By Jeremy Dibbell

A very interesting Object of the Month essay this month by my colleague and occasional Beehive contributor Anna Cook – the object from our collections is a broadsheet handout for marchers in a 16 October 1915 Boston parade for woman suffrage in Massachusetts. It includes instructions for the parade, plus (on the verso) songs to be sung during the march and at the rally following. The parade, organized by the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, included some 15,000 marchers!

Anna’s accompanying essay offers a brief overview of the struggle for the vote in Massachusetts, including a glimpse at anti-suffrage organizations such as the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women (I doubt they used the acronym, since MAOFESW doesn’t quite roll off the tongue).

To find out what happened when Massachusetts men were asked to amend the state constitution in November 1915 and allow women the vote, read the conclusion to Anna’s essay, here.

By Jeremy Dibbell

Our June Object of the Month is an 1862 advertising broadside for a return visit to Boston by the “Aztec Children,” Maximo and Bartola. The pair had made an initial appearance in Boston in 1850, and toured the world for at least four decades, sometimes under the management of P.T. Barnum. They were billed as “descendants and specimens of the Sacerdotal Caste (now nearly extinct) of the Ancient Aztec Founders of the Ruined Temples of that Country,” but were in reality microcephalic siblings from San Salvador whose mother thought she was sending them to America to be cured, not exhibited.

See the broadside, and read the whole story as told by our Senior Cataloger, Mary Fabiszewski, here.

By Jeremy Dibbell

Our Object of the Month for May is a fascinating 3 July 1898 letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, written just after the famous Battle of San Juan Hill, as the siege of Santiago continued. Roosevelt (pictured at left in his Rough Rider uniform) urges his friend, “Cabot,” to “Tell the President for Heavens sake to send us every regiment and above all every battery possible. … We are within measurable distance of a terrible military disaster; we must have help — thousands of men, batteries, & food & ammunition.” Roosevelt has even added at the corner of the front page of the letter, “For God’s sake have heavy reinforcements sent us instantly.”

As the Object essay notes, “Few documents show so vividly the contingency of history: Roosevelt believed the situation was so dire that he was prepared to go outside the army chain of command to send a message directly to the president. In fact, the result of the battle on 1 July was almost exactly opposite what Roosevelt expected. Within two weeks the Spanish would lose their naval squadron at Santiago and surrender the city.”

You can read a transcription of the letter, see images of all four pages and learn more about the background of the document here.

This Object of the Month celebrates the publication of The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898 (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2010) by Evan Thomas, a corresponding fellow of the Historical Society, who spoke here about the book last week. In The War Lovers, Thomas argues that, more than the American Civil War, or even World War II, the Spanish-American War was a harbinger–if not the model–of modern American wars. The “splendid little war” against Spain was a “war of choice,” not immediately vital to national security but ostensibly waged for broader and sometimes shifting humanitarian purposes. A sampling of the letters, diaries, and photographs of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge that Thomas used in writing The War Lovers will be on display here at 1154 Boylston each afternoon from 1:00-4:00 p.m., Monday-Saturday, through 5 June 2010.

By Jeremy Dibbell

One of the most interesting of our image collections here at MHS are the Francis Blake photographs, more than 1,000 images taken by physicist and amateur photographer Francis Blake (mostly during the years 1875-1898). Blake is known for his early use of high-speed photography: “In the mid-1880s, Blake designed a focal-plane shutter that allowed him to take photographs with exposure times of 1/1000 to 1/2000 of a second. (The average working speed of a contemporary commercial shutter was about 3/100 of a second.) The resulting stop-action images of trains, pigeons, horses, bicyclists, and athletes were exhibited in Boston, Philadelphia, and London from 1891 to 1893 to critical acclaim.”

We’ve digitized a selection of Blake’s photographs, including a few of his well-known portraits and high-speed images; these are browsable here. The image included here (taken c. 1886-1889) is an “action shot” of Blake’s son Benjamin.

