National Heritage Museum

The "John Brown Bell" in Marlborough, MA

On Saturday, March 10 at 2 PM the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library Inc. (National Heritage Museum) will be offering a free lecture with Tony Horwitz, author of Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War. To learn more about the talk, read our previous blog post about this public program.

The history and story of John Brown abolitionist and militant has captivated audiences for over 150 years. Not only is it a Virginia story but it has a Massachusetts connection. Perhaps the speaker or members of the audience already know about the “John Brown Bell” of Marlborough, Massachusetts.

In the summer of 1861, members of Company I, 13th Massachusetts Volunteers were camped by the Potomac River, near Harpers Ferry. Some of these enlisted men were members of the Marlborough Volunteer Fire Department.  The militia was ordered to cross the river and seize anything of value for the US Government, and diligently searched the arsenal for items that might be of use or profitable. Others had had already been there before and taken anything worth confiscating.

Not wishing to return completely empty-handed, the men entered the engine house at Harpers Ferry that had served as Brown’s headquarters during the raid.  The militia spotted the bell in the engine-house and decided to take it home to Marlborough.  The bell, it was reasoned, could be presented to the city’s Hook and Ladder Company, who found themselves bell-less at the time. 

Was the bell Federal property that should be handed over to the government or was it a war souvenir?

In 1862 the company  did not have sufficient funds to send it home and the on-going military conflicts also  prevented them from getting the bell to Marlborough.

From 1862 to 1892 the bell resided in Williamsport, Maryland. Mrs. George Snyder, a local resident, had kept the bell for the company. In 1892, former members of Company I, now organized in a Grand Army of the Republic chapter, returned to Williamsport and, after finding the bell still in Mrs. Snyder’s possession, raised the necessary money to have the bell shipped to Marlborough.

Over thirty years after its removal in 1861 from the engine-house in Harpers Ferry, the bell was eventually  placed in the “John Brown Bell Tower” in Union Common at the intersection of Main and Bolton Street in Marlborough, Massachusetts, where it resides to this day. To learn more, visit the Marlborough Historical Society website.

Should a bell of such historic importance be located in Harpers Ferry, Marlborough or elsewhere?  We look forward to hearing if Tony Horwitz has something to add on this subject.

Photo credits:

Courtesy of Claudia Roche

 

New England Cuisine at the Museum

Don't break out your lobster bibs quite yet! No, we are not offering a grand buffet of New England cooking classics. However, we have the next best thing in store for you.

On Saturday, May 28, at 2 PM there will be a really fun Lowell Lecture that you won't want to miss. Kathleen Fitzgerald and Keith Stavely will relate the tale of "Pressed Heads, Pottages, and Pippin Tarts: The Surprising Story Behind a Typical Diner Meal." Authors of Northern Hospitality: Cooking by the Book in New England (2011) and America’s Founding Food: The Story of New England Cooking (2004), Stavely and Fitzgerald will treat us to a culinary tour that traces the precursors of franks and beans and apple pie, as well as other traditional New England foods. Their talk will be illustrated with images of some of the foods they have prepared and served in their home.

The author team has a wealth of experience as speakers, having presented at international conferences, at numerous historical societies, libraries, and museums, and to a variety of community and professional groups. Through lively presentations and sprightly give-and-take with their audiences, they bring the hidden history of New England foodways to light, along the way showing how a region's food practices can illuminate its broader social and cultural history.

Stavely is a writer and scholar whose interest in the Puritan influence on American and English culture has resulted in a number of critically-esteemed books and articles. He has been a Guggenheim and American Council of Learned Societies fellow and a winner of the Modern Language Association Prize for Independent Scholars. Fitzgerald worked for five years as a college chaplain and for eight years as a coordinator of a soup kitchen. Except for one brief stint in an academic library in Ohio, she has worked for over twenty years as a public librarian in urban settings in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. She is currently a librarian at the Newport Public Library.

This free public lecture is funded by the Lowell Institute and complements the exhibition Night Road: Photographs of Diners by John D. Woolf. After the lecture, please join us for a book signing. Copies of both Northern Hospitality and America’s Founding Food will be available for purchase, thanks to a collaboration with an independent bookshop in Winchester, Book Ends.

