Library of Congress's Blog, page 148

Wipe That Scowl Off Your Face

Photography was well-established by the dawn of the 20th Century–it had graduated from the tintype and daguerreotype to innovations allowing for smaller cameras and more portable exposure media. But as the 1800s became the 1900s, portrait photography carried forward a tradition of depicting people sitting stiffly, staring sternly into the camera.

A handsome young immigrant from Germany, who came to San Francisco as the employee of family friends from back home and fell in love with the city by the bay, changed all that. His name was Arnold Genthe, and his papers (including numerous photographs) are in the collections of the Library of Congress.

Photographer Arnold Genthe, in his youth

Genthe had a classical European education–his father had been a professor–and early in life Arnold hoped to be an artist. But after his father’s death, the family struggled to cover costs, and his mother’s artist cousin frankly counseled him to relegate art to his leisure hours and find something more lucrative as a living. When Arnold went to San Francisco in 1895 (temporarily, he thought) it was as the tutor of the young son of wealthy family friends.

In his 1936 biography, “As I Remember,” Genthe described how fascinating he found all the worlds-within-worlds within San Francisco. He was advised to avoid the city’s Chinatown, a warning that only drew him in. In a bid to capture some sense of that unique place, he hit upon using photography:

“When I looked for pictures to illustrate my letters, there were none to be had except a few inadequate crudely colored postal cards. I tried to make some sketches. As soon as I got out my sketchbook the men, women and children scampered in a panic into doorways or down into cellars. Finding it impossible to get pictures in this way, I decided to try to take some photographs. Up to that time I had never used a camera … it had to be small enough to carry in my pocket, as I had learned that the inhabitants of Chinatown had a deep-seated superstition about having their pictures taken.”

Over a period of months, he successfully took numerous photos in Chinatown, which later became a book you can read on the Internet Archive: “Old Chinatown” published in 1913. He joined a photographers’ club, and eventually decided to become a portrait photographer capable of capturing lively, candid photos.

Genthe, who was fortunate to have as clients many well-to-do locals who recommended him to others, eventually was in demand on the East Coast as well to photograph not only wealthy individuals (John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan) and political leaders (Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson), but also artistic endeavors – theater, film and dance (Greta Garbo, Sarah Bernhardt, Isadora Duncan) and portraits of authors (Jack London, Ida Tarbell) and poets (William Butler Yeats and Edna St. Vincent Millay). (Her papers are at the Library).

Genthe is also immortalized as one of the most articulate eyewitnesses, with photos to back his words, of the great San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906:

“One scene that I recorded the morning of the first day of the fire … shows … a house, the front of which had collapsed into the street. The occupants are sitting on chairs calmly watching the approach of the fire … When the fire crept up close, they would just move up a block.”

Approaching fire during the Great San Francisco Earthquake

Genthe lost nearly everything he owned that week except the clothes on his back and the camera in his hand (the negatives for his Chinatown book were stored outside San Francisco, so they survived), and he moved to New York, where his career flourished. He died of a heart attack in 1942, famous as one of the world’s most accomplished photographers. The Library purchased the photos remaining in his studio at the time of his death.

 

Celebrating Women: Women’s History on Pinterest

(The following blog post is by Jennifer Harbster, a science research specialist and blogger for the Library’s Science, Technology, and Busines blog, “Inside Adams.” Harbster also helped create the Library of Congress Women’s History Month board on Pinterest.)

Alison Turnbull Hopkins at the White House on New Jersey Day. Jan. 30, 1917. Library of Congress Manuscript Division.

March is designated as Women’s History Month and this year the National Women’s History Project has selected “Weaving the Stories of Women’s Lives” as the theme. To help commemorate Women’s History Month, the Library has created a Pinterest Board that offers a visual celebration of the diverse stories of women in the United States.

Images capture moments in time and connect us to history; they awaken our senses, revive memories and inspire us. With the Library’s extensive collections related to women’s history, there is an array of material to showcase. We have pinned images from a broad range of women’s achievements, including politics, civil rights, sports, medicine, science, industry, arts, literature, education and religion.

There are images that focus on the stories of the women’s suffrage movement in the U.S. We “pinned” images from the Library’s Women of Protest Photographs from Records of the National Women’s Party, such as the “‘Silent Sentinel’ Alison Turnbull Hopkins at the White House” (1917), who carries a sign that reads “Mr. President, How Long Must Women Wait for Liberty.”

Maude Younger. Between 1909 and 1932. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

We also pinned memorabilia and images from the Miller National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) Suffrage Scrapbooks, 1897-1911 collection. The women suffragist images are powerful and portray the strength of the modern woman. One of my favorites is from the early 20th century of Miss Maude Younger, legislative secretary of the National Woman’s Party, working on her car in the streets of Washington, D.C.

