By Anna Clutterbuck-Cook, Reader Services

Today we return to the 1917 diary of Gertrude Codman Carter — artist, wife of Sir Gilbert Thomas Carter, a British colonial official, and mother to a young son, John Codman Carter. In February of 1917 the family resided in Barbados where Gertrude spent her days overseeing the construction of Ilaro Court, the family residence she had designed, and participating in a wide variety of social engagements.

Although physically far removed from the war raging in Europe, the family and their neighbors were intimately connected to the violence across the Atlantic. On February 18th, Gertrude interrupts the short-form structure of her typical diary entries to give an account of the injury and later loss of a neighbor’s son in battle.

While diaries invite us to see the world through the eyes of the diarist, that perspective is not always a comfortable one. On February 17th, she notes that she took her son John and a friend to a carnival dressed as a pirate and an “Indian Chief.” Toward the end of the month, between describing social calls and an afternoon playing tennis, Gertrude sees fit to remark that she received a call from “a dreadful little Jew. These casual displays of racism and anti-semitism remind us of the larger British and American imperial hierarchies within which this white New England woman was embedded.

*** February 1917 *** 

8 Feb. Ilaro. Mr. Carter seems to be doing well.

The Harold [Whytes?] gave us a jolly little lunch at the Bridgetown Club. The Harrells, & Lady Challum, Mrs. Ball Greene from [illegible] & ourselves.

9 Feb. Plans for theatre. Called Evelyns.

10 Feb. Another engagement (doesn’t say what – so I imagine it was a [illegible]).

11 Feb. Ilaro. Took  [illegible].

Lady Clark’s [illegible]. She is much better.

12 Feb. Ilaro. Called Skeet.

13. Ilaro. John in nursery window.

14 Feb. Women Self-Help Committee Meeting.

15 Feb. (What did I do all this time? Calendar says nothing). Government House at home.

16 Feb. Ilaro. 3 [illegible] Called [illegible] Mrs. Cullen. 9. Hall Clarks. Personal [illegible].

17 Feb. Auction at Mandon. Children’s carnival at [illegible] Park. John as a Pirate walked with Lyall as an Indian Chief. Took Hamilton.

18 Feb. E.F.S. Bowen to see house.

To Wm. Mannings to tea. A lovely afternoon & I took the Hamiltons to see the place. Mrs. Manning was very cheery having just received a letter from her son John saying “The Germans seem to be out of the stuff they need to kill me!” After tea on the verandah we went out on the lawn. The telephone bell rang & Mrs. Manning trotted off to answer it. I saw her coming back with her head up like a brave soldier. “Bad news,” she said, “John is wounded. They are sending up the cable. I walked up and down with her while the others melted away. Presently a boy on a bicycle came wheeling up the drive & the butler with a tragic face brought the orange envelope across the lawn. The sun was savagely bright & the yellow and blue macaw shrieked as he swung on his perch. I opened it & read it to her.

“Regret to inform you Lieutenant John Manning brought in dressing station severely wounded. 17th instant.”

Mr. Sam Manning came across the lawn: his face was impassive & he still held a fossil shell in his hand. Mrs. Manning was sobbing in my arms. She raised her head & said, “Sam. Wasn’t it odd? You remember yesterday afternoon?” “Indeed yes,” said the husband to me. “Mrs. Manning was sitting in her room & she looked up & saw John come in.”

(There seems to have been no doubt that this was a real case of telepathy, that the dearly loved son appeared to his mother of whom he thought constantly to say goodbye. It does not to me [impair?] the example of telepathy the fact that the man who came in to Mrs. Mannings room was her other son Herbert. She saw the face of John later form upon the face of Herbert for only a few moments.)

I sat with Mrs. Manning for an hour, trying vainly to give comfort. “He isn’t missing dear Mrs. Manning, he’s comfortable. They are taking care of him, he is at the dressing station. They’ll do everything for him.” But the mother shook her head. “He will die,” she said slowly. It was to say goodbye that he came yesterday.”

And indeed I was not surprised the next day to see the flags of the town at half mast for the boy who had gone. It was to me significant that his farewell should have been to his mother rather than the graceful little wife who married him in a rush & repented it afterward.

19 Feb. A nice swim. Called [illegible] etc. etc. in P.M.

Lady Godfrey & Mrs. Austin [illegible]. Dined at the Hamilton who have moved into [illegible].

20 Feb. Tea at Mrs. Burton’s. Stone carving.

21 Feb. Took John to make calls.

22 Feb. Another nice swim. [illegible] at 11. Mrs. Clifton [Whyte’s?] party [for?] Edna

23 Feb. Took Mrs. Burton to Ilaro. Some nice [gossetts?] to Lewis. Colonel G’s son’s [fiancee?] (he was killed at Ypres) a Miss [illegible].