Please call the Museum at 781-861-6559 if you have questions about this public program.

Credits:

Courtesy of Katheleen Fitzgerald and Keith Stavely

Courtesy of Katheleen Fitzgerald and Keith Stavely and the University of Massachusetts Press

The Adventures of Foxy Grandpa, Freemason. Or Is He?

From 1900 to 1918, cartoonist Carl Edward Schultze (1867-1939) drew a popular comic strip about an old man and his young grandsons. Unlike “The Katzenjammer Kids” and other cartoons in which children get the better of their parents and grandparents, Schultze wanted the grandpa to be the smart one. Thus Foxy Grandpa was born. He plays practical jokes on the boys or makes their practical jokes on him backfire.

The comic strip’s popularity led to related products for sale, from toys and postcards to ornaments and doorstops. They also included the doll seen here. Made by Art Fabric Mills Company of New York, the dolls were sold in printed cloth sheets, meant to be cut out, sewn and stuffed. In a December 1904 issue of McCall’s magazine, the dolls were advertised for 25¢. Malted Cereal Company also promoted them. The Museum's doll is now featured in the exhibition "Curators' Choice: Favorites from the Collection."

Carl Schultze signed the cartoons “Bunny”—his childhood nickname—along with a drawing of a rabbit. The doll holds a rabbit, Schultze’s alter-ego, under his arm.

The Museum purchased this doll in 1977 because of the watch fob he wears, which features a square and compasses, a common Masonic symbol. However, no one at the Museum has been able to identify a Masonic connection for the character. We haven't found any evidence that Schultze was a Mason, nor have we seen any references to Masonry in the cartoons.

Then a few weeks ago, I discovered a book entitled Foxy Grandpa Rides the Goat for sale. As mentioned in an earlier post, some late 19th- and early 20th-century initiation rituals involved gags, such as “pushing a hoodwinked (blindfolded) candidate around a lodge room on a wobbly-wheeled fake mechanical goat,” one of which we have in the Museum's collection. I thought the book’s title might be a reference to Freemasonry, as did my colleagues in the various collections departments, so we purchased the book. And we were disappointed to find only one reference to Freemasonry in the book:

“Come and ride our goat, dear Grandpa,
     We see you’re a mason true,”
Said the boys as they glanced below
     At the mortar on his shoe.

Between the watch fob and the poem, it seems clear that Schultze was familiar with Freemasonry. Membership in Masonic lodges was at a peak in the early 1900s, so even the uninitiated likely learned about the fraternity through friends, colleagues, or family members who were Masons.

Schultze's references to Freemasonry are rather subtle, perhaps noticeable only to those who are looking for them. Especially since we have not been able to identify a lodge that Schultze belonged to, these clues seem like his wry joke, in the same vein as the cartoon itself.

If you know anything about Carl E. Schultze's Masonic membership or activities, please leave a comment on this post.

Photographs:

"Foxy Grandpa" Doll, 1903-1912. Art Fabric Mills Company, New York. National Heritage Museum Collection, 77.36. 

Foxy Grandpa Rides the Goat. (Chicago: M.A. Donohue & Co.), 1908. National Heritage Museum, Van Gorden-Williams Library and Archives Collection

Lincolniana and other new and recommended books: March 2009

While some may think things have gotten too carried away for the Lincoln Bicentennial, there really are some new books, programs and exhibits worth knowing about.  We've added several titles on Abraham Lincoln to our collection and we've listed them along with all our other new Masonic and fraternal and general American history titles on our website's New Acquisitions page.  Please take a look.

If you're out and about in the Boston area (after having visited the National Heritage Museum in Lexington, of course!) and you're looking for Lincoln and Civil War related exhibits, you might check out the following:  The Medford Historical Society is home to one of the world's greatest collections of Civil War photographs and many are on display this month as part of their Of the People: Faces of the Civil War exhibit.  Some of their photographs, from the General Samuel Crocker Lawrence collection* also may be seen at the Brookline Public Library along with an exhibit, Abraham Lincoln: Self-Made in America.

