Library of Congress's Blog, page 147

The Golden Fleecer

Who the devil was Soapy Smith?

Some would say the devil was Soapy Smith.

He was a swindler, a con artist, a bunco steerer. In the 1880s and ’90s he fleeced rubes from Denver to Skagway, Alaska and at many points in-between. He was dubbed “Soapy” because an early con involved selling overpriced soap by tricking gullible passers-by into believing $50 and $100 bills were wrapped around some of the bars under their paper wrappings. He also knew the pea-under-the-shell game and three-card monte.

Artist’s rendering of Soapy Smith, gunned down by a Skagway vigilante

Here’s how his patter ran, according to authors William Ross Collier and Edwin Victor Westrate in “The Reign of Soapy Smith, Monarch of Misrule”:

“Wake up! The hour has come to face the problems of our country! … One question–the supreme question–before us today is vital to the welfare of the republic! Gentlemen, the all-important question which I propound to you and for which I earnestly seek the answer is this:

How are you fixed for soap?”

When Denver launched a petty-crime crackdown, Soapy and his gang decamped to–and effectively took control of–Creede, a silver-mining boomtown memorialized by its resident poet-and-newspaper-editor, Cy Warman:

Here’s a land where all are equal–

Of high or lowly birth –

A land where men make millions

Dug from the dreary earth.

Here meek and mild-eyed burros

On mineral mountains feed,

It’s day all day in the day-time

And there is no night in Creede.

Nightless as it may have been, after the sun went down, Soapy and his gang had many ways to flimflam one hapless schmo after another in his saloon, the Orleans Club (where, as Warman noted in verse, “everything was open wide/ and men drank absinthe on the side”). But Soapy had a reputation as a Robin Hood in some quarters, which was referred to, tongue-in-cheek, by the San Francisco Call:

“‘Soapy’ was not altogether bad at heart. He had been known to hand out to a less fortunate man the entire profits derived but a short time previous by knocking some Reuben on the head and ravaging his pockets.”

The journalist Richard Harding Davis went to Creede and had a chance to observe Smith in 1892, leading to this passage in Davis’ book “The West From a Car Window,” illustrated by artist and later, world-famous sculptor Frederic Remington:

“”Soapy” Smith … was a very bad man indeed, and hired at least 12 men to lead the prospector with a little money, or the tenderfoot who had just arrived, up to the numerous tables in his gambling-saloon, where they were robbed in various ways so openly that they deserved to lose all that was taken from them.”

Pickings were rich in Creede until the Silver Panic of ’93 turned many “mushroom towns” of the Colorado Rockies into spores blowing on the winter wind.

Cy Warman versified about that, too:

And now the Faro Bank is closed

And Mr. Faro’s gone away

To seek new fields, it is supposed, —

More verdant fields. The gamblers say

The man who worked the shell and ball

Has gone back to the Capitol.

Yes, he was writing about Soapy, who with his minions returned to Denver and had some large-scale misadventures: the governor had to call out the National Guard on Soapy when he was holed up in City Hall with his paid-off bureaucrats; Smith tried to start a sort of Foreign Legion of expatriate U.S. toughs in Mexico; and he planned a takeover of the town of Cripple Creek, which was foiled. Then he lit out for Skagway, where gold had been found in 1897.

And there, after a few lively months running a gambling hall and again effectively running the town by bribing the local cops, Soapy found the hail of gunfire that would kill him, at the hands of vigilantes on July 8, 1898. Smith’s exit made front-page news all over the nation.

The Library of Congress holds many collections that bring America’s Wild West heritage into sharper focus, ranging from the Chronicling America online collection of historic newspapers to photos, manuscripts and, of course, books.

 

 

 

Library in the News: March 2015 Edition

Headlining Library of Congress news for March was the announcement of new selections to the National Recording Registry.

Time called this year’s selections the “most American playlist ever.”

“If the Smithsonian is America’s attic, the National Recording Registry is the dusty box of records that America’s parents left up there,” wrote reporter Ryan Teague Beckwith.

Ben E. King of “Stand By Me” fame (which was one of the selections this year) told CBS News that having his song included in the registry “is one of the greatest moments of my life.”

Voice of America spoke with Christopher Cerf, co-producer and composer of some of the songs on “Sesame Street: Platinum All-Time Favorites,” which made the registry this year.

He said it was an honor and that he felt “incredibly lucky” to be a included in the registry.

Other outlets running the story included USA Today, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Variety, NPR, BBC, LA Times, Associated Press (print and broadcast), The Washington Post, PBS NewsHour, ABC News, BET and a variety of local news outlets across the country.

Also receiving praise for her work was author Louise Erdich, who was awarded the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.

Erdrich told Alexandra Alter of the New York Times Artsbeat blog that receiving such awards feels like “an out of body experience.”

“It seems that these awards are given to a writer entirely different from the person I am — ordinary and firmly fixed,” she said. “Given the life I lead, it is surprising these books got written. Maybe I owe it all to my first job — hoeing sugar beets. I stare at lines of words all day and chop out the ones that suck life from the rest of the sentence. Eventually all those rows add up.”

“In addition to the Library of Congress, I have my parents Rita and Ralph, in whom my grandparents’ spirits are still vital, to thank for this recognition,” Erdrich told Fine Books & Collections Magazine.

