Gertrude Codman Carter’s Diary, August 1917

By Anna Clutterbuck-Cook, Reader Services

Today we return to the 1917 diary of Gertrude Codman Carter. You may read the previous entries here:

 

Introduction | January | February | March | April | May

June | July

 

Gertrude spends the month of August preparing to move her family — son John, husband Gilbert (“G.” in the diary), and the family servants — to Ilaro Court, the mansion she designed and oversaw the construction of that today serves as the official residence of the Prime Minister of Barbados. 

On August 8th Sir Gilbert departs Barbados for the neighboring island of Trinidad, taking with him one of the household servants, Wickham to serve as his valet and necessitating the temporary loan of a young man, Cyril Toppin, from the Law family residence to serve as under butler in Wickham’s absence. The sixty-nine year old Sir Gilbert was, it seems, more interested in being spared the fuss of moving than he was in assisting his younger wife (twenty-seven years his junior) with the logistics of household relocation.

Gertrude, who seems used to daily life on her own, carries on with her social life, her work, and her volunteer commitments even as she travels to Ilaro on a regular basis to unpack, supervise final construction — “So now the thing is to rush along & get the top story done — anyway the windows and side of it”! It is perhaps with pride and relief that she can sit down and report on the final day of August that “all our trunks went up to Ilaro today.” They would be able to begin the month of September in their new home.

* * *

Aug 1.

Ilaro, unpacking boxes.

1pm Improvement Society.

Ilaro again.

 

Aug 2.

Town.

Women’s Self Help.

Civic Circle here at [Charleston?]

G. paid calls.

 

Aug 3.

Theater meeting.

Took John [to] band at the rocks.

 

Aug 4.

[Illegible] in the garden. [Showering?].

 

Aug 5.

Hurricane Sunday. All to church.

Wet p.m.

Dined at B[illegible]. Majors [illegible]. Delightful evening with new victrola “Chant des Belges!”

 

Aug 6.

Mrs. Law sent a boy to me for an under butler — someone must act for Wickham. G. is going away while we move in & taking Wickham as valet. This seemed a very young little person but his mother is the Laws waitress & he is a boy scout. Name Cyril Toppin.

Mr. Eustace came to lunch & discussed theater.

Colm Davies came to tea & Mr. Fell.

 

Aug 7.

Plans finished — at least they should have been but I found I had more work on them than I expected.

I called at Government House. Out.

Sunset at “Chan Chan” ‘s as Baby Manning calls Charlie Sealys.

 

Aug 8.

G. left today with Wickham for Trinidad to stay with Sir Norman Lamont & then to go to Tobago with him. He said he did not intend to return until we were settled. So now the thing is to rush along & get the top story done — anyway the windows and side of it.

 

…who had for the first time in history conceived a dinner party for the Bishop of [Devonshire?] who proved to be a most interesting man. Mr. Fell & [illegible] were there and the chairs & glass were lovely & old & the [illegible] dinner very good. The Claret too was irreproachable. I went & returned with Mr. Fell in his [illegible].

 

Wednesday 22nd & Thursday 28th

But today I spent at Ilaro & found its upper [illegible] rooms a solace & a place to think. I began to realize that not only was [illegible] gone but that in all probability I would never see Basil Blackwood again. I tried to imagine England & especially London without them & I felt I never wanted to see it again. How good they had both been to me & I must try to be thankful for the past.

 

Aug 24. 

To [illegible] party at the Ashtons — only eight of us, very nice. Her baby is such a darling, so friendly. I walked there & back. Oh how hot it was!

 

Aug 25.

Car came back but not itself quite. To Ilaro in the morning.

 

Aug 26.

To Mrs. Manning’s.

Mr. Fell came in late.

 

Aug 27

Took Small up to Ilaro to rub horses. Clarissa & Sarah are serving there.

To Self Help with Mrs. Carlin; planning alternations.

 

Aug 28.

John to dentist.

Laddie drove me to Spikestown & back a [illegible] dreary time.

 

Aug 29.

Again to Spikestown to a [illegible] meeting with Mr. Leslie & Lady Probyn & Mrs. Luce. A shower arose & got up to put my parasol over Lady Probyn; when it exploded & left only ribs we got quite merry over it. Also over Mr [illegible] who proposed “a [illegible] heart of thanks to H. E. the Governor.”

 

Aug 30.

[Torn paper] party at the Cove. L. drove me out. The Charlie Sealys & Clarence Hayes, Mr. & Mrs. Carpenter, Frank Austin & a nephew. We had tea at the Clarence Hayes’ first & quite fun. Clarence Hayes & I sat on the Cove beach & pretended to have a desperate flirtation to the [illegible] of Mrs. Carpenter above.

 

Aug 31.

To Charlie Sealys for [illegible].

 

All our trunks went up to Ilaro today.

 

* * *

As always, if you are interested in viewing the diary or letters 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.

 

Posted in From Our Collections

Politics of the Plate: Food Propaganda from the World Wars

By Adam Berk, Roxbury Latin School

In the summer of 2017, the Center for the Teaching of History at the MHS offered several professional development workshops for educators, including a program on World War I, and a three-day event that explored food in American history. While researching primary sources to share with teachers, intern Adam Berk, a student at Roxbury Latin School, discovered some fascinating items in the Society’s collection.

 

I was going through the MHS database, looking for potential resources for teacher workshops when I came across something that caught my eye:

 

This is a propaganda poster from World War I illustrated by Paul Stahr (1883-1953). As was discussed in several teacher workshops this summer, the influx of propaganda posters in America during the Great War played a very significant role in galvanizing the American people to serve their country, either by enlisting in the military or by embracing methods of service at home. Perhaps the most popular and accessible method was the movement to conserve food, especially anything consisting of wheat or meat.

