workers, uncovering clues about work clothes and labor conditions. As objects, the stereoviews can also be studied as an early form of photography. I look forward to seeing the many ways that the Robert M. Vogel Collection of Historic Images of Engineering & Industry will be used in the future. 

As we all look to the Clements for the study of American history, it is our donor community, the Clements Library Associates, who are the true stars.

Helen Harding — Business Manager

After working as a generalist in the Development Office since 2023, Helen has stepped into the role of Business Manager. She works with our HR generalist Heather Goodchild, handles finances for the library, and manages our facilities, including our North Campus storage facility. Her development background makes her well-suited to support the library’s mission of collecting and preserving primary sources, making them available for research, and supporting and encouraging scholarly investigation of our nation’s past.

Upon graduating from the University of Michigan with a bachelor’s in American culture, Helen started a successful catering company and restaurant, called EAT. Throughout her career she has successfully run and managed various small businesses, but turned her attention to the nonprofit sector when she pursued a master’s in public administration with a concentration in nonprofit management.

Photo by Marc-Gregor Campredon, Office of University Development, Regents of the University of Michigan.

Katie Jaede- Assistant Director of Development

Our new Assistant Director of Development, Katie Jaede, joins us from the development team at Cranbrook Art Museum. Katie will assist with fundraising, supporting our mission by working on annual giving, stewardship, and event planning. She enjoys connecting donors and visitors with collection items of interest or that coincide with their philanthropic goals, and she loves developing and maintaining relationships with both donors and colleagues.

At Michigan State University, Katie earned a bachelor’s in history of art and visual culture, and a Master’s in arts, cultural management, and museum studies. She’s always had a passion for history, art, and the humanities. She enjoyed promoting and helping to steward the collections of the Cranbrook Art Museum, and she’s excited to bring that same enthusiasm to her work at the Clements!

Heather Goodchild — Human Resources Generalist

Heather was hired in the new position of Human Resources Generalist for both the Clements and Bentley Libraries. She wears a lot of hats, including assisting managers with the hiring process and onboarding, managing timekeeping, and working with HR systems.

The opportunity to help others led Heather to human resources. After graduating from Michigan State University with a degree in business management, her mentors encouraged her to enter the field and she’s been enjoying having the opportunity to help others ever since.

Photo by Marc-Gregor Campredon, Office of University Development, Regents of the University of Michigan.

Ella Johnson — Digitization Specialist

As our new Digitization Technician, Ella’s responsibilities include scanning materials, creating metadata, and processing the images you see on our digitized collection page. Ella is a recent graduate of Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, where she majored in art history and worked on various digitization projects in the archives there. She also did digitization work for her local historical society in high school.

Clements Library Board of Governors

Welcome to new board members Wes Cowen (Old Mission, MI), Peggy Harrington (Mill Valley, CA), and Christina Karas (Ann Arbor, MI)!

And farewell to retiring board members Candace Dufek, Thomas Liebman, and Janet Mueller. Thank you for your service!

Maggie Vanderford

Librarian for Instruction and Engagement

McLaughlin

At present, as we continue to focus inward, becoming more secluded while simultaneously associating with “imagined communities” that span the internet and social media landscape, we cut ourselves off from understanding those universal and global embodiments that link us on a fundamental level. This has implications for how we conceptualize science in our daily lives but also how we think about and act on global environmental concerns. A connection to the sky has united humanity for millennia. Its decline today parallels a troubling apathy toward science in the 21st century.

Jakob Dopp

Graphics Cataloger

Photographers using the two earliest photographic processes, the daguerreotype and the salt paper print, found the cloud conundrum particularly problematic. Exposure times required for rendering features in the sky were shorter than those needed to render the landscape, as the photosensitive emulsions were more sensitive to the ultraviolet end of the light spectrum. This often resulted in daytime skies becoming overexposed in the final product. For salt prints, lengthy exposure times meant that, for the most part, skies appeared as blank spaces, with borders between cloud and sky indistinguishable. For daguerreotypes, an effect called “solarization” would often manifest, in which the sky appeared to have a blue tint as a result of the daguerreotype’s relative sensitivity to ultraviolet light. Unless the photographer possessed remarkable skill, any hint of white cloud formations would typically be subsumed by the larger sky.

The daguerreotype of the John D. Appleton house (unknown photographer, [1850-1859]), is a classic example of solarization caused by an overexposed plate. Bright conditions and a long exposure resulted in the blue tones visible in the final image.

Focusing skyward could more easily yield cloud forms, eliminating the need to juggle the gap in exposure time required for near landscape and distant heavens. A.K.P. Trask (1831–1900) produced these images of the 1869 solar eclipse, which show signs of heavy retouching but also seemingly authentic cloud forms.

Look closely at this series of stereographs by Michigan photographer Ephraim P. Harris and you will notice vibrant clouds filling the sky. However, if you look even more closely, you will soon realize that the same cloud formations appear across every one of these images. There is no question that the photographer concocted these scenes using the popular technique of combination printing. Because the sky template appears to have been overlaid directly across both the left- and right-hand stereo frames, it produces a headache-inducing dissonance when these images are viewed through a stereoscope, as the cloud forms are different in each frame.

Cheney J. Schopieray

Curator of Manuscripts

The anonymous author of “Practical Mathematics” included a list of the signs of the zodiac along with their Greek symbols as part of extensive definitions and problem sets relating to algebra, geometry, trigonometry, navigation, and surveying.

The University of Michigan’s collecting units, taken together, cover a broad sweep of human history, from ancient Babylonia and Greece to contemporary art and politics. There are few constants that persist across such a span of time and space, but there is at least one: a continuing belief in the influence of heavenly bodies on earthly matters. For millennia, people have recorded what they observed in the sky in order to lend meaning to what they experienced on the ground. A constant tension throughout this body of writing is between the accumulation of specialized knowledge and the desire to apply that expertise in accessible ways.

To take one example: “The Ecliptic, is a great Circle intersecting y^e: Equator in two opposite points & making an Angle with it equal to y^e: Suns greater Declination, (which is 23°..29°) & is that circle which y^e: Sun is supposed to describe by his Annual Motion round the Earth, this Circle is usually divided into 12 equal parts call’d Signs, each Sign containing 30°..00°; begining from the intersection of the Equinoctial, & number’d as follows . . . .”

This surviving portion of a Cuneiform Tablet with Ziqpu Star List offers descriptions of stars from constellations not found in the ecliptic, including Lady of Life, the Demon with the Open Mouth, the Stag, the Old Man, and the Crook. The tablet, likely produced in Babylon and dating from the final three quarters of the first millennium BCE, is held by the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology: Kelsey Museum 89551, University of Michigan.

One of the reasons for observing and understanding the movements of the planets and the fixed stars was the persistent belief that different signs of the zodiac had particular relationships to various parts of the human body. The richly symbolic frontispiece of Ars Magna Lucis et Umbræ (Rome, 1646) by the German Jesuit priest and scientist Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680) showed a man holding a caduceus with its snakes intertwined around signs of the planets. Printed on his skin were signs of the zodiac — Gemini (twins) on his arms, Capricorn (goatfish) on his knees, and so on — to indicate correspondences between bodily ailments and the times of the year, as well as the correct times for medical treatments for those parts of the body. The Homo Signorum or Man of Signs appeared in numerous types of early American publications, notably in farmers’ almanacs of the 18th and 19th centuries. The one shown on the previous page is from Benjamin Banneker’s Almanack, accompanied by a rhyme intended to help remember the order of the signs and which body part they were believed to influence.

Almanacs were among the most widely printed and consumed books of the period, and their astrological elements were part of everyday popular natural philosophy. People in early America looked to signs in the sky for literally down-to-earth reasons, seeking guidance from the stars on when to plant and harvest crops, as well as how to navigate the open sea. Celestial bodies were understood to guide the weather, which helped farmers and sailors anticipate floods and storms. Thus, a sound knowledge of how to interpret the zodiac could quite literally be the difference between feast and famine in the fields, or between life and death at sea.

By the early 18th century, clerical debates over astrological subjects had largely settled on a picture of a God who created the celestial bodies, as well as their practical uses and what influences they had on terrestrial matters. Astrology was considered a recognition of the creator’s marvelous design and not a subversive or unorthodox element in popular culture. This was, however, clearly understood to be “natural astrology,” focused on natural phenomena, and not a “judicial astrology,” which predicted social or political outcomes in human society. Judicial astronomy was uncommon enough that Protestant clergy were more often upset over the nude depiction of Men/Women of signs than the astrological content itself.

In the prefatory illustration “The Anatomy of Man’s Body, as governed by the Twelve Constellations” from Banneker’s Almanack and Ephemeris (Baltimore, 1796).

Perhaps the most extraordinary discovery of the 18th century was made by Hanover-born William Herschel (1738–1822), a musician and astronomer. Herschel ground and polished large and fine lenses for systematic observation of subtleties not easily seen by inferior telescopes, such as the relative movements of groupings of stars that appeared nearly as one. In March 1781, he observed the movement of an object thought to be a fixed star. After further observation and corroboration — as well as the calculation of its orbit by astronomer Anders Johan Lexell (1740–1784) — it was found to be a planet.

The discovery was literally and figuratively astronomical. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are visible to unassisted eyes from Earth. They were known to ancient peoples and incorporated into cultures over the course of thousands of years. This new planet expanded the solar system to nearly twice the size once believed.

The known planets had names and generally adopted signs that were Romanized and Christianized variants of Greek and alchemical symbols: Mercury (☿), Venus (♀), Mars (♂), Jupiter (♃), and Saturn (♄). What to call the new planet? In celebration and recognition of William Herschel for his 1781 observations, the name “Herschel” spread as a contender. Herschel himself rejected his own name in favor of “Georgium Sidus” (George’s Star) after King George III. Without a naming process that transcended geo-political boundaries, French publications tended toward the name “Herschel,” as did the fledgling United States.

An aptly titled question-and-answer textbook for children, An Astronomical and Geographical Catechism (Boston, 1798) by Caleb Bingham (1757–1817) includes a table of the planets, their signs, their diameters, and their mean distances from the sun (in English miles). The distance of planet “Herschel” from the sun is here noted as just over 1.78 billion miles, compared to the next closest, Saturn, at less than 897 million miles.

Mary Pedley

Assistant Curator of Maps

It is perhaps surprising that the Clements Library has any cosmographies at all, since they bear little ostensible relationship to the history of North America or the history of the United States. But since “discovery and exploration” provided the impetus for the encounter between the Europeans and the inhabitants of North America, it was also a theme that William Clements pursued. The basic notions of cosmology informed a sense of time and an understanding of place for both Europeans and Native Americans. Some of the rarest and most important books of the European Renaissance and the first century of printing were cosmographies, especially the work of the German scholar and professor of mathematics Peter Apian (1495–1552), whose Cosmographicus Liber (Landshut, Germany, 1524) was an influential guide to making maps and locating places, using the grid of latitude and longitude.

Globes and armillary spheres show the relationship between earth and sky. The appearance and naming of the continent “America” on the globe on the left [detail] made this work important for Mr. Clements to acquire. From Peter Apian, Cosmographicus Liber [Cosmographical Book], (Landshut, Germany, 1524).

Almost all cosmography understands the earth to be a sphere; the heavens too are often understood as a sphere or a domed shape surrounding the earth. Thus many cosmological maps are circular or represented by a globe or a globe within a globe, combined into one instrument known as an armillary sphere. The two previous images from Peter Apian’s work illustrate the concept.

Peter Apian, Astronomicum Caesareum, 1540, title page and one of the star charts inside. The dragon pointer on the circular schema of the title page represents the motus capitis draconis (movement of the head of the dragon), that is, the astronomical arc on the ecliptic that reflects the ascending and descending nodes of the lunar cycle.

Cosmography not only needed to illustrate the basic concepts but also name the parts of the heavens whose movements were most important — the sun and the moon and their eclipses — followed by stars whose relationships with each other remained fixed while their arrangement, or constellation, seemed to move in a predictable pattern across the night sky. These groups are the constellations of the zodiac. The individual stars and the stellar arrangements acquired their own names, in the European West taken from Greco-Roman mythology and/or from the Arabic-speaking scholars and observers of the Mediterranean East.

Apian made the study of stars and other celestial objects the subject of his sumptuous work, the Astronomicum Caesareum of 1540, dedicated to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and to his brother Ferdinand I of Spain.

Included in this work were various volvelles, round mobile instruments that could be manipulated to predict lunar and solar eclipses, the rotation of the zodiac throughout the year, the movement of the planets across the heavens, and the precise location of various heavenly bodies on particular days. This helped meet a need for prediction, regularity, and constancy, and ensured some stability in the national and religious calendars. Uniformity and agreement were required for the measurement of time, the determination of specific liturgical and administrative dates, special events in calendars, and even the time of day (something we continue to debate in our views on daylight saving time). Several good YouTube videos demonstrate the use of these volvelles if the reader searches for “Astronomicum Caesareum.”

In “Planisphaerium Coeleste,” night and day occupy the upper left and right corners, mythological putti adorned with the attributes of particular gods hold the upper center, and comparative systems of the universe align along the bottom. The two hemispheres show the night sky in the northern (left) and the southern (right) hemispheres. From Atlas Novus Terrarum Orbis . . . by Johann Baptist Homann (Noribergae, [1702–1750]).

Atlas holding up the heavens, with night and the moon to the right, daylight to the left, and a host of gods: Neptune with his trident, Mercury with caduceus and winged helmet, crowned Jupiter with scepter, the wind gods, and Ceres seated with the bounty of her harvest. Title page, Atlas Novus Terrarum Orbis . . . by Johann Baptist Homann (Noribergae, [1702–1750]).

With new technologies aiding observation, and with closer examination of the heavens by amateurs and professionals alike, new questions had arisen about the study of the planets, their movements, their sizes, their composition. A recent acquisition demonstrates the fascination of such comparisons for the young student J. Lawton, whose “Comparative Magnitudes of the Planets,” drawn in June 1853, includes the recently discovered Neptune, even larger than Uranus.

Jayne Ptolemy

Associate Curator of Manuscripts

Americans’ interest in angels and the heavens was widespread, even in musical culture like this illustrated sheet music for The Love Star Schottisch (Boston, 1853).

Henry Murfey, a bank clerk from Cleveland, Ohio, knew this all too well. He was only three years old when his baby sister Mary died in 1831. In an era when infant and child mortality was high, the loss of a young family member may have been common enough but it was still a devastating trauma that people carried throughout their lives. While Henry likely held no active memories of his sister, in 1856 he received messages from her through a medium, 25 years after her death. He recorded them in a letterbook now held at the Clements Library. Mary’s spirit recounted her final moments, being welcomed into the afterlife by an angel, and watching her family mourn her. “[I]t pained me to see those dear ones shed tears — But I was comforted by my kind guardian who told me I should some day speak to those friends.” The belief in a continued existence and the potential of future contact with loved ones was surely a consolation to those left grieving.

But Mary’s messages went beyond merely affirming that the human spirit continued after death, also touching on where they continued. Her messages described a vibrant community of spirits with cities, temples, and places of learning. “I found that home was not in a house like yours but the heavens themselves were a vast tabernacle where we could enjoy each others society, and join in the blessings given us by our good Father.” Not only did the spirits dwell in the heavens, but they hailed from various heavenly bodies. Mary’s guide explained that “spirits from every planet sought that place being called the studio of developed minds” and invited her to visit them. “O, how pleased was I when I saw that he was so kind and that I could visit those planets that I admired looking at when on earth.” She and her guide went on a trip to Saturn, where instead of the “green grass and flowers & trees & s[h]rubs like Earth,” the flora was “all transparent and can be looked through.” The inhabitants were “very small and beautifull. Wearing no raiment but as nature made them perfectly pure and without stain they converse with each other panterminically, or by signs and their food is the transparent fruit that grows on dwarfish trees very small and so perfect that scarcely a bend or knot can be formed on any limb.” Mary’s message depicted a beautiful life in the heavens that spirits could move through freely.

While these fantastical descriptions are attention-grabbing, it is notable that they included scientific concepts. “We can travel at a rapid rate,” she asserted, “all most as fast as thought. We have not eyes like thine for our spirits are visions of themselves[.] our good is the attraction that we have towards all those particles that compose our spiritual bod[ies].” The visit to Saturn was not just a narrative flourish — it also referenced ideas of how interplanetary travel and existence could be physically possible. Mary’s spirit relayed the challenges of trying to pass through the “density of the outer Stratas of atmospheric air” surrounding Saturn, indicating this trip was happening in actual space and that her audience would have questions about how the spirits confronted practical environmental issues. The unfathomable spiritual elements combined with scientific ones, both of which would have appealed deeply to 19th-century Americans steeped in a culture that valued both. The heavens, after all, were both a spiritual destination and a site of scientific inquiry. Henry Murfey’s recording of the messages from his “Angel Sister” show us how the two could come together.