The Women’s History Board also tells the stories of women who stepped into the workforce during World Wars I and II. The Farm and Security Administration Office of War Information (FSA/OWI) Photograph Collection (color and B/W prints) brings to our attention the spirit and determination of women who worked jobs normally dominated by men in the defense plants, railways and farms. The photographer Ann Rosener, who worked for the FSA/OWI, documents the changing roles of women. We pinned a couple of her images of women on farms – one is a woman behind the wheel of a tractor and the other is a group of women harvesting asparagus in Illinois.

Women in war: agricultural workers. Photo by Anne Rosener, Sept. 1942. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

This board also offers up a medley of images of women who drove race cars, flew airplanes, rode motorcycles and played golf. Throughout the month of March, we will be adding more images, so follow us to keep up with the new pins.

We hope the Women’s History Pinterest Board will inspire you to learn more about the individual story of a woman or the larger narrative of that moment in history from the perspective of a woman.

If you’d like to learn more about the Library’s Women’s History collection, a good place to start is American Women: Gateway to the Library of Congress Resources Related to the Study of Women’s History and Culture in the United States.

Several of the other Library blogs are featuring content in celebration of Women’s History Month.

Inside Adams: “Marie Curie: A Gift of Radium”

In Custodia Legis: “Women in History: Lawyers and Judges,” “Women in History: Elected Representatives” and “Women in History: Voting Rights”

Teaching with the Library of Congress: March in History

Wild Irish Foes

Today we’re going to add a new term to your broad vocabulary: Fenian. It’s a noun that describes a member of an Irish or Irish-American brotherhood dedicated to freeing Ireland from British dominion. The name was taken from the “Fianna,” a group of kings’ guards led by the legendary Irish leader of yore, Finn MacCool.

Bet you didn’t know that in 1866, large numbers of Irishmen (back in Ireland) and Irish-American men mustered out of service in the Civil War staged military-style actions in the name of their Fenianism, including a couple of attacks on Canada. (t was one of a handful of episodes in history of arms being taken up from within the U.S. against our northern neighbor – more on that shortly). The idea was to draw out the British military to focus on the Canadian trouble (Canada, at that time, being a British colony), making it easier for the Irish rebels to seize power back in Ireland and declare it a separate, self-governed nation.

The Battle of Ridgeway, Ontario

In April, hordes of Fenians massed in northern Maine, with the intent of seizing Campobello Island, part of British Canada. Both English and U.S. warships were positioned in the waters off the coast to tamp down the Campo-bellicosities. The governor of Maine asked for permission to call out the National Guard of the era, to help keep the peace.

Later that year, in June, an estimated 1,000 Fenians made a move across the U.S. border north to the outskirts of the Canadian town of Ridgeway, Ontario, on the northern shore of Lake Erie. There, they skirmished with Canadian troops, killing outright nine Canadian riflemen, according to Battle of Ridgeway expert Peter Vronsky, with more than 20 other Canadian deaths from battle injuries later; the Fenians lost up to six of their number on the spot with several later casualties. The Canadians captured scores of Fenian combatants, and later tried many, according to David Bertuca. After another fight in the area the Fenians re-crossed into the U.S., where many Fenians were arrested. Then-President Andrew Johnson publicly declared that the U.S. had no hostile intentions toward the Canadians. One other Fenian raid attempt on Canada was made in 1870; it, too, was abortive.

These imbroglios were all over the newspapers, even then. Here is one of those newspapers from 1866 you can read on the Library of Congress/National Endowment for the Humanities site, “Chronicling America.” And here is another account   of the Fenian attacks.

The Fenians had songs they sang to raise morale at their meetings and various other propaganda.

Lest their activities seem merely rowdy, keep in mind that this was only 20 years after the first starvation deaths occurred in the Great Irish Famine. That unspeakable human tragedy killed at least a million people and caused twice that number to flee Ireland; many went to the United States.  British policies, many historians say, exacerbated the suffering of the starving Irish and contributed to the high mortality of the famine, which was triggered by a potato blight that wiped out the sustenance crop virtually overnight.

You’ll still hear songs about the Fenian men sung in Irish pubs from Dublin to Dingle and from New York to San Francisco.

What were the other U.S. sorties against the Canadians? Well, the U.S. did torch Toronto  (then known as York) in the War of 1812, which some say spurred the Brits to get even by burning Washington (an event that led to a new-and-improved Library of Congress).

The other was a border dispute on San Juan Island, northwest of Seattle and south of Vancouver. Known as the “Pig and Potato War,” two nationals of the respective nations got into a tiff over a Canadian porker that ransacked a Yankee’s tuber patch. Nobody died, but the British and Americans built military camps on San Juan Island that you can still visit today.