Amongst all the propaganda posters from World War I that I saw, the above Stahr poster immediately piqued my interest, because to me, it is extremely reminiscent of this famous poster:

 

The “I Want You” poster is an iconic poster in American history. It was painted in 1917 by James Montgomery Flagg (1877-1960), one of the most successful artists of the time. The message behind the Flagg poster is a simple one: like so many other propaganda posters, it instructs Americans to join the army in order to serve their country. This poster enjoyed immense success and popularity, not because of the content of its message, but because of the unique and memorable way the message was conveyed. In my opinion, the direct and personal nature of this poster is what made it so popular. The pointed finger and the emboldened “YOU” must have struck a chord with many Americans.

I immediately saw a connection between these two posters because they both employ the same method of communicating their messages: both are directed right at the viewer. Just as Flagg’s Uncle Sam orders his audience to enlist in the army, the woman in Stahr’s poster is imploring her audience to conserve as much food as possible. Such a visible connection between these two posters could represent the incredible importance of food in the time of World War I.

One poster is a call to arms, and the other is a call to conserve. The posters use the same image of outstretched arms to convey two very different messages, and at first glance, the latter may not appear to hold the same gravity as the former.

But the U.S. desperately needed the support and loyalty of its citizens; countless lives of soldiers literally depended on the food conservation effort back home. Indeed, just as the United States entered World War I, the U.S. Food Administration was created, with future president Herbert Hoover in charge. Hoover’s task was to oversee the conservation of important foods, like wheats and meats. Besides frugality with groceries and consumption, Hoover also encouraged alternative diets, consisting mostly of food like fruits, vegetables, and eggs. Hoover never implemented a mandatory rationing system, instead depending on the conscience, morality, and voluntarism of the American people. Despite the strictly voluntary nature of the program, “food shipments to Europe were doubled within a year, while consumption in America was reduced 15 percent.” (Schumm) The positive results of Hoover’s program are a victory of American patriotism, compassion, and teamwork in an extremely difficult time.

The Stahr poster represents the important role that the American civilians played in the war: saving food at home meant saving lives on the front; food was of as much importance as guns. Flagg’s “I Want You” poster was iconic, and it is still famous today. But Stahr’s poster is a quiet reminder that food was crucial to World War I, and that without begging with outstretched arms, the outcome of the war might have been different.

*****

Bibliography

Schumm, Laura. “Food Rationing in Wartime America.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 23 May 2014, www.history.com/news/hungry-history/food-rationing-in-wartime-america.

John Allen, “The Food Administration of Herbert Hoover and American Voluntarism in the First World War,” Germina Veris, 1/1 (2014). Available at http://www.easternct.edu/germinaveris/the-food-administration-of-herbert-hoover-and-american-voluntarism-in-the-first-world-war/

 

 

Posted in From Our Collections

A Revolutionary Reunion: Lafayette and John Adams

By Amanda M. Norton, Adams Papers

On August 15, 1824, the General Marquis de Lafayette, one of the great heroes of the American Revolution, returned to the United States for the first time in forty years, kicking off a nearly thirteen-month tour of the entire country. After Lafayette’s arrival in Massachusetts, John Adams greeted him via his grandsons on August 22, “There is not a man in America who more sincerely rejoices in your happiness and in the burst of joy which your presence has diffused through this whole continent than myself.” “I would wait upon you in person,” Adams lamented, “but the total decrepitude and imbecility of eighty nine years has rendered it impossible for me to ride even so far as Governor [William] Eustis’s to enjoy that happiness.” He instead requested that Lafayette spend a day with him in Quincy. Lafayette in turn noted his regret that he had not been able to go straight to Quincy “on [his] Arrival at this Beloved place . . . and Embrace You.”

John’s grandson Charles Francis Adams was present for the meeting of the old revolutionaries in Quincy on August 29 and recorded his impressions in his Diary:

The Marquis met my Grandfather with pleasure and I thought with some surprise, because really, I do not think he expected to see him quite so feeble as he is. It struck me that he was affected somewhat in that manner. Otherwise the meeting was a pleasant one. Grandfather exerted himself more than usual and, as to conversation, appeared exactly as he ever has. I think he is rather more striking now than ever, certainly more agreable, as his asperity of temper is worn away. . . . How many people in this country would have been delighted with my situation at this moment, to see three distinguished men dining at the same table, with the reflections all brought up concerning the old days of the revolution, in which they were conspicuous actors and for their exertions in which, the country is grateful! It is a subject which can excite much thought as it embraces the high feelings of human nature. . . . My grandfather appeared considerably affected and soon rose after dinner was over.

A few weeks after their reunion Lafayette thanked Adams for the visit: “I Have Been Very Happy to See You, and altho’ I Regretted The shortness of My Visit . . . I Have Cordially Enjoy’d, More indeed than I Can Express it, the pleasure to Embrace My old Respected friend and Revolutionary Companion.” A French brass and marble mantle clock that Lafayette gifted to his old friend in honor of this visit now sits in the office of the Editor in Chief of the Adams Papers Editorial Project at the Massachusetts Historical Society.


Posted in From Our Collections Tagged ,

Dr. Lincoln R. Stone, Civil War Surgeon

By Katherine Dannehl, Reader Services

Gallipolis, Ohio is a village of 3,462 people nestled on the banks of the Ohio River. It has a few claims to fame, including being the birthplace of artist Jenny Holzer and hometown of Bob Evans of “Bob Evans” restaurants. Unrelated to conceptual art or country-themed restaurants, the town also played a major role in the American Civil War as the site of an extensive U.S. Army General Hospital for Civil War soldiers.

From the society’s collections: a hand-drawn map of the hospital, which stood from April 1862 until July 1865

 

The (unknown) artist drew detailed representations of the multi-building hospital, numbering and labeling each structure at the bottom of the map.

“Numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 are hospital ward buildings.”

 

The first four buildings are the dedicated hospital wards for the sick and injured. Building 5 is the two-in-one office and dispensary. The surgeon’s quarters and staff quarters are buildings 6 and 7, respectively. A dining hall and kitchen, house for the dead, bakery, laundry and linen room, stable, carpenter’s shop, and coal house round out the number of buildings at 14.