In other news, the Library opened a new exhibitions in March: “Pointing Their Pens: Herblock and Fellow Cartoonists Confront the Issues.”

Running an announcement was The New York Times.

Also garnering attention was the Library’s exhibit on theatrical design, which opened in February.

“In the performing arts, stage design often goes overlooked while the audience is captivated by the completely immersive experience of actors, scene, music, and costumes. The current Library of Congress exhibition ‘Grand Illusion: The Art of Theatrical Design’ showcases this essential craft,” wrote Allison Meier for hyperallergic.com.

Speaking of Library exhibits, President Barack Obama and his daughters stopped by the Library in March for a special viewing of Lincoln’s second inaugural address, which was on view for four days early in the month. The Washington Post covered the visit.

That All May Read

(The following is a guest post by Karen Keninger, director of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped.)

There are times when a “best-kept secret” is exactly what you want. But not when it comes to one of the most highly valued services provided through the Library of Congress – namely the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS).

Digital talking-book players are available in basic and advanced models.

This free public library service provides books and magazines in braille and talking-book formats to half a million residents of the United States and U.S. citizens living abroad who can’t read standard print because of visual or physical disabilities. However, statistics indicate that even more Americans could benefit from the service if they only knew about it.

That’s why NLS has launched a public education campaign to spread the word about NLS and its network of more than 100 cooperating libraries throughout the U.S. and its territories. We particularly want to inform people who are students, veterans or seniors who either cannot see well enough to read print or who have physical disabilities that make it difficult for them to handle a book or access print in other ways. Our goal is to make sure that all may read, regardless of disability.

The first completed portion of the campaign is a new set of web pages presenting information about NLS and a video featuring NLS patrons describing their experiences with the Library of Congress braille and talking-book program. The video is accessed through the Library’s new, accessible video player and is narrated by Kate Kiley, a veteran NLS narrator.

The new pages form the hub of a digital marketing campaign that will include digital media such as banner ads and text ads and search engine optimization. We also plan to use Facebook and YouTube, with video accompanied by audio description and text files.

NLS has a long history of using technology to meet the needs of our readers. In 1934, when vinyl records were the cutting edge of technology, NLS developed the talking book by recording narrations of books and distributing them on vinyl records. While most records were spun at 78 rpm at the time, NLS slowed it down so more minutes of recording would fit on a single disc. NLS also gave its patrons the talking-book machine, a record player capable of playing the unusually slow 33-1/3 rpm format of talking books. As vinyl technology improved, so did talking books, packing more and more onto smaller records until the advent of the cassette in the late 1960s edged out the vinyl.

Today the cassettes have been replaced with state-of-the-art digital technology, giving patrons the option of receiving their books on flash-memory-based cartridges for use in the latest version of the NLS talking-book machine or of downloading their books directly to play on their smartphones or tablets.

NLS has a lot to offer. Whether a patron chooses to receive books free through the mail or download them from NLS’s Braille and Audio Reading Download (BARD) site, and whether they choose to play the books on the latest version of the talking-book machine or on their smartphones or tablets using the BARD Mobile app, the talking book with human-voice narration is the centerpiece of the service. Talking books provide millions of hours of listening enjoyment to NLS patrons every year. And for those who want to read instead of listen, we provide books in braille. Braille can also be received through the mail or downloaded from BARD or BARD Mobile as digital files to be played on refreshable braille devices.

Young patron reads at bedtime using her smartphone.

Braille and talking book titles cover the gamut of subjects you would find in a public library – from true crime to romance, westerns to world history. And they cover all ages, from six-minute-long tales for kids to full-blown sagas for seniors.

One of the most oft-repeated comments we hear from patrons is, “I wish I’d known about this five years ago.” So we’re working hard to spread the word. The new web pages are the beginning of a focused effort. They will direct visitors to additional resources, contact information, eligibility criteria and application forms. Help us spread the word that all may read.

National Poets

(The following is a story written by Peter Armenti, literature specialist for the Digital Reference Section, found in the March/April 2015 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM. You can read the issue in its entirety here.)

The nation’s most acclaimed poets have helped the Library of Congress promote poetry for nearly 80 years.

The highest poetry office in the country belongs–both literally and symbolically–to the U.S. Poet Laureate. Headquartered at the Library’s Poetry and Literature Center in the attic of the Thomas Jefferson Building, the Poet Laureateship is the only national position dedicated to raising awareness and appreciation of poetry among the American public.

FROM CONSULTANT TO LAUREATE

From left, poets Allen Tate, Léonie Adams, T.S. Eliot, Theodore Spencer and Robert Penn Warren attend the annual meeting of the Fellows of the Library of Congress in American Letters, November 1948. Prints and Photographs Division.

Originally established in 1936 as an endowed Chair of Poetry in the English Language, the position, as conceived by Librarian of Congress Herbert Putnam, was created to build the Library’s literary collections and encourage their public use. The Library’s Consultant in Poetry, in other words, was expected to perform duties today carried out by full-fledged librarians. This is reflected in a memo to poet Allen Tate (1943-1944) outlining his duties, which were limited not to only poetry but to “all English and American literature.” Tate was appointed by Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish, himself a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.