 

 

George Washington and the Weaving of American History

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

What stories can that George Washington assembled to track the productivity of his weaving workshop at Mount Vernon tell? The book, which is part of the extensive collection of financial records that are part of Washington’s papers at the Library of Congress, doesn’t look like much. Nine inches high and seven-and-a-half pages wide, it was rebound by Library conservators very simply in paper, having at some point lost its original binding, if it ever had one. Its 26 pages contain a series of tables, neatly drawn by Washington himself, each with the heading “An Account of Weaving Done by Thomas Davis &c in the Year . . . ” These describe the output of the weaving workshop from January 1767 to January 1771, show how much of what the weavers made Washington used himself and how much he sold to his neighbors, and tell less than we would like to know about the free and enslaved weavers who worked there.

Patterns for Ms and Os and Birdeye in John Hargrove, “The Weavers Draft Book and Clothiers Assistant” (Baltimore, 1792). Reprinted in 1979 by the American Antiquarian Society, edited by Rita J. Adrosko.

One story is about Thomas Davis, the weaver who ran the workshop. Skilled weavers were scarce in colonial America, and Washington probably hired Davis from England. The workshop’s output, as documented in Washington’s neat hand, is a testament to the range of Davis’s skills and knowledge. Washington carefully recorded the weight (of the thread before it was woven and then of the finished cloth), width, density (in a column headed “hundreds in the width,” referring to the loom’s warp threads), and length of each piece; how long it took to weave, its price per yard and what type of cloth it was. At intervals, he added up what the weaving workshop had earned.

Davis and the weavers under his supervision worked in cotton, wool, linen and silk. They produced a variety of weaves, patterns and types of fabric, including bird eye, in cotton and wool; cotton and wool plaids; a pattern called Ms and Os; cotton striped with silk; linsey-woolsey, a mix of linen and wool; fustian, a rough cloth of cotton and linen; shalloon, a woollen material used for linings; and jean, sometimes spelled “jane,” a thick, twilled cotton that only later was associated with the blue jeans we wear today. The name of another fabric the weavers produced, diaper, also had yet to take on its modern meaning. They also turned out fish nets, harness, carpets, counterpanes and coverlets, and bed ticking. (Given the detail in which Washington recorded this information, it is interesting that he never mentioned color.)

“What Kind of Cloth,” 1770, showing Ms and Os, “Janes,” striped silk and cotton, carpet and more. George Washington Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

Davis may have been at Mount Vernon as early as 1766, before the book begins, and he was still there in 1773, so Washington must have been satisfied with him. Davis, however, may not have been so happy. Washington notes that in July and August of 1767 Davis had two bouts of sickness, and his farm manager reported that during this time he had fits in which he lay so long that he appeared to be dead (Lund Washington to George Washington, Aug. 17, 1767). Davis was also lonely. In 1773 Washington responded to Davis’s “particular request & earnest entreaty” to bring his mother and sister to join him, recording in a that he paid a ship captain for their passage.

What about the weavers Davis supervised? The only other weavers named in the book are slaves identified by Washington as Dick and George. References to them appear in the column headed “Sickness with other Remarks & Occur[rences]” that Washington used to record information about the weavers. The notation “wove by Dick” appears in this column twice, both times in July 1767, when he wove a total of 65-and-a-half yards of linen. George, who is mentioned more often, appears in 1769 and 1770 weaving linen, a mixture of cotton and wool, and a fabric called kersey. In January and February 1770, Washington noted that George, evidently a profitable worker, missed a total of 20 days of work, partly due to sickness, partly because he was working elsewhere.

In the last pages of the book Washington notes another set of workers: “one white woman” and “5 Negro Girls” – spinners. Washington’s identification of these women as “white” and “Negro” is his shorthand for free and slave. He hired the white woman, but the girls of African descent were probably slaves. Spinning, the process by which fluffs of raw fiber were twisted and counter-twisted with a hand-held spindle or spinning wheel into strong, smooth lengths of thread for weaving, was so ubiquitous a female activity that the word “spinster” was also used to mean an unmarried woman.

Spinning was a woman’s job, but weaving, especially in Britain and continental Europe, was a job typically held by men. Weavers were skilled craftsmen who had been trained in apprenticeships and formed guilds, trade unions and other associations to protect their craft. As a group they occasionally rose up to protect their rights. In the second half of the 1760s, just as Washington was documenting the work of his Mount Vernon weavers, the silk weavers of Spitalfields in London staged a series of uprisings to protest undercutting of their prices. In one such protest a crowd of hundreds of weavers descended on a colleague they believed was “working under price,” cut the work out of his loom, set him backwards on an ass and rode him through the town, “hooting, hallowing, and making a great uproar.” (Pennsylvania Chronicle, and Universal Advertiser, Sept. 11, 1769.) This was the same sort of ritualized violence, rooted in British tradition, that the American revolutionaries were soon to visit on the loyalists in their midst.