Published accounts of spiritual interplanetary travel echoed this meshing of world views. Journeys into the Moon, Several Planets and the Sun (Philadelphia, 1837) provided a translated account of the German medium Pauline Dorathea Beuerly, whose spirit while in a “periodical state of Somnambulism” was able to rise “from the Earth into higher regions, and was enabled to see things, which remain concealed to the terrestrial eye . . . from the hitherto unknown empire of spirits in those worlds, that glisten on the firmament.” Beuerly recounted voyages to the moon, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, dwarf planet Ceres, Saturn, Uranus, and the Sun. In addition to describing the climate, built environment, and spiritual residents of these places, Beuerly at times also referenced elements of the astronomical understandings of the day. Of the moon, she noted it was “the nearest body to our Earth” and affirmed it was “nearly forty times smaller than the Earth we inhabit.” The sun she described as an “uncommonly large body,” and that “We inhabitants of the earth believe the sun to be a real ball of fire, which he by no means is. The sun does not move, and beyond the sun are still millions, nay an uncountable number of stars, which are always visible; in one of them is the city of God, but this is also a sun.” Accounts of interplanetary spiritual travel reverberated with both religious and scientific belief, entwining and reinforcing each other.

This “Diagram of [the] Universe” in the Brownell Family Papers was likely drawn by Ned Brownell in the 1850s, showing how Americans engaged with astronomical science in their daily lives.

In the messages relayed from Mary’s spirit to her brother, she provided several pieces of advice, including a suggestion of how he might respond to people inquiring “who are your associates or what is your belief.” “Tell them that Angels can and that they do communicate with Earth’s Inhabitants, and that all can hold intercourse with heaven. These interesting messages are not given to excite the marvellous or to clash with man’s inner feelings — They are given to enable the doub[t]ing mind to look forward with joy to the happy time of laying down on the bed of Death.”

Henry did not record his reactions to these messages, but we know he felt compelled to communicate with his sister even 25 years after her death. Wondering over the unknown possibilities of the heavens was reason enough.

Sierra Laddusaw

Curator of Maps & Graphics

Richard Adams Locke, the man behind the “Great Moon Hoax” of 1835, was born and educated in England before relocating to New York City. Reactions to Locke’s ruse ranged from amusement by Horace Greeley, who encouraged readers to purchase the pamphlet, to outrage by Edgar Allen Poe, who was briefly convinced that Locke had plagiarized from his short story, “The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall.”

On day four, August 28, The Sun broke the news of a humanoid species living on the moon. Named Vespertilio-homo (bat-men) by the astronomers, these human-like creatures reportedly walked erect when on the ground but could also fly through the air using large bat-like wings. The report described them as standing four feet tall on average, with yellow-toned faces and prominent mouths, and covered in copper hair. The fourth article also included editorial commentary noting that certain facts concerning the bat-men were left out of the newspaper’s story; the editor claimed they would be included in a forthcoming publication from Herschel himself that would be supported by commentary from authoritative figures in government, science, and religion vouching for the credibility of the discovery.

The final stories shared the discovery of a large temple built of blue stone and additional details of Vespertilio-homo. The series came to an end with a report of tragedy striking Herschel’s observatory. Due to improper storage, the telescope’s lens had refracted the light of the sun and started a fire! The fire destroyed a wall of the observatory, but luckily the special magnifying lens survived. However, after repairs to the observatory were completed, the moon was no longer in position to be viewed, ending Herschel and his team’s lunar observations.

The Sun’s reporting of Herschel’s lunar discoveries was a sensation. Other newspapers reprinted the story and The Sun claimed an increase in circulation. It wasn’t until September 16, 1835, that the story was revealed to be untrue. Later a reporter for The Sun, Richard Adams Locke (1800–1871), claimed authorship, stating that he wrote the series as satire and never thought the public would believe it to be real. In 1859, Locke republished the six newspaper articles in a single volume, The Moon Hoax, or, The Discovery that the Moon has a Vast Population of Human Beings (New York, 1859). The added introduction expounded on the power of human imagination and placed Locke’s moon hoax in the same category as Thomas More’s Utopia, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. “It appears to be as natural for the human mind to be craving after the wonderful, the mysterious, the marvellous, and the new discoveries, as it is for the physical appetite to desire food, drink, and sleep, and thereby as it were constantly attempting to lift up the veil that hides incomprehensibilities from our vision.”

Both Herschel and his wife, Margaret, had opinions on the false story purporting to describe discoveries by him. In 1836, Margaret commented on the hoax in a letter to Herschel’s aunt: “Have you seen a very clever piece of imagination in an American Newspaper, giving an account of Herschel’s voyage to the Cape with an instrument [omitted] feet in length, & of his wonderful lunar discoveries. Birds, beasts & fishes of strange shape, landscapes of every colouring, extraordinary scenes of lunar vegetation, & groupes of the reasonable inhabitants of the Moon with wings at the backs, all pass in review before his & his companion’s astonished gaze — The whole description is so well clenched with minute details of workmanship & names of individuals boldly referred to, that the New Yorkists were not to be blamed for actually believing it as they did for forty eight hours — It is only a great pity that it is not true.” Herschel complained of the hoax in the postscript of an 1837 letter to his aunt: “I have been pestered from all quarters with that ridiculous hoax about the moon — in English French Italian and German!” (Herschel at the Cape, by D.S. Evans, et al. Austin, 1969).

While the stories in The Sun were indeed a hoax, at the Clements Library you can read evidence of the actual 1969 moon landing. The Manuscripts Division holds a copy of the transcription of the commentary among Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and NASA Mission Control that was provided to reporters shortly after the moon landing. An attentive reader of the transcript will note the Clements Library copy lacks the addition of the letter “a” to Armstrong’s famous quote — “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” The addition of the letter “a” was requested by Armstrong himself, appears in later copies of the transcript, and is considered by NASA to be the official version of the quote. Armstrong stated that even though “a man” can’t be heard in the recording, it is what he said or at least was what he intended to say. Also lacking in the transcription are any reports of bat-men or other life forms on the moon.

Although unlikely to persuade any of the moon hoax adherents, reading the typescript evokes a powerful and exceptional moment in human history.

Paul J. Erickson

Randolph G. Adams Director

William L. Clements Library

On January 29, 1859, Professor Ormsby Mitchel (1810–1862) delivered a lecture at the Academy of Music in New York titled “The Great Unfinished Problems of the Universe,” as the conclusion of his well-attended “Course of Five Popular Lectures on Astronomy.” Before the lecture, the gathered worthies passed a series of resolutions related to the construction of an “Astronomical Observatory” in Central Park, which had only partially opened the previous year. Mitchel was an appropriate guest for this honor, as he was at the time the best-known American popularizer of astronomical knowledge. A college professor and engineer based in Cincinnati, Mitchel took the lead in raising funds to build the Cincinnati Observatory and to purchase a suitable telescope. When it opened to the public in March 1845, the observatory housed the second-largest refracting telescope in the world.

Through his writing, lecturing, and fundraising, Mitchel was instrumental in spreading awareness of the new science of astronomy in the antebellum United States. In the first issue of The Sidereal Messenger (Cincinnati, 1846–1848), a periodical Mitchel launched in 1846, he wrote that the new wave of interest in the heavens called for the creation of more knowledge for general readers on “a subject which for the first time they are permitted to investigate by sight, and not by faith only.”

American writers and readers had of course long been interested in the notion of ascent, but mostly out of an interest in the perspective that a view from the heights would afford. That is to say, they were interested in looking down instead of up. The Clements Library’s large collection of bird’s-eye view prints are an example of this impulse, but it also took other forms. Several writers in the 19th-century United States imagined voyages to outer space, or encounters with extraterrestrial beings. A short interlude in Washington Irving’s A History of New York (New York, 1809) muses on the views that European settlers had of the Americas when they first crossed the Atlantic, and for comparison imagines a conquest of the Earth by “Lunatics,” little green men with tails who carried their heads under their arms and arrived from the moon on ships that slid down moonbeams. They transported the rulers of all the nations of Earth back to the moon, where the Man in the Moon, shocked by the barbarity of the earthlings, declared the entire planet to be a lunar possession.

What looks like a rocket on the cover of this newly arrived U.S. edition of Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon (New York, 1874) was actually a capsule fired from a gigantic gun designed by the novel’s Baltimore Gun Club.

The detailed description of the creation of this craft, combined with the technological advances heralded by Mitchel’s great telescope in Cincinnati, sparked a new focus in American speculative writing of the 19th century. No longer content with simply talking to the people of the moon, many writers became preoccupied with the technical challenge of actually getting to outer space. And this interest was most pronounced in the post-bellum outpouring of fiction intended specifically for boys.

Tucker’s spacecraft relied on a combination of mystical Eastern knowledge and esoteric craftsmanship. His narrative clearly influenced Edgar Allan Poe, whose 1835 short story “The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall” described a trip to the moon in a balloon-like contraption inspired by Tucker’s device. (Tucker was a professor at the University of Virginia when Poe was a student there.) What the ability to actually see into outer space inspired in many writers was a more practical approach to the questions of science fiction. What would flying machines look like? And how could they be built?

Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon Direct in Ninety-seven Hours and Twenty Minutes was first published in Paris in 1867; a translated American edition appeared two years later. Although written in France, the novel’s focus was American. It concerned the efforts of the Baltimore Gun Club after the Civil War to steer the prowess of American artillerists in less destructive directions. Impey Barbicane, the club’s president, fixed on the goal of constructing a giant gun — eventually called “The Columbiad” — large enough to launch a manned capsule all the way to the moon. The novel was filled with discussions of the required size and caliber of such a gun, all amidst a welter of scientific calculations that were only made possible by the advances in astronomical observation that Mitchel so avidly promoted.

Harry Collingwood’s The Log of the Flying Fish (New York, 1887) was originally published in London. This first U.S. edition featured the book’s silvery marvel—a combination airship and submarine that took readers to previously unexplored heights.

Developments: Philanthropists, Heroes, and Helpers

Angela Oonk

Director of Development

Luckily, the stories I have to tell are the antithesis to the title of this publication. The donors to the Clements Library form the community that we call the Clements Library Associates. I am delighted to interact with philanthropists, heroes, and helpers every day.

We closed out our Centennial Year with an Adopt a Piece of History Fest which brought us full circle. William Clements created the library through his own philanthropy, and encouraged funding for future additions to the collection. This event celebrated new acquisitions, and provided the opportunity for attendees to see items first hand, and sponsor the purchase of historical materials, their conservation, and their use in instruction. Over twenty-five items were adopted in one evening. Donors are listed in a virtual bookplate gallery on the Clements webpage. The celebratory tea-party atmosphere provided ample opportunity for everyone to mingle and to meet Clements staff members. 

The Clements Library has always been as much about the people as the collections. On June 15, 1923, at the luncheon preceding the dedication of the Clements, George Winship had this to say, “The William L. Clements Library places the University of Michigan in a distinguished position for the teaching of our country’s history, and for training scholars.” As we enter our second century, we give our gratitude to everyone who participates in and believes in the work of the library. 

Staff News

The Development team welcomes Tiffani Irhke as the new Marketing Coordinator. Tiffani graduated from the University of Michigan in 2023 with a dual bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Communication, and Media Studies. Tiffani is passionate about creating visibility and awareness for the library, and giving a platform to underrepresented voices and communities. Tiffani manages all digital marketing through social media, content creation, blog content, email newsletters, and website development. She also handles press releases, event publicity, and creates print materials and merchandise.

Angela Oonk

Director of Development

The camp environment often made culinary endeavors challenging for Civil War soldiers as described by George Starbird, but these soldiers at Fort Monroe, Virginia, made it look easy for photographer George Stacy.

How often have you given someone a present, and when they gushed over it, you’ve said, “Oh, it’s nothing”? In modesty we trivialize these important gestures, perhaps even replacing “you’re welcome” with “forget it.” George Starbird (1843–1907) didn’t see a small gift of tea as trivial while serving with the 1st New York Mounted Rifles during the Civil War. In his letter home dated February 19, 1863, he recounted torrential rain that left the military camp a sea of mud and a “little brook began to course its path directly under the place I had made my bunk.” Despite the weather conditions and lack of sleep, he wrote, “Tell Mrs. Banks that when I make [a] dipper of tea it makes me think how she would laugh to see me stooping over hot fire, burning fingers in doing it. Tell her she is ever so kind to send it to me and that I do appreciate it and I’ll go now and make me [a] cup.”

Taking the time to give a gift connects the giver and receiver, and this is why we call our supporters the Clements Library Associates. Through your thoughtfulness, you not only help the Clements thrive, but you also forge a closer bond and become part of a community. 

Last year gifts of $100 or less totaled almost $35,000. Some donors choose to sign up for monthly giving which adds up quickly; giving over a number of years also makes a huge impact. I am humbled by the number of donors who have been supporting the Clements consistently for 50 years (or more, the current database only shows gifts back to 1975). In particular George F. and Charles L. have been steadfast in their commitment, missing nary a year! This is no small feat. After all, life is busy and letters are pushed to the side and forgotten. We feel the importance of each of these kind gestures, no matter the size, and are grateful for the community that supports the Clements Library.

Moving from her home in Maine to a farm in Lakeville, Minnesota, upon her marriage, Ann Brackett’s diaries demonstrate the importance of the maintaining family ties through correspondence and gifts, large and small. Indeed, the Ann M. Brackett diaries were a gift to the William L. Clements Library from the late Dr. Duane Norman Diedrich.

Staff News

Clements Library Director Paul Erickson completed his term as President of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic at the society’s annual conference in Philadelphia in late July. SHEAR is the primary scholarly organization for scholars working on the history of the U.S. between 1775 and 1861.

Isaac Burgdorf joins the Development team as the new Marketing Coordinator. Isaac is a 2024 graduate from the University of Michigan School of Information and has worked at the Clements as a Manuscripts Assistant since 2022. We are excited that Isaac is now a full-time member of the library staff, and look forward to working with Isaac as he continues to promote the library and its materials through social media and outreach.

The start of a new semester means the opportunity to work with some of the incredibly talented and motivated students from the University of Michigan! This fall, we will be joined by:

• Theresa Azemar – School of Information
• Diana Baxter – School of Information
• Milo Boatwright – LS&A
• Ellie Franklin – School of Information
• Samantha Huck – LS&A
• Anastasiya Ilkiv – LS&A
• Bela Kellog – LS&A
• Madison Lay – Ross School of Business
• Naomi Yu – School of Information

In Memoriam

Richard C. “Dick” Marsh

Photo courtesy of the Society for American Music

2024-2025 William L. Clements Library Fellows

Long-Term Fellowships

Jacob M. Price Dissertation Fellowship (2 months)

Ryan Langton, PhD Candidate in History, Temple University; “Negotiating the Endless Mountains: Networked Diplomacy along the Eighteenth-Century Trans-Appalachian Frontier”

Dorothy and Herman Miller Fellowship in Great Lakes History (2 months)

Ramya Swayamprakash, Assistant Professor, School of Interdisciplinary Studies, Grand Valley State University; “Islands in the Straits: Technology, Transformation, and Remarking Nature along the Detroit River 1860-1960”

Ben Pokross, Duane H. King Postdoctoral Fellow, Helmerich Center for American Research at Gilcrease Museum, University of Tulsa; “Writing History in the Nineteenth-Century Great Lakes”

Short-Term Fellowships (1 month)

Norton Strange Townshend Short-Term Fellowship

Ashley Reed, Associate Professor of English, Virginia Tech; “Spiritualist Religion in American Women’s Writing, 1848-1910”

Ben Bascom, Assistant Professor of English, Ball State University; “Eccentric Queers: Sexuality and Debility in Nineteenth-Century America”

Javier Eduardo Ramírez López, PhD Candidate in History, El Colegio de México; “The Great American Bookseller: The Formation and Dispersion of Henry Stevens’s Mexican Collection”

Johann Neem, Professor of History, Western Washington University; “The Daily Life of American Democracy, 1780s–1850s”

Alfred A. Cave Fellowship

Emily Dixon Magness, PhD Candidate in History, William & Mary; “If you had paid attention, you would know”: The Sacred World of Eighteenth-Century CherokeeAnglo Politics”

Howard H. Peckham Fellowship on Revolutionary America

Ronald Angelo Johnson, Associate Professor of History, Baylor University; “Mutual Entanglements: Transracial Ties Between Haitians and Revolutionary Americans”

John W. Shy Memorial Fellowship

Blake McGready, PhD Candidate in History, Graduate Center, City University of New York; “Making Nature’s Nation: The Revolutionary War and Environmental Interdependence in New York, 1775–1783”

John M. Price Short-Term Fellowship

Blake Grindon, Patrick Henry Scholar, Postdoctoral Fellow in History, Johns Hopkins University; “The Death of Jane McCrea: Sovereignty and Violence in the Northeastern Borderlands of the American Revolution”

Julius S. Scott III Fellowship in Caribbean and Atlantic History

Rachel Tils, PhD Candidate in History, University of Chicago; “Marketing in the System: Policing the Antillean Internal Economy. 1763–1807”

Phoebe Labat, PhD Candidate in History, Brown University; “Natural Disasters in the French Atlantic, 1624–1843” 

Richard and Mary Jo Marsh Short-Term Fellowship

David R. Whitesell, Independent Scholar; “A Bibliographical Catalog of Pre-1901 American and Canadian Photographically Illustrated Books

MacManus & Co. Fellowship

Henry Knight Lozano, Senior Lecturer in American History, University of Exeter; “Reptile Dominion: A Human-Reptile History of Florida in the Nineteenth Century”

Ephemera Society of America Fellowship

Alexandra Cade, PhD Candidate in History, University of Delaware; “Schottische at the Spa; Waltz at the Waterfall: Sensory Performance of National Identity in Nineteenth-Century American Tourism”

