Library of Congress's Blog, page 113

Russian Revolution: The Last Days of the Romanovs

A daughter of the Romanov family transports sod in one photo, aided by a soldier; in another, her father, the deposed Russian czar, paces in front of a house in Siberia where the imperial family was held after the revolution in 1917 that toppled its dynasty. The grainy black-and-white images underscore how far the Romanovs fell from their days atop an empire—and also offer a window on the last days of a family whose story has intrigued the world for a century now.

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Grand Duchess Tatiana, one of the four daughters of the deposed Russian czar, transports sod on a stretcher in May 1917 with assistance from a soldier. She is helping her family plant a kitchen garden.

Discovered a decade ago, the two images in this blog post are part of a group copyrighted in 1921 by Underwood and Underwood, a firm that sold news photos. A college student participating in the Library of Congress Junior Fellows Summer Intern Program discovered them while inventorying the contents of files containing uncataloged deposits submitted with historical copyright applications. The photos were scanned and posted online by the Prints and Photographs Division, joining seven others already available.

Some photos in the group are believed to have been taken by Pierre Gilliard, a tutor who stayed with the imperial family during much of its detention. He composed a narrative that is attached to several of the original photos. It explains that the Romanovs were detained from March 1917 until August 1917 at Tsarskoye Selo, an estate that had belonged to them. They occupied their time with religious activities and walks in the park under close watch by guards. Gilliard continued to teach lessons, assisted by the czar and czarina.

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The czar and his children in front of Governor’s House in Tobolsk, Siberia, where they were held captive from August 1917 to May 1918. The four figures to the left are the grand duchesses; the boyish figure in the center is the czarevitch, the imperial heir. The figure on the far right is the czar.

“On the 13th day of May,” Gilliard wrote, “the family decided to change the lawn, near the residence, into a kitchen garden. All were enthusiastic and everybody, family retinue, servants, and even several soldiers of the guard joined the work. . . . In June, the results of their labor were clearly shown, for all kinds of vegetables had grown, including 500 cabbages.”

In August 1917, the Romanovs and their retinue were moved to Tobolsk, Siberia, where they remained until May 1918, when they were transported to Ekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains. The entire family and four retainers were executed there in July 1918.

On August 1, 2007, framed facsimiles of the newly found photos were presented to former Librarian of Congress James Billington, a Russia scholar, during an exhibition of items inventoried by the 2007 Junior Fellows interns. “This is an example of the power of discovering unexpected things in the Library’s collections,” he observed.

World War I: The Library of Congress Memorial Tree

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Tree planting ceremony. Photo by Underwood & Underwood, Dec. 7, 1920. Prints and Photographs Division.

The Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building is bordered by a number of impressive trees. One of them, a Japanese elm at the southwest corner of the building, was planted on Dec. 17, 1921, in memory of four Library of Congress staff members killed while serving in World War I. According to an article published in the Jan. 1, 1921, issue of the Library Journal, the planting of the tree was supervised by Superintendent of Building and Grounds Bernard Green. The article includes this photograph of the ceremony, which can be found in the Prints and Photographs Division.

The Library’s service flag, bearing 95 stars for all Library staff members who served, is stretched out in the wind. The day looks bright, but it must also have been cold. The crowd members wear hats and thick coats, but Librarian of Congress Herbert Putnam, addressing them in the photo, has taken off his hat. Behind him, the American flag flies at half-staff on the Jefferson Building.

Putnam paid tribute to the four men, Cpl. Charles Chambers (312th machine-gun battalion), 1st Lt. Edward Comegys (11th Aero squadron), Cpl. Frank Dunkin (54th U.S. Infantry) and Cpl. John Wheeler (U.S. Signal Corps). Out of the 250 men employed by the Library, 89 had enlisted and four never returned.

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A.L.A. Library War Services Headquarters in the Library of Congress. 1918 or 1919. Prints and Photographs Division.

Chambers worked in the Smithsonian Section, Comegys and Dunkin worked in the Copyright Office and Wheeler was a member of the building maintenance force. Putnam wished to say more about their service but lamented that the “details of it are meager and unequal.” The available information was that, like many military deaths of World War I, the four men died from disease, not combat. He offered some information on their service:

Of the service – and character – of Lieutenant Comegys, his first Commanding Office, Captain Powell [who attended the ceremony], is to say something. He alone, of the four was killed in action – in the St. Mihiel drive. Dunkin also was in fierce fighting in which he showed both dash and grit. But it was not in action but in hospitals that he and Chambers came to their end – and both from pneumonia due to exposure in the trenches.