Lots of other interesting exhibits and events are scheduled throughout the area and information on them is available at the Massachusetts Lincoln Bicentennial website.  National events and a state-by-state guide may be found at the Lincoln Bicentennial website.

*Landscapes of the Civil War, an exhibit of photographs from this same collection appeared at the National Heritage Museum in 1999 and an accompanying book (Landscapes of the Civil War: Newly Discovered Photographs from the Medford Historical Society. Edited by Constance Sullivan.  N.Y.: Knopf, 1995.  Call number E 468.7 .L25 1995)  is available in our collection along with other materials by and about the collector and Freemason, Samuel Crocker Lawrence.  More on Lawrence also is available in the library that bears his name at the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts.

Abraham Lincoln signature from the Library of Congress Prints and Photograph Division.

 

 

 

For map-lovers

One of the recently announced American Library Association children's book award winners that particularly got my attention is Uri Shulevitz's How I Learned Geography.  The author-illustrator has included autobiographical details in previous books but never so poignantly.  His latest book tells of his Polish family, ravaged by war and forced to relocate.  Strangers in a new country, they are poor and hungry yet one night instead of food from the market his father brings home a large, colorful map and places it on their wall.  At first Uri and his mother are annoyed because there are so many other things they need.  In time he realizes the map nourishes him and his dreams as no food ever could.

It's a sentiment map-lovers of any age can appreciate.

And we are a museum of map-lovers.  Interesting, historic, beautiful and colorful maps both large and small may be found on many of our walls and often are exhibited or used in exhibits to illustrate the stories we tell.  Over thirty years ago when our Museum was new and the Library & Archives collection just being formed, maps were identified as a priority and a small but respectable collection acquired.  One of the early acquisitions, shown at right, Carte du Theatre de la Guerre dans L'Amerique...1775-1778 was drawn by Captaine de Chesnoy, an aide-de-camp to the Marquis de Lafayette and published in Paris. The three columns in the lower right list major campaigns of the Revolutionary War in chronological order so there's lots of visual and narrative interest all in one map.

Fortunately today it's easier than ever to find, study and even print or order reproductions of every imaginable kind of map.  New England has several wonderful map collections including the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at Boston Public Library (BPL) and the Osher Map Collection at the University of Southern Maine (where the new map museum will open in September 2009).  Online resources about maps also are extensive.  It's hard to beat former British Library map librarian Tony Campbell's Map History site for an all around introduction to anything and everything having to do with maps.  The Library of Congress, University of Texas, New York Public Library and David Rumsay map sites also are comprehensive and, the Library of Congress along with the BPL site, provide the opportunity to buy reproductions from their collections.

And this post wouldn't be complete without mentioning Google and their many map products.  Several official and unofficial blogs are available to try to keep up with and make sense of their latest map offerings.

Sources listed and mentioned above: 

Chesnoy, Michel.  Carte du theatre de la Guerre... Paris: Chez Perrier graveur:  Chez Fortin, [1779].  Call number:  map 029-1779?

Shulevitz, Uri.  How I Learned Geography.  N.Y.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.

Silvestro, Clement M.  A Decade of Collecting Maps.  Lexington, MA:  Museum of Our National Heritage, 1985.  Call number:  GA 190 .S54 1985

 

 

 

Now you see it, now you don't: fore-edge painting

If you happened on Truths Illustrated by Great Authors: A Dictionary of Nearly Four Thousand Aids to Reflection...in our library you might notice the handsome binding and gilt fore-edge or outer edge of the book:

 

However, if you fanned through the book, glancing at some of the interesting quotations from Shakespeare and other authors, you would see the gilt edge above transform into a picture (thought to be from Stratford-upon-Avon) if you held it just right:

Fore-edge painting is the process of decorating the longer outer edge of a book then, usually, when dry, concealing it with gilt.  It's a hidden treasure in a book and while some describe it as a lost art, others consider it 'pretty but petty.'  The earliest examples date back to the 16th century but it wasn't until the mid-18th century that it gained more prominence.  London bookseller and binder James Edwards (1756-1816) indicated he had a "method of binding books in vellum with drawings which will not rub out" in a 1785 patent application and even though he hadn't invented the process he became one of its greatest practitioners. The technique quickly moved from England to the rest of Europe (though several earlier examples may be found on the continent) and then onto North America in the 19th century.  Fore-edge painting enjoyed a brisk revival in the 20th century.