 

The hospital map is officially titled in our online catalog, ABIGAIL, as “Plan of U. S. A. Hospital at Gallipolis, Ohio, where Dr. and Mrs. Lincoln R. Stone spent the first seventeen months of their married life.” A military hospital doesn’t sound like an ideal place to honeymoon, but Dr. Lincoln R. Stone of Newton, Massachusetts was called to action to become the head surgeon of the hospital at Gallipolis immediately after his wedding in February 1864. He would reside there until the hospital’s closure in July 1865.

From the National Museum of African American History and Culture


A native of Maine, Dr. Stone graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1854 and worked at Massachusetts General Hospital for a year before opening his own medical practice. In 1861, duty called him to serve as assistant surgeon to the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry. At Winchester, Virginia, Stone was taken prisoner after refusing to abandon the hospital in his charge. He survived this ordeal and continued his military service, transferring to the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment upon the direct invitation of his close friend Robert Gould Shaw.

Robert Gould Shaw’s name has been buzzing through the halls of the society following our recent acquisition of the sword he wielded at Fort Wagner just before his death. Due to Dr. Stone’s consistently shifting posts at military hospitals, Dr. Stone would come to learn of Shaw’s death secondhand.

“…we learned that Col. Shaw was shot dead through the heart and was buried in the fort.”

 

In this copy of a letter from our archives, which was sent to Massachusetts Governor John Andrew, Dr. Stone himself informs the governor of Shaw’s passing and of the total loss experienced at the battle.

“The whole loss in the attack of Fort Wagner was 1,510 – of these almost one half were killed.”


About seven months after the Fort Wagner attack, Stone married Ms. Harriet Hodges of Salem, Massachusetts and moved to Gallipolis to assume his post as resident surgeon. On October 1st, 1865, to honor his service, Stone was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. Subsequently, he was mustered out on October 13th, 1865, and would return home to Newton to continue practicing medicine.

His wife Harriet Hodges Stone would become well-known to the community 30 years later as the founder of the Newton branch of the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women.

Dr. Stone would come to live well into his nineties. He is buried at Harmony Grove Cemetery in Salem, Massachusetts with his family.

To view these featured American Civil War materials in person, consider visiting the library at MHS. If you get here sometime this summer, you can view Robert Gould Shaw’s sword while you’re at it!

You can also find additional information about the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women within our collections, though you will find those specific to the Newton branch and Harriet Hodges Stone at Harvard’s Houghton Library.

In Gallipolis you can visit the historical marker where the U.S. Army General Hospital once stood, on the corner of Ohio and Buckeye Avenues.

*****

Sources and Related Materials:

Marquis, Albert Nelson, ed. Who’s who in New England: A biographical dictionary of leading living men and women of the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. Chicago: A.N. Marquis & Company, 1916. https://books.google.com/books?id=RmUTAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false

“12-27 U.S. Army General Hospital,” Remarkable Ohio, accessed July 29, 2017, http://www.remarkableohio.org/index.php?/category/435

Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women. Newton Branch Committee. Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women Newton Branch Committee records, 1894-1902. http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/deepLink?_collection=oasis&uniqueId=hou02149

United States. Army. General Hospital, Gallipolis, Ohio. Army General Hospital of Gallipolis, Ohio: Correspondence, orders, rules, and regulations. 1864-1865. Located in: Modern Manuscripts Collection, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD; MS C 24. https://oculus.nlm.nih.gov/cgi/f/findaid/findaid-idx?c=nlmfindaid;idno=army024

“Carte-de-visite album of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment,” National Museum of African American History and Culture, accessed July 28, 2017, https://nmaahc.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2014.115.8#

 

Posted in From Our Collections Tagged

John Randolph of Roanoke

By Susan Martin, Collections Services

The recently acquired MHS collection of Shaw-Minturn family papers has received its fair share of well-deserved press, particularly related to the discovery of the famous sword carried by Robert Gould Shaw at the assault on Fort Wagner. I hope to write more about the Shaw letters in a later post. But the collection also contains some interesting papers from the Minturn branch of the family, including letters written by John Randolph (1773-1833) during the last year and a half of his life.

 

 

“John Randolph of Roanoke” (as he is usually known) was a Congressman, minister to Russia, tobacco planter, fiery orator, vehement anti-Federalist, and all-around difficult man to get along with. The seventeen Randolph letters in this collection were written to Fish, Grinnell & Co. of New York, shipping merchants who procured and shipped items for Randolph that he couldn’t acquire in Virginia. (Fish, Grinnell & Co. became Grinnell, Minturn & Co. when Robert B. Minturn joined the firm. Robert Gould Shaw’s sister married Robert B. Minturn, Jr.)

In October 1831, when the letters start, Randolph was only 58 but suffered from a variety of physical ailments, including the tuberculosis that would ultimately kill him. His first few letters deal primarily with business matters, but on 9 February 1832, he launched into an angry discourse on banking policy and the upcoming presidential election. A New York newspaper had apparently reported that Randolph’s support for Andrew Jackson was wavering.

I am & ever shall be I hope the friend of Genl. Jackson. But deadly opposed as I am to the Bank of the U.S. I cannot support his ministers [Louis] McLane & [Edward] Livingston who are its warm supporters. I will do nothing & say nothing that can injure his re-election […]

Randolph also had a few choice words for Martin Van Buren and John C. Calhoun (and a bad prediction).

Neither of them [will] ever be President of the U.S. & Heaven forbid that either ever should be. Although I think the N. Yorker much less objectionable than him of South Carolina, I should be very sorry to see him in an office for which in my poor judgemt. he is unfit, wanting that weight & dignity of character & manners which are more essential than the greatest abilities & which Genl. Washington alone (in my opinion) of all our Presidents possessed.