Brian Leigh Dunnigan Fellowship in the History of Cartography

Carli LaPierre, PhD Candidate in History, Queen’s University; “From Where We Stand: Visual Imagery and Understandings of Space in EighteenthCentury Northeastern North America”

Week-Long Fellowships (1 week)

Richard & Mary Jo Marsh Fellowship

Ryan Morini, Director of Community Oral History Collections, Doy Leale McCall Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of South Alabama; “The Unsettled Life of an Eastern Nevada Ghost Town”

David B. Kennedy and Earhart Fellowship

Matthew Skic, Curator of Exhibitions, Museum of the American Revolution; “Loyalists at War: The Story of the Queen’s Rangers”

Brian Leigh Dunnigan Fellowship in the History of Cartography

Alanna Loucks, PhD Candidate in History, Queen’s University; “Imagined Imperial Spaces: Comparing Cartographic Representations of the Great Lakes Region in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century”

Mary G. Stange Fellowship for Creative and Performing Artists and Writers

Tina Villadolid, Independent Scholar; “More Pieces of the Archipelago: Connectivity between UM and the Philippines”

Ruth Lopez, Independent Scholar; “Finding Miss Jennie Curtis”

Alexander Ames, Director of Outreach & Engagement, The Rosenbach Museum & Library / Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation; “’The Sound of Harps Angelical’: A Celtic Harpist Residency at the William L. Clements Library”

Jacob M. Price Week-Long Fellowship

Emily Lampert, PhD Candidate in History, Rice University; “The Virginian Atlantic: Virginia in the British Imagination, 1780–1860”

Jack Werner, PhD Candidate in History, University of Maryland, College Park; “Ableist Empire: U.S Colonialism, Disability, and Labor in the United States and the Philippines, 1898–1916”

James E. Laramy Fellowship in American Visual Culture

Mary Kate Robbett, PhD Candidate in History, Northwestern University; “Collecting the War: Civil War Relics, 1865-1915”

Jeremy McLaughlin, PhD Candidate in Information, University of Wisconsin – Madison; “A Most Familiar Form(e): Textual and Visual Knowledge Transmission in the Cultural Astronomy of Colonial North America”

Norton Strange Townshend Week-Long Fellowship

Jess Libow, Visiting Assistant Professor in the Writing Program, Haverford College; “Obscure Conditions: Visualizing Health in Nineteenth-Century American Literature”

Jordan T. Watkins, Assistant Professor of Church History and Doctrine, Brigham Young University; “Slavery and Religion in the Nineteenth-Century”

Ashley Rattner, Assistant Professor of English, Jacksonville State University; “The Crass Materiality of Utopia: Publishing Communitarian Reform in Nineteenth-Century America”

Clayton Lewis Fellowship in American Culture

Emily Schollenberger, PhD Candidate in Art History, Temple University; “Shifting Sediments: Photography, Memory, and Imperial Landscape”

Introduction to Archival Research Fellowship (1 week)

Forty-Three Foundation Fellowship

Leah Driehorst, Undergraduate, University of Michigan; “Paradox of Progress: Uncovering the Problematic Views of Late 19th-Century American Reformers”

Digital Fellowship (1 week)

Jacob M. Price Digital Fellowship

Surekha Davies, Independent Researcher; “Humans: A Monstrous History” 

American Trust for the British Library and William L. Clements Library Fellowship (2 weeks)

Dannie Brice, PhD Candidate in History, Duke University; “Imperial Grounds: Coffee, Entangled Empires, and the British Military Occupation of Saint-Domingue, 1789–1833”

Sierra Laddusaw

Curator of Maps & Graphics

The Matthews-Northrup firm rose to prominence as the publishers and printers of railroad maps, which required a level of detail also demonstrated in their Map of the United States.

When prompted to think about “tiny things,” maps may not be the first objects that come to mind. However, I invite you to think about how you use maps on, possibly, a daily basis: through the phone in your pocket. We use map applications on our phones for guidance when driving and navigating unfamiliar cities, as a reference on how to get from point A to B, and to decide on the closest place to grab lunch. A convenient map in your pocket isn’t a new idea; today’s digital maps are modern technology’s answer to the pocket maps of the past. 

In the United States, pocket maps were first retailed to the public in the 1820s. Major American map publishers, including Samuel Augustus Mitchell (1792–1868), Henry Schenk Tanner (1786–1858), and Anthony Finley (1784–1836), produced pocket maps that highlighted the growing road and railroad networks. Pocket maps of the 19th century were printed and folded into slipcases or covers made of thick paper, cardboard, and—for deluxe printings—leather. The map itself was typically printed on paper, though sometimes the map would be mounted on linen to help reduce the wear and tear of regularly folding and unfolding the paper. Pocket maps were designed to be disposable, with publishers regularly releasing updated editions. 

The smallest pocket map at the library, when folded into its cover, measures 13.2 × 5.8 cm. Map of the United States, published by the Matthews, Northrup, & Co. in 1891, is a vest pocket map showing the boundaries between the states, location of cities, and the routes of major transportation networks. Alongside a brief history of the country, the back of the map is printed with a variety of quick facts, including a list of past Presidents and Vice Presidents, military statistics, and a list of “Fifty Famous Americans.” The publisher also makes good use of the cover to advertise their “handsomer,” “handier,” and “always up to date” maps of every state, offered for sale at fifty cents a map!

By Iman Jamison

Manuscripts Division Intern

The Clements Library houses thousands of records, ephemera, lists, and inventories that reveal the rare stories of lives lived long before us. As a recent history graduate, I am honored to have had the opportunity to gain glimpses into these stories, whether they be of a missionary traveler in the late 18th century or the 19th-century letters of an antislavery activist. However, out of my four years at the University of Michigan, one particular story comes to mind, woven together by “little pieces” of inventory.

During the Winter 2024 semester, I was a student in Matthew Spooner’s class, Silences of the Archives: Slavery and the American Revolution. While searching for archival records relating to African Americans, we often lose access to the humanity of those we are researching. The hands-on work we participated in at the Clements allowed my classmates and me an understanding of the missing pieces of the historical memory of African Americans during the Revolutionary War-era. To this end, we looked through the letters and records of the British anti-slavery advocates as well as the ephemera and manuscripts of Black Americans themselves.

Iman Jamison working with the items listed in Samson Adams inventory to imagine a space Adams may have inhabited.

As a class, we were tasked with reading these inventories and interpreting the significance of the document’s presence in the archive. However, Jayne Ptolemy, Associate Curator of Manuscripts, and Maggie Vanderford, Librarian for Instruction and Engagement, did not stop there. They presented us with the opportunity to not only read these inventories but engage with and visualize the life of Adams through tiny pieces of paper.

With our inventories in hand, we scoured a table filled with miniature paper cut-outs representing the objects present on the list—objects that lived in the rooms of Adams’ dwelling. One by one we found each item on the inventory and its corresponding cut-out and recreated what we imagined his back parlor and bedroom may have looked like. We were asked questions about how we thought his rooms might have been organized: Was there a reason the cracked looking glass is followed by a pillowcase on the inventory for a room supposedly used for the reception of guests? Why was there a spinning wheel in Adams’ bedroom? What was the significance to how he stored his belongings or is the significance lost simply because of how the author of the inventory chose to order them?

The small rooms we created presented us, as historians-in-training, with a way of envisioning the life of Samson Adams, highlighting the silences so often present in African American history. These seemingly mundane lists and inventories are the exact artifacts of history that help answer our questions, and also leave us with new mysteries. The tiny replicas of his estate were instrumental in that process. I will always wonder if the images on our little pieces of paper truly resembled the objects scattered around the rooms of Adams’ estate, a visualization of the legacy of a free African American man building economic gains when the odds were very much against him.

The internet was scoured by Clements staff to locate representative images of items listed in the Samson Adams inventories.

“1 Bed spread Patchd work Bed and Sundry Cloths on it Bedstead &c” (Bed, Object Number 1981.0010, Winterthur Museum Collections)

“Two flower Barrels & C[ontents?]” (Wooden Flour Barrel, Warwickshire County Museums)

“Bellows” (Bellows, Object umber 1957.0787, Winterthur Museum Collections)

Maggie Vanderford

Librarian for Instruction and Engagement

The golden age of microbiology during the 1880s–90s signaled a landmark shift in popular awareness of human relationships to the microscopic world. As French chemist Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) and German physician Robert Koch (1843–1910), among others, rapidly identified the bacteria responsible for infectious diseases like cholera and tuberculosis, such scientific discoveries quickly took hold of the public imagination. By the end of the century, the language of microorganisms was part of common public health parlance. It became a given that millions (or billions!) of tiny living creatures, unseen to the human eye, were in fact powerful players in battles with infection or epidemic disease. At the Clements Library alone, numerous medical treatises and manuscripts document this shift. The Thomas Nock Notebooks (1884–1890), for example, include the writings of a Philadelphia medical school student invested in the nuances of the “germ theory of inflammation.”

The Clements Library holds one particularly rare example of this print phenomenon, Leaves from a Microbe’s Notebook (Yonkers, 1890), which only exists in one other copy held at the Huntington Library. The striking pamphlet was bound in burlap fabric wrappers and printed on imitation burlap paper, an expensive proposition for what it was—which was a piece of promotional literature for the antiseptic Borolyptol, manufactured by the Palisade Manufacturing Company in Yonkers, New York. The story was narrated by a dramatic (and literarily inclined) microbe, who recounted the tale of his birth and of his role in the formation of a pus-generating abscess. Unfortunately for the microbe and his brethren, the doctor in the story sprayed the abscess with Borolyptol; although the first treatment was not enough to kill them, it had a traumatic effect: “Up to this time I had had a clear conscience and an unimpaired memory,” wrote the microbe. “Later in the day as my senses slowly returned, I became aware that something had happened. Gradually there came to me a recollection of a horrible, blinding, suffocating storm which had swept over us.”

As the story continued, the microbe shared other details about his “race”: they can multiply “exceedingly” at short notice if the occasion demands; their temporality clashes with human chronologies (“With us a day is as a thousand years—more or less”), and so on. The melodramatic ending felt reminiscent of a starlet’s stage soliloquy when the antiseptic returned for the final death blow, and the microbe described his own death: “Ah! It grows cold! My senses are leaving. It is the end; yet I shall die content. Vapors rise about me taking on fantastic shapes. As they twist and twirl and twine a symbolic word stands forth. Nerving myself, as the light fades out, for a final effort, I transcribe it as it reads–“Borolyptol.”

The humorous advertisement was, on one level, a silly and clever visualization for customers who wanted to believe that all infections had a singular, simple solution in the form of antiseptic. On another level, it seriously anticipated real questions that experimental psychologists would ask in the coming decades about the interior life of microbes. The Clements Library holds a copy of experimental psychologist Alfred Binet’s landmark text, The Psychic Life of Micro-Organisms (originally published in New York in 1889; WLCL copy from Chicago, 1897), which detailed the psychological phenomena witnessed in “the lowest classes of being.” Binet didn’t go as far as insisting that microbes thought about long walks on the beach or feeling pain, but remained certain that they experienced some kind of psychological interiority.

In addition to such psychological and philosophical inquiries, American authors such as Mark Twain (1835–1910) were deeply invested in imagining a microbial perspective as a narrative way to investigate human similarities to other creatures. After reading The Story of a Germ Life by H.W. Conn (New York, 1904), Twain began writing 3,000 Years Among the Microbes (1905), “Translated from the original Microbic,” a scientific fantasy novel narrated by a man-turned-cholera germ living among the microbes in a tramp’s body. For Twain, the viewpoint of a microbe helped investigate the ethical dilemmas at stake in sharing the world with an unknown, possibly unimaginable number of organisms, both macro and micro. Famously, Twain left his microbe novel unfinished. Something about the tension between the human and microscopic worlds felt irresolvable to him, and he certainly wouldn’t rely on the easy simplicity of killing them all off with an antiseptic à la Borolyptol.

Although fascination with the microbe, specifically, as a character, a form, and an idea may have emerged in 1878 with the word itself, a compulsion to narrate from the perspective of microbial life has remained throughout the twentieth century. From the Adventures of Jimmy Microbe by Virginia Budd Jacobsen (Chicago, 1937) to the Adventures of Micki Microbe by Maurine Burnham Guymon (1987), I Contain Multitudes, by Ed Yong (New York, 2016), and Me, Microbes, and I by Philip Bunting (Melbourne, Australia, 2021), it is clear that we remain more motivated than ever to not only understand the microscopic world, but to live within it.

This sampling of pages from Leaves from a Microbe’s Notebook features fanciful depictions of microscopic life forms.

Jakob Dopp

Graphics Division Cataloger

For instance, French photographer René Dagron ( 1819–1900) famously created microphotographs of secret messages and newspapers that were smuggled into Paris by carrier pigeons during the siege of 1870/71 in the Franco-Prussian War. After producing a microphoto, Dagron would carefully extract the exposed film, roll it up, and insert it into a small tube which could be discreetly attached to a pigeon. Upon receipt the microphotos could then be unrolled, placed back upon glass plates, and projected at an enlarged size via magic lantern for viewing. However, long before his involvement in clandestine military communications, Dagron had already established himself as the first person to recognize the lucrative commercial prospects of microphotography.

During the Siege of Paris in 1870, the German armies surrounded the city, preventing correspondence with the outer world. Microscopic dispatches flown in by carrier pigeon were viewed by news-starved residents via magic lantern, as depicted in this illustration from John Howard Appleton’s (1844–1930) Chemistry, Developed by Facts and Principles Drawn Chiefly from the Non-Metals (Providence, 1884).

The term “stanhope” stems from Dagron’s ingenious use of an altered lens, a particular type of handheld magnifier created by Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl of Stanhope (1753–1816). After cutting down one side of a small stanhope lens to make a flat surface onto which a microphoto (often no larger than 2 × 2 mm) could be adhered, the lens could then be implanted inside of tiny holes bored into a vast array of objects including jewelry, pens, rings, scissors, pin cushions, pipes, children’s toys, ornaments, musical instruments, etc. Mass produced trinkets made from carved ivory such as miniature binoculars, telescopes, and eyeglasses were particularly popular objects. Common themes of microphotos found inside of stanhopes include landscape views, street scenes and city/town views, reproductions of famous artwork, major events (such as the World’s Columbian Exposition), and material that can best be described as salacious.

Three of the Clements Library’s stanhope viewers on display, with spools and a measuring tape for scale. The measuring tape itself is a stanhope viewer (from a private collection), note the light colored projection on the top which holds the lens.

This image captures what is visible to the naked eye when peering through the stanhope lens—in this case the Minnehaha Falls. The microphotograph, itself likely no larger than 2 x 2 mm, may be magnified by a factor of 300 when viewed through the lens.

Emi Hastings

Curator of Books

In a quest for the extraordinary, book collectors are often drawn to extremes. This may include the “first,” the rarest, and even the biggest or smallest of books. For the lover of small things, a tiny book has an enduring charm out of proportion to its diminutive size. A miniature book is often defined by collectors as 3 inches (7.6 cm) or under in all dimensions, although the Library of Congress allows miniatures to be up to 3.9 inches (10 cm) in height or width. What draws someone to a miniature version of a text, when a larger version may often be cheaper and easier to read?

Many of the earliest printed miniature books were religious in nature, including such texts as Books of Hours, psalms, and Bibles. For these works, their miniature format served as a religious talisman or a personal reminder of faith, allowing the book to be kept close to one’s body. While the miniature text was still readable, turning the tiny pages required careful attention and focus, a kind of intimacy with the text that called attention to the physical format.

Miniature Bibles, often called thumb Bibles, began in the 17th century in England and became especially popular in America in the 19th century. They contained a summarized version of the biblical text, sometimes with illustrations. While the first English thumb Bibles may have been intended for adult readers, later American editions were often specifically adapted for children. An edition of Bible History (New York, 1813; 5 cm) states in the preface, “It is hoped, the perusal of this little treatise will so attract the young mind, as to excite a curiosity and love for the scriptures at large.” The possession of a miniature Bible would thus lead the child to further study of the full-sized family Bible.

The Bible in Miniature (London, undated) bound in dark leather with decorative stamping in gold. An inscription on the flyleaf read “Mabel Smith from Papa.” Contrasted with a full-sized family Bible in a similar leather binding, The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments (Oxford, 1740) from the Weld-Grimké family papers. 

The American Tract Society published numerous miniature books between 1825 and 1899, both for adults and children. Popular devotional works for adult readers included Dew-Drops (Philadelphia, 1884; 5.6 cm), A Threefold Cord (New York, 1953?; 8 cm) and Daily Food for Christians (Boston, between 1882 and 1900; 8 cm), all in multiple editions. The American Sunday-School Union in Philadelphia was also a prolific publisher of miniature books for children, including a popular book of prayers called Small Rain Upon the Tender Herb (Philadelphia, ca. 1835; 3.6 cm)

Gen. Cass’ Letter to the Harbor and River Convention (Rochester, 1848). Yellow pictorial printed wrappers, satirical advertisement on rear wrapper. 

Beyond their immediate appeal as adorably small objects, miniature books served a variety of purposes, ranging from the frivolous to the sacred. The miniature format made a religious text seem more personal or more appealing to young readers, transformed a plain volume into a tiny work of art, or made information easier to access on the go, whether you needed to look up an unfamiliar word, make a quick calculation, or read a favorite work of literature on the train. The lasting appeal of miniature books speaks to the many different audiences they have served and the ways in which they have been consumed by generations of readers.