During the next 50 years, less emphasis was placed on requiring the Consultant in Poetry to develop the Library’s collections and more on organizing local poetry readings, lectures, conferences and outreach programs. A defining moment came in 1985, when Sen. Spark M. Matsunaga’s two-decade campaign to create a national Poet Laureate position resulted in an act of Congress (Public Law 99-194), which changed the consultant’s title to “Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry” and charged the Librarian of Congress with making the selection.

In 1986, Robert Penn Warren became the first poet appointed under the new title, having been the Library’s third Consultant in Poetry more than 40 years earlier. Howard Nemerov (1963-1964; 1988-1990) and Stanley Kunitz (1974-1976; 2000-2001) also have the distinction of serving twice, each having been appointed Poetry Consultant and Poet Laureate.

“The Poet Laureate post is an honor, not a job,” said Pinsky.

By including “Poet Laureate” in the title, the position became the American equivalent of the well-known and longstanding position of British Poet Laureate. As a result, the visibility of the office, along with expectations for it, ballooned. Librarian of Congress James H. Billington described the Poet Laureate as “the nation’s official lightning rod for the poetic impulse of Americans.” Dr. Billington has appointed all but two of the 20 Poets Laureate. In June 2014, he appointed Charles Wright the 20th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.

PROMOTING POETS AND POETRY

Seven Poets Laureate Consultants in Poetry returned to the Library for a reading in the Coolidge Auditorium to celebrate publication of “The Poets Laureate Anthology.” From left: Librarian of Congress James Billington; Carolyn Brown, former director of the Office of Scholarly Programs; and poets Mark Strand, Charles Simic, Kay Ryan, Maxine Kumin, Daniel Hoffman, Rita Dove and Billy Collins, 2010. Photo by Abby Brack Lewis.

Fostering the work of promising poets has long been an interest, if not a responsibility, of the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. Each year the Poet Laureate selects two or more poets to receive the Witter Bynner fellowship.

The fellows are recognized at a reading in the nation’s capital and go on to organize local poetry readings in their own communities.

Administered by the Library of Congress, the fellowship is sponsored by the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry. Harold Witter Bynner (1881-1968) was a prolific poet and philanthropist who made provisions for a poetry foundation after his death. The Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry was incorporated in 1972 in New Mexico to provide grant support for the writing of poetry through nonprofit organizations. Since its inception in 1998, 37 poets have received the Witter Bynner fellowship, including the recently selected 2015 winners.

POETRY PROJECTS

Per the legislation establishing the office, the Poet Laureate is appointed solely on the basis of a poet’s lifetime literary achievement and has few official responsibilities. However, many Poets Laureate have used the prestige and resources conferred through the position to launch initiatives, and sometime large-scale projects, that seek to introduce–or reintroduce–people to the value of poetry in their everyday lives.

Joseph Brodsky (1991-1992) developed the idea of providing poetry in public places–supermarkets, hotels, airports, hospitals–where people congregate and “can kill time as time kills them.”

Rita Dove (1993-1995) brought together writers to explore the African diaspora through the eyes of its artists, and also championed children’s poetry and jazz through multiple events.

Robert Hass (1995-1997) sponsored a major conference on nature writing, “Watershed,” which continues today as a national poetry, art and environmental impact competition, “River of Words,” for elementary and high school students.

Billy Collins (2001-2003) encouraged the nation’s high-school students to read a poem a day during the 180-day school year.

Kay Ryan (2008-2010) reached out to the nation’s community-college students and professors through a poetry-writing contest and a video conference featuring tips about writing poetry and aspects of her own writing process.

A number of Poets Laureate, such as Robert Pinsky, Ted Kooser and Natasha Trethewey, have also developed poetry projects with unprecedented scope.

Robert Pinsky, who served an unprecedented three terms (1997-2000), issued a national call for people to send him their favorite poems, along with their justifications. Pinsky received more than 18,000 submissions to his Favorite Poem Project. Selected submissions were subsequently gathered into three poetry anthologies.

The centerpiece of the project was the development of 50 video documentaries featuring people reading and discussing their favorite poems. The videos, which aired as segments on PBS’s “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” can be viewed on the Favorite Poem Project website and are a permanent part of the Library’s Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature. The project endures today, with six recent videos featuring the favorite poems of Chicagoans and plans for more videos in the future.

Ted Kooser (2004-2006) initiated the American Life in Poetry Project to introduce poetry to a broad range of readers through his free weekly poetry column in newspapers and online publications. Each column consists of short poems that an average reader can understand and appreciate, along with a few introductory words from Kooser. The project, which continues after a decade and more than 500 columns, has been immensely successful in reaching millions of readers each week.

Natasha Trethewey (2012-2014) participated in “Where Poetry Lives,” a series of reports with PBS “NewsHour” Senior Correspondent Jeffrey Brown, which uses poetry as a framework through which to view important issues facing American society. Stories featuring Trethewey have ranged from a profile of the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project in Brooklyn, N.Y., which seeks to help victims of dementia engage their memories through poetry and other forms of language play, to a visit with troubled teens in King County Juvenile Detention Center in Seattle, Wash., who work with the nonprofit Pongo Teen Writing Project to express themselves by turning their stories into poetry.

Future Poets Laureate will remain free to shape the position. But one thing is certain: the Poet Laureateship will continue to serve as a national symbol of the government’s commitment to honoring, promoting and preserving a place for poetry in American society.