 [illegible] on theatre plans.

24 Feb. [illegible] Tea at the Felix Hayley’s. Theatre plans.

25 Feb. Meet Mr. Bowen & Mr. Carlin at Ilaro about sash weights. Called Wilkinson’s & Laws.

[illegible] round plan.

26 Feb. Burtons at 9. House at 10. 2 o’clock a call from Mr. R. Davis the theatre promoter. Very full of excitement. A dreadful little Jew. Hamiltons to tennis.

27 Feb. Electricity at 11. At Ilaro.

2 o’clock meeting of the Theatre Committee. [illegible] outside plan of theater for model. Worked rest of p.m.

28. Feb. Worked on [illegible] for theater. 4.30 Civic [illegible] at the Budges.

Dined at the Hamilton & played Pirate [illegible].

***

If you are interested in viewing the diary yourself, in our library, or have other questions about the collection please visit the library or contact a member of the library staff for further assistance.

These transcriptions are preliminary and not meant to be authoritative. In all cases where a word could not be contextually surmised [illegible] has been inserted in its place.

By Grace Wagner, Reader Services

As we begin to move out of February and, hopefully, leave behind the worst of winter, I’d like to reflect back on a historic Boston storm that had a strong impact both on Boston’s landscape and its mythology. February 15, 1876 was a stormy day at the start of the United States’ centennial year. It was also the last day that one of Boston’s first ‘residents’ would stand in Boston Common. This resident was known as the “Great Elm” (and later, the “Old Elm”) and it was one of the most prominent signifiers of Boston’s place in history, a silent witness to history called upon in many early accounts of the city.

The tree had a fabled history among Bostonians. Nehemiah Adams describes the tree in alternately flowery language: “That tree is to antiquity with us what a pyramid is in Egypt. It is like the pillars of Hercules, bounding the unknown ages which preceded the arrival of the Pilgrims” (Boston Common, 1842) and more bizarre turns of phrase: “vegetable patriarch” (The Boston Common: Or, Rural Walks in Cities). Adams’ assessment of the tree’s ancientness is largely in keeping with other Bostonian’s views. Although it was a long held belief that the tree stood in Boston Common even before the Puritans arrived, it was only when the tree fell and its rings were counted that residents definitively concluded that the tree had existed since at least the 1630s (Boston Common in colonial and provincial days by Mary Farwell Ayer). 

The tree had witnessed a number of types of events over the years, from public hangings and duels during the early days of Boston to local women laundering clothing by the tree and Frog Pond at the end of the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century, as Boston grew in size and the Common became more like a large public park, more common activities included people meeting at the Elm Tree or going skating on Frog Pond.

This nineteenth century print is one of many prints and artistic renderings that were produced of the tree and features Bostonians enjoying their time near the Great Elm, whether sitting under the tree, playing catch near it, or strolling by it. Although this particular print focuses on an idyllic depiction of the Common, it also reveals the age of the Great Elm, which is missing several branches and is fenced in by an iron gate in this depiction. The gate wasn’t installed until 1854, after a series of storms left the elm badly scarred. Over several hundred years, the tree sustained a number of injuries, including a large cavity that developed in the center of its trunk. When the tree finally did come down in 1876, struck by a strong gust of wind during a storm, Boston citizens rushed to the tree to claim branches and scraps of wood as souvenirs.

The tree was repurposed in a number of other ways by inventive residents, including creating veneered pictures of the tree made out of wood from the elm itself and growing a root of “The Old Elm” around a china dish cover. Part of the tree was also used to make a chair for the Boston Public Library (Boston Common: a diary of notable events, incidents, and neighboring occurrences by Samuel Barber). One of these keepsakes belongs to MHS’s own collection, a pair of “Old Elm earrings,” made by Benjamin F. Knowlton. The earrings are shaped like tiny liberty bells and are made out of elm wood, with tiny gold clappers, and red, white, and blue striped ribbon attached to the top of each earring.

From the days of Puritan society, when Boston Common was still a cow pasture, to the Revolution and into the nineteenth century, the Great Elm was a marker of time for Boston for many years. If you are interested in the Great Elm, or the history of Boston Common, please consider visiting the library to learn more! 

By Susan Martin, Collection Services

The MHS just acquired a fascinating document related to political activism by Boston’s black voters during the 1884 presidential election. This election, only the fourth presidential contest in which black (male) voters could take part, pitted Democrats Grover Cleveland and Thomas A. Hendricks against Republicans James G. Blaine and John A. Logan. Most African Americans supported the Republican Party, and “Blaine and Logan Clubs” had sprung up in many American cities, including Boston.