At Mount Vernon, the enslaved weavers and spinners and the ill and isolated Davis had little opportunity to follow the example of the Spitalfields weavers and assert their rights. But George Washington did. In the 1760s, the Anglo-American colonists were becoming annoyed by what they felt were unjust taxes, such as those imposed by the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Act of 1767, and other British impositions that the Continental Congress would later list in the Declaration of Independence. In 1769, Virginia, like other American colonies, began boycotting British goods. George Washington, a member of Virginia’s legislature, the House of Burgesses, supported the boycott (see his , April 5, 1769, click here for a transcription). In this period Washington was also looking for ways to diversify the production of his Virginia estate. At the end of the 18th century, tobacco, which had been so valuable to the earliest Virginia settlers, was declining as a profitable crop. Like other Virginia planters, Washington began to rely more on crops such as wheat and flax, and sources of income such as milling and fishing. The weaving workshop — which made linen out of his flax, nets to catch his fish and cloth to supply his estate and sell to his neighbors — was part of that effort.

“Wove by Dick,” 1767. George Washington Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

For years, Washington had been buying textiles, along with other goods, from London merchants in exchange for his tobacco. Now he was reconsidering that practice on both financial and political grounds. On the last pages of the book are notes that show him calculating what it cost him to manufacture textiles at home compared to the cost of importing them from Britain. Or as he put it (with the creative capitalization, spelling and punctuation of the 18th century): “A Comparison drawn between Manufacturing, & importing; the goods on the otherside.”

Washington’s realization, in the 1760s, about the connection between manufacturing and national autonomy appears to be the story George Washington created this book to tell. He had hired weavers before 1767 and continued to do so after 1771, but it was only during this period of political and economic turbulence that he chose to create a separate record of his Mount Vernon weaving business and to calculate exactly what it earned and what it cost him. After he became the first president of the United States, domestic manufacturing became central to the program advocated by his treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, and by Washington himself.

In the fall of 1789, soon after he became president, Washington went on a tour of the New England states. In Boston he visited a “duck manufacture,” a workshop that wove duck, a sturdy cotton fabric. Proto-factories like this one were forerunners of the steam and water-powered factories that would appear in New England in greater numbers in the decades to come. Once again Washington paid close attention to the details, counting 28 looms and 14 spinners, mainly girls and women from local farming families who were paid for their labor. The workers, he remarked in his diary (), “are the daughters of decayed families, and are girls of Character – none others are admitted.” He did not dwell on the similarity between their predicament – worn-out farms (this is the “decay” he mentions) and his own 20 years earlier. Nor did he predict that one day these early factory workers would organize for better pay and working conditions. But he did record his approval:  “This is a work of public utility & private advantage” he remarked in his diary, something he had learned long ago.

Library in the News: February 2015 Edition

The Library’s big headline for February was the opening of the Rosa Park Collection to researchers on Feb. 4, which was also the birthday of the civil-rights icon.

“A cache of Parks’s papers set to be unveiled Tuesday at the Library of Congress portrays a battle-tested activist who had been steeped in the struggle against white violence since childhood,” wrote Michael E. Ruane of The Washington Post. “The trove, parts of which were unknown to historians, also shows Parks as a woman devoted to her family, especially to her mother and husband, Raymond, for whom she kept her hair in long braids even after he died.

“Her personal papers and keepsakes contain a much fuller story of the woman behind the movement,” wrote Laura Clark for smithsonian.com.

“But amid all the witness-to-history artifacts — a note after she’s had dinner with future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, for instance, or her ID card for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, or a copy of a 1999 letter she sent to Pope John Paul II after meeting him — is the ordinary, the everyday, the mundane,” wrote Todd Spangler for the Detroit Free Press. “It is made all the more remarkable for it being hers.”

Speaking with collection curator Adrienne Cannon was the New York Times.

“I think that she felt, perhaps, limited in a way by the iconic image of Rosa Parks as the woman who refused to give up her seat in the bus,” said Cannon. “This significance that she had in the public sphere did not fully describe who she was, and I think that she perhaps wanted us to know her true self.”

WUSA (local CBS) reporter Lesli Foster spoke with Senior Archivist Specialist Margaret McAleer.

“”We always think of her as the quiet seamstress. But in her writings, we see how very courageous she was,” said McAleer.

Also running broadcast pieces were ABC This Week and NPR All Things Considered.

CBS News online also ran a story, interviewing Maricia Battle, curator of photography for the new collection.

“‘Writing things down was a way of releasing some of that pressure,’ Battle said, noting Parks’ stress from her arrest, the subsequent unfolding of the Montgomery bus boycott, and losing her job as an assistant tailor at the Montgomery Fair department store. Parks held on to much of this writing – not to mention postcards, invitations, poll tax receipts, and handwritten recipes – throughout her life.”

A selection of items from the collection are on display at the Library through March 31.