Pics of the Week: Honoring Rosa Parks

U.S. Rep. John Conyers looks over his remarks with Elaine Steele, longtime friend of Rosa Parks. Photo by Shawn Miller.

The Library of Congress presented a special program on Tuesday to honor the Howard G. Buffett Foundation for loaning the Rosa Parks Collection to the Library. A special guest was U.S. Rep. John Conyers, who employed Rosa Parks in his Detroit congressional office for 22 years.

Conyers described Rosa Parks as a quiet, humble person with a beautiful personality. He told the story of how one day she came to him and said:

“‘I’d like to ask for a pay reduction.’ I said ‘I beg your pardon? Nobody’s ever asked for that before.’ Nobody’s ever asked for it since. I said, ‘A pay reduction? Rosa Parks what are you talking about?” She said ‘Well, you know how you let me go to so many places in the country and even overseas. I feel I should have a reduction and I ask you to do that.”

“I said ‘Mrs. Parks, you honor me by coming to my office and having worked with me for so long.’ It was no secret that more people came to see Rosa Parks in my office than came to see me. That’s an example of the kind of person she was.

“For our government and our Library to raise her to this height makes me very, very proud of all of you,” Conyers said.

Philanthropist Howard G. Buffett speaks during the ceremony honoring him for his purchase and loan of the Rosa Parks Collection to the Library. Photo by Shawn Miller.

The Rosa Parks Collection is on loan to the Library from the Buffett Foundation for 10 years. During the event, Buffett also spoke and described how he came to acquire the collection.

According to Buffett, he had been watching the evening news and heard about the materials sitting in boxes in New York for 10 years.

“I thought, ‘that’s crazy. How can that be right?'” he said. He told his wife that his foundation should look into buying the collection, make sure it got preserved and put it somewhere for people to see.

It wasn’t until a woman from Florida – Patricia O’Toole – wrote to Buffett encouraging his foundation to buy the Parks collection and place it in good hands that he decided to act.

“I’m glad Patricia O’Toole wrote me that letter,” he said. “This is just the right thing to do.”

U.S. Rep. John Conyers looks over items from the Rosa Parks Collection. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Buffett ending his remarks by saying that he travels a lot around the world: “Everybody wants to come to America. Everybody wants to come to the United States. There is a huge reason for that. There are many, but one is freedom and that is what Rosa Parks represents – freedom.”

Several items from the Rosa Parks collection are included in the Library’s ongoing major exhibition “The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom,” which is open through Jan. 2, 2016. Later this year, selected collection items will be accessible online.

Donna Urschel, Public Affairs Specialist in the Office of Communications, contributed to this report.

The Library in History: Love in the Stacks

(The following is a story written by Audrey Fischer for the March/April 2015 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM. You can read the issue in its entirety here.)

A bust of Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt by sculptor David Deming was presented to the Library in 1998 to mark the 10th anniversary of the Bobbitt Prize. Photo by Shawn Miller

A romance that began at the Library of Congress in the 1930s led to the creation of a national poetry prize.

Several years before former president Lyndon Baines Johnson’s 1937 election to the U.S. House of Representatives from the state of Texas, his younger sister Rebekah was pursuing a Washington career of her own. While in graduate school, she worked in the cataloging department of the Library of Congress. Her co-worker, Oscar Price Bobbitt, had also come to Washington from Texas–on a train ticket bought by the sale of a cow. A romance blossomed between the two.

Speaking at the Library in 1998, their son, the author Philip C. Bobbitt, provided some background on his parents’ courtship, which culminated with their marriage in 1941.

“I discovered a cache of old index cards, apparently used as surreptitious notes passed by my parents to each other under the eyes of a superintendent who supposed, perhaps, that Mother was typing Dewey decimals. … On each was typed an excerpt from a poem. The long campaign by which my father moved from conspiratorial co-worker to confidant to suitor was partly played out in the indexing department of the Library.”

 

Following her death in 1978 at age 68, her husband and son decided to endow a memorial in her honor.

“Owing to the history I have described,” Bobbitt added, “the Library of Congress was suggested as a possible recipient of this memoriam.”

Thus, the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry was established at the Library in 1988, and awarded biennially since 1990. The $10,000 prize recognizes the most distinguished book of poetry written by an American and published during the preceding two years, or the lifetime achievement of an American poet. Charles Wright, the current Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, was awarded the Bobbitt Prize for lifetime achievement in 2008. Poet Patricia Smith recently received the 2014 Bobbitt Prize for her work, “Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah.” (She will receive the award and read selections from her work at the Library on April 6.)

“The Bobbitt family’s relation to the Library is a great love story and it is too good not to want to savor, commemorate and celebrate,” said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington.

Celebrating Women’s History: America’s First Female P.I.

Allan Pinkerton. 1884. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Walking into the Chicago office of Allan Pinkerton’s detective agency one afternoon in 1856 was a woman of medium height, “slender, graceful in her movements, and perfectly self-possessed in her manner.” Claiming to be a widow, aged 23, Kate Warne was looking for a job, and not as a secretary. One could imagine Pinkerton’s surprise at such a request – women just weren’t employed for such things. Needless to say, Pinkerton decided to give Warne a chance. Perhaps it was her dark blue eyes “filled with fire” and the quiet strength and compassion she radiated that tipped the scales in her favor.