  Chambers had reached the fighting zone – on the Meuse – and was within reach of the German “heavies.” But the satisfaction of a response with his own gun was denied him; for before his unit – “Washington’s Own” – took the offensive that ended in the capture of Montfaucon – on the very night before this – he was rated too ill to fight. With 25 others of his Company, he was hurried to a field hospital and later to Hospital 26 at Alleray. There, within a few days, he died.

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Plaque of the memorial tree commemorating Library employees fallen during WWI. Photo by Shwn Miller.

Wheeler did not have the fortune to be sent abroad. His value was found in photographic work for which, after preparation at Columbia, he was detailed to Camp Merritt. It was there he died, also of pneumonia.

Besides Putnam, speakers included Rep. Julius Kahn of California, chairman of the House Committee on Military Affairs, Col. Lester Jones, Superintendent of the Coast and Geodetic Survey and first commander of the American Legion, and Captain Garland Powell, commander of the 22nd Aero squadron, in which Lt. Comegys served. Planes from Bolling Field circled overhead during Capt. Powell’s remarks. The U.S. Marine Band performed.

Putnam finished his remarks with these lines from Rupert Brooke’s 1914 poem, “The Dead,” and from Marjorie L.C. Pickthal’s poem “When It Is Finished.”

“The Dead,” Rupert Brooke

These laid the world away; poured out the red

Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be

Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,

That men call age; and those who would have been,

Their sons, they gave, their immortality.

“When It is Finished,” Marjorie L.C. Pickthal

Bid us remember in what days they gave

All that mankind may give

That we might live.

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American Library Association, United War Work Campaign, Nov. 11, 1918. Prints and Photographs Division.

During the war, not only did men go to war, so did books. According to Wayne Wiegand, distinguished visiting scholar at the John W. Kluge Center, the American Library Association established its Library War Service in 1917 to provide books and library services to US soldiers and sailors both in training at home and serving in Europe. In fact, 12-year-old Rachel Ashley, daughter of Frederick William Ashley, who was the superintendent of the Library of Congress main reading room at the time, dropped off ALA leaflets at homes in her Washington, D.C. neighborhood inviting neighbors to donate books for the effort, wrote Wiegand in an article for American Libraries Magazine.

World War I Centennial, 2017-2018: With the most comprehensive collection of multi-format World War I holdings in the nation, the Library of Congress is a unique resource for primary source materials, education plans, public programs and on-site visitor experiences about The Great War including exhibits, symposia and book talks.

Inquiring Minds: African-American Soldiers in World War I

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Adriane Lentz-Smith

The following is an article from the March/April 2017 issue of LCM, the Library of Congress Magazine, in which Adriane Lentz-Smith discusses her research at the Library of Congress into the experiences of African-American soldiers in World War I. Lentz-Smith is an associate professor at Duke University, author of “Freedom Struggles: African-Americans and World War I” and an adviser to the Library’s World War I exhibition. She is also the featured expert about the role of African-Americans in the war for the PBS documentary “The Great War.”

African-American soldiers and civilians in the World War I years saw the war as both obligation and opportunity. Over 380,000 African-Americans served in the nation’s strictly segregated military during the war years, 200,000 traveling with the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF).

Whether they numbered among the 40,000 who served in the two African-American combat divisions or among the majority relegated to labor battalions, black soldiers fought two wars for democracy: President Wilson’s against the Central Powers and their own against white supremacy and Jim Crow. Army lieutenant and, later, Howard University professor Rayford Logan would speak for countless African-American veterans when he wrote in his memoirs that he had been marked by both wars, Woodrow Wilson’s and his own, and that he could not discern fully which war had a more lasting effect.

I found my way to World War I through Rayford Logan and other African-Americans, such as AEF lieutenant (and later civil rights lawyer) Charles Houston, whose experience veered between service and heartbreak. My interest started with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)’s investigation of the 1917 police attack on black soldiers and their subsequent mutiny in Houston, Texas.