Cheney Schopieray

Curator of Manuscripts

Teacher and poet Rebecca Dodge Eaton (1796–1852) sat down to her diary in the night hours of July 30–31, 1839, to the sound of the waterfalls in Rochester, New York. She had been experiencing “not very fine feelings” alone in the boarding house where she lived, but this night she found inspiration in the glowing light of the moon. Thanks to its reflection, she could see just well enough to write out feelings and religious praises into a blank book that she filled with diary entries, poetry, and miscellany. Still, her desk was steeped in shadow and her writing became shaky and almost twice as large as usual. Over the ensuing 26 days, she diarized on the same page, recording visits to the library, buying a “philopaena” gift, purchasing books for herself, reading, and attending lectures. Since she previously filled the reverse side of the page with poetry, she wrote smaller and smaller as she attempted to squeeze in as much writing as possible to put off the inevitable need to continue her diary somewhere else in the journal. 

The influential Foster’s System of Penmanship (Boston, 1835) outlined a model for teaching students to write quickly, legibly, and with few frills. This plate shows teachers a method for using connected vertical and parallel lines for practice writing the same words in varying sizes.

Many overlapping reasons contribute to the size of a person’s handwriting. It may depend on the environment in which they write, their education and practice, their anatomy and physiology, the available writing utensils and surfaces, the purpose of the writing, and the intended audience. Viewing small handwriting seems to lead us naturally into asking usual questions of analysis: who made this? how did they make it? for whom? where, when, and why? Rebecca Eaton did not set out to write in an enlarged or a cramped script. Her handwriting changed size because of the presence/absence of light in her writing space and how she chose to keep her book—by adding text to seemingly random middle pages rather than sequential ones.

Penmanship education of the 19th and 20th centuries frequently included practices intended to hone students’ skills at writing letters and words with different forms, proportions, and spacing. Typically, younger children were (and still are!) taught to write large and only after gaining proficiency write smaller and smaller. Penmanship instructor Benjamin Franklin Foster (ca. 1803–1859) suggested a practice that moved from large hand to half text to small hand.

Magnification of these handwritten copies of the Lord’s Prayer reveals tracings of a coin used as a guide for the boundaries of the text. While vision typically diminishes with age, septuagenarian Rev. Samuel Dana defied the odds by producing legible writing with base-to-waist heights as small as 0.25 mm! 

Some writers developed a habit or style of writing in a miniature hand as part of their everyday practice. Rev. Samuel Dana (1778–1864) of the Old North Church in Marblehead, Massachusetts, had famously small handwriting that he would use in his private writings as well as in service of his ministry. One of his routines was to take half dimes or three-cent coins, trace them with pencil, write the complete Lord’s Prayer in ink within the boundaries, erase the pencil, and give the results to friends or parishioners as keepsakes. The Clements Library has an example of three uncut, apparently undistributed examples that he created on September 6, 1851, at the age of 73!

Micro-calligraphic writing might also have commercial motivations. The practice, skill, and talent of penmanship master and printmaker David Davidson is revealed in one example of his work. On ornate lace paper he utilized a “crow quill” steel pen nib to make a gift for U.S. Senator James Dixon, in recognition of his “Address Delivered . . . On The Death Of Judge Collamer” on December 14, 1865. When magnified, readers can see that title letters are comprised of the text of the speech. Davidson made a number of these works of art, which displayed his prowess to friends and potential penmanship students alike.

Micrography is a Jewish art form dating back to medieval times, using miniscule script to create shapes or drawings. Practitioner David Davidson, who referred to himself as an “artist in penmanship,” was born in Russian Poland and immigrated to New York in 1851. Other examples of his work include a micrographic drawing of the Astor Library and two portraits created using text from the Bible.

Tiny handwriting is perhaps most prevalent in pocket diaries and pocketsized notebooks, the sort which travelers often used for their portability These little books are practical for a person on the move, but! Taking up one of these home-made or pre-printed volumes also steels a commitment to small script or lettering. In 2020, Richard King Thomas donated his ancestor’s simultaneously diminutive and grand American Revolutionary War diary. The penman was a member of the Davis family of Upper Merion, Pennsylvania, a community roughly 15 miles northwest of Philadelphia. Though his identity is not yet known, the diarist was one of the men recruited for military service between June and August 1776 to assist in the defense of New York.

Davis was a militiaman or associator who took up a 10 × 8 cm hand-sewn volume of 34 pages and marched from his family farm on August 13, 1776. His handwriting is crabbed, a sort of cramped writing that is particularly challenging to read because of irregular character formation. With characters averaging ~1 mm base-to-waist height, the writer was able to fit as many as 20 lines on a page. His phonetic spelling adds to the importance of this documentation of his experiences. Davis carried the diary as he boarded a shallop in Philadelphia on August 17, 1776. That day, it survived the wind, pouring rain, high tide, and broken ship tie rope that stymied the departure and it stayed with him in a hayloft that night. 

As he marched and sailed toward the City of New York, Davis kept hauling out his quill and a portable inkwell, writing on the most suitable hard surfaces he could find. He chose a large tombstone in an Elizabeth Town cemetery to write on as he passed through. Davis arrived at Bergen, New Jersey, the day after George Washington’s retreat from Brooklyn on August 30, 1776. Through the first two weeks of September, he moved with his battalion along the New Jersey shoreline, where he could see the British troops at work on Staten Island and hear the guns as they pressed in on Washington’s headquarters at New York. There, while moving between Bergen, Paulus Hook, and Bergen Point, Davis wrote about the oppressive mosquitoes, knee-deep mud, skirmishes between British Men-of-War and revolutionaries’ row galley boats, a woman who spared room for lodging, the sermons he heard, and his shifting diet (of chocolate, boiled beef, dumplings, bread, butter, pigeons, squirrels, and sugar).

Between August 17 and 21, 1776, Davis traveled with his diary from Philadelphia to Trenton; marched 26 miles or so through Prince own (Princeton), King’s own, and Brunswick; and then took the Raritan River to Amboy. A few days later, his unit moved to Elizabethtown, then Newark and Bergen. Between August 31 and September 12, Davis moved back and forth between Bergen, Paulus Hook, and Bergen Point. He then followed the same route home to Upper Merion, Pennsylvania, arriving there September 17, 1776.

Paul J. Erickson

Randolph G. Adams Director

William L. Clements Library

“Tiny Things” may seem like an unusual theme for a Clements Library Quarto. Like most of our peer institutions, we often tend to focus on big things: the largest collection of this, the deepest holdings of that, the longest shelves, the most titles by Author X. We love our Audubon folios. We celebrate the acquisition of flashy, famous items, which are also often large. Librarians and scholars alike are drawn to materials from the past that had an impact—books that were the biggest sellers, that were read by the most important people. And I’m as guilty of this as anyone. A book that was published that nobody read is kind of like the tree that falls in the forest with nobody around to hear it.

Even the way we store our collections privileges big and weighty artifacts. Our biggest books—which we call folios—have their own shelves. Meanwhile, our smallest printed books are batched together in acid-free boxes in the “Pamphlets” and “Juveniles” section of the stacks. This all makes perfectly good sense, of course. Given our interest in using space as efficiently as possible, it’s entirely logical to store the largest books on the tallest shelves. And from the perspective of preserving our fragile collection items, storing small children’s books and paper-covered pamphlets in boxes protects them from the damage they would suffer if they were on open shelves with the rest of the collection. 

This issue of The Quarto asks you to pick up a magnifying glass and think small. The pieces in this issue focus on small books, small maps, small pictures, or books about small things. Miniature books and prints are often wonderful examples of the art and craft of bookmaking and illustration. The challenge of creating a tiny version of a book that still functions as a book is a test of the skill of printers and binders alike, and many collectors are drawn to these items for just this reason. 

But what if we come at the question of tiny from a different direction? Instead of thinking about small things, what if we thought about small audiences? My interest in books from the past grew out of an interest in readers from the past, which is to say that I was interested in the audience. When I read an 18th- or 19th-century American book, I often think more about who would have read it and how than I do about who wrote it or who printed it. So in thinking about “tiny things” for this issue, I was led to think about readers rather than books themselves.

Of course, how books are produced has a direct bearing on how many people read them. In his book Popular History and the Literary Marketplace, 1840–1920 (Amherst, Mass., 2008), Gregory Pfitzer offers what is my favorite definition of “popular” literature. He writes that “popular” printed items are things for which “every aspect . . . was designed to increase sales.” Which is to say that a “popular” book was one that was written, printed, bound, and sold in ways that were very specifically intended to sell more copies. Now, you might reasonably ask, “Doesn’t everybody who prints books want to sell as many copies as they can?” To which I would reply, “Does Rolls Royce want to sell as many cars as they can, or do they want to sell a small number of cars to very specific people?” Some books are Rolls Royces, deluxe items meant to generate a large return from each single copy sold to an elite market. Other books are Honda Civics, meant to generate small returns from a huge number of copies sold to just about anybody. And if you browsed the shelves of the Clements Library’s stacks, you’d be able to pretty easily tell the Rolls Royces from the Hondas, just as you would in a parking lot. 

What I’m really interested in are things that look like Honda Civics but were made for a Rolls Royce-sized market—that is, things that were cheaply made but intended for a tiny audience. I’m both fascinated and delighted by the amount of labor that people in the past put forth to create something that just a handful of people, or maybe only one person, would ever see, using processes that were developed for mass circulation.

Corn husks are now used in boutique paper products, but the process for creating the fragile husking party invitation in 1885 would have been time-consuming and labor-intensive. 

One example of this that I especially love is a recently acquired invitation to a “Husking Party” in West Springfield (it’s not clear which one—there are five “West Springfields” in the United States) in September 1885. The invitation was printed on the most appropriate and the most ephemeral possible material: a corn husk. Maybe more than one person saw this invitation, but given that it survived, it almost certainly wasn’t passed around. Yet William Thomas had to go to the trouble to collect enough corn husks to generate a good crowd for his party. He had to trim them to size and flatten them so that they’d take ink. And he had to set type—using four different typefaces—that would actually print on the husk. All this work, for something that was intended for only one person to see.

The James Stephens case, featured in “Haydock’s Monthly,” was notorious in its time, involving the poisoning of Stephens’ wife, the assault of her niece, a revenge shooting by the victim’s nephew, and Stephens’ escape and re-capture—all elements sure to appeal to an active and enterprising lad. “Haydock’s Monthly” is part of the James V. Medler Crime Collection.

When I think about scale—about smallness—in the Clements collections, it is these moments of privacy that come to mind first, often because they are the most moving to me. In early August a new daguerreotype arrived at the library that took my breath away, precisely because the moment it captured was so tiny, so private. A white child of perhaps two or three years of age posed for a photograph. But instead of the “hidden mother” method, where a child’s mother would hold a child still for a photographer while concealed under a covering, this child is being comforted in a more visible, yet more private way. From outside of the picture’s frame on the child’s right, a hand of an otherwise unseen African American person gently holds the child’s hand in reassurance. We don’t know who the child is, nor do we know where the daguerreotype was made. We also don’t know who was offering their hand to comfort that child. Was it a hired nanny? A person enslaved by the child’s family? An employee of the photographer? We’ll likely never know. But that extended calming hand—a moment so brief that if you blink you’ll miss it—is the kind of small, quiet moment that close attention to the items in the Clements collections can reveal. Sometimes, tiny things mean the most. 

It takes the viewer a moment to notice the unobtrusively joined hands in this daguerreotype, amid the distractions of the child’s patterned outfit and elegant headware. But close attention to the smallest detail brings rewards.

Jayne Ptolemy

Associate Curator of Manuscripts

Bah humbug! A quick perusal of daguerreotypes will yield any number of severe-looking portraits that hide any sense of humor the subjects might have possessed.

Above, right: [Young woman], daguerreotype. [Kalamazoo, Michigan?]: [approximately 1855 to 1860]. David V. Tinder Collection of Michigan Photography. The majority portion donated by David B. Walters in honor of Harold L. Walters, UM class of 1947 and Marilyn S. Walters, UM class of 1950.

The archetypical librarian has their hair severely styled, lips pursed, and a cranky “Shhhhh!” at the ready. But if you’ve spent any time amongst the staff at the Clements Library, you’ll know there’s far more chatter and laughter than shushing going on. Likewise, ask most people what they think of 18th- or 19th-century Americans, and they’ll likely describe some version of a dour, tight-laced party pooper. Black and white photographs often do little to dispel this myth.

Take, for example, these very traditional mid-19th century poems penned by a young Polly Bishop Mansfield on themes of friendship, remembrance, and perseverance. “Through all the changing scenes of life / Of sunshine or of sadness / Amid temptations, dangers, strife / Or in the hours of gladness / I ask one single boon from thee / My friend — wilt thou Remember me [?]”

While there’s a tenderness to the lines, there is admittedly also something rather anonymous about it. It feels like any number of young women might have written them, and you get little sense of Polly Bishop Mansfield as an actual person. If I’m being honest, I likely wouldn’t remember this on its own. It’s only the presence of a small, inside joke that elevates this collection to great heights. The poems, you see, are accompanied by a fish.

Look even closer, and you’ll see just how much care Polly put into this silly shad—the smallest of stitches sewn, scales and eyes drawn on in ink, all of it carefully stuffed. 

This little addendum was pinned into one of Anthony Wayne’s account books. Notice all the other pinholes in the margin, suggesting there were many others like it, in this age before Post-It notes.

Jayne Ptolemy

Associate Curator of Manuscripts

I have a confession. I hated early American history for much of my pre-adult life. The Jamestown colony, Federalists, the Missouri Compromise, robber barons. I hated all of it. It just felt so stuffy, so distant, and so boring. It wasn’t until I went to college and got to really study and wonder about the details of everyday life and the strange qualities of the human condition that I got hooked. In the spirit of what allowed me to fall in love with the past, I want to offer a selection of items that flag those lighthearted, quirky moments that provide openings to rejoice in the people we encounter in the collections.

Jakob Dopp

Graphics Division Cataloger

Whether or not people can truly interact with spirits of the deceased has long been a subject of controversy and fascination. Skeptics of 19th-century spiritualism often leveled accusations of financially-motivated fraud against the likes of William H. Mumler, Madame Diss Debar, and Tennessee Claflin, to name a few. Indeed, even the most enthusiastic proponents of spiritualist practices found themselves at times questioning the credibility and intentions of others within their ranks. The Clements Library holds a particularly wonderful example related to what this author considers to be an instance of fraudulent spiritualism, the Wella and Pet Anderson spirit drawings photograph album. 

A total of 26 cabinet cards compiled by a Chicago-based spiritualist named John C. Bundy comprise the album, all of which photographically reproduce hand-drawn portraits of spirits created by married spiritualist duo Wella and Lizzie “Pet” Anderson. Originally from Maine, the Andersons became established in Brooklyn, New York, in the 1860s. Pet’s role was that of the trance medium who facilitated contact with the dead, while Wella served as a conduit through whom spirits could execute portraits of themselves. An Anderson spirit drawing could be completed in two to three hours, with Wella working in 10 to 12 minute bursts, often while in a darkened room and at times even blindfolded. Wella claimed to have had no previous artistic training or experience.

Numerous members of The Ancient Band were in fact real historical figures including Anthony van Dyck, Omar ibn Al Kattab, Abelard and Heloise, Plutarch, Pindar, Alfred the Great, and Gautama Buddha. However, more than a few were complete fabrications cleverly constructed with a veneer of plausibility. For instance, there was “Henri de Brianville,” an English knight and alchemist who lived during the reign of Charles I; “Adehl,” an ancient necromancer from India who lived to the ripe old age of 180 after inventing an Elixir of Life; and “Dawn,” a young woman born in Massachusetts in the 1770s who perished just one hour into the dawning of her existence (hence the name).

Even aspects of some of the real historical figures don’t quite add up. In the descriptive catalog, the Andersons showcased their portrait of a ponytailed Confucius to the “learned and wealthy Chinese merchants” of San Francisco’s Chinatown. The response of the Chinese critics was to enlighten the Andersons that during the lifetime of Confucius (ca. 551–479 BCE) the queue (braided hairstyle) was not worn, the custom having been established only a few hundred years ago by edict, as a badge of loyalty to the present reigning [Manchurian] dynasty.” Apparently, this anachronism was used as proof that the Andersons’ spirit drawings were in fact fraudulent, “thereby discrediting the correctness of the Spirit Artist.” However, the Andersons attempted to explain away this gaffe by claiming that, much like Samson of the Old Testament, Confucius “believed in the idea that there was a power in the hair, which added to physical health and mentality” and that he “wore it braided, to keep it out of his way.” The fact that the Andersons felt compelled to defend themselves against the charges of fakery speaks volumes about the perceived threat to their reputations it must have posed at the time.

