Library of Congress's Blog, page 71

New! Baseball’s Jim Bouton and “Ball Four” at the Library

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The original cover, “Ball Four” (1970). Jim Bouton Papers, Manuscript Division. Jim Bouton Enterprises, Inc., no commercial reuse.

We are thrilled to announce that the Library has acquired the papers of former Major League Baseball pitcher Jim Bouton. Celebrated in his 20s as a pitcher with the New York Yankees of the 1960s, Bouton attained lasting fame as the author of an explosive (and hilarious) memoir, “Ball Four: My Life and Hard Times Throwing the Knuckleball in the Big Leagues.” More than a baseball book, “Ball Four” became a monument to a tempestuous time in American history.

Here, John Thorn, an author and the official historian of MLB, writes about Bouton and their long friendship.

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Bouton’s signed Yankee publicity photo. Photo: Louis Requena. Jim Bouton Papers, Manuscript Division.  Jim Bouton Enterprises, Inc., no commercial reuse.

Fifty summers ago, in that year of Woodstock, Apollo 11, and the Mets’ improbable World Series championship, a pitcher named Jim Bouton threw a knuckleball and wrote a diary that became a classic of American literature. He called it “Ball Four,” and it was a stunning success. Funny, profane and smart, it revealed the sex, drugs, and horseplay of baseball in the era. It sold millions of copies and changed the landscape of sports and journalism in ways that are still relevant. It was also a political work, a milestone in the generational divide that characterized the 1960s.

The New York Public Library named it as one of their Books of the Century, the only sports title named. Jim thus stands shoulder to shoulder with such world figures as Anton Chekhov, Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, James Joyce, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. “Ball Four,” the library’s editors noted, “was the first ripple of a tidal wave of ‘tell-all’ books that have become commonplace not only in sports, but also in politics, entertainment, and other realms of contemporary life.” (Jim, with typical diffidence and humor, has termed his book a “tell-some.”)

So I’m delighted that Jim’s personal papers and related materials – some 37,000 items, from 1939 to 2018 — are now preserved at the Library. The collection is a treasure trove for scholars — of baseball, plainly — but also for those who would try to recapture what it was like to be alive in the Age of Aquarius and Vietnam.

After that 1969 season, Jim pitched a half year with the Houston Astros, then was shipped to Oklahoma City, for whom he pitched twice and retired. Meanwhile, “Ball Four” had become a controversial bestseller and was his ticket to new ventures. He proceeded to lead an improvisational life, sportscasting for two New York city news stations; acting as a McGovern delegate at the 1972 Democratic convention; starring opposite Elliot Gould in Robert Altman’s 1973 film “The Long Goodbye”;  and writing and acting in a televised sitcom version of “Ball Four.”

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Bouton’s 1962 World Series program, signed by his famous teammates. Jim Bouton Papers, Manuscript Division. Jim Bouton Enterprises, Inc., no commercial reuse.

He wrote other books, including “I’m Glad You Didn’t Take It Personally,” a response to the critics of “Ball Four.” Most importantly, in my view, he updated “Ball Four” in each of the next three decades, thus creating a candid, sometimes heartbreaking, extended memoir without parallel in American literature.

Jim and his wife, Paula Kurman, have been my closest friends for decades. Yet whenever we get together at a neighborhood restaurant, I confess to being, for a moment, star-struck — and not because I saw him pitch seven innings of shutout relief to win a 22-inning game in 1962, when I was still in high school.

He is the man who wrote “Ball Four.”

Now 80 and living in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, Jim is deeply gratified that his papers will be accessible at the Library of Congress, in the best of all possible homes.

The Jim Bouton Papers include first drafts and notes about the writing of “Ball Four,” as well as scrapbooks, letters and manuscripts that document his baseball career. His writing, broadcasting, personal, and business lives are included. In the baseball section, you’ll find his trading cards, a vintage baseball glove, a Seattle Pilots pennant, and a 1962 World Series program — signed by his Yankees’ teammates including Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Yogi Berra, Elston Howard and Tony Kubek. But the glory of the collection is the hastily scribbled notes, the audiotape transcripts, and the drafts of “Ball Four.”

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An editor wanted to strike an unflattering passage from a draft; note the “Stet” mark to restore it. Jim Bouton Papers, Manuscript Division. Jim Bouton Enterprises, Inc., no commercial reuse.

Jim was not the first baseball player to write an autobiography, but he was one of the first to tell his own story without the benefit of a ghost. Leonard Shecter, formerly a beat writer for the New York Post, shaped Jim’s tapes and notes into a cohesive narrative, but Jim was the writer, as all those in baseball knew. (That’s why Pete Rose called out from the dugout, when Jim pitched against the Cincinnati Reds in 1970, “F**k you, Shakespeare.”)