I visited the Library of Congress Manuscript Division to see whether the records of the NAACP housed there contained more incidents of brutal treatment and black rebellion, and to explore what World War I had meant to African-Americans who funneled their activism through local NAACP branches.

The papers opened up a project: they were filled with accounts of everyday people making meaning of the war, defending soldiers—sometimes literally in the cases of troops who ran afoul of the law or of brutal ranking officers—weighing in on what citizenship rights should accrue to black soldiers and linking soldiers’ fates to their own.

The stories, figures and interpretations that I found in them helped me to determine which additional Library collections to seek out, including the papers of Rayford Logan and those of William L. Houston, Charles Houston’s father.

I was no expert when I walked into the Library; I learned how to ask productive questions by wading through the NAACP papers, but Rayford Logan’s papers helped me see the disjuncture between wartime rhetoric and practice. Historian that he was, Logan meticulously recorded in his diary memories of the humiliations heaped on him by white superior officers. Recalling a lieutenant colonel who insisted on assigning sleeping quarters by race over rank, Logan acerbically described the officer’s commitment to segregation as “a perfect example of the American democracy in war.”

I also learned from colleagues I met in the Manuscript Division reading room. Indeed, every time I see my book, “Freedom Struggles,” I think of Jennifer Keene, historian at Chapman College, who first showed me the war poster “True Sons of Freedom” that eventually became my book cover. The intellectual community fostered in the reading room was but one of the many Library of Congress resources that shaped my work.

National Poetry Month: New Recordings Uploaded to Recorded Poetry and Literature Archive

The following is a guest post by Anastasia Nikolis, a graduate student intern in the Poetry and Literature Center and a doctoral candidate in the English department at the University of Rochester.

Happy National Poetry Month! I hope you are all as excited to celebrate as we are here at the Poetry and Literature Center.

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2011–12 poet laureate Philip Levine at the Library of Congress. Photo by Abby Brack Lewis.

In honor of National Poetry Month, the center has digitized and uploaded 50 new recordings to its online Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature. Among the additions are recordings by poets laureate Daniel Hoffman, Philip Levine, Rita Dove, Maxine Kumin, Josephine Jacobsen, William Stafford, Anthony Hecht, Robert Pinsky and Gwendolyn Brooks.

Conceived of in 1940 and kicked off in 1941 with a lecture by Robinson Jeffers titled “The Poet in a Democracy,” the archive began as a national culture-building project in response to the pressures of World War II—in particular, to the rise of European fascist rhetoric. The hope was to capture the voices of an elite class of poets and then make that elite content democratic by increasing access to it through dissemination of the recordings. The underlying message was that American literature could spread as far as fascist propaganda, but even more effectively.

Furthermore, to close the divide between practicing poets and the cloistered academics who studied poetry, Librarian of Congress (and poet!) Archibald MacLeish intended to promote young poets “who should have some attention and are usually ignored” in favor of more established poets, and “make albums from time to time which [the Library] could sell to the many schools, colleges and interested individuals”

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Portrait of Robert Frost, the 1958–59 poet laureate consultant in poetry.

The advancement of recording technology meant that you didn’t have to be in Washington, D.C., or New York to hear great poets like Robert Frost, E. E. Cummings, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Conrad Aiken—you could buy the record and listen to them anywhere. Today, the technology is even better, since you can just stream the recording right from your home computer at no cost at all.

Over the course of its more than 75-year history, the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature has expanded its mission, amplifying voices of women and writers of color to make the poetry community even more inclusive, which you will see in the selection of recordings chosen for this month’s release.

Fifty recordings is a lot to get through, so I have chosen three to spotlight in this post to guide you if this is your first encounter with the treasure trove that is the archive.

So, without further ado, turn up your speakers, plug in your ear buds, and enjoy the audio archive!

Kamau Brathwaite, 1982

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Kamau Brathwaite is a Caribbean poet born in Barbados. He explains in this reading that his connection to his Caribbean heritage was estranged at first, encouraging him to flee his home country to attend school in England and then work in Ghana in order to find a place where he felt he could write. He says, “[H]ome was philistine. Home was a kind of desert. Home was not the place where one wrote poetry. So I had to find another kind of home. Another kind of rootlessness.” Brathwaite eventually realizes that his home in the Caribbean is precisely where his poetry comes alive, and in poems like “South” (which starts at 35:50), he details his journey through rootedness and rootlessness to find his voice.