Most of what is now known about the history and practice of fore-edge painting is thanks to a former Colby College Professor of English and Rare Book Librarian, Carl J. Weber (1894-1966).  He received a donation of books with fore-edged paintings and began his research after finding very little general or scholarly work on the subject.  Weber published A Thousand and One Fore-edge Paintings: with Notes on the Artists, Bookbinders, Publishers, and Other Men and Women Connected with the History of a Curious Art in 1949 and included a detailed list of fore-edge paintings in some 56 American libraries and private collections.  He revised the work as Fore-edge Painting: A Historical Survey of a Curious Art in Book Decoration in 1966.  Fore-edge painting became a family interest after that: a new book, The Fore-edge Paintings of John T. Beer is the latest by his grandson, Jeff Weber.

Which books did and didn't get decorated edges?  There's no particular rhyme or reason to it, though if you look at the 1001 listings in Carl Weber's 1949 book, you do see multiple entries for the bible, Book of Common Prayer, books of poetry, and various classics.  Where can you find examples of fore-edge painting?  Again, Weber notes that while most libraries have no examples of fore-edge painting, there are many important collections around the world.  The larger American collections may be found at the College of William and Mary, the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City and the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA.  Boston Public Library also has a significant number of rare books with fore-edge paintings and has made them easily accessible on their website and on Flickr, the photo management and sharing program.  In fact the wonderful thing about BPL's Art of the Book collection on Flickr is that you can see, at a glance, that the painting and the subject of the book are sometimes, but not always, in concert.  For example,  A view of Hampton Court Palace adorns this copy of the Iliad by Homer:

 

 

while other works by Homer have castles in Wales, scenes from Bath, England, and the Eton College Chapel.  On the other hand, the Memoirs of the life and travels of John Ledyard contains this very appropriate scene (as Ledyard was a member of Captain Cook's expedition):

 

I was interested to find only one Masonic title on Weber's 1949 list, William Preston's Illustrations of Masonry, published in 1792.  The copy listed, held in a private collection, had 2 fore-edge scenes painted, St. Paul's Churchyard and the Goose and Gridiron Ale House, noteworthy as the place the Grand Lodge of London began in 1717.  Alas, our own copy of the same edition doesn't have any fore-edge paintings.  I would be interested to hear from anyone who knows of other Masonic titles with this type of decoration.  Given the amount of material published in the 18th and 19th centuries, the propensity toward decoration, and the interest in secrecy, fore-edge painting and Freemasonry would seem ideally suited!

Meanwhile, next time you pick up a book, particularly if it is old and has a beautiful binding, try fanning the pages.  You may just get a nice surprise.

Sources consulted and mentioned above:

Carter, John.  ABC for Book Collectors.  8th ed.  New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2006.

Weber, Carl J.  A Thousand and One Fore-edge Paintings: with Notes on the Artists, Bookbinders, Publishers, and other Men and Women connected with the History of a Curious Art.  Waterville, ME: Colby College Press, 1949. Online copy here

Weber, Carl J.  Fore-edge Painting: a Historical Survey of a Curious Art in Book Decoration.  Irvington-on-Hudson: Harvey House, 1966.

Weber, Jeff.  The Fore-edge Paintings of John T. Beer. Los Angeles: Jeff Weber Rare Books. Limited to 210 copies printed by the Castle Press, Pasadena, 2006.

White, William M.  Truths Illustrated by Great Authors.  London:  W. White, 1852.  Call number:  RARE PN 6081 .W48 1852.  Fore-edge painting of Stratford-upon-Avon.

New and recommended books: December 2008

Though our collection doesn't necessarily include the kind of popular titles one finds on holiday gift idea lists, a few recent acquisitions come to mind as potential gifts for just the right person....