The game’s first autobiography was King Kelly’s “Play Ball: Stories of the Diamond Field,” wholly written by Boston Globe reporter Jack Drohan in 1888. It was not until 1960 that a player wrote his own book. That was Jim Brosnan in “The Long Season,” highly readable and unprecedentedly frank, even though he pulled his punches in matters of sex and substance abuse.

In 1968, Shecter, by then a freelancer no longer working for the Post, wondered if the time was ripe for a truly honest baseball diary. He approached Jim, who replied, “Funny you should mention that. I’ve been keeping notes.”

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The beginning. Bouton’s introductory comments to editor Len Shecter and his first notes. Jim Bouton Papers, Manuscript Division. Jim Bouton Enterprises, Inc., no commercial reuse.

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Pic(s) of the Week: Ice Cream!

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Ice cream vendor, Havana, Cuba, c. 1890-1910. Detroit Publishing Company collection, Prints and Photographs Division.

This image of a long-ago Caribbean ice-cream vendor! You can taste the cool softness of the ice cream melting on your tongue, feel the pearl of sweat slipping down the nape of your neck, hear the bell from the nearest steeple. It’s enough to set you in mind of the dreamy opening sentence from “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s masterpiece: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice….” 

True, our photo is from Cuba, not Marquez’s Colombia, and our unknown vendor is peddling ice cream, not just ice. But the picture, taken by an unknown photographer between 1890 and 1910 in Havana, evokes so much of the turn-of-the-century era, before electricity and ice became commonplace. The eye is drawn to the glasses used for ice cream (surely they tinkled or chimed together as he walked); the women in long dresses and bonnets, receding into the distance; the barred entryways to the doors on the street (was it Sunday afternoon, and stores were shuttered?); the direct gaze of the man whose features are hidden by his hat.

It’s our “Pic of the Week” this Friday, as we feature the Library’s “Free to Use and Reuse” sets — millions of copyright-free items like this one that you can download and use as you wish, be they photographs, prints, manuscripts, maps, musical scores, books, newspapers, prints, films, recordings and so on. The Library highlights a themed batch of photographs and prints on our homepage at the first of each month, and we’ll pick one to highlight here on the first Friday.

This month’s feature is ice cream, because summer, and there are dozens of fabulous pics.  Here’s one from South Carolina, with a deep blue summer sky to die for:

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Zesto ice cream sign, West Columbia, S.C. Photo: John Margolies. Prints and Photographs Division.

And nothing said early 20th-century small-town bling like a stained-glass Tiffany lamp at the local ice cream parlor. This beauty is from Zaharakos Ice Cream Parlor in Columbus, Indiana, which opened in 1900 and is still around.

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Stained-glass Tiffany lamp at Zaharakos Ice Cream Parlor. Historic American Buildings Survey, Prints and Photographs Division.

Feel free to shuffle around on your own. There’s no rush. It’s the middle of summer, and we’re talking about ice cream.

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Remembering Jazz Legend Billy Strayhorn

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Billy Strayhorn, scoring music (or pretending to), c 1946 Photo: William Gottlieb. William P. Gottlieb Collection, Music Division.

The following is a guest post from saxophonist Chris Potter, who participated in the Music Division’s Finding Strayhorn discussion panel on June 12, 2019. It was first published on our In the Muse blog. We are reposting it here because Billy Strayhorn is Billy Strayhorn.

My visit to the Library of Congress fortunately coincided with the announcement that the BillyStrayhorn Music Manuscripts and Estate Papers are now available for the public to study. I was very honored to be invited to look over his archives, contribute to a panel discussion called Finding Strayhorn, and perform some of his music.

My time at the Library started with the rare opportunity of trying Gerry Mulligan’s baritone saxophone, one of the few times someone has played it since his passing. I was fairly daunted by the task, considering all the beautiful music that has come out of that horn; also I have only attempted to play the baritone saxophone a handful of times in my life. Nevertheless, I did my best, using Gerry’s own mouthpiece, and found that the instrument setup lent itself to a lovely, mellow, “Mulligan-esque” tone. Perhaps I’ll have to spend some more time on the baritone in the future.

The bulk of my time in DC was spent studying Strayhorn’s archives, which are astonishingly vast. To have the original scores in front of me for pieces like “Take the A Train” and “Chelsea Bridge,” as well as full scores and lead sheets for hundreds of other pieces, was truly a revelation.