Josephine Jacobsen, 1972

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Poets laureate begin their terms in the fall with a reading of their work and conclude their terms in the spring with a lecture like this one. Josephine Jacobsen was the 21st consultant in poetry (the position that is now known as poet laureate consultant in poetry) and only the fourth woman consultant; Elizabeth Bishop was the third 20 years earlier. The lack of respect given to women poets was acute to Jacobsen. This lecture examines “the atmosphere in which [women poets] worked, in order to understand its pressures and permissions.” Jacobsen explains how women poets were pressured not to behave in certain ways and only permitted to speak of certain subjects, and she goes on to explain how poets like Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath changed American women’s poetry by explicitly rendering emotional and bodily experiences.

Muna Lee, 1960

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Muna Lee was a poet, translator novelist, and activist, who worked most of her life facilitating relations between the United States and Latin America through her work at the State Department. She lived in Puerto Rico for a number of years and describes that tropical landscape and culture in her poems. One of the fun things about these recordings is that they not only capture the poems being read aloud, but also capture a bit of the poet’s personality. Notice how differently Lee reads her poems: she reads her second poem, “Legend,” much more dramatically than the others, letting herself get caught up in the rolling, emphatic quality of the lines so that the last line arrives loudly. A few poems later, she reads the short poem, “Hacienda” (8:40), more hypnotically, and the last line arrives much more quietly, fading into the hush of the organic items of the poem—cinnamon and cassava root.

Pic of the Week: Reading Without Walls

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Gene Luen Yang. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Gene Luen Yang, National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, launched his Reading Without Walls program during a Library of Congress event on April 10. It challenges young people to explore, through books, worlds outside their comfort zone. “Reading is a fantastic way to open your minds and hearts to new people, places and ideas,” said Yang. “Through reading, I’ve met new friends, learned new facts and become a better person.”

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden joined Yang in an informal conversation at the April 10 event, followed by a question-and-answer session with local students. Here Yang shows off his official ambassador medal to students.

What Was in Abraham Lincoln’s Pockets on April 14, 1865?

This is a guest post by Gayle Osterberg of the Library’s Office of Communications.

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Contents of President Lincoln’s pockets on the night of his assassination. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith.

When Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865, he was carrying the following:

Two pairs of spectacles and a lens polisher
Pocketknife
Watch fob
Linen handkerchief
Brown leather wallet containing a five-dollar Confederate note
Nine newspaper clippings, including several favorable to the president and his policies.

These items were given to his son, Robert Todd Lincoln, upon Lincoln’s death. Learn more about the items and see them up close in this video.

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Inquiring Minds: Researching Justice at the Library of Congress

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Greg Guggenmos, front right, examines papers related to Justice Hugo Black with a fellow student from Joe Kobylka’s Southern Methodist University honors seminar on the Supreme Court. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Many college students head for the beach or perhaps to a city with a lively night life for spring break. The students in Joe Kobylka’s honors seminar on the Supreme Court had a strikingly different kind of destination this year: the Library of Congress. The students traveled from Southern Methodist University in Dallas to spend the week of March 13 in the Manuscript Division examining the papers of Supreme Court justices to respond to a research question that Kobylka, a professor of political science, helped each of them develop. Here Greg Guggenmos, a sophomore majoring in statistical sciences and minoring in computer science and history, answers a few questions about his experience.

What is your research topic?

I’m doing my research on the development of the clear and present danger test from the time of Justice Holmes to the late Warren court. It is one of the main tools the justices use to protect free speech—it defines the circumstances under which limits can be placed on the First Amendment.

Whose papers did you consult for your research?

Several of the justices on the Supreme Court during those years: William Douglas, Hugo Black, Robert Jackson, Earl Warren, Felix Frankfurter and William Brennan.

What was it like to view and handle original documents?

The Library of Congress makes it easy to get up close and experience some of the most monumental moments our country has seen. From day one, we got to hold and touch the physical writing of people who had always just been names in a textbook. It was incredible to be able to step away from the sometimes-stuffy opinions of nearly 80 years ago and see firsthand how the justices interacted with one another. They joked, took offense and tossed ideas back and forth. It humanized history in a way that is challenging to explain.