Hiring Warne would turn out to be one of the best decisions Pinkerton ever made. She became the first female detective in the United States and would become the superintendent of the female bureau of the Chicago office.

“In my service you will serve your country better than on the field. I have several female operatives. If you agree to come aboard you will go in training with the head of my female detectives, Kate Warne. She has never let me down,” Pinkerton once said.

Warne offered a skill set that Pinkerton’s male agents didn’t have – the ability to gain the confidence and friendship of other women for the purpose of gaining valuable information related the agency’s criminal cases.

According to author Daniel Stashower, Warne proved herself to be fearless and versatile. In one investigation, she posed as a fortune-teller to entice secrets from a suspect. In another, she made friends with the wife of a suspected murderer.

Warne played an integral part in several high-profile cases. Early on in her career, she was brought on board the case of the Adams Express Company – the detective agency was investigating the theft of several thousand dollars from the railroad company. Pinkerton had a hunch the money was stolen by a man named Nathan Maroney, the manager of the Adams Express office in Montgomery, Ala., and the last person to have possession of the locked pouch the money had been kept in. Pinkerton sent Warne in to befriend Maroney’s wife in hopes that she would divulge the truth of her husband’s actions. And that she did, taking Warne to the location where the money was hidden and thus solidifying the evidence and case against Maroney.

Pinkerton wrote, “The victory was complete, but her [Warne] faculties had been strained to the utmost in accomplishing it, and she felt completely exhausted. She had the proud satisfaction of knowing that to a woman belonged the honors of the day.”

Warne would prove herself yet again valuable in what was probably the defining case of her career. In 1861, Pinkerton foiled an attempt to assassinate newly elected President Abraham Lincoln while on a whistle-stop train trip to Washington, D.C., for his inauguration. While investigating robberies on the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, Pinkerton uncovered the plot. He sent Warne to Baltimore as a spy to infiltrate the southern sympathizers. Posing as a Mrs. Barley, a visitor from Alabama, Warne’s job was to “cultivate the wives and daughters of suspected plotters.” The attempt on the president-elect’s life would be made while he was passing through the city.

Adalbert John Volck. Passage through Baltimore from V. Blada’s “War Sketches.” Baltimore: 1864. Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress

“Mrs. Warne was eminently fitted for this task. Of rather a commanding person, with clear-cut, expressive features, and with an ease of manner that was quite captivating at times, she was calculated to make a favorable impression at once,” Pinkerton wrote in his book, “The Spy of the Rebellion.” “She was of Northern birth, but in order to vouch for her Southern opinions, she represented herself as from Montgomery, Alabama, a locality with which she was perfectly familiar, from her connection with the detection of the robbery of the Adams Express Company, at that place.

“Mrs. Warne displayed upon her breast, as did many of the ladies of Baltimore, the black and white cockade, which had been temporarily adopted as the emblem of secession, and many hints were dropped in her presence which found their way to my ears, and were of great benefit to me.”

Warne’s involvement went even further. Not only did she courier messages to Lincoln’s party, but she also helped smuggle the president himself onto a train that would ultimately pass through Baltimore with him undetected.

Stashower’s book “The Hour of Peril” chronicles the case, including Warne’s involvement. For his book, Stashower conducted research at the Library, using the Records of the Pinkerton’s National Dectective Agency and the papers of Abraham Lincoln and John G. Nicolay.

In this video, Stashower discusses his book and Warne’s involvement in foiling the “Baltimore Plot.”

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Warne continued on in Pinkerton’s employ until 1868, when she fell ill and died. She is buried in the Pinkerton family plot in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.

The Library’s Pinterkton Detective Agency collection doesn’t contain many references to Warne. Of particular note is a pamphlet, written by Pinkerton, of the events in 1861. It was written in response to a published letter by John A. Kennedy, who claimed, along with his detective force, the responsibility of discovering the plot. In the pamphlet are references to Warne corroborating her involvement in the Baltimore plot.

Most of the Pinkerton’s Chicago office files were destroyed in a fire in 1871, so beyond Pinkerton’s published writings, little more is known of the female detective. Warne was certainly an intriguing figure, and perhaps little documentation exists because she was a good spy!

This obituary of sorts in the March 19, 1868, issue of the Democratic Enquirer (Ohio), recounts news of Warne’s exploits while at the Pinkerton agency.

“Up to the time of her death, her whole life had been devoted to the service into which she had entered in her younger years. She was undoubtedly the best female detective in America, if not the world.”

Sources: Daniel Stashower, “The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War” (St. Martin’s Press, 2013); www.pinkerton.com; Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency records, 1853-1999, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress

“Make Speedy Payment”: Women, Business and George Washington

(The following is a guest blog post by Julie Miller, early American historian in the Manuscript Division.)

Rebecca Steel, advertisement, Pennsylvania Gazette, Oct. 9, 1766.

In 1766, Philadelphia shopkeeper Rebecca Steel advertised that she had for sale “Dry Goods, Bohea, Green, Hyson, and Congo Teas &c. as usual, at the most reasonable Rates,” and also “a Parcel of fine silks” that she would “sell low” (Pennsylvania Gazette, Oct. 9, 1766). In the same advertisement she warned her customers that if they didn’t “make speedy payment,” she would “be put to the disagreeable Necessity of suing.” A decade later, in the thick of the Revolutionary War, George Washington bought tea from Steel. He didn’t have to worry about being sued, however, since he paid his bill. We know this because the receipt, () signed by Thomas Mifflin, quartermaster general of the Continental Army, is in his papers at the Library of Congress.