Also on display this month is the original manuscript of Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address.

The Washington Post’s Michael Ruane got a sneak peak at the document in February in advance of the special exhibit.

“Experts at the library showed the two versions of the speech, explained Lincoln’s quirky composition style and spoke about the damage the documents have incurred over 150 years,” he reported. “Even in a library conservation lab, the experts were careful to limit the exposure to light, covering the documents with large sheets of paper before and after discussing them.”

In addition to receiving the Rosa Park’s collection, the Library also received the papers of American composer Marvin Hamlisch.

Running stories were Fine Books & Collections Magazine and AllAccess.com.

Here Comes the Sun: Seeing Omens in the Weather at Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inauguration

(The following is a guest post by Michelle Krowl, Civil War and Reconstruction Specialist in the Manuscript Division. To commemorate the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, for a limited time [March 4-7, 2015] the Library of Congress will display both the four-page manuscript copy and the reading copy of the address in the Great Hall of the Thomas Jefferson Building.)

Saturday, March 4, 1865, the day of Abraham Lincoln’s second inauguration, “opened rather disagreeably” with a combination of “drenching rain,” drizzling, and “a heavy gale” in the morning. Such were the downpours that The Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) even joked “the police were careful to confine all to the sidewalks who could not swim.”

Crowds wade through pools of water and mud to attend Abraham Lincoln’s second inauguration, held on the east front of the United States Capitol, March 4, 1865. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

Despite the foul weather, thousands of people assembled on the east front of the United States Capitol to witness the first president since Andrew Jackson being inaugurated for a second term of office. Lincoln’s second inauguration also offered the novelty of being the first inauguration held in the shadow of the Capitol’s newly completed cast-iron dome and witnessed by a substantial number of African Americans, some of whom wore blue uniforms reflecting their status as soldiers in the Union army. What a difference four years had made. In 1861, dust – not mud – was the problem, the dome was under construction, and black men were barred from service in the army.

After Senator Andrew Johnson of Tennessee was sworn in as vice president in the Senate chamber about noon, invited guests then moved outside to the East Portico of the Capitol to witness Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration. The president stood behind a small metal table, put on his spectacles and read from a two-columned page of type, which he had cut-and-pasted to guide his reading of his inaugural address. At just over 700 words, Abraham Lincoln’s speech would be the second shortest presidential inaugural address in American history, while also managing to be one of the most profound and memorable. He identified slavery as the cause of the war and looked to God as the arbiter of how long the war would continue. And although the war had not yet ended, Lincoln looked forward to a national reunion by urging “with malice toward none; with charity for all” to achieve “a just and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.” At the conclusion of Lincoln’s address, Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase administered the oath of office, and Abraham Lincoln had once again been inaugurated as president of the United States.

While we tend to remember the stirring words Lincoln spoke in his inaugural address, many who witnessed the event were also struck by the good omens seen in the weather. Accounts vary as to the exact timing of the sun’s appearance, but observers noted that while Lincoln gave his address and took the oath of office, the clouds parted and the sun shone brightly on the ceremony. Lincoln’s secretary John G. Nicolay wrote to his fiancé Therena Bates that “Just at the time when the President appeared on the East portico to be sworn in, the clouds disappeared and the sun shone out beautifully all the rest of the day.” Michael Shiner, an African-American laborer at the Washington Navy Yard recorded in his diary, “Before he came out on the porch to take his [word omitted] the wind blew and it rained with out intermission and as soon as Mr. Lincoln came out the wind ceas[ed] blowing and the rain ceased raining and the Sun came out and it was as clear as it could be….”

Abraham Lincoln reading his Second Inaugural Address. This was the only event at which President Lincoln was photographed while delivering a speech. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

Several witnesses to the meteorological change interpreted it as a portent of better days ahead.

Charles Frederick Thomas, superintendent of construction on the Capitol dome, wrote to his family that “on Saturday morning there was a terrible Storm of wind and rain which continued for about an hour and then a few showers until about 11 o’clock. When the President commenced his address the clouds broke away, and by the time he had finished, the sun shone in all its splendor, which I may hope is a good sign for us.” Even Justice Chase, who when secretary of the treasury had not always appreciated Lincoln, wrote to first lady Mary Lincoln that “I most earnestly pray Him, by whose Inspiration it was given, that the beautiful Sunshine which just at the time the oath was taken dispersed the clouds that had previously darkened the sky may prove an auspicious omen of the dispersion of the clouds of war and the restoration of the clear sunlight of prosperous peace under the wise & just administration of him who took it.”

According to Lincoln’s friend, reporter Noah Brooks, even the president had noticed the sun’s appearance, and “went on to say that he was just superstitious enough to consider it a happy omen.” But as Brooks later considered the significance of the sunshine at Lincoln’s second inauguration, he noted that Lincoln, “illumined by the deceptive brilliance of a March sunburst, was already standing in the shadow of death.”