One of the issues that got Randolph fired up was the Second Bank of the United States. Jacksonian Democrats believed that a central bank violated state sovereignty and the Constitution. Randolph called it “that knot of brokers in Philada. that levy contributions all around them & leave nothing undone to injure the Trade of New York.” But he had confidence in President Jackson. When Congress voted to reauthorize the bank, Randolph reassured Fish & Grinnell that “no Bill re-chartering the present Bank will ever receive Genl. J.’s signature. I have it under his own hand.” And he was right—Jackson vetoed the bill on 10 July 1832.

However, just four days later, Jackson set in motion the Nullification Crisis by signing the Tariff of 1832. This protectionist tariff and its previous incarnation, the 1828 “Tariff of Abominations,” hit Southern states hard. A fed-up South Carolina adopted the Ordinance of Nullification, which declared both tariffs void in the state and threatened secession if the federal government used force to compel compliance. Congress called their bluff and passed a bill authorizing the use of military force in South Carolina.

Randolph did not support nullification, but he was disappointed with Jackson and sympathetic to South Carolina. “And yet I fear,” he wrote, “that the people about the President, taking advantage of his own ferocious passions, and thirst for blood, will precipitate us into a conflict, that must end in ruin, no matter which party gets the upper hand.”

Fortunately South Carolina and the federal government would settle on a compromise tariff that defused the conflict, but Randolph’s feelings about the general political situation, combined with his poor health, made him despondent. He wrote on 31 January 1833:

The springs of life are worn out. Indeed in the abject state of the public mind, there is nothing worth living for. It is a merciful dispensation of providence, that Death can release the captive from the clutches of the Tyrant. […] I could not have believed that the people would so soon have shown themselves unfit for free government. I leave to General Jackson, & the Hartford men, and the ultra federalists and tories and the office-holders & office-seekers their triumph over the liberties of the Country. They will stand damned to everlasting fame.

Despite his cynicism, Randolph was a very witty correspondent. I like this passage from his 19 July 1832 letter, when he was considering a move to England and ordered a number of supplies.

After my last, you may well be surprised at the list of articles subjoined, but I have got into the habit of considering myself in a fourfold state – 1. as a dead man, 2. as a living one, 3. as a resident at Roanoke, 4. as residing on the south coast of England […] & I try to provide for each contingency.

We hope you’ll visit the MHS to take a look at the Shaw-Minturn family papers, the Robert Gould Shaw sword, or any of our other terrific resources.

Posted in From Our Collections

From Fenways Past

By Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook, Reader Services

Tomorrow, the Massachusetts Historical Society — in collaboration with the Emerald Necklace Conservancy — is offering a walking tour of our neighborhood, the Fenway. In celebration of this unique neighborhood, I have selected a few postcards from our collection that illustrate the Fenway’s gardens, streets, and buildings as they once appeared. The next time you visit the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Museum of Fine Arts, Fenway Park, or the Back Bay Fens, take a moment to look around for signs of our neighborhood as it has grown and changed for the century and more that the MHS has occupied the corner of Boylston and The Fenway.

 

Since 1912, Fenway Park has been home to the Boston Red Sox and parts of its original brick facade are still visible to visitors and passersby. This postcard dates from 1914 and suggests that the ritual of lining up before the gates open has a long history!

 

The Back Bay Fens, part of the chain of city green spaces known as the Emerald Necklace, were designed and constructed in the 1890s by the firm of Frederick Law Olmsted. The broad avenues of The Fenway and Park Drive that encircle the gardens, playing fields, and marshlands, were purposefully designed for leisure driving, cycling, and walking.

 

The two columns at Hemenway St. and Westland Ave. still stand as a gateway to the Fens for pedestrians and drivers alike. If you walk through this intersection today, many of the young trees depicted on this postcard now tower above the street, providing shade to pedestrians and cyclists as they pause for a break in automobile traffic.

 

Open to the public in June 1876 on Copley Square, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston relocated to the Fenway in 1909. The Evans Wing for Paintings, depicted here in a fine black and white print, opened to the public in 1915. Today, one of three entrances to the museum opens out onto the Fenway, memorably flanked by the bronze sculptures Night and Day by Spanish artist Antonio Lopez Garcia.

 

 Across the waters of the Fens from the MFA stands the Kelleher Rose Garden, opened in 1931 and designed by landscape architect Arthur Shurcliff, whose papers are held in the MHS collections.

 

Beyond the Museum of Fine Arts, along The Fenway, stand “Mrs. Jack Gardner’s Palace” —  the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum — and Simmons College, founded in 1899 and opened to its first class of 142 students in the fall of 1902. They offered young women degrees in Home Economics, Library Studies, Secretarial Studies, Nursing, Teaching, and General Science.

 

At the opposite end of the Back Bay Fens from Simmons College stands the Somerset Hotel. Designed by Arthur Bowditch in the 1890s — the same period during which the Massachusetts Historical Society’s 1154 Boylston St. building was under construction — Somerset Hotel still stands today along what remains of Charlesgate Park, the link between the Back Bay Fens and the Charles River Esplanade.

 

The Esplanade parkland was severed from the Emerald Necklace in the 1950s when Storrow Drive was constructed to ease the traffic congestion to and from downtown Boston. Our final postcard today shows the newly-minted roadway as it snakes passed the now-iconic Hatch Memorial Band Shell, from which the Boston Symphony Orchestra broadcasts its Boston Pops concert every 4th of July.

While the postcard collection at the Massachusetts Historical Society is uncataloged, it is available for research use in the Society’s reading room. The postcards are arranged by geographic location and subject matter, covering Massachusetts, national, and foreign scenes. If you would be interested in accessing this collection please contact the library to arrange a visit.