Steel’s receipt is just one among many pieces of evidence in Washington’s papers that he regularly did business with women. Many of the women he dealt with were poorer and less formidable than Rebecca Steel. In New York on Sept. 20, 1776, he paid a woman six shillings to wash his “plain shirts,” stocks (a kind of 18th-century necktie), stockings and a silk handkerchief. The he signed identifies her only as a “servant of Major Leach in the camp.” (See this story from the Teaching with the Library of Congress blog about another laundress who worked for Washington during the Revolutionary War.) Hannah Till, a servant who worked at Washington’s headquarters at Morristown, N.J., signed the for wages she received on June 23, 1780, with an X, the mark used in place of a signature by people who did not know how to write. These were temporary jobs for poor women with limited skills who were available to work for Washington as he moved around from place to place during the Revolutionary War.

Bill for Tea, Feb. 10, 1777, signed by Thomas Mifflin and James Steel for Rebecca Steel. Rebecca Steel’s husband James had been dead since 1742, so this James may have been a son or other relative. George Washington Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

Other women had more sophisticated skills or valuable goods to offer. Dorothy Shewcraft, for example, sold Washington a pair of andirons and a “scotch carpett” for his New York headquarters (), and Hannah Stewart made him “table cloths and two towels” when he was headquartered in West Point (). Both Shewcraft and Stewart signed the receipts they received from Washington with clear, neat signatures. Widow Ann Emerson, housekeeper in Washington’s Philadelphia household while he was president, came so highly recommended that she felt confident enough to bargain for her salary, declining to accept less than £50 per year, a price, Washington’s secretary reported, that was “much too high.” Emerson also won the privilege of keeping her 7-year-old daughter with her, even though Martha Washington “had rather it should not be brought into the family.” This was a standard objection on the part of employers of live-in servants. ().

Much of the work that women did for pay in early America was an extension of household work. Women kept gardens and sold produce, kept chickens and sold eggs, and kept cows and sold dairy products. Young, unmarried women often went to work as servants for their neighbors as a way to experience a little independence and build a nest egg before marriage. Nearly all women were constantly at work spinning, weaving, sewing, knitting, mending and washing. Women delivered babies and provided nursing for their families and neighbors. In a world in which there were no grocery stores, clothing stores and sometimes, especially on the frontier, no trained doctors, these women provided not only for their households but also for their communities.

Some women, however, stepped into traditionally male domains, operating printshops and publishing newspapers, managing land, farming, and owning shops, merchant and manufacturing firms, and trading ships. Typically these women were widows. According to Anglo-American law in this period, when a woman married, her husband took control of her property and the money she earned legally belonged to him. When a woman’s husband died, however, she could regain her economic autonomy and in some cases get control of family property and businesses. Some wives had been supporting their husbands’ businesses with their money or labor long before they owned them as widows.

Washington dealt with several such widows. From the 1760s through the early 1770s, when in accord with revolutionary boycotts he stopped importing goods from England, he repeatedly bought nails, hinges, padlocks and other metal supplies from the British firm of Theodosia Crowley and Co. Crowley was in her 30s when her husband, heir to one of England’s great ironworks, died and left her the business until her sons were old enough to take over. They lived long enough to do so, but when they too died young, Crowley took over the business again and ran it herself with the help of a series of managers. By the time she died at 88 in 1782, she had run the business for a total of 38 years. Not only had she outlived her husband by more than half a century, she also outlived all six of her children. (For Washington’s purchases from Crowley, see, for example, Robert Cary, invoices,, or ).

During the revolution, Washington dealt not only with Rebecca Steel, the Philadelphia tea merchant, but also with Ann Van Horne, a New York wine merchant. In April 1776, just before Washington arrived in New York City to face the British ships that were gathering threateningly in the harbor, the steward and housekeeper in charge of setting up his headquarters ordered 37 bottles of wine from Van Horne. Unlike Hannah Till, who could not sign her name, in a clear, firm hand. Van Horne had married into a family of New York merchants, one of whom was her husband, Garrit Van Horne, who had died by 1765. He seems to have respected her business abilities, since he made her a co-executor of his will. Advertisements in New York newspapers in the 1760s and 1770s show her managing his estate, selling Madeira, claret, brandy, sugar and Cheshire cheese, and also substantial land holdings and a slave. (New York Mercury, Sept. 23, 1765; New York Gazette and the Weekly Mercury, Aug. 12, 1771).

Receipt signed by George Washington for laundry done by a “servant of Major Leach in the Camp,” New York, Sept. 20, 1776. George Washington Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

The following winter Washington purchased tea from Rebecca Steel. Like Ann Van Horne, Steel was a widow and the co-executor of the estate of her husband, James Steel (Pennsylvania Gazette, Dec. 2, 1742). Historian Karin Wulf identifies her as one of Philadelphia’s handful of “elite” women shopkeepers. One of her frequent customers was Quaker Philadelphian Catherine Drinker, whose detailed diary records her visits to Steel’s shop and her husband Henry Drinker’s attendance at her funeral in 1783. Steel’s life can also be traced in her advertisements in Philadelphia newspapers.