Abraham Lincoln would serve just over a month of his second term. He was assassinated by the actor John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer, and died on April 15, 1865.

Lincoln’s words on March 4, 1865, live on, and his Second Inaugural Address is considered one of the finest ever delivered by an American president.

The Faces of Engineering

U.S. Army recruiting poster: “Engineers blaze the trail for education!” 1919. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

Founded by the National Society of Professional Engineers, Engineers Week (Feb. 22-28, 2015) aims to raise public awareness of the contributions to society of the profession. The celebration is typically held in conjunction with George Washington’s actual birthday (February 22). Washington could be considering one of the nation’s earliest engineers, particularly for his work in surveying.

The Library of Congress is home to the papers of many professional engineers, many with interesting connections.

Last year marked the centennial of the completion of the Panama Canal. Within the Manuscript Division are collections of several men who worked on the project. George W. Goethals was a key figure in the construction and opening of the canal. He was chief engineer in 1907 and helped bring the project to completion ahead of schedule in 1914. He also was appointed first governor of the Panama Canal Zone.

Joseph Cowles Mehaffey started off as a maintenance engineer in the Panama Canal Zone and was later named Governor of the Panama Canal in 1944. He received such honors as the Legion of Merit and Army Distinguished Service Medal for his work.

The Library of Congress has a free, 134-page reference guide to Panama materials in its collections.

William Howard Taft with Col. George Washington Goethals and others, in Panama. Dec. 23, 1910. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

The collections also include papers of pioneering aeronautical engineers, including individuals who helped make the Apollo missions possible. C.S. Draper was the founder and director of MIT’s Instrumentation Laboratory (later renamed after him), which made the Apollo moon landings possible through a computer it designed for NASA. According to MIT, the computer was designed to track the spacecraft’s location and velocity and provide steering commands to keep it on the correct path, among other things. Draper himself actually petitioned NASA in 1961 to participate as an astronaut on Apollo’s mission to the moon.

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong took the first footsteps on the moon as part of the Apollo 11 lunar mission. Thomas O. Paine was NASA administrator at the time. According to NASA, during his leadership the first seven Apollo manned missions were flown, in which 20 astronauts orbited the earth, 14 traveled to the Moon and four walked upon its surface.

NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center designs and develops spacecraft, trains astronauts and serves as Mission Control for U.S. space flights. Between 1980-2006, Photo by Carol M. Highsmith. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

Space exploration and the moon have long been a topic of interest, and the Library’s online presentation, “Finding our Place in the Cosmos: From Galileo to Sagan and Beyond,” takes a look at some of that discussion.

The Library’s Science, Technology and Business Division provides research and reference guides on a wide variety of engineering subjects, including Aeronautics/Astronautics, building engineering, civil engineering and on the engineering profession.

Sources: pbs.org, pancanal.com, MIT, NASA

An Architectural Marvel 40 Years in the Making

The Washington Monument. April 2, 2007. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

The Washington Monument is probably one of the most recognizable structures in all of D.C. At 555 feet, the Egyptian obelisk can be seen from miles away. A particularly picturesque vantage point is looking at the monument through the cherry blossom trees along the tidal basin.

Built to honor President George Washington, the Washington National Monument Society laid the monument’s cornerstone on Independence Day, 1848. However, it would take almost 40 years before the structure would be completed. The monument underwent two phases of construction, one private (1848-1854) and one public (1876-1884).

From the beginning, the monument was beleaguered with troubles, including difficulty with fundraising.

“The original design of the society was to allow every one an opportunity to contribute, and to carry out this idea the amount to be received from any one individual was limited to one dollar,” reported the May 17, 1876, issue of the Clearfield Republican.

The paper also reported that by 1826, only $28,000 had been raised. The monument society decided to lift the restriction and, by 1847, had about $87,000 and the wherewithal to begin construction.

Lithograph from the original design of the Washington Monument by architect Robert Mills. 1846. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

The monument also suffered from acts of vandalism, as an issue of the Daily Evening Star reported on March 13, 1854.

“We did not think that a paper published in this country could be found so lost to a sense of every thing that is decent and rights, a to justify the recent outrageous act of vandalism perpetrated in this city by the creatures who destroyed the block of marble sent by the Pope of Rome to the National Washington Monument Association,” began the article.

The paper then reprinted an excerpt from another paper in New York that extolled the destruction of a block of marble sent by the Pope.

Opposition to the Pope’s Stone largely stemmed from the Know-Nothing Party, a group who disapproved of immigrants, especially Catholics, entering the country.

When the obelisk was a little less than one-third its originally designed height, the society lost support and funding, and the monument stood incomplete and untouched some 20 years.