Did you find material helpful to your research?

The papers are a crucial part of my research. It’s nearly impossible to see how and why the justices came to the conclusions stated in the official opinion of the court without digging through the personal letters and memos between justices. The papers available in the Library of Congress enriched my understanding of how the clear and present danger test developed and provided insight into the reasoning of the justices.

Did you encounter any documents you found surprising?

While roaming around the First Amendment cases of Justice Robert Jackson, I stumbled over an exchange of letters between Jackson and Arthur Schlesinger, who was then a Harvard history professor. The two men were discussing Jackson’s recent analysis of the tactics of the Communist Party during coups in other countries and how those same tactics were likely to be applied in the United States. Here’s the crazy thing: the ideas they were bouncing back and forth would become important parts of Schlesinger’s position on communism 20 years later when he advised John Kennedy and Richard Nixon. I’d seen those ideas, and even the same rhetoric, in speeches from the Kennedy years and beyond. History came to life before my eyes. I saw how simple letters between friends influenced American policy for decades to come.

What was your experience like generally at the Library of Congress?

Growing up, I would often escape outdoors—sometimes recruiting friends—to re-enact various battles, speeches and great moments from American history. It was these backyard escapades that kick-started my love for learning. During my week at the Library, I felt as if things came full circle. Schlesinger’s letters are just one example of many fascinating exchanges and remarkable moments of history I encountered. Letters from Roosevelt, Churchill and other world leaders passed through my hands. I came with a group of students from Southern Methodist University. Together, we uncovered top-secret documents from the FBI, conference notes from cases like Brown v. Board of Education and even a translation of a major case into Japanese! It was an amazing experience to dive into the history stored in the Library of Congress.

 

National Book Festival: 2017 Poster Depicts Delightful World of Books

(The following is a repost from the National Book Festival blog . The author is Lola Pyne of the Library’s Office of Communications.)

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2017 National Book Festival poster by Roz Chast

Spring is in the air and with it begins anticipation for our summer celebration of books and reading—the Library of Congress National Book Festival—which this year will take place on Sept. 2. Two weeks ago, the diverse author lineup for the 2017 festival was announced and today the poster is being revealed!

The poster artist is Roz Chast, a cartoonist whose work has been published in the New Yorker, Scientific American, the Harvard Business Review, Redbook and more. Chast started drawing cartoons as a child growing up in Brooklyn and went on to graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design. She has won numerous awards for her books and illustrations.

Cindy Moore, a graphics specialist at the Library of Congress, led a team of other graphics specialists at the Library in selecting Chast to design this year’s poster. However, the theme Chast came up with was all her own.

“Books have always been a major part of my life from the time I learned to read,” explains Chast. “They are a way to escape from the world, but also a way to feel more deeply connected to it. I wanted to make a poster that expressed the excitement, appreciation and delight I have for the books of my life.”

By the looks of this lively whimsical poster, she succeeded wildly!

You can download a copy of the poster from the Library of Congress National Book Festival website.

The 2017 Library of Congress National Book Festival, which is free for everyone, will be held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center on Saturday, Sept. 2. The festival is made possible by the generosity of sponsors. You too can support the festival by making a gift now.

 

New Book: Card Catalog’s History

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Jacket design by Brooke Johnson

A new book exploring the history of the card catalog—that venerated chest of small drawers that contained the known universe—has been published by the Library of Congress in association with Chronicle Books.

The lavishly illustrated volume tells the story of libraries’ organizing approaches from the layout of papyrus scrolls at the Library of Alexandria, to playing cards with notes on the back that served librarians during the chaos of the French Revolution, to the doorstep of the digital information retrieval we use today. The card catalog evolved out of the need for a standardized system to manage rapidly expanding libraries, serving as both a repository for data and a search tool in a predigital age.

“The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures,” includes illustrations featuring the Library’s original catalog cards, many with fascinating annotations, and the covers of many familiar, beloved books in its collections. Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden contributed the foreword, declaring the card catalog “the gateway to the wonders of a library’s collection” in the 20th century.