On 20 Sep. 1884, a committee consisting of three Boston men sent this letter to the Republican National Committee on behalf of the “colored voters of the 3d. Congressional district” of Massachusetts. They requested information on the candidates, particularly Democratic vice presidential nominee Hendricks. The letter reads, in part:

We hope you will be able to forward a good stock of Hendrick’s [sic] public record so that every colored man in the Commonwealth may know all about the Democratic candidate for the Vice-Presidency. […] We have formed a Blaine & Logan Club and intend to make things lively for Messrs. Cleveland & Hendricks on the 4^th day of next November.

I was curious about this “opposition research” targeting Hendricks. Thomas Andrews Hendricks (1819-1885) of Indiana certainly had a substantial public record. By 1884, he’d served in multiple elected offices, including state congressman, U.S. representative, U.S. senator, and governor. He’d even run for vice president once before, on a ticket with Samuel Tilden in 1876, but they lost to Rutherford B. Hayes. So, what specific grievances did black voters have against Hendricks? To answer that question, I found two terrific resources in the MHS stacks, both printed in Boston in 1884.

The first is a book called The Life and Public Services of Grover Cleveland, by Frederick E.  Goodrich, which includes an appended biography of Hendricks. Goodrich was an enthusiastic Democrat, and his biography is unabashedly partisan. He describes the Democrats as the true heirs to the Founding Fathers and calls the Republicans “demoralized” and “thoroughly corrupt.” Hendricks himself sounds almost mythical: “His honesty was above suspicion, his integrity was never questioned, nor his motives impugned. He won the respect of all his colleagues and retained the confidence and support of his constituents.”

Goodrich wrote in generalities and didn’t have much to say about Hendricks’ specific votes related to slavery or African American civil rights. He did explain, in one passage, Hendricks’ support for the Fugitive Slave Act:

It has been objected to him lately, that he was in favor of the Fugitive Slave Law; but so was the majority of his party, which at that time recognized that slavery was a legal institution in the Southern States, and which upheld the right of the slave-owners to claim their property wherever they found it. It is too late in the day now to rake up the anti-slavery record of any man, because many of our foremost and most honored public men since the war were, prior to that event, defenders, or at least apologists of slavery.

The second resource I found at the MHS was a speech by W. R. Holloway delivered on 2 Aug. 1884 and published in pamphlet form as A Bad Record: Hendricks as a Public Man. William Robeson Holloway (1836-1911), a staunch Republican and brother-in-law of Gov. Oliver P. Morton, had held various political appointments in Indiana. He was a full-throated anti-Hendricks man and didn’t mince his words, characterizing Hendricks like this:

Shown to have been the Friend and Apologist of Slavery, a Copperhead of the worst type.—An Intense Negro Hater, as well as a Defender of Treason, a Constant Sympathizer with the Rebellion.—The Champion of Traitors, and always a Bogus Reformer, an Insincere Demagogue, and an Uncertain Leader.—Not a Redeeming Feature to be found in the Public Career of the Choice of the Democracy for Vice-President.

Hendricks did, in fact, oppose all three Reconstruction Amendments to the U.S. Constitution: the Thirteenth (abolishing slavery), Fourteenth (extending citizenship, due process, equal protection, etc.), and Fifteenth (granting suffrage to black men). In his speech, Holloway also described how the Democrat “sustained and defended the Dred-Scott decision,” “denounced the Emancipation Proclamation,” and opposed the military service of African Americans, arguing that black soldiers lacked the courage to serve alongside whites. He accused Hendricks of opportunism, hypocrisy, and cowardice. Here’s more:

He has been consistent in his opposition to the negroes, and while in the Senate, voted uniformly against the colored race, against emancipation in the District of Columbia, against their civil and political rights in that District, and against their right to ride on the street-cars in the city of Washington; opposed their employment as soldiers, and after they were enlisted and had gallantly perilled their lives on the field of battle, he voted on more than one occasion to deny them equal compensation with white soldiers in the same service.

It’s no wonder the “colored voters of the 3d. Congressional district” were determined to “make things lively”! Massachusetts’ 14 electoral votes went to the Republican nominee, James G. Blaine, but despite the party’s best efforts, Grover Cleveland won the election by a narrow margin. Thomas A. Hendricks died one year later on 25 Nov. 1885, and the vice presidency remained vacant for the rest of Cleveland’s term.