At one point, superintendent of the Washington Monument, William Dougherty, was thrown off the grounds following instructions by the board of managers of the Washington National Monument Society. At that time, the society had been taken over by members of the Know-Nothings. You can read his account in this article from the May 30, 1855, issue of the Evening Star.

Beef Depot Monument. 1862. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

The onslaught of the Civil War also contributed to a halt in construction and fundraising. In fact, Union soldiers drilled on monument grounds and used the area to graze cattle and store hay. By the end of the war, the monument and grounds was an eyesore. Mark Twain once referred to it as a “factory chimney with the top broken off.”

Finally, in 1876, the government resumed construction of the monument under the supervision of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Still, disagreements and criticisms about the project continued to be rampant, particularly where the design and foundation’s safety were concerned. The reason the monument looks like it is two different colors is because by the time the project resumed, the stone from the original quarry was no longer available.

When fully constructed, the Washington Monument was the world’s tallest structure. It was formally dedicated on Feb. 21, 1885, to much pomp and circumstance.

The Evening Star reported on the celebration, devoting several pages to coverage of the event and background on the planning and construction of the monument.

Washington Monument as it stood for 25 years. ca. 1860, Photo by Mathew Brady. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

“The Washington National Monument was formally dedicated today with imposing ceremonies. The day was cold and windy, but the sky was clear. Many buildings along the line of the procession were decorated with flags and gay bunting, which gave rich effects of color in the bright sunlight. The program arranged for the ceremonies was faithfully carried out in every detail.”

The monument didn’t officially open to the public until October 1888.

More historical newspaper articles documenting the Washington Monument project can be found through Chronicling America’s topics page on the landmark. The Prints and Photographs Online Catalog also has an abundance of images and architectural designs of the monument.

Sources: National Park Service, “The United States Army Corps of Engineers and the Construction of the Washington Monument,” by Louis Torres 

 

A Sense of Purpose: Organizing the Rosa Parks Collection

(The following is a guest post written by Meg McAleer, senior archives specialist in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division.)

Archivists have wonderful jobs. Four colleagues – Kimberly Owens, Tammi Taylor, Tracey Barton and Sherralyn McCoy – and I shared nods of understanding, delight and awe often during the last two months of 2014 as we organized and described the papers of Rosa Parks, the civil rights activist who refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Ala., on Dec. 1, 1955, and in the process launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott and a new phase of the civil rights movement. Working through the holiday season, we were fueled in equal parts by excitement and a strong sense of responsibility to get it right for the sake of her legacy and the scholars, young and old, who would be using the collection.

Parks’ recipe for “featherlite” pancakes

The collection contains correspondence, family papers, writings, notes, honors and tributes, financial records, books, and, among other material, an item that entices by its very name – a recipe for “featherlite” pancakes. All told, the manuscript portion of the collection comprises roughly 7,500 items that provide rich insights into Parks’ private life and public activism on behalf of civil rights. An additional 2,500 photographs are preserved in the Library’s Prints and Photographs Division. From the perspective of the Library of Congress Manuscript Division, this is a fairly small collection. Our largest collection, the records of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), contains more than 3 million items.The Rosa Parks collection encompasses the most personal of personal papers. The majority of collections we receive consist largely of office files that come to us fairly well organized, having been maintained by office staff. Some collections, however, also contain far more personal papers that are typically stored in homes (as were the Parks papers). There they are stashed in drawers, stuffed in desks and corralled into boxes relegated to attics and basements. Over the years they are taken out, reexamined and reassembled. Idiosyncratic in nature, they are fragmentary rather than comprehensive but very revealing about the private person who also played prominent public roles. Personal papers help us make sense of the public person, understanding their actions, reactions, thoughts and motivations a little more clearly. In one of her autobiographical writings available in the collection, Parks asked herself: “Is it worthwhile to reveal the intimacies of the past life? Would the people be sympathetic or disillusioned when the facts of my life are told? Would they be interested or indifferent?” Hardly making us indifferent, Parks’ collection breathes life into an icon in ways that truly inspire.

Personal papers stored in homes also tend to be poorly organized, as were Parks’. Her papers came to us with a partial item-level inventory prepared by an auction house. The inventory gave us a good sense of what was in the collection, but item-level description is no substitute for an organization that brings like material together in a logical order. Only when logically arranged and sequenced is a collection able to tell a coherent story. It is a lot like a jigsaw puzzle. Individual pieces hint at what is being depicted but only when they are assembled does the picture fully emerge. As an archivist, I know that my arrangement decisions are good ones if the collection’s narrative voice is released. The voice emanating from Parks’ fragmentary writings in the collection is strong, courageous, clear-eyed, grounded in core ethical beliefs and not immune to pain when describing the daily humiliations of racial segregation. That same voice is loving, compassionate and nonjudgmental in the relationships that mattered the most to her.

