By Daniel Hinchen, Reference Librarian
Originally, my intention with this blog post was to share some images and information about a few artifacts we have in our collection that relate to photography, but as I struggled to write about the objects we hold, my mind eventually started thinking of other topics I might explore through our collections. After all, I had a deadline to meet.
I seized on an idea – sprung from the most recent subject of my small book club – to investigate the Society’s holdings related to the Hawaiian Islands in the 19th century and earlier. The hope was to find images, descriptions, or depictions of local inhabitants surfing, an activity which occurred for generations before the arrival of Euro-American explorers and traders.
To that end, I pulled a few collections that are cataloged with the phrase “Hawaii—Description and travel”. While I did read a brief but interesting journal entry about an encounter with a shark on a voyage to Hawaii, I did not get to dig deeply enough in the rest of the volume to see if there were any mentions of surfing.
But, as luck would have it, the serendipity of the stacks came to my aid. [Incidentally, multiple current and former employees of the MHS have graced the Beehive with their tales of research serendipity (here, here, and here), so it must be a naturally occurring phenomenon, and I can’t imagine that it is localized to only our stacks.]
While looking for the diary of Charlotte Reed Heustis (recounting a voyage to the Sandwich Islands, or Hawaii) within the Thomas Reed papers, I noticed a folder labeled “drawings.” Never one to pass up visual materials in a manuscript collection, I took a look. And with that chance encounter, the direction of my blog post was settled.
The drawings, sketches, and compositions were done by Sophia Francis Reed, daughter of Thomas Reed whose papers make up the bulk of the Thomas Reed papers. According to our catalog information, Sophia lived only until the age of twenty-two.
So, without further ado, I present these interesting drawings and sketches of Miss Sophia F. Reed.