 

Posted in From Our Collections Tagged

Winslow Homer’s Civil War reporting for Harper’s Weekly

By Alex Bush, Reader Services

While searching through the MHS’ library catalog, ABIGAIL, for records relating to Mr. Sidney Homer, an 1860s inventor, I stumbled upon a trove of graphics created by Winslow Homer. As a fan of Homer, I admonished myself for not being aware that we had any of his artworks here at the MHS. I did not, however, find any of Homer’s famous paintings in our stacks. Instead, I found evidence of an oft-overlooked part of Homer’s artistic career.

Known for his dramatic depictions of the ocean and idyllic images of country life, Homer’s career as a painter began to take off after his late-twenties. However, he showed artistic talent much earlier in his life in the form of sketches, prints, and other black-and-white media. This includes the MHS’ holdings, a selection of some of Homer’s lesser known work from this earlier period of his life, consisting in-part of prints he created for Harper’s Weekly as an artist-reporter during the Civil War.

Following an arduous apprenticeship at the Boston lithographer J.H. Bufford, 21 year-old Winslow Homer was eager to begin his career as an artist free from the shackles of any sort of contracted work. He became a freelance illustrator, submitting pieces to magazines such as Harper’s or Ballou’s Pictorial. When he was offered a contract as a staff artist for Harper’s in 1860, he turned it down. “The slavery at Bufford’s was too fresh in my recollection to let me care to bind myself again,” he later stated. “From the time I took my nose off that lithographic stone, I have had no master; and never shall have any.” However, after completing a commission from Harper’s to cover the presidential inauguration of Abraham Lincoln at the dawn of the Civil War, Homer began a stint with Harper’s that would end up becoming a formative part of his early career as an artist.

 

 “Presidents Buchanan and Lincoln entering the senate chamber before the inauguration. – (From a sketch by our Special Artist.)” Harper’s Weekly, March 16, 1861, p. 165

 

With photography still in its developmental period, some of the public’s best sources for images of current events were publications such as Harper’s Weekly. Based in New York City, Harper’s was a political magazine featuring news, stories, illustrations, and more. It was especially active during the Civil War, during which it had nearly 200,000 subscribers, and it worked to provide the public with images, news, and accounts from the front. Part of this endeavor included the hiring of around 30 artist-reporters, tasked with shadowing troops to the warfront and attempting to depict what they saw there. In a short but vivid description from their June 3, 1865 issue, Harper’s explained the project as follows:

They have made the weary marches and dangerous voyages. They have shared the soldiers’ fare; they have ridden and waded, climbed and floundered… The pictorial history of the war which they have written with their pencils in the field, upon their knees, upon a knapsack, upon a bulwark, upon a drum-head, upon a block, upon a canteen, upon a wet deck, in the grey dawn, in the dusk twilight, with freezing or fevered fingers…–this is a history quivering with life, faithful, terrible, romantic.

Winslow Homer was one such artist, although he was not assigned to a particular unit as were most of his colleagues. He made several trips to the front over the course of the war, but completed most of the actual depictions of what he saw there back at his studio in New York. His first trip to the front was likely around October of 1861, during which he focused on the Army of the Potomac. He did not witness any fighting as the army had recently returned from its defeat at Bull Run and was undergoing reorganization. The majority of Homer’s depictions of the war featured army life rather than actual fighting—soldiers setting up camp, eating, receiving medical care, or generally palling around. His images of camp are jovial and often humorous, highlighting the solders’ camaraderie and rowdiness. When compared with other artists’ depictions of soldiers from that time, Homer’s soldiers are distinctive in their quality of expressivity in contrast to other square-jawed, conventionally patriotic representations of “heroic” troops.  Though Homer did have a few pieces of a more patriotic nature, such as “Songs of the War” and “Our Women of the War.”

 

 Detail from “A Bivouac Fire on the Potomac,” Harper’s Weekly, Dec. 21, 1861, p. 808-809

 

Detail from “Our Women and the War,” Harper’s Weekly, Sept. 6, 1862, p. 568

 

In the spring of 1862 Homer visited the front again, and this time witnessed actual fighting. He was present in Washington to watch McClellan’s Army of the Potomac embark, and accompanied them on a transport ship to the York Peninsula in preparation for an advance on the Confederate capitol. Homer watched the month-long siege against Yorktown, but left not long after the siege ended. He completed most of his depictions of what he saw there after he returned to New York, and thus ended his stint as a “special artist” for Harper’s. He later complained to his friend John W. Beatty that Harper’s greatly reduced the size of his sketches upon printing them, sometimes squeezing 4 onto a single page and paying him only $25 for the entire page instead of $25 per artwork as was originally negotiated.

“The Army of the Potomac: a sharp-shooter on picket duty,” Harper’s Weekly, Nov. 15, 1862, p. 724

 

“Rebels outside their works at Yorktown reconnoitering with dark lanterns,” Harper’s Weekly, May 10, 1862, p. 305

 

Homer’s more famous images of the Civil War, “A Cavalry Charge” and “A Bayonet Charge,” were done after he returned to his home in New York and ended his work with Harper’s. Later drawings of army life suggest that he did make subsequent visits to the front later on in the war, but they were not part of Homer’s official work as a reporter. From here he shifted his focus to painting, although Harper’s did offer him another steady job at the end of his time at the front. Feeling intimidated by his obscurity as a painter, Homer heavily considered taking the job and vowed to his brother that he would accept the offer if his next two paintings did not sell. Unbeknownst to Homer, his brother purchased the paintings himself. Homer did not find out until years later, at which point he “swore roundly and refused to speak to his brother for weeks.” Still, this small encouragement helped to propel Homer into his career as a painter. In subsequent work he depicted scenes from war and soldiers, no doubt inspired by these early sketches.

 

All prints pictured in this post and more can be seen in their original forms in Harper’s Weekly at the MHS.