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Strayorn’s notes for a set. Strayhorn Collection, Music Division.

To see the confidence in his handwriting and the full command of form and orchestration he possessed, is to feel oneself in the presence of a true master, speaking across the years and saying, “See, kid, this is how it’s done!” Among some of the details that caught my attention was the specificity of how voices were assigned; it’s always been said that Ellington wrote for specific members of the band, and that clearly went for Strayhorn as well. Surprising to me, this practice did not only apply to solo parts, in some cases this extended to how chords were voiced. For example, on the last minor triad of “Solvejg’s Song” from the arrangement of the Peer Gynt Suite, it is specified that the top trumpet note should be played by Ray Nance and the trombone note should be played by Booty Wood. In addition, the saxophone section is assigned in many different ways, with the baritone player Harry Carney often having his own staff as opposed to the rest of the sax section being assigned to a different staff, so that the baritone’s movement is often independent of the rest of the section, and sometimes occupies the lead voice. I noticed many instances where the “rules” of smooth big band orchestration were broken, which in this master’s hand created those lush indefinable musical textures that I’ve always known and loved.

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Strayhorn’s score for “Take the A Train.” Strayhorn Collection, Music Divison.

There has been much discussion over the years concerning exactly what Strayhorn’s contribution was to the Ellington sound. The material in these archives makes it clear what a major artist Strayhorn was in his own right. The artistic and personal relationship between the two men was clearly very complicated and nuanced (I strongly recommend reading David Hajdu”s biography “Lush Life” for more information), but from an aesthetic viewpoint, the fact that that these two musical giants met and worked together for many years, with an orchestra of some of the most beautiful unique instrumental voices on hand to bring their musical ideas to life, is nothing short of a miracle, and the work they left us is a true gift to humanity.

My visit culminated with the panel discussion Finding Strayhorn, which included Billy Strayhorn’s nephew Gregory Morris and niece Alyce Claerbaut, along with the aforementioned author David Hajdu as well as noted Strayhorn scholar Walter van de Leur (special thanks to Walter for his help in the reading room helping me decipher what it was I was looking at in those handwritten scores!). The incomparable Larry Appelbaum was the moderator of the event, and I performed solo saxophone versions of several of my favorite Strayhorn compositions: “Lush Life,” “Take the A Train,” “Blood Count,” and “Rain Check.” The event will be streamed in full on the Library’s website and YouTubechannel in the coming months, but for now you can watch my performance in the following clip:

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It was a wonderful way to cap off an inspiring trip to the Library of Congress, and a great way to show our appreciation for one of the most gifted artists this country has produced.

I strongly recommend that people interested in jazz and American music take advantage of the resources available at the Library of Congress; there is an incredible amount of material available for those who are interested in the rich musical tapestry our country has produced. Being in the presence of the actual items made by these artists is an indescribable feeling.

[image error] Panel at Finding Strayhorn event. L-R: Susan Vita, Chris Potter, Walter van de Leur, David Hajdu, Alyce Claerbaut, Dr. Gregory Morris, Larry Appelbaum. Photo credit: Katja von Schuttenbach

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Garfield Shooting: July 2, 1881, and the Medical Disaster That Ensued

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Charles Guiteau. Photo: C.M. Bell, 1881. Prints and Photograph Division.

This story is adapted from an upcoming story in the Library of Congress Magazine. It recounts the day of July 2, 1881 — 138 years ago — when President James A. Garfield was shot at a train station in Washington and the national drama that ensued.

By Mark Hartsell

Something about Charles Guiteau wasn’t right — anyone could see that. He so creeped out the women of his religious community that they nicknamed him “Charles Git-out.” His wife — he later managed to find one — divorced him, convinced he was possessed by an evil spirit.

Guiteau’s own family thought him insane. I’d have Charles committed, his father once wrote, if only I could afford it. His sister, long a defender, finally admitted the problem after Charles threatened her with an ax.

“It was the look of his face that frightened me,” she would recall. “He looked to me like a wild animal.”

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Guiteau, photographed in jail, by C.M. Bell, on February 6, 1882. Prints and Photographs Division.

One man’s madness ordinarily isn’t the stuff of history. Guiteau’s story is anything but ordinary.

In 1881, he stalked and shot down the president of the United States — a tale of murder, insanity, invention, arrogance and incompetence preserved at the Library in the papers of President James A. Garfield, Alexander Graham Bell and others.

Though no one in the Washington establishment really knew him, Guiteau believed himself a kind of political hero — the man who got Garfield elected president. During the 1880 campaign, Guiteau had delivered a speech supporting Garfield at a small gathering. Even before Garfield won, Guiteau was convinced his speech — heard by few, noted by none — would make a crucial contribution to victory. The new president, he felt, owed him a plum diplomatic post as a reward.