Books as History: the Importance of Books Beyond Their Text by David Pearson.  New Castle, DE:  Oak Knoll Press, 2008.  Call number:  Z 4 .P43 2008.  This well-illustrated, unusual look at books -- their form, content, ownership and value -- from the earliest examples right up to recent advances in electronic publishing is fascinating and a real treasure.

Boston Beheld: Antique Town and Country Views by D. Brenton Simons.  Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2008.  Call number:  N 8214.5 .U6 S47 2008.  This book, recently published in association with the New England Historic Genealogical Society, presents over 60 18th and 19th century views of Boston and environs along with informative descriptions about the work of art, artist and setting.  Included are a number of scenes from collections at the Boston Athenaeum, Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts Historical Society, Bostonian Society which individually are stunning -- but taken together present Boston as never seen before.

The Houses of the Founding Fathers: The Men Who Made America and the Way They Lived by Hugh Howard New York: Artisan, 2008.  Call number:  E 176 .H866 2007.  Leafing through this beautiful, over-sized volume filled with full-color photographs makes you feel you're actually traveling up and down the Atlantic coast visiting the homes of notable Americans of the 17th and 18th centuries.  Several well known homes are included (Jefferson's Monticello, Washington's Mount Vernon, and the Vassal-Craigie-Longfellow House in Cambridge to name a few) but many other lesser known homes stand out as well.  Biographical information, maps and a timeline are included along with descriptive entries for each of the forty homes highlighted.

Masonic Lodges of Massachusetts: 275th Commemorative Anniversary Edition. [Boston]: Masonic Leadership Institute of Massachusetts, 2008.  Call number:  17.9763 .M375 2008. This recently published book presents beautiful color photographs (exterior and some interior) and information about Massachusetts lodges from some 251 cities and towns throughout the Commonwealth.  At a glance you can see the great diversity of historic buildings as well as the more modern meeting places.  For more information on ordering a copy contact the Caleb Butler Lodge.

And, for a complete list of the new titles we've added in the past couple months, please check New Acquisitions on our website.

Twelve Mighty Orphans

Looking for an engaging yet quick read this summer?  How about something that combines sports and Freemasonry?

Sportswriter Jim Dent covered the Dallas Cowboys for 11 years. While in Texas he never heard of the Masonic Home, in fact he first learned about them half-listening to a story about an old football player on ESPN.  Something about it got his attention though and the next day he headed for Fort Worth and began researching the recently closed Masonic Home, Hardy Brown, coach Rusty Russell and and an entire team of underdogs that played in some of the biggest games in Texas high school history.

Twelve Mighty Orphans: The Inspiring True Story of the Might Mites Who Ruled Texas Football tells the story.  Dent details how this small band of orphans in the middle of the Depression, a bunch of underweight, under-equipped kids went on to beat larger, better funded, and much better-equipped schools during the 1930's and 1940's.  It's a great, true story.

Additional background information about the Masonic Home and School of Texas may be found in our copy of Robert L. Dillard's 1973 history of the orphanage (image at left is from the cover).  Dillard, a former President of the Board of Directors there, provides a detailed history of the institution that opened its doors in 1900.  While there is only brief mention of sports of any kind and a short note in the chronology for 1942 that "H.N. "Rusty" Russell, long-time Principal and coach, left the Home", it provides some background for Dent's more focused story.

Full information for both books follows:

Dent, Jim.  Twelve Mighty Orphans: The Inspiring True Story of the Mighty Mites Who Ruled Texas Football.  New York: St. Martin's Press, 2007.
Call number: 42 .D46 2007

Dillard, Robert L.  History of Masonic Home & School of Texas.  Fort Worth: Masonic Home and School, 1973.
Call number: 42 .D578 1973

And, as suggested by the comment below, see also an interesting look at the Masonic Home and the integral part athletics played in it, in

Vaughn, William Preston, "Masonic Home and School of Texas, 1920-1940: The Glory Days" in A Daily Advancement in Masonic Knowledge: The Collected Blue Friar Lectures.  Bloomington, IL: The Masonic Book Club, 2003.  Call number:  61 .D133 2003