More long-lasting and complex was Washington’s business relationship with his Virginia neighbor, Penelope Manley French. French was a wealthy widow of Washington’s own age who owned land adjacent to Washington’s that he very much wanted to buy but that she did not want to sell. Her ownership of the land took the form of a life interest that would pass to her only child, Elizabeth, at her death. When Elizabeth married in 1773, two years after the death of her father, Daniel French, Washington commented: “Our celebrated Fortune, [Miss] French, whom half the world was in pursuit of, bestowd her hand on Wednesday last . . .” (Washington to Burwell Bassett, Feb. 15, 1773). Penelope French’s land formed a part of the fortune that Elizabeth French brought to her husband, Benjamin Dulany. (The Virginia Gazette in Williamsburg, which contained the Dulanys’ marriage announcement, was published by widow Clementina Rind. The following year, Virginia’s House of Burgesses, of which Washington was a member, appointed her the colony’s printer).

French held out against Washington for many years. But despite her display of determination, there is not a single letter between her and Washington in his papers. All her communication with him was carried out through male surrogates, her son-in-law and her half-brother, William Triplett. Eventually she gave in – partially. In 1786 Penelope French agreed, not to an outright sale, but to a rental of the land for the duration of her lifetime. But even after she agreed to it, French didn’t make it easy for Washington to conclude the deal. When in September 1786 Washington rode over to William Triplett’s to meet with French and sign the papers, he found Triplett sick in bed and French absent. He and Triplett signed the papers a month later in court in Alexandria, without her ().

Washington continued to work around French. In a 1799 letter to Benjamin Dulany about a related arrangement (Washington to Benjamin Dulany, July 15, 1799) in which he was renting slaves from French, Washington carefully writes, “I thought it respectful & proper however, to couple her name with yours” and acknowledges Dulany’s own interest in the deal, since the slaves would “ultimately, descend to you, or yours.” (Washington to Benjamin Dulany, Sept. 12, 1799.) Washington was treading difficult territory here. On one hand he scrupulously named French, who was after all the one he was doing business with; at the same time he reminded her son-in-law, who was acting for her, of his own stake in the deal. (The slaves who were the subject of the deal had no say at all.) Washington died that December; Penelope French outlived both him, and the arrangement she made with him, by almost six years (Penelope French obituary, Alexandria Advertiser, Oct. 19, 1805).

Invoice for nails, files, knives, locks, hinges, and other goods purchased by George Washington from Theodosia Crowley and Co., March 1761. George Washington Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

Washington’s papers are full of evidence that he was willing to make business deals with women. What went wrong in his negotiations with Penelope French? It appears that she was unwilling to deal directly with him. Maybe the clash between the unworldly gentility expected of white southern ladies and her status as a substantial landowner made her uncomfortable in a way that the illiterate servant Hannah Till simply could not afford to be. Their stories are just a few samples among many in Washington’s papers of a side of Washington worth thinking about during Women’s History Month.

Read More About It

George Washington’s papers are in the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress, and you can see them online. The published edition (which currently does not include most of Washington’s financial papers, including these bills) is at Founders Online.

Newspaper advertisements are a wonderful way to learn about women in business in early America. You can find out about them at the Library of Congress Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading Room.

I learned about Theodosia Crowley in: M.W. Flinn, “Men of Iron: The Crowleys in the Early Iron Industry” (Edinburgh University Press, 1962). Rebecca Steel: Karin Wulf, “Not All Wives: Women of Colonial Philadelphia” (Cornell University Press, 2000) and “The Diary of Elizabeth Drinker” ed. Elaine Forman Crane (Northeastern University Press, 1991, 3 vols.). Ann Van Horne: Jean P. Jordan, “Women Merchants in Colonial New York,” New York History 58 (October 1977): pgs. 412-439 and the papers of Levinus Clarkson, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. There appears to have been more than one Ann Van Horne. An Ann Van Horne died in 1773 (see a notice concerning her estate in Rivington’s New York Gazetteer, May 6,1773), three years before another Ann Van Horne signed Washington’s receipt for a wine purchase.

For some background on women, work and the law in early America see: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich: “Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750″ (Alfred A. Knopf, 1982) and “A Midwives Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on her Diary, 1785-1812″ (Alfred A. Knopf, 1990); Marylynn Salmon, “Women and the Law of Property in Early America” (University of North Carolina Press, 1986); and Linda Kerber, “Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America” (University of North Carolina Press, 1980).

Curator’s Picks: American Women Poets

The following is an article from the March/April 2015 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM, in celebration of both Women’s History Month (March) and National Poetry Month (April). The issue can be downloaded in its entirety here.

American history specialist Rosemary Fry Plakas highlights several women poets whose works are represented in the Library’s Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

1. Anne Dudley Bradstreet

British-born Anne Bradstreet (1613-1672) was the first woman poet to be published in colonial America. Her poems were first published in London in 1650, followed by an expanded edition published posthumously in Boston in 1678. “Both in her breadth of subjects–home, family, nature, history, philosophy and religion–and in her sensitivity to prejudices against women’s writings, Bradstreet is a worthy pathfinder for the women who have followed her.”