Finally, Eunice White Beecher (1813–1897) (widow of clergyman Henry Ward Beecher and sister-in-law to author Harriet Beecher Stowe) had much to say about Pet Anderson and numerous other spiritualist mediums who began contacting her shortly after her husband’s death. In an interview included in the February 19, 1893, issue of the St. Louis Globe, Mrs. Beecher stated that shortly following the passing of her husband, “Spiritualists seemed to look upon me as their legitimate prey or object of conversion. . . . A clergyman in Chicago gave me a great deal of annoyance by sending letters in which he said Mr. Beecher had been heard from in the other world and that he said for twenty years he had been preaching error.” Another letter claimed that “Mr. Beecher had sent word from spirit land through ‘Pet’ Anderson, a female medium, that he had been in error for fifty-five years. Then the man wrote me begging me to let ‘Pet’ Anderson come here and stay with me for two or three days . . . Then he sent me what he called a sermon of Mr. Beecher’s, which he said had been communicated from spirit land.” When asked by the reporter if she thought the sermon was true to her husband’s style, Mrs. Beecher responded, “I hope none of his friends ever accused him of preaching anything like that. It was the most preposterous, childish nonsense that was ever penned. I could not imagine how such supreme nonsense could be conceived.” Nonsense or not, the human impulse to connect with the deceased and confirm the existence of an afterlife can be powerful. People like the Andersons skillfully manipulated these desires into opportunities for profit.

Clayton Lewis

Curator of Graphic Materials, retired

Rowland Stephenson (1782– 1856), Member of Parliament for Leominster, was descended from generations of wealth and accomplishment and was well known to the social elite as a respected partner of the Lombard Street bank, Remington, Stephenson & Co. Although described as dapper, Stephenson was deeply in debt and had committed his bank to financing schemes that were hemorrhaging money, including the enormous, unfinished London Coliseum (an amazing story in itself) promoted by surveyor/artist Thomas Horner (1785–1844). In November of 1828, rumors spread of Remington, Stephenson & Co.’s insolvency. 

It all caught up with Stephenson on December 26, 1828, when he was confronted by his banking partners. A hasty internal audit had revealed that Stephenson and his personal clerk, James Harman Lloyd, had secretly been using negotiable securities placed on deposit at his bank as collateral for personal loans. Remington, Stephenson & Co.’s liabilities now exceeded its assets by nearly £200,000, forcing a panicked closure, and triggering a run on London banks. The year ended with the financial ruin of many depositors. Senior partner Joseph Toulmine, age 64, suffered a stroke and died after having been declared completely bankrupt.

When Stephenson and Lloyd landed in Georgia on February 28, they were dismayed to find their story in the American papers, including their descriptions, details of their expected arrival in Savannah, and the posting of an additional reward by a retired sheriff of London turned bounty hunter, Joseph Parkins. Parkins, a notorious hothead, already had a history with Stephenson over past political confrontations. Parkins also was a significant depositor at the failed Remington, Stephenson & Co. He happened to be in the United States and was more than eager to pursue the case on behalf of the bank as well as for himself. It was personal. 

Alerted to Stephenson’s presence by these same news reports, William Oates, Deputy Jailer of Savannah quickly apprehended Stephenson, bound him, locked him in the cabin of a fast pilot boat, and sailed up the coast to New York City, intending to hand him over to the British Consul and collect the rewards. Acting on word that Stephenson was being held against his will in New York Harbor, the chief constable of New York located and took charge of Stephenson. A battered but much relieved Stephenson stayed comfortably in a room in the constable’s house, even dining with British Consul James Buchanan. The news that the now notorious embezzler Rowland Stephenson was in New York spread like wildfire, along with public outrage that “foreign agents” were operating inside the country to apprehend him, in violation of the sovereignty of the United States.

A hearing in front of a New York judge went badly for the many parties interested in prosecuting Stephenson. The various warrants from Britain were ruled to be invalid, British Consul Buchanan refused to testify on William Oates’ behalf, and a writ was issued to apprehend Oates and his gang from Savannah for kidnapping. The judge was particularly unimpressed with the quarrelsome Parkins, who could not demonstrate any authority on American soil. The court recorder announced that Stephenson was at liberty and free to leave as cheers rang out. 

Having fled New York, Parkins’ Savannah gang were arrested and prosecuted in Georgia. Strapped for cash, Parkins himself eventually landed in the same debtors’ prison that had previously held Stephenson. Deeply embittered, in 1938 he published a pamphlet, An Abridged Correspondence Between J. W. Parkins And His Late Bankers. Messrs. Remington, Stephenson & Co. London (S.l., [1829?]), complaining about the gross injustice of his situation and that “the reader … will be ready to acknowledge that Mr. Parkins is the most victimized man he ever read of.” James Lloyd is recorded as having married in 1833 in Georgia but disappeared after that. 

Upon further study, a common thread began to emerge, having something to do with banking, personal debt, the costs of royalty, and financial crimes. A name, not known to me at the time, Rowland Stephenson, MP, appeared frequently as the addressee of the manuscript letters, the guest of royal event invitations, and the subject of the watercolor portrait. His name also appeared in a newspaper clipping announcing the reward for information leading to his arrest. A quick look into his entry in the Dictionary of National Biography found this: “Stephenson’s parliamentary career was distinguished solely by his manner of leaving it.” I was certainly intrigued and began to gather as much information as I could find on this absconder to America.

There is a distinctive handwriting throughout the scrapbook, however, it does not resemble Stephenson’s. Some of the material, of British origin, dates from after his 1828 escape to America, so it is very unlikely that this scrapbook was compiled by Stephenson. However, the personal nature of much of the contents—invitations, letters, etc.—are undoubtedly material that passed through his hands. Whose scrapbook was this and how did it get to America? Was it compiled by someone close to Stephenson (his sister-in-law, who lived at his estate?), or possibly a contemporary “true crime” memorabilia collector who attended the bankruptcy auctions of Stephenson’s personal property in England? In any case, the contents indicate it was probably assembled in Britain, well after Stephenson and Lloyd departed.

In 2021 I was in touch with Dr. Paul Bangay, a descendant of the Stephenson family and the author of a carefully researched and detailed account of his relative in The Dapper Little Banker (Lancaster, England, 2011). Bangay was not aware of the scrapbook. I was excited to share images from it, and he enjoyed seeing them. He did not recognize the handwriting, nor offer a theory on how and why it could have landed in America. Much of the information in this article was drawn from Paul Bangay’s book, which is a captivating read.

Stephenson’s story is a complicated one which elicits a complicated response. Americans have a history of sympathizing with the fugitive and the outlaw. Nationalist pride and indignation also drove America’s defense of this financial scoundrel and protected him from prosecution. However, as we have re-learned of late, the collapse of financial institutions and the crime of embezzlement are not victimless. One wonders how a similar dramatic tale chronicling the experience of one of Stephenson’s victims would alter our perceptions. 

Cheney J. Schopieray

Curator of Manuscripts

Deceiver or Deceived?

In the summer of 1860, Newark, Ohio, surveyor David Wyrick made an astounding discovery. While digging in a cluster of pre-Columbian indigenous burial mounds he uncovered a stone inscribed with what appeared to be an ancient Hebrew text. Wyrick and the so-called “Keystone” became instant sensations and topics of controversy. Beginning in the 17th century, theories circulated that Native Americans were descended from Lost Tribes of Israel. Wyrick’s Keystone supported this argument, and he postulated in a letter to antiquarian William Brockie, “This may have been a lost relic of the children of Israel—or a lost ornament by some other race who obtained it of them . . .” (September 1860). In November of the same year, Wyrick uncovered another stone, this one carved with an abridged version of the Ten Commandments and an image of Moses. This stone was aptly named “Decalogue” and, together with the Keystone, became known as the Newark Holy Stones.

The Shame of Victimization

The variations of confidence schemes and con games are many, and they often require ingenuity, creativity, organization, skill, and at the very least brazenness in the face of potential consequences. The perpetrators often inspire curiosity, and their exploits invoke a sort of glamor. But tarnish comes when remembering the serious psychological, social, and economic harm suffered by their victims. Even the sharpest among us can be drawn into their schemes. The monetary losses and self-directed doubt and anger can be devastating. How could I let this happen? How could I be so stupid? It seems so obvious—what was I thinking? What will people think of me if they find out?

Emily Howland (1827–1929) of Sherwood, New York, was a reformer active in abolitionism, Black education, and women’s rights and suffrage movements. She was a brilliant and steadfast woman acting on some of the most challenging and progressive efforts of her day. And yet she, too, found herself on the receiving end of deception. On October 14, 1905, Emily Howland was interrupted at supper by an unexpected visitor. It was an African American man who told her that he was fleeing to Canada from North Carolina. He had seen his sister murdered, he defended her, and was targeted for lynching on reward of $500. He had difficulty walking because he had been shot twice in the back. He told her that he met with Harriet Tubman (1822–1913) at her home in Auburn, who directed him to Howland. He needed $135, so Emily accumulated the funds. He departed but then returned the next Monday and said that men seized him en route but he escaped. He did find someone who could get him out of the country for $450 (since the railways were being watched). Against her better judgment, Emily wrote a bank check for that amount. She recalled being disturbed at his “most excited & harrowing” manner after taking the check. 

Emily Howland had been close friends with Harriet Tubman for many years, so she decided to go to Auburn, ask Tubman about the case, and request that no more similar cases be sent to her. As Emily relates in a letter dated October 21, 1905, Harriet told her that “about 2 months ago a colored man brought this fellow to her house with this same story & wanted shelter for him which of course was promptly granted. He had a revolver . . . slept in her barn some more nights, wanted money. She begged some for him not enough to satisfy him. . . . Harriet said she had never mentioned my name to him. He had got it in some way. The whole affair seems like a horrid nightmare.” Emily Howland reproached herself for not listening to her own apprehensions when giving in to the second request for money. She was embarrassed about the amount of money lost, could not pay the next bill she received, and grieved over the good works for humanity that that money could no longer support. Her goal was to avoid dwelling on the events and remembering that “this too will pass.” 

Spanish Prisoners and Nigerian Princes

In March 1908, L. F. Liscombe of New Hampshire received an urgent letter from Luis Rubio. Rubio wrote from prison at Valencia, Spain, and explained that he was related to Liscombe through his in-laws. He had been secretary treasurer under Gen. Martínez Campos during the Cuban Revolution, but he defected and joined the revolutionaries. He was forced to flee to England, taking £36,000 of his assets. There, he received news that his wife died, leaving his 15-year-old daughter Emily a prisoner in Santa Elena, Spain. Rubio rushed to Spain but was detained on arrival and imprisoned. Before he left England, however, he deposited the £36,000 in a London bank “on a special private contract” such that only the bearer of a particular security document could access it. The document was in a hidden compartment in his portmanteau, which was confiscated and would not be released without payment of his sentencing costs. Since he was sick and dying, Rubio pled that Liscombe pay the costs to release the embargo, which would allow Emily to be supported, and also provide an ample reward to Liscombe for his help. Since he could not receive letters at the prison, he needed Liscombe to airmail Pedro Romero at Calle del Mar, Provincia de Valencia, for more information and details on how to send the payment.

Thirty-two years later, Clements Director Randolph Adams (1892–1951) received an urgent letter. A prisoner in Mexico City needed help, for the sake of his “dear daughter as well as [his] very existence.” Confined for bankruptcy, he beseeched Dr. Adams to pay for the embargo placed on his suitcases, one of which contained a baggage check that could be used to release his trunk, which was held at a customs house in the United States. That trunk had a secret compartment which held $285,000 and if Adams would advance the embargo release funds, he would receive $9,500 of the hidden monies. “Due to serious reasons of which [he] will know later,” Adams should airmail or wire the prisoner (signed “A”) via his contact Julio Rios at R. de Bolivia 22- Dept. 1, Mexico City.

These occurrences may sound familiar to modern readers. The “Spanish Prisoner” letters are an example of international crime and a precursor to the modern and widely experienced “Nigerian Prince” emails, which follow the structure of an advance fee scam. The con artist tries to establish connection to the recipient, provides a story with appeals for humanitarian help, and requests some amount of money needed to access a large amount of hidden capital. They appeal to potential victims’ emotional desires to help those in need as well as their own greed or monetary needs. Of course, the prisoner and the Nigerian royalty are fabricated, there are no funds to release, and there is no daughter to save; there is only that advance fee—and the subsequent silence or requests for additional funds. 

If you fell for one of these advance fee scams, not to worry. Cheney J. Schopieray (b. 1980) received an email on July 24, 2011, from Gary Smith, who was duped by a Nigerian Prince scam after paying upwards of $20,000. Smith received confirmation of the fraud from FBI agent Williams D. Chase. Thanks to his [Chase’s] help, Smith was “the happiest man on earth” because he received promise of restitution of $1M U.S. currency. All Cheney needed to do was send $190 for Special Agent Chase to run the paperwork, via his contact at [email protected]. He is pretty sure his portion of the $1M will arrive any day now.

He Seen His Opportunities and He Took ‘Em

Tammany Hall philosopher George W. Plunkitt (1842–1924) famously justified political corruption by distinguishing between Honest Graft and Dishonest Graft. The former being personal and political party financial gains secured through use of insider information or bestowing salary benefits on cohorts, while simultaneously benefiting State projects. As he said, “The books are always all right. The money in the city treasury is all right. Everything is all right.” Dishonest graft, he said, is the use of political position to engage in illegal activity such as accepting bribes and kickbacks, engaging in theft, blackmailing criminals, or collaborating with gamblers and other lawbreakers.

President Thomas Jefferson appointed Philadelphian Levett Harris (ca. 1784–1839?) as U.S. Consul to Russia at St. Petersburg in 1803. Harris held the position until 1817, with a period as chargé d’affaires while Ambassador John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) was in Ghent negotiating the treaty to end the War of 1812. In 1817, Harris returned to the United States to seek appointment as Ambassador to Russia. His prospects were high, given the Czar’s favor and his length of service as consul. These hopes were dashed when a series of revelations about consular corruption came to light through other U.S. government personnel and American merchants in Russia. The accusations primarily related to Harris profiting by the certification of nonneutral ships as American at the port of St. Petersburg under false papers, and by using monetary incentive to encourage his appointees to do the same. His nomination was quietly squelched, and Harris sued William D. Lewis, whose printed pamphlet against him did much to null his potential ambassadorship. The Supreme Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania handled the case Harris v. Lewis, which lasted around seven years and ended in Harris’ favor after a 16-day trial with a minimal monetary award.

Cheney J. Schopieray

Curator of Manuscripts

“Mrs. Ross has always been a wandering character, her relatives don’t know where she lives or how. Her history, if written, might be as romantic as that of Rob Roy, Jesse James or Belle Star.” 

Mrs. Ross is “a woman of uncommon intelligence and great will power, but as having obtuse moral perceptions, unscrupulousness as to the means, by which she attained her desires.” 

(E. S. & J. T. Drake letters, October 16 and November 10, 1893; Port Gibson, Mississippi; King Family Papers).

In late 1888, a woman named Mrs. Ross arrived at the McLean Asylum for the Insane at Somerville, Massachusetts, to visit patient William H. King. Though she had never met him, she rejoiced in the belief that she had found her long lost uncle who had been presumed dead decades before. She was taken by his “patience, gentleness and beautiful humility” and began to work toward bettering his living conditions and comfort. She sent him papers and gifts. When Mr. King had a sore red spot on the bridge of his nose, she bought and sent him a pair of new gold spectacles with fine French crown lenses. Fearing for his discomfort she recommended elegant coverings for his leather armchair. Believing him in need of attention, she pleaded for increased social calls by herself and by prominent men and women who had known him. She encouraged frequent visits by asylum personnel to give him smiles and cheering words to lift his “poor broken spirit.” Nothing should be spared to provide for his comfort and happiness.

The institutionalized William H. King had been a prominent Newport, Rhode Island, merchant who made his fortune as a trader in China in the 1840s and 1850s. William King never married or had children, and by the early 1860s showed increasing signs of mental distress, characterized by heavy alcohol consumption, paranoia, hallucinations, and violent outbursts. His brother Edward King worked with Dr. Benjamin D. Silliman and others to assess William’s condition. On July 31, 1866, the King family had William involuntarily committed to the McLean Asylum under the care of superintendent Dr. Edward Cowles. There he remained for the 22 years before his unexpected visit from Mrs. Ross.

“Who is Mrs. Ross,” read newspaper headlines in New York, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts in 1893. Mrs. Ross had filed a petition for habeas corpus with the Supreme Judicial Court in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, for the illegal institutionalization of William King and his unlawful detention at the asylum. She argued that he was sane and should gain his freedom. Immediately after the 1893 petition, W. H. King was removed from the asylum to a hotel, evaluated by a guardian ad litem, found to be insane and in need of medical care for seizures, and re-committed by the judge’s decree. Mrs. Ross appealed and asked for a jury trial to determine in/sanity. The appeal was rejected and dismissed on December 6, 1893. And thus began a string of lawsuits and appeals that would wend their way from Massachusetts to Rhode Island, to New York, and to the United States Supreme Court over the next six years. 

Another legal battle between Mrs. Ross and the King family arose several months later upon the death of David King, Jr., William King’s nephew and guardian. The flurry of claims and counterclaims in the courts fed curiosity about Mrs. Ross, and newspapers scrambled for information about her. Who was this woman and how was she related to William H. King? The Providence Journal published regular updates and shared the common refrain, “No Explanation of the Identity of the Mysterious Mrs. Ross Who is Fighting the King Heirs.” Lawyers for Mrs. Ross refused to disclose her background so as not to prejudice the case. 