You can read more about Blake and his photos in a short biographical essay introducing the digital images.

By Jeremy Dibbell

On the eve of Thomas Jefferson’s 267th birthday, we at MHS are delighted to annouce a new web presentation of the manuscript copy of Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, his only full-length book. Read more about the manuscript here.

By way of introduction to the new site: “When Jefferson was in Paris in 1785 representing the United States as a diplomat, he paid to have 200 copies of Notes printed for private distribution. Prior to publication, Jefferson reworked an earlier version of his manuscript by using sealing wax to attach corrections and changes written on small additional pieces of paper to full handwritten pages. He also expanded the text by inserting additional full pages. These changes show the evolution of Jefferson’s ideas on a number of topics, and the supplemental information he gathered as he wrote. This website allows the reader to interact directly with Jefferson’s complex manuscript by reading the original manuscript and by following all the changes that he made to the text before it was first published – including the opportunity to see passages written by Jefferson that have been hidden by attachments for more than two centuries.”

Our digital projects team has really worked some pretty amazing magic with this presentation – you can literally lift attachments off the page and see what Jefferson wrote underneath – or flip up additions and check out what’s on the back. It’s a little complicated at first, so I encourage you to use the Tutorial before you begin. It helps, believe me! Once you’ve mastered the navigation, you can start browsing at page 1, select your chapter, choose a selected passage, or search.

Also check out the list of sources for further reading, and some additional documents compiled by Jefferson during the composition of this work (including a table of Virginia birds).

Enjoy!

By Jeremy Dibbell

You’ve probably heard of Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia (and if you haven’t, just wait until next week, and watch this space!), but you may not have heard that Jefferson’s text was an expanded version of answers to a set of questions posed by François Marbois, the secretary to the minister from France, Anne-César, Chevalier de La Luzerne. In late 1780 and early 1781, Marbois sent lists of queries to representatives of each state (some with 16 questions, some with 22), requesting information ranging from “descriptions of the state boundaries and natural resources to the religion and social customs of its people. He asked for information about state history, population (including Native American peoples), manufacturing, and colleges, as well as specific information about how each state handled estates taken from Tories.”

Our April Object of the Month is a draft of Roger Sherman’s reply to Marbois, which he wrote in November 1782. Sherman, a Connecticut representative to the Continental Congress from 1774-81 and again in 1783-84, notes in his letter that he has delayed answering until he was “able to obtain an account of all the articles about which you desire to be informed.” He goes on to provide answers to Marbois’ questions, and enclosing several additional lists and texts. Of the principal manufactures, he writes: “Coarse linens & Woolens. Potash. Salt Petre, of which more than 100 Tons has been made in Connecticut Since the present war. & a Sufficient quantity of G. powder. Most kinds of Iron ware is also manufactured here, such as Cannon, & Cast Iron of all kinds & Edge Tools Such as Axes Sythes &c.” Of Tory property: “The Estates of the Rebels who have joined the Enemy or voluntarily taken probation under them are forfeited to the State, & disposed of for the expence of the war.” You can see images of the full draft letter, or read a transcription, here.

In her Object of the Month essay, Digital Projects Coordinator Nancy Heywood also touches on the other known responses to Marbois. John Witherspoon penned “A Description of the State of New-Jersey” (viewable here via Google Books), and we have a copy of Marbois’ queries regarding that state in the William Livingston papers II (viewable online here). And General John Sullivan answered Marbois in December 1780 regarding the state of New Hampshire, of which the original is at the Huntington Library (we have copies of both Marbois’ queries and Sullivan’s reply in our Miscellaneous Bound collection). The Historical Society of Pennsylvania holds Marbois’ letter to Thomas McKean with queries about Delaware, although we don’t know if any response exists. Of course the most famous reply, which was what grew into Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia (the original manuscript copy of which is part of the Coolidge Collection of Thomas Jefferson manuscripts at MHS, and is now viewable online here).