—

  1. Donald H. Karshan and Lloyd Goodrich, The Graphic Art of Winslow Homer, organized by the Museum of Graphic Art, New York, 1968
  2. Lloyd Goodrich, Winslow Homer, New York: Published for the Whitney Museum of American Art by Macmillan, 1944
  3. “Biography of Winslow Homer,” Winslow Homer, 2017, winslow-homer.com
  4. Amy Athey McDonald, “As embedded artist with the Union army, Winslow Homer captured life at the front,” Yale News, 20 April, 2015, http://news.yale.edu/2015/04/20/embedded-artist-union-army-winslow-homer-captured-life-front

 

 

 

Posted in From Our Collections Tagged

“A stain of depravity”: John Quincy Adams on Lord Chesterfield

By Gwen Fries, Adams Papers

When Louisa Catherine Johnson wrote to her then-fiancé John Quincy Adams on March 20, 1797, she desired to impress him with her reading of Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to His Son. The reaction she received was not the reaction she expected.

Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

(National Portrait Gallery, London)

Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to His Son is a compilation of 448 letters from Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773), to his son, also named Philip (1732–1768), from the time the boy was five until his death. The letters contain lessons on subjects such as history and mythology in the boy’s youth, but the older he gets, the more the lessons relate to what Stanhope constantly refers to as, “the useful and necessary art of pleasing.” When the boy was eleven, Stanhope wrote that he desired he should be “as near perfection as possible” as “never were such pains taken for anybody’s education” and as his opportunities for knowledge and improvement were unparalleled. “The smallest inattention, or error in manners, the minutest inelegancy of diction, the least awkwardness in your dress and carriage, will not escape my observation,” Chesterfield wrote to his son. Understandably, Philip felt the need to keep secrets from his father. Upon his death from edema in 1768, Chesterfield discovered that Philip had been secretly married for ten years and had two sons. While Chesterfield provided for Philip’s two sons during what remained of his life and in his will, he neglected to leave Philip’s wife Eugenia anything, prompting her to publish over thirty years of his letters to his son. The collection of letters, published in 1774, attracted a great deal of notice in Britain and across the Atlantic.

Over twenty years after their original publication, Louisa wrote to her fiancé that she thought the letters “very good” but asked for John Quincy’s opinion on the book. John Quincy responded that he was never permitted to read the letters in his youth and harbored “too much contempt” for the principles within to have dedicated time to its perusal in his adulthood. Furthermore, he told her Chesterfield had a “stain of depravity which pervades all his ideas of morality” and that could only generate an “accomplished knave.” He advised her to read Samuel Johnson instead and leave Chesterfield’s “fraud” and “baseness” alone. (There is a 1779 copy of Stanhope’s work in the Stone Library at Peacefield with John Quincy’s bookplate attached.)

Undoubtedly, John Quincy’s fervent ideas about the book he claimed not to have read came, in part, from his parents. When his mother Abigail requested a copy in 1776, his father dissuaded her, telling her she wouldn’t want it as the letters were, “stained with libertine Morals and base Principles.” Abigail accepted her husband’s advice but got her hands on a copy four years later. After perusing the letters, she agreed that Chesterfield was filling his son’s mind with “the most immoral, pernicious and Libertine principals.”

Though John Quincy was no stranger to a father’s care, attention, and critiques, his relationship with his father little reflected the relationship of the Stanhopes. While John Adams urged his son to study the history of revolutions, Chesterfield outlined the proper way to bid farewell to mistresses. Chesterfield was, and urged his son to be, a chameleon in the world, a far cry from John Adams, the possibly uprooted but never swayed oak. In fact, Chesterfield’s instruction was so opposed to John Quincy’s lifestyle that he admitted to Louisa he felt as though Chesterfield were “personally satyrising” him.

John Quincy’s reaction to the text perhaps realizes his father’s April 15, 1776 wish that his children should “wear mean Cloaths, and work hard, with Chearfull Hearts and free Spirits” and that they would “scorn Injustice, Ingratitude, Cowardice, and Falshood. Let them revere nothing but Religion, Morality, and Liberty.” Nowhere did John Adams mention the useful and necessary art of pleasing.

Posted in From Our Collections Tagged

A Treasure Rediscovered: The Civil War Sword of Robert Gould Shaw, 54th Regiment

By Daniel Tobias Hinchen, Reader Services

Today, the MHS is happy to unveil a recent acquisition to the collection. On 12 July the Society announced the acquisition of a significant collection of Shaw and Minturn family papers, photographs, art, and artifacts. The most remarkable item in the collection is the officer’s sword carried by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment – the first Northern regiment composed of free black volunteers. One hundred fifty-four years ago, Shaw carried the weapon during the failed assault on Fort Wagner, Morris Island, South Carolina. With sword in-hand, Shaw was shot in the chest while mounting the parapet and was killed. The sword and other personal effects were stolen from his body during the night and presumed lost.

However, the sword survives. Following acquisition of the sword from descendants of the Shaw family, the collections staff here at the MHS had the daunting task of tracing the provenance of this sword in order to ensure that it is the genuine article.

What follows is a brief chronology of Robert Gould Shaw and his sword, as laid out by Curator of Art & Artifacts Anne Bentley, and Senior Cataloger Mary Yacovone, who combed through various sources published, primary, and otherwise. [N.B. – These events are arranged chronologically but, as with much historical research, the pieces fell together in anything but clear order.]

*****

Nov. 1860 – Robert Gould Shaw (RGS) enlists in the 7th NY Militia.

28 May 1861 – RGS commissioned 2nd Lieutenant, Company H, 2nd Massachusetts Infantry.

8 July 1861 – RGS commissioned 1st Lt. in same.

10 Aug 1861 – RGS commissioned Capt. in same.

31 Mar 1863 – RGS commissioned Major, newly-formed 54th Massachusetts Regiment.

17 Apr 1863 – RGS commissioned Colonel, 54th Mass. Regt.

[mid-late April 1863?] – RGS’ uncle, George R. Russell, orders an officer’s sword for Shaw from master English swordsmith Henry Wilkinson.