I hoped to find out more about the three men who sent the letter, A. P. Jones, W. D. Johnson, and Jas. H. Wolff, but could only definitively identify the third man. The remarkable story of James Harris Wolff (1847-1913) probably deserves a blog post of its own. He served in the Navy during the Civil War and became a prominent black attorney who argued civil rights cases for African Americans. In 1910, he was the first black person to deliver the official Fourth of July oration in Boston.

By Shelby Wolfe, Reader Services

In the autumn of 1869 the peaceful valley of Onondaga, in central New York, was in commotion from one end to the other. Strange reports echoed from farm to farm. It was noised abroad that a great stone statue or petrified giant had been dug up near the little hamlet of Cardiff, almost at the southern extremity of the valley; and soon, despite the fact that the crops were not yet gathered and the elections not yet over, men, women, and children were hurrying from Syracuse and from the farm-houses along the valley to the scene of the great discovery.

So begins Andrew D. White in a 1902 article for The Century titled “The Cardiff Giant: The True Story of a Remarkable Deception.” Thus, he sets the scene for his bizarre – yet true – story about a very fake giant.

I came across White’s article in a scrapbook of clippings in our collections, illuminating the events and deceptions surrounding the once-famed Cardiff Giant. While the compiler of clippings in this scrapbook is unknown, this person had enough interest to collect published material and neatly title the scrapbook in black ink, “The Cardiff Giant.” On the first page, a note from the November 1902 meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society recognizes “one of our distinguished Corresponding Members,” Andrew D. White, for his “minute description of the attempt to cheat the public.”  

On 16 October 1869, workers who were hired to dig a well on the property of William C. “Stub” Newell in Cardiff, New York, unearthed what became known as the Cardiff Giant. The bewildered well diggers were hired by Newell, who knew the figure had been deliberately planted almost a year earlier by his cousin, George Hull. While in Iowa in 1866, Hull was reportedly inspired to create a stone giant and pass it off as a petrified man after he argued with a Methodist revivalist, Rev. Mr. Turk, and wondered why so many believed the remarkable stories in the Bible about giants. Two years later, Hull hired men to quarry out an eleven-foot block of gypsum near Fort Dodge, Iowa, which he shipped by train to Chicago to be sculpted into the giant. The finished 3,000-pound figure was shipped again to Cardiff and buried to await its debut. Once it was uncovered, Newell set up a tent to display the nearly ten-foot-five colossus, and hundreds flocked to his Cardiff hamlet for a twenty-five-cent viewing of what many believed to be a petrified man (Newell raised the price to fifty cents after two days). Following the discovery, Hull sold the giant to David Hannum for $23,000, who shipped it to Syracuse and began a road tour toward New York City. Noting the public’s remarkable interest in the giant, P.T. Barnum offered to purchase it for $50,000. Though his offer was declined, Barnum covertly made an exact copy of the giant and charged visitors to view it.

While much of the public and even some professionals were fooled, others saw through the deceit, partially or fully. An article in the 3 November 1869 edition of the Worcester Daily Spy includes a testimony from Professor James Hall, “the state geologist of New York, a scholar of a good American reputation.” Hall states, “It is certainly a great curiosity, and, as it now presents itself, the most remarkable archaological [sic] discovery ever made in this country, and entirely unlike any other relics of a past age yet known to us.” While Hall did not believe it to be a petrified human, he thought it a unique object related to “the race or people of the past formerly inhabiting that part of the country.” Another article includes a letter dated 24 November 1869, in which Professor O. C. Marsh concludes, “Altogether, the work is well calculated to impose upon the general public; but I am surprised that any scientific observers should not have at once detected the unmistakable evidence against its antiquity.” He posits evidence for the deliberate and relatively recent burial of the figure, namely an analysis of the gypsum from which it was cut and the estimated erosion timeline that both support the “humbug” conclusion.

It struck me while reading George Hull’s obituary in the Boston Journal that the notice is hardly about Hull. Less of an obituary and more of a sensational article, the heading reads “Cardiff Giant” and within the article, “Hull Proud of It.” I presume it’s safe to say Hull wouldn’t have minded – the obituary notes, “Hull was very proud of the affair, and he never tired of talking about it.” According to the Boston Journal, Hull accumulated a fortune from his hoax but died in poverty. Whoever assembled this scrapbook of clippings also included an obituary next to Hull’s, printed just fifteen days later for “the last survivor of the famous ‘Cardiff Giant’ humbug,” sculptor John J. Sampson of Chicago.

The tale of the Cardiff Giant sparked the imaginations of authors Mark Twain and L. Frank Baum, and the giant even found his way into a Nancy Drew mystery. Today you can find him on display at the Farmers’ Museum in Cooperstown, New York.

If you would like to explore this topic further, visit the library to see what else you can uncover about the Cardiff Giant, its public reception and famed deception.