Are there other “Notes on the state of ___” still out there? We suspect it’s entirely possible, and welcome news on any of them!

By Jeremy Dibbell

Back in November Anna Cook recapped a brown-bag event on the progress of the “Presidential Papers Project” at MHS, headed by my colleague Tracy Potter, with assistance last semester by intern Sarah Desmond. The end product of this survey will be a web-accessible subject guide to letters written by U.S. Presidents within the collections of the MHS, which we hope to have available in the near future. Tracy provided me with a few “sneak peeks” into the data, though, so I could offer a Presidents’ Day preview:

Not yet counting the letters of John and John Quincy Adams (of which there are many thousands in our collections), Tracy’s tabulated 12,988 presidential letters at MHS. We have manuscripts from all of the presidents excepting the three most recent (Obama, George W. Bush, Clinton). Our top five holdings (again without the Adamses) are:

5. Eisenhower (386 letters)

4. Theodore Roosevelt (440 letters)

3. Monroe (568 letters)

2. Washington (621 letters)

1. Jefferson (9,446 letters)*

Tracy also highlights just one collection which is particularly rich in presidential manuscripts: the Edward Everett papers contain correspondence from fourteen presidents! That’s each chief executive from Washington to Lincoln except for Madison and William Henry Harrison.

Watch this space for a link to the presidential guide when it’s launched, and many thanks to Tracy for giving us a chance for a preview.

*Note: all numbers may continue to change slightly with the final tabulations.

By Nancy Heywood

Many people have heard of Silence Dogood, and recognize that name as a pseudonym used by Benjamin Franklin, but how many people have read “her” words? The MHS has just launched a web exhibition, “Silence Dogood: Benjamin Franklin in The New-England Courant”  featuring contextual essays about the topic as well as digital images and transcriptions of the 14 pieces appearing in a Boston newspaper between March and October of 1722 “by” the outspoken widow Silence Dogood.

In 1722 Boston-born Benjamin Franklin was 16 years old and busy working as an apprentice for his brother James, the printer and publisher of The New-England Courant. The Courant wasn’t officially tied to the colonial government of Massachusetts and the newspaper became known for publishing opinionated, lively, and satirical pieces, some of which questioned the political and religious establishment. In his autobiography Benjamin Franklin remembered how he wanted to write for the paper but thought his brother wouldn’t accept or print any pieces he submitted.  So Benjamin thought of a less direct method to get his writing published: he recalled, “I contriv’d to disguise my Hand, and writing an anonymous Paper I put it in the Night under the Door of the Printing House.” This “anonymous Paper” was the first essay written by “Silence Dogood” that was published as a letter to the editor in the 26 March-2 April 1722 issue of the Courant.

The appearance of Silence’s letter in the newspaper (followed by a note from the publisher, James Franklin, with suggestions to Mrs. Dogood about how to ensure the safe delivery of future letters to the newspaper) prompted Benjamin to continue writing. Over the next 7 months, thirteen more essays appeared in the newspaper. Silence Dogood shared her life story (see essay one to read a dramatic account of her birth on board a ship), advocated for the rights of women (essay 5), quoted a lengthy piece from a London newspaper about freedom of speech (essay 8) and commented on the vice of drunkenness (essay 12), which includes what is perhaps one of the longest lists ever compiled of all the harmless sounding terms used to describe a state of drunkenness: “boozey, cogey, tipsey, fox’d, merry, mellow, fuddl’d, groatable, Confoundedly cut, See two Moons, are Among the Philistines, In a very good Humour, See the Sun, or, The Sun has shone upon them … .”).

Also available within the MHS’s web presentation of the Dogood essays are links to online displays of the full issues of the 14 newspapers in which the essays appear. Website visitors have the opportunity to browse a few sample issues and see the output of the publishing house where Benjamin Franklin learned many aspects of the printing trade.