11 May 1863 – Wilkinson sword no. 12506 proofed on this date, per Henry Wilkinson records.

23 May 1863 – Wilkinson sword no. 12506 etched and mounted on this date. Sold to C. F. Dennett, Esq., per Henry Wilkinson records.

28 June 1863 – RGS wrote to his mother: “Uncle George has sent me an English sword, & a flask, knife, fork, spoon &c. They have not yet come.”1

29 June [1863] – “June 29 – Monday. “Arago” in and mail from the North.”2

1 July 1863 – RGS wrote to his father that “A box of Uncle George’s containing a beautiful English sword came all right.”1

4 July 1863 – RGS wrote to his father that “All the troops, excepting the coloured Regiments, are ordered to Folly Island. … P.S. I sent you a box with some clothes & my old sword. Enclosed is receipt.”1

16 July 1863 – Mass. 54th participated in the Battle of Grimball’s Landing, James Island. RGS probably used his new Wilkinson sword in this action. First experience under fire for the 54th, which stood strong and proved its mettle covering the retreating Union forces.

18 July 1863 – Assault on Fort Wagner. RGS shot in the chest as he stood on the parapet of Ft. Wagner, sword in hand. Overnight his body was robbed of personal effects and arms and stripped to underwear. Sources differ as to the culprits.

19 July 1863 – RGS buried. According to Brig. Gen. George P. Harrison, C.S.A. writing to Luis F. Emilio much later, RGS was placed in the rifle pits below the parapet and 20 of his dead soldiers placed on top of him. Sources here differ also.

Friday 24 [July 1863] – John Ritchie diary: “Packed up Col. Shaw’s effects & expressed them North.” Ritchie later noted that he also sold the colonel’s horse.

3 June 1865 – Letter from Brigadier General Charles Jackson Paine, district commander at New Berne, N. C., to family:

Goldsboro June 3, 1865. I heard the other day of the sword of the late Robt. G. Shaw killed at Fort Wagner, in the possession of a rebel officer about sixty miles from here. I sent out and got it; the scabbard was not with it. I am going to send it on as soon as I have an opportunity.3

28 Jan 1876 – Letter from Lydia Maria Child to John Greenleaf Whittier:

I spent last winter with the parents of Colonel Shaw…The flag of the 54th Regiment was in their hall, and the sword of Colonel Shaw. There is a history about that sword. It is very handsome, being richly damascened with the United States coat-of-arms, and the letters R. G. S. beneath. It was a present from a wealthy uncle in England, and he received it a few days before the attack on Fort Wagner […] When his mother showed me the weapon she said: “This is the sword that Robert waved over his followers, as he urged them to the attack. I am so glad it was never used in battle! Not a drop of blood was ever on it. He had received it but a few days before he died.”4

Detail of the sword, showing United States Coat-of-Arms and initials R.G.S.

(Photograph by Stuart E. Mowbray)

 

1900 – At a meeting of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, Commandery of Massachusetts, Brev. Lt. Solon A. Carter, U.S.V., presented a paper titled “Fourteen Months’ Service with Colored Troops,” in which he stated:

In July [1865], upon leaving the service, the late Assistant Adjutant General* was charged by General Paine with the duty of restoring the sword to Colonel Shaw’s father, and upon arrival at this home, opened a correspondence with Mr. Francis George Shaw informing him of its recovery.

The sword in question proved to be the one carried by the gallant colonel and was identified by the initials R.G.S. delicately etched upon the blade. In a postscript to one of his letters, Mr. Shaw wrote, “The sword was a present to my son from his uncle, Mr. George R. Russell, who purchased it in England and caused the etchings to be made there.”

In a subsequent letter acknowledging its receipt he says “I thank you most heartily for all the care and trouble you have taken. So far as such words may be applied to an inanimate thing it is the weapon which has done most for our colored people in this war, and it is to me likewise as well as to you a source of great satisfaction that is was recovered and restored by officers of colored troops.”

*Captain Solon A. Carter, of Leominster, Mass., served as C.J. Paine’s Assistant Adjutant General. Appointed 15 July 1864 and resigned 3 July 1865.

Mar 2017 – The sword was found in the attic of the home of Mary (McCawley) Minturn Haskins.

6 Apr 2017 – In an e-mail to MHS Curator of Art & Artifacts Anne Bentley, one of the donors stated:

Susanna Shaw Minturn is my great-grandmother and apparently was very close to her brother, RGS. Her oldest son, Robert Shaw Minturn, had no children; there were four girls and my grandfather, Hugh Minturn (who died in 1915, before his mother). I can only guess, but presumably my great-grandmother passed the sword on to my father, Robert Bowne Minturn, not her oldest grandson, but the senior by male primogeniture. My father was 15 when his grandmother died in 1926. The sword may have hung on his childhood bedroom wall.

17 Apr 2017 – Shaw sword is given to the Massachusetts Historical Society as part of a larger gift including papers and portraits.

*****

1. Shaw, Robert Gould, Blue-eyed child of fortune: the Civil War letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw / edited by Russell Duncan, (Athens : University of Georgia Press, c1992.)

2. Lt. John Ritchie’s diary, Quartermaster of the Massachusetts 54th Volunteer Infantry Regiment, whose diary was used by Luis F. Emilio in A Brave Black Regiment.

3. Paine, Sarah Cushing, Paine ancestry : the family of Robert Treat Paine, signer of the Declaration of Independence, including maternal lines / compiled by Sarah Cushing Paine ; edited by Charles Henry Page, )Boston : Printed for the family [Press of D. Clapp & Son], 1912.

4. Child, Lydia Maria Francis, Letters of Lydia Maria Child / with a biogrpahical introduction by John G. Whittier and an appendix by Wendell Phillips, (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1883).

Posted in From Our Collections Tagged ,

“Honest and Faithful” Emerson P. Dibble

By Susan Martin, Collections Services

That word Southwick brings a lot of happy memories to my mind. Can almost see the place now. The old mountain is just beginning to turn color. Chestnut burrs are about half formed and [I] can plainly see the tobacco field with the seed plants standing out like guards. 