Mrs. Ross’ opening affidavit of December 1894 carefully narrated the abduction of William King by his brothers at Troy, New York, in 1866, his forced institutionalization, the sketchy and missing paperwork surrounding it, and called into question the dismissal of her habeas corpus case the preceding year. She claimed that William H. King was not actually William H. King, but instead was her uncle Peletiah W. Gordon. Few other facts were provided and the bits and pieces about Mrs. Ross were only revealed through depositions of people who knew her through family. They shared that Eugenia A. Webster Ross was born at Port Gibson, Mississippi, to parents James and Christiana Calhoun. Her mother had died when she was young, and Eugenia was raised by her grandmother, Aletheia Gordon. According to an aunt-in-law, “Mrs. Alethea [sic] Gordon, the grandmother of Mrs. Ross, was very penurious and exceedingly eccentric. I believe that tendency thus inherited by Mrs. Ross had developed into insanity upon questions of property and the inheritance of great estates.” Eugenia Calhoun married Captain Isaac A. Ross. After her husband’s death in the 1870s, she did not inform the captain’s mother, who only learned of it months afterward from another source. Acquaintances claimed she had a “roving” disposition with no fixed address, unknown sources of money, and no estate through her deceased husband. She assumed different names in her travels and was boarding sporadically in Salem, Massachusetts between 1888 and 1891 as “Mrs. Black.”

At length, on July 1, 1895, a final decree from the Supreme Court Appellate Division at Providence, decided on William H. King’s relative, George Gordon King, as guardian. 

The King family heard nothing more from Eugenia Ross until the death of William H. King on March 6, 1897, at the psychiatric Butler Hospital in Providence where he had been transferred. The King family deliberated on the most appropriate executors for William’s massive estate. George Gordon King and Sarah Birckhead, representing the two branches of family, were granted letters of administration. Eugenia A. Webster Ross filed an appeal to the Supreme Court of Rhode Island at Newport after the probate court upheld the appointment. She argued that George and Sarah were not next of kin, that Eugenia was next of kin, and that the Newport probate court granted the appointments before a legally required 30-day window passed. Over the spring and summer of 1897, Eugenia led her lawyers on an expedition to find evidence proving that the William H. King that traded in China was not the man who died in Butler Hospital and that Peletiah W. Gordon was the deceased. They called at the homes of King family members, demanding that they turn over or reproduce family photographs, private and business papers, family histories, and a sculpted bust. The goal was to secure depositions of persons who could visually identify which man was which.

On July 22, 1897, the Chief Justice ordered a deposition by Mrs. Ross, but she could not be found. The King’s lawyers hired the Pinkerton Agency to find her and deliver the summons. When the agent discovered her, he attempted to serve the document in the street. Mrs. Ross “caused a disturbance,” refused to accept the paper, and failed to appear before the judge. She was held in contempt. The case was decided in favor of the Kings for Mrs. Ross’ contempt and failure to submit the ordered bill of particulars in the Fall Term 1897. Mrs. Ross was terrifically frustrated and believed that she had been denied justice on account of a legal technicality. The case rose to the United States Supreme Court, which decided against her on November 7, 1898. And then as the Kings, the courts, creditors, and unpaid assistants began to press in on Mrs. Ross for financial obligations associated with the previous six years of litigation, she vanished.

Eugenia Aletheia Calhoun Webster Ross was mysterious, but the lawyers, newspapers, in-laws, and detectives were simplistic in reducing her to an “adventuress” perpetually clamoring after wealthy men’s estates. Born in 1836, Eugenia was raised brought up by her father and grandmother in a tumultuous environment. Her father James was a manipulative and cruel man, who engaged in duplicitous real and personal property schemes. He relied on a combination of threats, genealogy and inheritance arguments, and questionable legal transactions to secure for himself the property of his in-laws, the Gordons. After the death of Eugenia’s mother in 1838, James installed himself on his mother-in-law’s cotton plantation at Port Gibson. He threatened that if she did not grant permission for him to live there, he would take Eugenia away to Texas where he would disallow any contact between them. Aletheia gave in and James, Eugenia, and Eugenia’s brother Adam settled on the plantation. An agreement was signed, stipulating that they could live on the plantation beginning June 28, 1837, so long as James kept the plantation profitable. James began calling the plantation “Calhoun Place.” 

This arrangement lasted six years, until Aletheia’s husband died. His will stipulated that Aletheia would receive $1,000 annual allowance plus four enslaved domestic workers; considerable property would go to their children Christiana and Peletiah W. Gordon; and an investment was allotted to grandson Adam Calhoun for his education. To frustrate these terms, James refused to give Aletheia any accounting of plantation costs or profits. He also intervened and prevented her annual allowance, providing instead erratic small amounts of cash and groceries. Without regular funds, she was unable to pay debts, at least one of which went to court. She believed that James was intending to lead the courts into forcing her to sell the plantation property, which James would then buy for himself. Aletheia’s fears were justified. At an earlier date, she had sent James to Kanawha, Virginia, to pay taxes on 6,000 acres of Gordon lands. He instead sold the land to pay the taxes, and bought the property under his own name. To make matters worse, James’ barbarity prompted 10 of the 21 enslaved men, women, and children at “Calhoun Place” to flee to Aletheia’s home for protection. James gathered together several men and attacked her house, breaking into her kitchen, shouting, threatening, and pursuing the terrified enslaved laborers. 

Eugenia Calhoun’s grandmother died in 1844, and she was left alone with her father. In a horrific irony, James became Aletheia’s executor. He took over the property, remarried, and parceled and sold parts of the land. Eugenia observed these actions. She saw court proceedings and women’s secondary legal status repeatedly favor her father’s unjust efforts to steal property and monies that rightly belonged to her mother and to her uncle—and to Eugenia as next of kin. What she didn’t witness herself, she learned through papers and court records later. Her father’s preoccupation with avarice revealed itself when Eugenia’s fiancée Isaac A. Ross asked James for permission to marry. Her father refused on grounds that Ross was only interested in Eugenia for her property. Nevertheless, Eugenia and Isaac married in 1858, and shortly thereafter “Isaac A. Ross & wife” sued James E. Calhoun for the inheritance he’d stolen from Aletheia, Christiana, and Eugenia. The Civil War caused delays, but on March 15, 1866, a portion of the claims were validated, and the courts awarded Eugenia Ross $17,641.86. 

Eugenia Ross spent her 30s handling various aspects of her husband’s mercantile business, while simultaneously pursuing two avenues of legal inquiry. She attempted to track down her uncle Peletiah W. Gordon, who may or may not have been dead, and to secure her just inheritance from the Gordon property spuriously sold or re-arranged by her father. In the latter case, she engaged in multiple Mississippi lawsuits that finally concluded in 1895. In the former case, Eugenia’s path became murky. The Pinkertons later suggested that Eugenia became a Spiritualist during the Civil War period and that a medium working out of the Gayoso Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, told her that her uncle Peletiah W. Gordon was still alive. Her investigations discovered that as a youth, Peletiah ran away multiple times, from home and from his school at Lawrenceville. After a final argument with his mother Aletheia, he left the family for good in his late teens. The last piece of information Eugenia learned was that her uncle was arrested in Boston for pickpocketing $27 and afterward absconded.

It is not clear how Eugenia came to the conclusion that her uncle changed his identity. In the 1870s, she came to believe Archibald W. Gordon (A.W.G.) of Mobile, Alabama, was in truth Peletiah W. Gordon (P.W.G.). She claimed that P.W.G. ran away and became director of the U.S. Bank at Mobile as A.W.G. Though the theory was far fetched, her strong advocacy, intelligence, and persuasiveness convinced lawyers to take it to court. They worked for her on promises of percentage returns, while she in turn borrowed money from individuals on similar assurances. Isaac B. Rich, Spiritualist editor of the newspaper Banner of Light (Boston, 1857–1907), offered to put up over $20,000 on loan and percentage returns for the effort. The Alabama cases were not decided in her favor. Eugenia Ross followed other genealogical trails, looking for P.W.G. and other ancestors’ estates, from Texas and New Hampshire to England, eventually leading to William H. King in the asylum at Somerville, Massachusetts, in 1888.

In February 1893, after mayor Rantoul began an investigation, Mrs. Dowdle revealed her identity. Mrs. Ross/ Black had convinced Phoebe Dowdle that she would be placed in an insane asylum if she shared even the tiniest detail about her identity with the Huses or anyone else. Mrs. Dowdle was so terrified that she remained in the Huses’ home, fearing they wouldn’t believe her true circumstances and that at any moment, Mrs. Black/Ross would show up and have her committed. Mayor Rantoul arranged for Mrs. Dowdle to travel home to Mississippi, met with Mrs. Ross and her lawyer to turn over unpaid board for the Huses, and the affair ended. Or, nearly so. Unbelievably, in December 1893, Mrs. Ross sent a letter to Phoebe Dowdle, stating that she was coming to visit in a few weeks. 

The Clements Library’s collections are filled with complicated people, who seem to plead simultaneously for empathy and opprobrium. Mrs. Ross shrewdly built legal cases with a paucity of evidence, manipulated and deceived lawyers and people who loaned or gave her money, caused emotional pain to bereaved family members, inserted herself into the life of a mentally ill man on false pretenses, kidnapped and psychologically tortured an older woman for multiple years, crafted two or more identities for deceptive reasons, and much else. At the same time, she grew up watching her father ruthlessly manipulate her grandmother for advantage, experienced his threats and violence, and saw her own property stolen by him. She developed a strong character and a sense that she had to fight for her inheritance and her rights in the male-dominated spheres of the court system and daily life. The tale of Mrs. Ross has important ties to the history of mental health care, women and the law, property, slavery, Spiritualism, journalism, and more in the 19th century United States. Her full story has yet to be written, but when it is, it might just be as romantic as that of Rob Roy, Jesse James, or Belle Starr.

Emiko Hastings

Curator of Books

In 1893, Stanley said he attended the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and made his snake oil liniment in a live demonstration, killing hundreds of snakes in front of his audience. If indeed this event took place as he described, it must have been an unofficial part of the fair, as Stanley does not appear among any official lists of exhibitors. After this publicity stunt, Stanley expanded his sales to the eastern United States and set up a factory in Providence, Rhode Island.

Stanley was apparently quite the showman, at least according to his own recounting. He was said to keep tame rattlesnakes as pets to be used in his shows, and claimed to have been bitten hundreds of times by venomous snakes, surviving only because he had the perfect cure for snake-bite. While several purported snake-bite antidotes were mentioned in his pamphlet, including a poultice of indigo and salt, applying a fresh-cut onion to the bite, and drinking generous amounts of whiskey, he did not specify which one he himself used. He raised thousands of rattlesnakes on his snake farms in Texas and Rhode Island in order to render their fat into oil for his liniment. The snake skins were tanned and made into slippers, belts, and neckties. Stanley’s Snake Oil Liniment claimed to cure rheumatism, gout, headache, toothache, sore throat, indigestion, frostbite, partial paralysis, lumbago, neuralgia, and insect and reptile bites. Ironically, Stanley also warned would-be customers against false imitations of his snake oil that were sold by traveling salespeople. He assured buyers that Clark Stanley’s Snake Oil Liniment was sold only by druggists.

Stanley wasn’t even the only person of his day to mass-produce snake oil as a medicine. Others across the country were manufacturing snake oil from rattlesnakes, crafting liniments containing the oil as an ingredient, or selling products called “snake oil” that did not actually contain any snake products. A number of these also traded on a supposed link to Native traditions, including Blackhawk’s Liniment, Rub-in-Oil sold by “Chief White Horse” of Madison, and White Eagle’s Indian Oil Liniment. 

There does not seem to be a clear answer as to why snake oil had a surge in popularity while other animal oils remained in limited use. The reported ease and profitability of snake farming may have had something to do with it, compared to the difficulty of commercially producing bear or wildcat oil. As a venomous creature, the snake is naturally more dangerous and exciting than the common goose, squirrel, or skunk. Snake oil may also have caught the popular imagination because of its strong association with cowboys and the imagery of the American West. 

By the time Clark Stanley’s Snake Oil Liniment was finally discredited, the term “snake oil” was already being used disparagingly to refer to any worthless cure-all medicine. Over a decade before Stanley claimed to have made his debut at the World’s Columbian Exposition, a May 15, 1882, issue of the Chicago Medical Review discussed snake oil as a fraud: “There are persons who still have great faith in the virtues of rattlesnake oil, and believe it a specific for rheumatism. A traveling quack who announced that his cure-all was compounded of rattlesnake oil, reaped a silver harvest from crowds on the square of a large city, not long ago.” 

The final blow for Stanley came in 1916, when he was charged with violating the Food and Drugs Act. His snake oil liniment had been tested and found to contain nothing but “a light mineral oil (petroleum product) mixed with about 1 per cent of fatty oil (probably beef fat), capsicum, and possibly a trace of camphor and turpentine.” Having falsely represented his liniment as a remedy for numerous ailments, he was fined $20. The era of snake oil as medicine was finally over, but it continues to live on in the popular imagination as the quintessential American fraud.

Paul J. Erickson

Randolph G. Adams Director

William L. Clements Library

Many authors of advice manuals, city directories, and novels shared a concern with helping the guileless avoid being duped. These writers were particularly attuned to the dangers that confidence men posed to young people who were moving to American cities to find work. Away from the familiar environments of home and church, these transplants were targets of seducers, gamblers, prostitutes, and more. The table of contents of an 1896 book titled The Frauds of America: How They Work and How to Foil Them by E.G. Redmond (Chicago, 1896) is a list of urban swindles for which Americans needed to be on the lookout: forgers and counterfeiters, pickpockets and shoplifters, mail thieves, Ponzi schemes, genealogical humbugs, sellers of counterfeit goods, blackmailers, mock auctioneers, and thimble riggers (the thimblerig was a form of shell game). As Karen Halttunen so brilliantly outlined in her book Confidence Men and Painted Women (New Haven, 1982), all of these anxieties stemmed from the fact that increasing numbers of Americans in the antebellum U.S. were in regular contact with strangers.

In the nation’s growing cities, signs of respectability, such as good manners and decorous dress, served as codes for trustworthiness. But respectable clothes and comportment could be easily faked, particularly with the help of the aforementioned advice guides. The same books that told people how to identify spurious banknotes or untrustworthy salesmen could also serve as instruction manuals for how to more effectively trick the unsuspecting. Indeed, the shelves of the Clements Library are not only rife with anxiety about being cheated, they are also filled with advice on how to do the cheating. Narratives of mercantile life told shop clerks how to include their thumb in the measurement of fabric, so as to short customers a thumb’s width. They advised grocers on exactly how much sand they could get away with adding to their sugar barrel without having customers complain.

The frequency with which anxiety about fraud and deception turns up in the Clements Library’s collections raises questions about what living under such conditions does to a people. Can we trust our institutions? Our government? Can we trust one another? Herman Melville’s 1857 novella The Confidence-Man (New York, 1857) serves in many respects as the core text for all of these questions. Set on the Mississippi steamboat Fidèle on April Fools’ Day, the novella shows the title character turning up in a multitude of guises to ask all of the ship’s passengers for their confidence. In the book’s final scene, an old man struggles in the dark to compare two banknotes he had gotten in St. Louis to the images in a newly acquired counterfeit detector. Unable to decide if the notes are genuine or not, he spoke for many of his compatriots in the antebellum U.S.: “I don’t know, I don’t know . . . there’s so many marks of all sorts to go by, it makes it a kind of uncertain.” Understanding how people in the past dealt with uncertainty is one of the greatest challenges that contemporary historians face, and it’s why the Clements collections remain such a tremendous resource.

Developments

Graphics materials in the archives have a unique ability to represent the complexities of the human experiences and foster empathy, but also create challenges in processing, housing, and conservation as our fastest growing collections area.

By definition, marginalized voices exist at the periphery of mainstream narratives. Taking the time to identify and illuminate hidden details is often the job of collection processors and catalogers and it can be easy to take for granted the time and skill required to ensure that the materials are  well represented and discoverable. The Clements Library has demonstrated the impact funding can have on elevating the accessibility and usability of records. Through grants from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation and the Frederick S. Upton Foundation, we were able to take the extra research time required on the Richard Pohrt Jr. Collection of Native American Photography to ensure that the correct people are identified in the photos, and to include the various English and Indigenous language versions of their names. And this fall we welcome a 2-year graphics cataloging fellow, Annika Dekker, through new funding provided once again by the Delmas and Upton Foundations to assist in organizing and describing other materials in the Graphics Division. Archivists must carefully curate and provide descriptive metadata to ensure that future generations can comprehend the significance of these artistic pieces accurately.

While you have seen in this issue of the Quarto that there are ample examples of Arts and Resistance throughout the collection, I have been thinking a lot about the Graphics Material Division lately. We bid farewell to Clayton Lewis as he retired as curator in June. Through a crowdfunding campaign, friends and colleagues are raising money in his honor to set up the Clayton Lewis American Visual Culture Fellowship. Supporting the travel of visiting researchers, helps to offset the funding cuts in humanities departments around the country and encourages creative research with the Clements collections.

Events

Ice Cream Social

100 years old never looked so good! On June 15, the Clements Library gathered staff, friends, family, students, and the greater community of Ann Arbor on the south lawn of the Clements to celebrate its birthday. The community enjoyed complimentary ice cream and activities such as making their own spy quills containing secret messages, coloring pieces from the Clements collection, and checking out a 1923 Duesenberg. Though it seems the best activity of the evening was the unplanned gathering under the 100 year old portico to avoid the rain shower. There’s nothing quite like the detail from an Albert Kahn building. It was a great birthday party and we can’t wait for more in the future!