“The Tenth Muse lately Sprung up in America,” London, 1650

2. Gwendolyn Brooks

In 1950, Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000) became the first African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. “In her prize- winning work ‘Annie Allen,’ Brooks provides a poignant portrait of a young black girl in Chicago as a daughter, wife and mother.” After many productive years of writing and teaching, Brooks became the first African American woman to serve as the Library’s Consultant in Poetry, 1985-1986.

“Annie Allen,” New York, 1949

3. Mercy Otis Warren

Poet and dramatist Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814) drew on her literary talents, democratic convictions and friendships with patriot leaders to produce her three-volume commentary on the American Revolution. “This singed title page of Thomas Jefferson’s personal copy shows how close it came to the flames of the Christmas Eve 1851 fire that destroyed nearly two thirds of the books Jefferson had sold to Congress in 1815.”

“History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution,” Boston, 1805

4. Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson’s (1830- 1886) beloved poem “Success”– one of the few published during her lifetime–was submitted without her permission by childhood friend and fellow poet Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885). “Jackson urged Dickinson relentlessly to publish her poems and wished to be her literary executor, but alas, Jackson died the year before Dickinson.”

[George Parsons Lathrop] editor, “A Masque of Poets,” No Name Series [v. 13] Boston, 1878

5. Phillis Wheatley

African-born poet Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784) was a slave educated by her Boston owner’s wife, who encouraged her to publish her poems. This collected work was published by the Countess of Huntingdon in London, where Wheatley had been welcomed by Benjamin Franklin and abolitionists Grenville Sharpe and the Earl of Dartmouth. “Her portrait was probably drawn by the African American artist Scipio Moorhead, whose creative talents are praised in one of Wheatley’s poems.”

“Poems on Various Subjects: Religious and Moral,” London, 1773

*All images | Rare Book and Special Collections Division

BOOM Shaka-laka-laka!

Where were you when you first heard that?

“Stand!” by Sly and the Family Stone

I was in the theater audience for the movie “Woodstock,” and I recall thinking even then that the section featuring Sly and the Family Stone was the high point of the film. Now, whenever I hear “I Want to Take You Higher,” which has the Boom-shaka-laka-laka bridge between verses, I visualize the long fringe, on Sly Stone’s jacket sleeves, flying through the air in slow motion.

The 1969 long-playing album “Stand!” by Sly and the Family Stone, which includes that song, not to mention the hit “Everyday People” and the title cut, is among 25 recordings being added to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry for 2014. This designation is given to recordings regarded as having cultural, artistic or historical significance worthy of preservation for future generations.

This year’s recording registry additions (bringing the grand total of recordings so designated to 425) are a lively mix of rock, folk, pop, jazz, blues, religious and classical, some spoken-word, and some historic recordings.

For example, there’s “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford, who had a huge hit in 1955 with this song about a tough hombre who mines coal for a living: “You load 16 tons and what do you get? Another day older, and deeper in debt. Saint Peter, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go – I owe my soul to the company store.”

Ford, a popular bass-baritone, managed to put a lot of grit into his performance of the song even when he sang it with crystal-clear enunciation (he had classical voice training), wearing a tailored suit.

But to add true grit, this year’s recording registry also includes Blind Lemon Perkins’ 1928 recording of “Black Snake Moan” and “Match Box Blues.”

Joan Baez Photo by William Claxton

 

Joan Baez’s first album recorded in 1960 and titled with her name is in this year’s registry. It is a collection of folksongs, sung in her bell-like voice with minimal accompaniment, committed to vinyl at the dawn of her long and productive career.

Also on this year’s list is jazz saxophonist Gerry Mulligan’s 1953 live concert version of “My Funny Valentine.” The Gerry Mulligan collection is held at the Library.

Lauryn Hill’s 1998 “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” is on this year’s list, along with Radiohead’s 1997 album “OK Computer.” Ben E. King’s soulful “Stand By Me” (1961) is listed, along with the Righteous Brothers’ painful “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” from 1964.

The Doors’ eponymous first album (1967) is there, too – which includes not only the high-airplay “Light My Fire” and the highly regarded album cut “The End” but also their version of Kurt Weill’s wry, dry “Alabama Song,” better known by its lyric “Oh, show me/ the way/ to the next/ whiskey bar – No, don’t ask why.”

Touching base with history, there is a set of wax-cylinder recordings of sounds people captured at home between 1890 and 1910, collected by the University of California, Santa Barbara Library; radio coverage of the funeral of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, featuring a sobbing breakdown on the air by reporter Arthur Godfrey; 101 wax-cylinder recordings made of international displays presented at the 1893 World’s Fair at Chicago; and two Irish fiddle tunes laid down in 1922 by Michael Coleman, a violinist who kept this element of Eire real, both in his home nation and in the U.S.

Meanwhile, on the lighter side, the registry takes in Steve Martin’s 1978 LP of wacky bits from two standup shows, titled “A Wild And Crazy Guy” and an album that gathered together some of the best-loved songs from the show “Sesame Street.”

And in a nod to the rise of women in classical music, the 2014 registry includes “Fanfares for the Uncommon Woman,” recorded by the Colorado Symphony conducted by Marin Alsop. The 1999 album presents five fanfares written by composer Joan Tower celebrating “women who are adventurous and take risks” with each fanfare dedicated to a different woman of the music world. It is appropriate that the Colorado Symphony recorded this collection, in that Colorado was an early adapter to women on the concert-hall podium – not only Alsop but also Antonia Brico and JoAnn Falletta.