This passage is from a letter written by Private Emerson Phelps Dibble on 25 August 1918, about one month after his enlistment in the U.S. Marine Corps. The MHS recently acquired a fascinating collection of Emerson’s papers, primarily letters written during his service in World War I.

 

Emerson Dibble was born on 24 March 1898, the son of Albert C. and Winifred E. (Phelps) Dibble. As far as I can determine, he was their only child. Emerson’s mother died when he was just three years old, and his father remarried a woman named Millie Holcomb. The Dibbles lived on a farm in Southwick, Mass., where they grew tobacco.

Emerson enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps on 23 July 1918. Most of the letters in the collection were written to his stepmother Millie, his father Albert, and his girlfriend (later wife) Olive Madeline Jordan. Emerson’s letters are detailed, affectionate, funny, and often very moving. For example, when he wrote the words above, he was in training at Parris Island, S.C., and the pangs of homesickness had set in. Being away made him appreciate his home and family more. Millie wrote that she cared for him as if her were her own son, and he replied, “You can never know how my heart jumped when I read that.” He wrote to his father in the same vein:

When I saw and recognised your hand writing Gee, there was that same big lump came up in my throat and then when I read on and saw your feelings [I] couldn’t keep the tears from my eyes. They were tears of gladness tho’ and [I] can tell you this dad that when this big fight is over and I come back up in a decent country and back to Home there is going to be a closer, dearer feeling between us. I’ve made mistakes in the past that [I] never realized until now. You told me hundreds of times that [I] would see them some day but I in a foolish, boyish passion and anger could not see things the way you did. But [I] can assure you that I see them now, and, oh, so plainly, Dad. When I get back you and I are going to be father and son and not strangers as we have almost been.

Emerson seemed to flourish under the rigorous military discipline. He grew fitter and stronger every day, and even qualified as a sharpshooter. He was proud of the toughness of the Marines: “I wouldn’t want to be a Common Soldier. The U.S. Marine is the only real soldier of [the] United States and is good as any other in the world.” Emerson was also full of interesting anecdotes. He described meeting, in South Carolina, “one old fellow who said he was 92. Don’t know whether he was or not. He looked it tho’. He was a slave when the Civil War broke out and he told us he had seen the battle of Cold Springs and also the evacuation and capture of Richmond by the Yankees.”

In September 1918, the Spanish flu epidemic hit Parris Island, and the camp was temporarily quarantined. Emerson had “a slight attack” and recovered, but he was worried about the folks back home. The following month, he shipped out to Europe.

Letters took longer to reach him across the Atlantic, and when he didn’t hear from Millie, Albert, or Olive for three months, he worried even more. He wanted “to have everyone all O.K. when I come home.” But it was Emerson who would get the worst of it. After another bout with the flu and a fever of 103, he was hospitalized with sub-acute bronchitis. He complained of headaches, weakness in his legs, and a cough, but didn’t feel that bad, he said. It was the monotony he hated.

On 1 May 1919, an ecstatic Emerson wrote to Olive and Millie from the U.S. Naval Hospital in Brooklyn, N.Y. He’d been transferred back to the states and still hoped for a full recovery before leaving the service. One letter revealed a new detail: it was tuberculosis that had killed his mother Winifred eighteen years before, and the family was afraid Emerson would contract it, too. He reassured them that he’d had four sputum tests, and all four had come back negative.

Olive and Emerson were now engaged to be married. Olive was a schoolteacher in Springfield, Mass., and Emerson wrote to tell her how much he missed her:

Oh, Olive dear, if you had only known how I longed for you. Just to see you, to kiss you, to feel you cuddle up close to me as you used to. Gee, dearest girl, I lived over a hundred of those fine times we used to have to-gether. […] You understand, don’t you? Guess I have changed some since a year ago. Maybe in some ways for the worse but principally for the good. […] Oh, dearest girl, if you could only feel my feelings now, Olive, I love you, love you – God help me if I ever stop loving you. […] Hoping and praying to be with you and kiss you (again & again) sometime in the near future.

Emerson was honorably discharged from the U.S. Marine Corps on 29 July 1919 with marks of “excellent” for character, obedience, and sobriety. His service was described as “honest and faithful.” In the fall of 1919, before their marriage, Emerson worked at the General Electric plant in Pittsfield, Mass., and wrote often to Olive in Springfield. They were probably married in 1920.

The next letter, the final letter by Emerson in the collection, is heartbreaking. It’s dated 3 February 1921 and was written on stationery from a ladies’ clothing shop in Holyoke, Mass.—Emerson was apparently boarding there after receiving treatment at a sanatorium. His despair is palpable. At the same time, we learn that Emerson and Olive had become parents.

Today I started to “streak” again so I suppose may expect a hemorrhage any time. Hope this one finishes the bell for [I] am sick and tired of this separation and this recurrence of the trouble. Am afraid that I am going to be a misfit and a dependent for life and thats too much for me. […] Have thought of you often and pray for you and the little girl every night. Can’t go to sleep for hours sometimes just thinking of you dear. […] Maybe I am cowardly and all that but am ready to die tonight and would go happy knowing that [I] had taken a load from the world in general.

Emerson died in July 1922 and is buried at Pine Grove Cemetery in Lynn, Mass. According to his application for a driver’s license, filled out earlier that year, he had contracted pulmonary tuberculosis after all.

I’d love to know what happened to his daughter, Peggy Dibble. She was still alive in 1924, but I can’t find any record of her after that. The collection came to us with a small photograph album, but unfortunately the people in the photographs are unidentified. Another unsolved mystery is the  location of Emerson’s diary, which ended up in the hands of his friend Mike Cronin and was probably returned to Olive after Emerson’s death.

Amazingly, Olive lived to the age of 94 and died in October 1990. She never re-married and is buried in the Lynn cemetery plot with Emerson.

 

Posted in From Our Collections