Staff News

Celebrating the Retirement of Clayton Lewis

We bid farewell and happy retirement to long-time Curator of Graphics Material, Clayton Lewis, on June 20 at the Ann Arbor City Club. In addition to a reception, the program featured speakers sharing stories as well as presentations of gifts in Clayton’s honor. Clayton worked as adjunct faculty to the University of Michigan School of Art and in the field of commercial printing before becoming the first Curator of Graphics Material at the Clements in 2002. He greatly expanded the holdings of the Clements, and worked with donors to secure major collections including the David V. Tinder Collection of Michigan Photography and the Richard Pohrt Jr. Collection of Native American Photography. We wish him all the best on his travels, with scenery to enjoy and an easel by his side.

New Staff Members

The Reader Services Division welcomes Emma Schneider to assist in the reading room and with curatorial projects. Emma graduated from Kalamazoo College with a degree in religion, and has previous experience working as an outdoor adventure guide, and organizing the archives at Interlochen Arts Academy. 

Monteith’s Map-Drawing and Object Lessons (New York, 1869).

Hair Album

The Clements Library collection includes a number of hair albums, but the newly purchased Maria Marsh Hair Album 1850–1853 stands out for several reasons. The album contains around 100 hair samples, an unusually large number, and there is work to be done in tracking some of the relationships represented in the album. Other albums tend to contain intricately worked hair samples, but these are quite simple, many with a blunt cut where one can almost feel the snip of the scissors close to one’s ear. Also intriguing are these beautiful metallic hearts that are used to affix the hair to the album pages, adding an extra element of affection and care. The most heartbreaking is the sample taken from the head of an unnamed infant who died at four months of age. The hair was too short to loop, and only one side shows evidence of scissors, since the infant’s feathery hair had not yet grown long enough for a first haircut.

The Frank Reade series

Awaiting cataloging and shelving at the Clements is a single-volume compilation of periodicals from the Wide Wake Library, including 20 issues from the Frank Reade series and 15 issues from Beadle’s Half-Dime Library (featuring Broadway Billy and Deadwood Dick), originally issued between 1883 and 1890. The Frank Reade series was the first science fiction periodical in the world and has been referred to as the lost ancestor of steampunk. Featuring the adventures of several generations of the Reade family, the series channeled the optimism and excitement of the age, sparked by the seemingly unlimited possibilities of electricity, steam power, and other advances. Boy inventor Frank Reade produced robots, submarines, airships, automobiles, and any number of ingenious devices which played key roles in the stories. The series captures a moment in time before corporations took over the business of inventing, Thomas Edison was a hero, there was collective optimism about the beneficial uses of technology, the myth of the American West was taking shape, and the spread of these new inventions served to connect distant parts of the country.

Author Harold Enron wrote the first four issues of the Frank Reade series, including, The Steam Man of the Plains. As described by Enron, the steam man “was a structure of iron plates joined in sections with rivets, hinges or bars as the needs required…. The hollow legs and arms of the man made the reservoirs or boilers. In the broad chest was the furnace…. The tall hat worn by the man formed the smoke stack. The driving rods, in sections, extended down the man’s legs, and could be set in motion so skillfully that a tremendous stride was attained, and a speed far beyond belief.”

The Children’s Hour

Several photographic items related to children and their experiences, including interactions with 19th-century print culture, have come into the Clements Library recently.

A beautiful tintype of an unidentified young woman who is a little older, possibly African American, holding a photo album.

The Children’s Hour

Three small pamphlets, the largest measuring 6 x 4½ inches, Additions to our children’s literature and tiny book collections include three recent finds. In a tiny pamphlet, Rufus Merrill (1803–1891), one of the biggest provincial publishers (Concord, NH) took a firm stand in the perennially thorny dog vs. cat debate. Book About Dogs and Cats (Concord, N.H.,1856) reports that cats are undesirable, “self-willed and forward to the last degree,” whereas when it comes to dogs, “No other animal is gifted with so much sagacity or is so faithful to his master.” This pamphlet additionally gives us the name of an owner, signed inside the back cover by Theodore Huff on October 1, 1860, so it may be possible to connect this item to an individual and his life circumstances at the time he acquired it.

One might expect to find a morality tale when opening the next item, Who Stole the Grapes, published by the Sunday School Union in New York between 1856 and 1858; but one may be surprised by the lesson learned. Rather than a wayward child deterred from a life of crime, the bad actor in the story was a spiteful teacher, who framed the boy for the theft. Falsely accused, the boy recognized the virtue in not seeking revenge against one’s persecutors.

The last item is an illustrated pamphlet titled Jerry, Jenny and Jim, published by the Chicago Corset Company between 1882 and 1889. An example of how things were circulated and re-circulated, the backsheet advertisement for a dry goods store in Fargo was likely added to the item after its arrival in the Dakota Territory. The story concerns Jim Jumbletum, his wife, and his mule. But the footnote text that runs throughout the story contains information on Ball’s H.P. corsets, including the endorsement of the corset’s elastic side section, which “emits no disagreeable odor, and will not heat the person or decay with age.” It’s an odd combination of an amusing illustrated story for kids with an extended, very specific ad for corsets. At the end Jim learns the importance of purchasing the right corset for his wife.

Freeman obtained prominence in her field, referred to as “one of the best known and most beloved librarians in the country” by the Cleveland Plain Dealer upon her retirement in 1940. Photograph courtesy of The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library. “Marilla Waite Freeman.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. https://digital collections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-bef2-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

The Novel Club met to discuss James Hilton’s Lost Horizon in December 1935, two years after its initial publication. Four years later the novel would top Simon & Schuster’s list of mass-marketed Pocket Books. Lost Horizon related the story of four people kidnapped while fleeing conflict in the fictional city of Baskul and taken to the Tibetan Kunlun mountains. They were brought to a utopian valley where the inhabitants lived to be hundreds of years old and moderation was the rule of the land. This valley was home to the mythical lamasery called “Shangri-La,” which has since become a catchphrase meant to invoke images of a paradise, typically in a location perceived as distant and exotic.

Freeman compiled a list of discussion questions for the group along with a biographical sketch of Hilton, using information received from his publishers and from Hilton himself. In his correspondence with Freeman, Hilton praised her reading of the tale: “I wish I could explain more fully in a letter the philosophy of the book, but I can see from your own suggestions that you have read it with much sympathy and understanding” (September 3, 1935). As an homage to Marilla Freeman, a few staff members here at the Clements Library chose to host our own book club to read and discuss the novel using her questions as a guide.

The most striking of Freeman’s questions asked if the “world cataclysm” that Hilton warned about was already upon them. Looking back, Hilton’s words feel prophetic, coming between world wars: Hitler rose to power two years before the club met to discuss Lost Horizon; they were a few years into the Great Depression; and the first major drought contributing to the Dust Bowl had occurred the year before. Unfortunately, most of the Novel Group responses were not recorded, so we can only speculate how the group might have responded to this question. Our book club discussed our perception that a cataclysm has been ongoing for some time now, and that maybe there has never been a time when the feeling of impending doom fully disappears.

In the novel, one of Shangri-La’s central purposes was to act as a repository for a large library of books and art, reflecting Hilton’s very real worries about these treasures being lost in times of conflict. He expressed this fear in an interview, stating that, “If humanity rushes on at its present headlong speed it must inevitably crash sooner or later. When that time comes I’m afraid all the precious things in this world will be lost—books, pictures, music . . . ”. This focus on Shangri-La as an archive piqued the interest of the Novel Club here at the Clements Library, calling to mind a Japanese print in our collection marked with a stamp indicating that it was held in a bomb shelter throughout WWII for its safety.

Freeman wondered if “Eastern mysticism” was one of the main draws of Hilton’s story. The Clements group reflected that Hilton referenced “Eastern” themes and ideas in a manner that may not have been challenging to white audiences of the time. While reading this book and watching the original film adaptation, depictions of Tibetan and Chinese characters stood out as racist caricatures. Although Shangri-La is in Tibet, it’s explained that Tibetan and Chinese people don’t have the stamina to live as long as white people. The leader and founder of the lamasery, the High Lama, is himself a French Christian. On top of this, the film adaptation casts a white man in the main speaking Chinese role, for which he received an Academy Award nomination.

Freeman’s correspondence with James HIlton revealed the author’s hope that his novel would focus attention on his fear that “the world has reached a parting of the ways in which a decision must be made between the reign of violence and that of the quieter life; otherwise, civilization as we know it will perish from the earth.”

While many of these depictions were viewed as offensive by our book club today, we did wonder if the novel’s portrayals came across as progressive in its day. Conway, the main character of the story, settles into Shangri-La quite quickly. This is in part because of the decade that he spent living in China, leading him to feel “at home with Chinese ways,” hinting at the positive effects of a non-Western culture. While Hilton did seem to have a real reverence for Tibet, he never actually visited the region: “I entertain a lot of dreams and illusions about it that would probably be rudely shattered. I prefer to keep them intact,” he explained in an interview. One of my coworkers brought up the point that something similar might happen in our work, where something we write with the intention of being inclusive and respectful might be considered offensive to future readers.

The one recorded response of the original Novel Club was to the question regarding the success of the novel, which the members attributed to “Its peace, its picture of a place of refuge from the present world unrest.” Freeman’s discussion questions for the Novel Club included the prompt, “What would we do if a Novel Club picnic should meet with the experience related in this book?” Like the character Mallinson who spent the entirety of the story looking for a way to escape, perhaps some would resent being kept away from their friends, family, and the life that they had built back home. Others, myself included, viewed Shangri-La as a restful opportunity to take a break from our busy day-today lives.

In the novel, one of Shangri-La’s central purposes was to act as a repository for a large library of books and art, reflecting Hilton’s very real worries about these treasures being lost in times of conflict.

The importance of rest and relaxation is emphasized throughout Lost Horizon. Upon hearing the phrase “slacker” being used in a negative manner, a resident of Shangri-La remarks, “Is there not too much tension in the world at present, and might it not be better if more people were slackers?” The 1973 musical film adaptation of the book includes the very charming song “The Things I Will Not Miss,” which features a long-term inhabitant of Shangri-La expressing her desire to leave the lamasery and a woman who was more recently brought there wishing to stay. The one thing that both characters fully agree on is that they would not miss work, which I feel is a sentiment most of the audience past and present can relate to. The focus on (moderate) relaxation in the story feels revolutionary and freeing to imagine.

Joining the previous members of Cleveland’s Novel Club across time was a very moving and impactful experience. The opportunity to slow down and analyze a piece of literature with my colleagues helped me to better understand my fellow staff members and the novel, and to share a literary experience with like-minded book lovers of almost a century ago.

Title vignette from Colton’s Atlas of America (New York, 1856)

Colton’s Atlas of America was one of many publications of Joseph Hutchins Colton (1800–1893) who, from 1831, produced railroad maps, immigrant guides, folding pocket maps, large wall maps, and compilation atlases. He was aided by his son, George Woolworth Colton (1827–1901), whose map compilations comprised the contents of the Atlas of America. So what vision of America did the Vignette Title lead us to expect? Native Americans were placed boldly in the foreground and elevated above the landscape, encouraging us to expect some delineation of their own lands among the 63 maps of provinces, states, and territories inside the atlas. But we look in vain. Only on the maps of North America and the United States was a specifically Indian Territory, west of Arkansas, delineated and colored.

The Indian Territory, barely present in the Atlas of America, resulted from the The Indian Removal Act of 1830, whose purpose was described by President Andrew Jackson as “. . . the benevolent policy of the Government, steadily pursued for nearly thirty years, in relation to the removal of the Indians beyond the white settlements is approaching to a happy consummation. Two important tribes have accepted the provision made for their removal at the last session of Congress, and it is believed that their example will induce the remaining tribes also to seek the same obvious advantages.”

Forests gone and hunting grounds lost. Those are the “obvious advantages” observed by the Native people on the rock in the Title Vignette.

Who created this subversive image? The vignette is signed “C.E. Doepler del[ineavit = designed it]” and “C. Wise sc[ulpsit = engraved it]”. C. Wise, the engraver, remains unidentified though his artisanal skills are clear. Carl Emil Doepler (1824–1905), on the other hand, was a German artist resident in New York City in the 1850s. Born in Warsaw, Poland, and trained as an artist in Dresden and Munich, he arrived in the city in 1849 to work as an illustrator for the publishers Harper and Brothers and G.P. Putnam, among others, for whom he created numerous images for children’s books and popular histories. His work address at Harper and Brothers at 82 Cliff Street in downtown Manhattan was only a few blocks away from 172 Williams Street where Joseph Hutchins Colton maintained his publishing house.

Doepler did not stay in New York; he returned to Germany by 1860 where he taught costume design in Weimar and became the costume designer for the city’s theater. He is probably best known for the costumes he designed for early productions of Richard Wagner’s Das Ring des Nibelungen, the great opera cycle concerning mythic Teutonic gods. Doepler’s ideas for how these gods were dressed have influenced productions of the Ring cycle to the present day. The title vignette for Colton’s Atlas of America showed Doepler’s early interest in cultural representation through clothing. His later working methods on the Nibelungen costumes might tell us something about how he created the frontispiece for the Colton atlas. The German scholar Joachim Heinzle has described Doepler’s efforts to produce “historically correct” Germanic costumes through his research in museums and study of early Teutonic weaponry, jewelry, and clothing to achieve what he thought was an accurate presentation of the mythic characters in Wagner’s opera.

Doepler may also have been familiar with the work of Swiss artist Karl Bodmer (1809-1893) who was also well known in Germany for his artistic works. Bodmer accompanied Prince Alexander Philipp Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied (1782–1867) on his trip from 1832 to 1834 through the interior of North America, traveling up the Missouri River into the heart of the Great Plains, deep in the homelands of the Mandan and Hidatsa, which were also the hunting and traveling regions for several other indigenous groups, such as the Sioux, Assiniboine, Cree, and Blackfoot. The Prince’s matter of fact descriptions of Native Americans, given without editorial nuance, were illustrated by Bodmer’s strikingly detailed colored images and published in German as Reise in das Innere Nord-Amerikas (Coblenz, 1839–41) and in English as Travels in the interior of North America (London, 1843–44). Their joint work created an archive of information for Native peoples of the northern Great Plains.

But what is the “civilization” invoked? Fences and farms, steam and railways, houses and tall buildings, the civilization of Manifest Destiny, a concept coined in detail by John Louis O’Sullivan, who summed it up in his article on the Oregon question in the newspaper, The Eastern State Journal (White Plains, NY, January 29, 1846): “And that claim [to Oregon] is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the Continent which Providence has given for the development [sic] of the great experiment of liberty and federative self government entrusted to us.” However, Manifest Destiny comes at a price. Inside the atlas, a geographical description of North America reveals the cost: “Of the American aborigines few remain. They have vanished from the land before the march of civilization.” In spite of its title, Doepler’s frontispiece, with its foregrounding of Native Americans, resists civilization and the claims of Manifest Destiny.

When I think about “Resistance” my mind automatically capitalizes the word, and I conjure visions of protests in the street, paint flung on fur coats, tea dumped in the harbor. I dwell on things with high stakes and big consequences, steeped in publicity and fevered debate. In short, I imagine worlds that feel beyond me in my (mostly) quiet library office, where I spend my days bedecked in a cardigan and generally avoiding conflict whenever possible. But in truth, our lives include more acts of resistance than we tend to realize. We might not break the rules, but we sure do bend them. Driving 75 miles per hour in a 70 zone. Reading in bed with a flashlight. Rolling into work five minutes late. Passing a note in class. Which brought to mind one of the favorite things I processed this past year, a stunning volume kept by Marion Shipley while a young teenager at the turn of the 20th century. She filled its pages with exquisitely collaged scenes, colored pencil drawings (including images of cat and elephant butts), newspaper clippings of dashing actors, embarrassing love letters, and several diary entries. The one dated June 7, 1907, is the one that captures my heart, as Marion celebrated having a substitute teacher. “We raised ‘ ’ (look at it upside down). We all drew pictures of each others’ backs and passed them around the class.” And in one of those rare moments of archival serendipity, Marion saved the passed note in her notebook and it stayed safely nestled between its pages all these years.

While students in Marion’s class drew pictures and passed them desk to desk in order to reclaim degrees of power, others used the learning materials themselves to steal some time and agency. Richard M. White, a student at South Carolina College in 1813, wrote himself into being all over his copy of The Elements of Euclid, viz the First Six Books (Philadelphia: 1806), inscribing his name at least 37 times across the volume’s 518 pages. Doing so, the book is more his now than Euclid’s, forefronting his interpretation, his ownership, and his experience beyond all else. In the margin beside a particularly challenging exercise, he scrawled, “Is it not difficult to get knowledge? Yes it is out of Euclid. Ergo.” And elsewhere, in perhaps my favorite addition to the book, is an exquisitely simple and beautifully oversized “Oh Man” plastered across the top of the page alongside two hand drawn geometrical diagrams. You can imagine this student, frustrated and ink-stained, using the text itself to vent his exasperation. Perhaps like the Springfield Seminary, the students here were told that “complaining of lessons” was forbidden, but what if it was done silently in the empty space of the page?

“I have twenty eight pupils, most of them from thirteen to seventeen & some as wild as young colts. I am sometimes inclined to wish them very far away from me[.] [T]hey continue to keep me all the time busy & all the time tired.”