Cover of Parks’ date book

In letters to her husband Raymond Parks in 1957-1958, she shared intimately the heavy toll her protest took on their personal lives. Both Rosa and Raymond Parks lost their jobs in 1956 following her arrest, pushing them over the edge into deep poverty. Another set of records – their income tax returns – reveals how deep and prolonged their descent was.

The collection’s lack of a coherent order actually heightened the thrill of discovery. I found myself opening each container with eager anticipation. Mixed in with material from the 1990s, I found a 1955 date book from the Montgomery Fair department store where Parks worked as an assistant tailor. Opening it, I discovered that Parks had repurposed it as a notebook during the bus boycott in 1956. It brought me closer to those events as I read the names of people who bravely volunteered to drive Montgomery’s African Americans to their jobs.

Inside page of date book

All of us who worked on this collection were deeply inspired by a life lived so completely aligned with principles. To an extent, we felt like the scores of people who wrote to Parks and struggled to express their gratitude for her lifelong crusade for equal rights. For myself, I think I came to admire her most as a writer and for the power of her words. The collection contains bits and scraps of her writings and notes for speeches, created in or around 1956, in which she described what happened that fateful evening of Dec. 1, 1955, and the subsequent unfolding of the bus boycott. In none of her accounts does she portray herself as a lone heroine. Parks worked hard to place her arrest in the broader context of Jim Crow racial segregation and discrimination. She framed her decision to remain seated as one among many incidents of black protest. In other words, what happened on that bus was not a one-off event. “Treading the tight-rope of Jim Crow from birth to death,” she wanted us to understand, always involved, “… a line of some kind – color line hanging noose rope tight rope.” Her words beat at our national conscience.

The collection is now arranged and described in a written guide that lays out its organization and describes its content. Available in the Library of Congress Manuscript Reading Room, the Rosa Parks collection enters a new, dynamic phase of its life, engaging researchers in a dialogue that will leave few indifferent.

This post is part of a short series celebrating Rosa Parks and her collection on temporary loan at the Library of Congress. You can read the first post in the series here. 

About That Cannon in My Basement —

A few years ago – around 2001, 2002 – I had a cannon in my basement in Rockville, Maryland. You could see it through the front windows, where it was aimed. I wondered if the mailman would report us to Homeland Security.

It wasn’t a real one, but it was incredibly realistic and man-o’war-size (about five feet long). It was made out of scrap wood and styrofoam and was one of the most ingenious set-design pieces I’d seen in several years knocking around in community theater. We put it in our basement because the theater company couldn’t afford storage space, and the only other option in the short term was to put it in a dumpster. It didn’t seem right to get only one show’s worth of use out of such a great piece.

From the Federal Theater Project

Scenic design – the sets, costumes, and lighting — are an essential part of theater, as important as the acting or the singing or the orchestra. They can evoke joy, or controversy. The Library of Congress on Feb. 12 will open an exhibition in its Music Division foyer in the James Madison Building titled “Grand Illusion: The Art of Theatrical Design,” featuring set designs of famous productions and famous designers from its vast theatrical collections, to include opera, ballet, vaudeville and musical theater.

The exhibition includes the work of 21 designers for 28 productions, including Nicholas Roerich, Robert Edmond Jones, Boris Aronson, Oliver Smith, Florence Klotz and Tony Walton. It represents a tiny portion of what the Library offers in this area, and it’s noteworthy that many separate collections here “speak to each other” in that so many luminary figures of the stage — from the musical, production, book or dance cadres — interacted with each other on myriad shows.

Productions highlighted will include the Ballets Russes, the Ziegfield Follies and the musicals “My Fair Lady,” “Grand Hotel,” “Show Boat” and “Chicago”; also included will be holograph music manuscripts from George Gershwin and Frederick Loewe, not to mention letters and scripts by Ira Gershwin, Freddy Wittop and John Kander. The exhibition closes July 25, and then will travel to the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles for display in its Library of Congress Ira Gershwin Gallery from this coming August through February, 2016.

I’m out of theater now, but fondly recall activities onstage and off. I produced two shows for the Washington Savoyards — backstage management, from renting rehearsal space and the set build to directing the stage crew and paying the cast.

Pete, William and Cayetano built sets that were clever, beautiful and–this is important–safe. Pete was responsible for that very lifelike cannon.

The cannon was in the basement for, oh, two years, but finally the day came when we wanted to put our house on the market. So I called William, and asked if he could help me get the cannon over to the storage bay for the Victorian Lyric Opera Company. They thought it might be usable for one of their productions of “HMS Pinafore.” I assumed somebody had a truck.

William and Cayetano showed up with a subcompact Toyota. They pulled the cannon into its two sections, stuffed the muzzle in the back seat and somehow tied the heavy caisson section with ropes onto the roof, and off they went.

There were interesting squash-marks in the carpet, but we got the house sold.