“The Card Catalog” traces the catalog from its earliest precursors through the height of its popularity and eventual transition to online methods. The Library of Congress, after decades of reliance on a system originally devised by Thomas Jefferson for his own books, created its own card cataloging system as the 20th century began and for decades made its cards available to local public libraries nationwide. “The Card Catalog” features many of these original cards, both handwritten and typed, with notations and stamps reflecting the work of generations of librarians.

Paired with the cards are photographs of some of the great treasures in the Library’s collection, from Shakespeare’s First Folio and Walt Whitman’s corrections on a print of “O Captain! My Captain!” to first editions of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

“The Card Catalog,” a 224-page hardcover book with more than 200 color illustrations, is available for $35 in the Library of Congress Shop, 10 First St. SE, Washington, DC, 20540-4985. Credit-card orders are taken at (888) 682-3557 or online.

Gallery Talk: The Libertine Life of Abel Buell

This is a guest post by Kimberli Curry, exhibition director in the Interpretive Programs Office.

Library of Congress specialists often give presentations about ongoing Library exhibitions. We are pleased to introduce a new blog series, “Galley Talks,” featuring content from these presentations. This first post relates to the exhibition “Mapping a New Nation: Abel Buell’s Map of the United States, 1784.”

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Abel Buell’s “New and Correct Map of the United States of North America,” 1784. On deposit to the Library of Congress from David M. Rubenstein.

In March 1784, Abel Buell (1742–1822)—a Connecticut engraver, silversmith, inventor and entrepreneur—produced his ”New and Correct Map of the United States of North America,” the first map of the newly independent United States to be compiled, printed and published in America by an American. If not for the publication of his landmark map, Abel Buell might have been forgotten despite being quite a colorful character.

In his early twenties, Buell succumbed to temptation and used his engraving skills to change 5-shilling notes to 5-pound notes. He was found guilty of counterfeiting in March 1764 and received the typical punishment of the day: his forehead was branded with the letter “C,” his ear was cropped, his property was sold to reimburse holders of his “artwork” and he was imprisoned. Buell was released from jail shortly thereafter, but he was ordered to remain within his small town.

Buell’s liberty was fully restored after he reasoned before the court that he had been hard at work developing an apparatus that could cut and polish gems and presented the prosecutor with a ring mounted with semiprecious stones. The result? He received Connecticut’s first patent for his lapidary machine.

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Buell’s petition to the Connecticut General Assembly, 1769.

Meanwhile, Buell began to experiment with fabricating printing type, a useful craft at a time when type needed to be imported and was very expensive. In 1769, Buell successfully petitioned the Connecticut General Assembly for a loan to establish the first foundry for making type in the colonies. It never came to fruition and, after failing to pay back the loan, Buell fled New Haven in 1775 to avoid imprisonment.

He continued to lead an audacious life, most likely participating in the Boston Tea Party, and he was apprehended after helping to destroy a statue of King George III, among other adventures.

Returning to New Haven, he bounced from one ambitious project to another. On March 31, 1784, Buell placed an ad in the Connecticut Journal for the sale of his most well-known endeavor, his “New and Correct Map.” Besides its somewhat hurried quality—he was most likely in a race with another mapmaker to produce the first map of the United States—what makes the map quintessentially “Buell” is his characterization of it as a work in progress to be updated over time with new information. This never happened; instead, Buell bounced to another project.

In 1785, Buell minted the first Connecticut coins—an odd turn of events for a convicted counterfeiter. For this endeavor, he patented a machine that could mint 120 coins a minute, an impressive feat at the time.

Four years later, he’s off to England—he may have departed hastily after manufacturing unauthorized New York coins, or he may have been sent as an industrial spy to learn about the British textile trade.

Upon his return, he erected one of the first cotton mills in New England; a year later, he placed an ad in a Connecticut newspaper for every good and service under the sun—except for anything related to a cotton mill. He next invented a machine for planting vegetables that enabled one man to perform the work of 20. Sadly, Buell was unable to profit financially from his many labors.

When Buell died penniless in New Haven in March 1822, his death notice read simply: “Died: At the Alms House in this town, on the 10th, Mr. Abel Buell, aged 81 years, an ingenious mechanic.”

There are only seven known copies of Buell’s map, including the one on display in the Library’s exhibition. For more on Buell and his map, visit the exhibition online and the related exhibition “Mapping a Growing Nation.”