Looking for signs of this, I paged through a notebook kept by an unnamed itinerant New England schoolmaster, where he compiled instructional exercises and explanations, helpful literary selections, and details about the classes he taught over the years. The leather cover is evocatively warped, raising visions of a water-logged teacher riding through the rain to his next class. Amid beautiful pen-and-ink trigonometry diagrams and surveying examples, lists of student names, and other teacher records, appears the ghostly outline of a left hand. I gently placed my hand over it, and my fingers ever-so-slightly reached beyond the ink mark.

In approximately 1890 while in the throes of a severe illness, an Otoe-Missouria man by the name of Waw-no-she (also known as William “Billy” Faw Faw) experienced a life-changing vision in which two young men appeared and reassured him that he would survive the sickness; a magnificent cedar tree then sprang from the earth accompanied by wild songbirds in fine voice. Faw Faw found deep spiritual meaning in this vision and began spreading the messages he interpreted from the experience. Before long, he had become the figurehead of a movement that preached the resurgence of traditional lifeways, the maintenance of a supportive community built on trust and kindness, and the rejection of pernicious influences wrought by exposure to Euro-American culture (especially land allotment and the consumption of alcohol).

The two men in this group portrait wear bead-embroidered frock coats typical of followers of Faw Faw. The coat worn by the man at far right includes the horse gifting motif. Photograph by William F. Prettyman, ca. 1892.

Adherents of the Faw Faw religion (which included members of the Otoe-Missouria, Ponca, Pawnee, Osage, and other tribes that had been relocated to Indian Territory) wore distinctive articles of clothing that incorporated symbols related to ritual aspects of the faith. Breechcloths and frock coats worn by men were often embellished with spectacular bead-embroidered designs including cedar trees, buffalo skulls, stars, birds, hands, crosses, and human figures posing with horses. By wearing clothing clearly associated with a movement that stood in opposition to the objectives of their colonizers, followers of Faw Faw openly signaled their beliefs through artistic expression. While the Faw Faw religion only lasted from around 1890 to 1895, its beautiful visual legacy remains in many material artifacts and photographs that survive to the present.

Oto Chiefs. The immaculately dressed man seated in the back row far left is William Faw Faw himself. Photography by Lenny & Sawyers, approximately 1891.

New Staff Members

Heather Alphonso lends her experience to the reception staff, greeting researchers and visitors and helping with administrative tasks.

Appointments

In July 2022, Clements Library Director Paul Erickson was officially announced as the president-elect of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, the primary scholarly society for historians studying the era between 1787 and 1860. His term will run from July 2023 to July 2024. He will be the first representative of a library or archive to hold the SHEAR presidency.

Welcome!

The Clements family welcomes its youngest member—Lucy Obata Goeman was born on February 23 to Emiko Obata Hastings, Curator of Books, and her husband Bill Goeman. Lucy’s own interest in books, like Lucy herself, is nascent but growing fast!

Other articles in this issue highlight the work that members of the Clements Library staff have done over the previous century. Julia Miller shows how both collectors and scholars have become more interested in examining original bindings—as opposed to embellished re-bindings— of early American books, an area where we have been focusing some of our acquisitions energy. And Angela Oonk describes the crucial role that building connections with donors has made in sustaining the Clements for its first hundred years.

Everything that we do at the Clements—and everything that we plan to do—is based on our collections, and on their continued growth. And our commitment to the importance of the in-person encounter with primary sources from the American past is stronger than ever, as we emerge from the past three years where the pandemic made those encounters difficult for many researchers. Technology now permits readers on the other side of the world to see manuscripts, photographs, and books from the Clements collection as clearly as they could in the Avenir Room, and we will continue to broaden this mode of access. We will also work to make the library a more welcoming place for an increasingly diverse group of students, scholars, and other visitors. All of the changes that you see when you visit the library over the coming year are intended to help us better tell our story, to let the community at the university and beyond know what we do and what we stand for. We remain committed to preserving the materials in the Clements collection for future generations, but we are also committed to putting them to use for the generation that’s here right now. It’s going to be an exciting second century.

­— Paul Erickson
Randolph G. Adams Director
William L. Clements Library

The Centennial is a celebration of the William L. Clements Library, but it is also a story of the philanthropy of the people who have bolstered the building, collections, and programs through their generosity. This, of course, starts with Mr. Clements himself. Influenced by U-M Professors Thomas M. Cooley and Moses Coit Tyler, Clements had a love of American history and culture that led to his collection and eventual donation of materials. His vision included the funds to build a magnificent facility to house the collection designed by Albert Kahn. While these gifts were extraordinary, Mr. Clements also participated in a variety of other philanthropic causes, but did not offer an explanation behind his gifts. We lack insight into the reasons behind his philanthropy and what influenced his donations—whether it was part of the culture of the time, a sense of duty, or other personal or moral imperative.

In November we celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Clements Library Associates (see sidebar). In addition to a party to mark the celebration, I also hosted 2022 Norton Strange Townshend Fellow Amanda Moniz on the online program Clements Bookworm to discuss her research into philanthropy. One hundred years ago the Clements Library didn’t have any professional fundraising staff let alone research fellows looking for evidence of philanthropy in the archives. The beautiful thing about the archives is that there are innumerable layers of information awaiting new questions to be asked.

As I contemplated the Centennial year and my role within the Clements, I started to think of the Development and Communications Division as a connector of the past, present, and future—perhaps not unlike Mr. Clements. We have modern tools in social media to help highlight stories in the collections for the public and we seek out gifts that ensure that the Clements Library will be here well into the future. One of Dr. Moniz’s research sources was the Divie and Joanna Bethune Collection (1796–1853), but that isn’t the only place we find philanthropy in the archives.

Benjamin Bussey (1757–1842) was a Revolutionary War veteran, excellent businessman, and philanthropist. The Benjamin Bussey Collection at the Clements holds letters from acquaintances, organizations, and even strangers asking Bussey for loans and charity. He responded positively with gifts to a wide range of organizations.

Those seeking to influence public perception have long known that “a picture is worth a thousand words,” and the inexpensive availability of trade cards and photos in the 19th Century helped to make them a viable fundraising tool. We have images of social activists Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) and Sojourner Truth (1799–1883) that were sold to advance their work. Some who purchased these cards admired the activists and their causes enough to display their photos in family albums.

Other fundraisers used images to support the institutions where they worked. For example, we see the emergence of a professional fundraiser in Reverend Henry Leonard, the “financial agent” of Heidelberg College (now Heidelberg University) in Tiffin, Ohio, for thirty-two years. Leonard posed for a series of photographs documenting his “fishing trips” to raise money for the University. He was well-known and beloved for his work and his story lives on in the Maxson Ephemera Collection.

Henry Leonard re-enacted his “fishing trips” for the camera. Maxson Album #14, gift of Jerry and Charlotte Maxson.

Illustrated Catalogue of the Floral and Musical Charity Festival (Detroit, 1890). Gift of Martha Seger.

Manuscripts

The Clements recently acquired the 19-item Crow Creek Agency Collection, focusing on a Native American boarding school in Crow Creek, South Dakota. Included is a program for the 1892 Christmas celebration, which lists songs and recitations performed by the students, providing a glimpse of student life at this boarding school and how American culture was represented and taught.

Drawing by Crow Creek boarding school student John Badger, age 15.

Evocative student work accompanies the collection. There are eight letters from students who shared their experiences at the Christmas celebration. Many of them wrote about the presents they received and highlighted the week spent at home with family over the holidays. The collection also includes geometric drawings and collages, examples of how these children expressed themselves in moments of forced cultural assimilation that demonstrate how art can help us think about trauma and its relationship to heritage.

One of the larger recent acquisitions is a collection of papers of Rufus Degranza Pease, including letters, a diary and writings, printed material and more. Pease was a graduate of Willoughby Medical College in 1845, and became an itinerant lecturer on a variety of topics, including astronomy, geology, health, physiognomy, phrenology, and free thought. Following the Civil War, he lectured for the National Association of Christians Opposed to Secret Societies, focusing on Freemasons, Knights Templar, the Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias, and others. Later in his life he became a doctor of physiognomy in Philadelphia where he resided until his death in 1890.

A selection of draft documents from the papers of Rufus DeGranza Pease.

Much of the correspondence to Pease is from fellow peddlers of educational services and instructive lectures in the Midwest. They collaborated and traded information and advice on travel routes, discussed which communities were receptive to their services, and how much could be charged for lectures and classes.

Other letters written by Pease are filled with fury, directed toward Mormons among others. Pease was an abolitionist and anti-slavery advocate, though he raged at Lincoln for the suspension of habeas corpus in 1863. He also believed that he was being persecuted, seemingly somewhat justified by his imprisonments for “seduction and fornication.” He wrote during one imprisonment in October/ November, 1863: “For my part I have seen the hand of Providence in the matter from the first, and cannot doubt that I am bruised for the benefit of your community. No silly and contemptible malicious charge against me of insanity, even though bolstered up by sap headed drug and quack medicine peddlers of Berlin [Wisconsin] as elsewhere, will avail against the true and right…The charges they had diligently circulated for months about me were fornication, even going so far as to specify a person, and also seduction. But finding they could make no headway in that direction immediately commenced to cuttlefish under a wholesale and cold-blooded charge against me, even to indict me of partial, if not entire insanity.”

During his later years in Philadelphia, Pease earned money by providing phrenological and physiognomical advice. He conducted a mail order business, soliciting letters from clients, which arrived with enclosed photographs, posing questions such as: Will I be a good candidate for the priesthood? What type of career should I pursue? For the exorbitant fee of $10, Pease would provide answers by return mail, presumably based on physical characteristics exhibited in the photographs.

Printed materials include the only issue that Pease ever produced of the Journal of Man, published by Rentoul in Philadelphia in 1872, as well as a variety of lecture and course advertisements, synopses and tickets, flyers, and circulars.

Books

New to the Book Division are three pamphlets related to Hunting’s New Railroad Shows, or Hunting’s New United Monster Railroad Shows, a circus traveling by rail car to locations around the United States. The pamphlets are referred to as route books and contain accounts of the seasons of 1891, 1892, and 1894. Each route book starts out with a list of the performers and support staff who traveled with the circus, including: cooks; musicians and other performers; an advance team that traveled ahead to take care of the advertising and to set up the tents; and caretakers for the animals, among others. The heart of each pamphlet is the “Author’s Diary,” comprised of snapshots of stops on the season’s itinerary, recording the location, the population of the towns, the railroads taken to get there, the weather, and any notable events. The financial success of the show is often noted—“bad business,” “fair business,” “good business,” or “big business” (the maligned Easton, Pa. keeps up its reputation of being a “‘bum show town”). The entries provided vivid accounts of the challenges of managing a traveling circus—wrangling people, equipment and animals; the sometimes gruesome injuries sustained by performers; railroad mishaps; and the revolving-door entrance and exodus of performers along the way.

An example from 1892:
Brewsters, N.Y., May 31.— First real
“circus day” of the season. During
the parade this morning a wild bull
made his appearance and stampeded our lady and gentlemen
riders. Prof. Mohn led the enraged
beast a wild chase down a narrow
alley, and Jeanne Earle created a
sensation by making a daring leap
for life from the back of her fiery
steed to terra firma. Where the beast
came from or where he went is an
unsolved mystery. This is the home
of a great many retired showmen.
Mr. Henry Barnum, who is now
connected with the Forepaugh
Show; Mlle. De Granville (Mrs. Dr.
Knox) and Lew Baker, an old time
boss canvas-man, were visitors.”

One of the acts advertised in the 1891 guide was “Professor” Harry Mohn’s dog circus. Mohn was featured in an entry describing an eventful stop in Pennsylvania: “A Duncannon loafer stole one of Prof. Mohn’s trick dogs after the night show, but Harry succeeded in getting the dog back before he left town. Harry Smith was kicked in the groin by a tough. It will lay him off for several days.”

Two of the pamphlets include a “Showman’s Directory and Guide,” compiled annually. The Directory listed contact information for performers and service providers who might be needed by a traveling show. If you required new balloons, or ran out of circus lights, or were in need of canvas, magic lanterns, or a taxidermist, contact information is available! There are listings for engravers, lithographers, printers, tightrope walkers, clowns, jugglers, and musicians—the panoply of services required to keep the show on the road. The collection reveals the cooperation that existed among similar outfits, who traded information and provided mutual support.

Also recently acquired, A Key to English is a textbook produced by Ceta Ryan to help Japanese immigrants in California learn English. An imprint from 1906 San Francisco is a rarity in itself, given the earthquake and subsequent fire which burned much of the city. But the volume is interesting in several other aspects. The text is printed in both English and Japanese, which was a complicated task for the printing technology of the era. Information inside the back cover indicates that this book was owned by someone who spent time in the internment camp in Poston, Arizona, during World War II, revealing that it had a fairly long life in readers’ hands and somehow wound up in a carceral setting.

Books

Recently arrived in the Graphics Division’s growing collection of ephemera, is a fascinating tiny redware souvenir—measuring 3.5 cm—made to look like a soldier’s canteen and to commemorate the Battle of Gettysburg. On one side is affixed a photograph of a woman named Jenny Wade, who lived in Gettysburg with her mother and was killed during the battle on July 2, 1863. Wade and her mother lived in the middle of the town of Gettysburg, and when the fighting started, moved to the home of a relative. One morning while Wade was kneading dough to make bread for Union soldiers, a Confederate unit began firing at the house. A musket ball passed through the door and killed her. Famously, the day after her daughter died, her mother finished baking the bread that her daughter had started when she was shot and killed, and gave it to the Union soldiers to feed them. 

And on the other side of the souvenir is a picture of a man named John Burns, another famous civilian folk hero of Gettysburg. While Burns was almost 70 when the battle began, he was eager to fight with the Union soldiers whom he admired. Burns left his house with an old musket, a top hat, and frock coat and joined in with a Union regiment marching by. He borrowed a rifle from a wounded soldier and fought throughout the Battle of Gettysburg with several different units. Burns was wounded several times, and he achieved fame as a volunteer civilian who pitched in to help the Union cause.

Next is a group of five photographs from the Montana Industrial School for Indians, a boarding school in west central Montana, about an hour or so west of Billings. Unitarian Universalists opened the school in 1886, and it operated for a decade before the federal government discontinued funding and it was forced to close. These evocative images are of the students, who were mostly Crow Indians.

Looking closely at details of these photos, one can spend time noticing the children’s expressions and reflecting on their experiences.

Maps have always been an integral part of the library’s collections, starting with Mr. Clements’ early acquisitions prior to his gift to the University. Because maps reflect time, place, and author’s intent, some research themes can prove more elusive for older maps—for instance, the representation of two important communities on maps: Native Americans and enslaved Africans. While Native Americans held priority of geographic place and African Americans arrived via forced immigration, both groups endured forms of displacement within the North American space.

Detail from Guillaume Delisle (1675–1726), Carte du Canada (Paris, 1703). Delisle, a geographer in Paris, compiled this map from many missionary reports and other first hand accounts from the region, populating the area around the Great Lakes with Native American place names and identifiable groups.

The location of Native American groups in North America challenged mapmakers, given the seasonal mobility and fluctuating numbers of many indigenous groups. Yet their very mobility meant that indigenous modes of mapmaking and representation had much to offer early French explorers and missionaries, who often recorded these verbal and sometimes performative maps, although physical maps were rarely replicated. Nonetheless indigenous presence, indicated by the appearance of various group names, are a staple feature of French maps of North America from the 17th century onwards. 

Some British mapmakers who carried out ground surveys in colonial regions similarly included Native American groups, territories, and aboriginal claims. A focused British interest in the location of Native American groups is displayed in this manuscript map. “A Map of the Indian Nations” was probably prepared for the British military administration at the time of the cession of the transAppalachian territory to the British from the French at the end of the Seven Years’ War, more easily visible in a detail of the area around Fort Loudon.

Willem De Brahm, 1717-ca. 1799], “A Map of the Indian Nations in the Southern Department,” 1766.

Such maps emphasized the indigenous American presence in regions where European settlers were expand – ing their own footprint. Farmers and settlers of European descent pushed into these western lands between the Appalachians and the Mississippi, with tragic results for Native Americans. Soon designated as “emigrant Indians” the several groups who spread out in the Southern territory on the De Brahm map were squeezed into a much smaller area in what is now eastern Oklahoma, as shown on the War Department map of 1836 (next page). Colored lines indicated boundaries of lands of 10 displaced Native American groups in the wake of the Indian Removal Act (1830), which authorized the federal government to extinguish all Indian title to the lands in the deep South, and 60,000 souls set out on the Emigrants Walk (or Trail of Tears).

Map Showing the Lands Assigned to Emigrant Indians West of Arkansas & Missouri, produced by the United States War Department ([Washington, D.C.], 1836).

While Native Americans were pushed westwards, forced emigration peopled North America and the Caribbean islands with enslaved individuals. Despite or perhaps because of fears of the growing Black population, the African American presence as forced labor on plantations in the American South or the Caribbean islands was rarely visualized. However, one can discern the size of a plantation and extrapolate the number of slaves required to work in the fields or process sugar (the main export from the islands) from the plantation surveys frequently executed on the islands. A recent research project looked closely at the island of St Croix, a Danish colonial holding, and the depiction of two types of mills used for crushing the sugarcane: wind and animal driven. These mills were built and operated with Black labor, as the cartouche shows. The detail reveals the various sizes of plantations and the number of mills on each, a determining factor in the value of the holdings.