“I would like the Austrian mission and call your attention to it, as ‘first come, first-served,’ ” he wrote Garfield, weeks before the election. (Guiteau later changed his mind: He preferred Paris.)

In his characteristic unsettling way, Guiteau sought support from prominent Republicans. Sen. John Logan once awoke to find him sitting in his parlor. After Garfield took office in 1881, he began showing up at the White House. Finally, Secretary of State James G. Blaine, tired of the badgering, told him to drop the matter — a rejection that persuaded Guiteau he must “remove” the president. Chester Arthur, a friend of the spoils system, then would become president, Guiteau figured, and he would have his post in Paris.

Guiteau bought a .44 pistol and began stalking Garfield.

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Garfield, c 1875, Brady-Handy collection, Prints and Photgraphs Division.

The night of July 1, Garfield wrote in his diary about the day’s events and a trip to New England scheduled for the morning. “Retired at 12,” he concluded — the last entry he would write. The next day, Guiteau ambushed Garfield in the train station waiting room, shooting him in the arm and the back.

Physician Doctor Willard Bliss — “Doctor” was both his first name and his profession — examined Garfield at the station and, back at the White House, declared himself head of Garfield’s medical team. “If I can’t save him,” Bliss said, “no one can.” That decision would have the gravest consequences: Bliss couldn’t locate the bullet lodged in Garfield’s body, and weeks of probing the wound with unsterilized fingers and instruments produced infections that ultimately killed the president.

Over the next 2.5 months, Bliss issued regular bulletins — posted at telegraph and newspaper offices — to a nation anxiously awaiting news of Garfield’s condition. Eager to help, everyday Americans offered advice — preserved on scraps of paper — about the president’s diet, spiritual well-being and medical care (“pass a double catheter into the presupice,” one advised). Navy engineers, trying to ease Garfield’s suffering in the suffocating summer heat, rigged up what would be America’s first air conditioner in the president’s room.

Among those keen to help was Bell, by then a renowned inventor who four years earlier had successfully introduced the telephone. He set to work on a device he believed could be used like a modern metal detector to locate the bullet in Garfield’s body.

In letters and laboratory notebooks, Bell chronicles his race to improve this “induction balance” machine quickly enough to save the president. He tinkered, tested, failed and, exhausted, tinkered more.

“I feel woefully disappointed and disheartened,” Bell wrote after the first examination of Garfield failed to locate the bullet. “However, we go right at the problem again tomorrow — trying to improve our apparatus.”

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Illustration of Bell’s device being tested. Bell is with earpiece at right. Aug. 20, 1881. Sketch by William A. Skinkle.

A second exam of Garfield failed, too, and likely couldn’t have worked: Attending staff failed to remove a mattress with metal springs, throwing off the device. And, fatefully, Bliss permitted Bell to search only the area of the wound, on the right side of Garfield’s body. The bullet, it turned out, was on the left.

Bliss, his reputation now bound to the outcome of Garfield’s case, continued issuing optimistic bulletins even as it became clear to Garfield and others around him that he was dying. Old friend Almon Rockwell, writing on the back of a railway pass, recorded scenes around Garfield’s bed just days before he died.

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“A spasm of pain passing across his face…” Garfield’s last days, as recorded by Rockwell.

“Darling does it hurt?” Garfield’s wife, Lucretia, asked. “It hurts only to live,” he replied.

Garfield died Sept. 19, and Guiteau soon faced justice in a trial every bit as strange as his life had been. He objected to his own lawyer’s arguments and sang “John Brown’s Body.” He confessed to the shooting but not the murder — the doctors, he said, had killed the president. The jury quickly found Guiteau guilty, and he was hanged on June 30, 1882, at the D.C. Jail, then at 19th & C Streets SE. He mounted the gallows and recited a poem he wrote for the occasion. It went, in part:

“I saved my party and my land,

Glory hallelujah!

But they have murdered me for it.”

When he finished the poem, the trap dropped, and it was over.

Months earlier, Garfield, surrounded by family and friends, had pondered his passing life.

“Will my name,” he asked, “have any place in human history?”

“Yes, a grand one,” came the reply, Rockwell recorded. “But a grander place in human hearts.”

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Garfield’s death scene, in a Currier & Ives lithograph, 1881. Prints and Photographs Division.

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Stonewall at 50: How it Played out in Newspapers

This is a guest post from Amber Paranick, who does great work over at the Headlines & Heroes Blog, which chronicles the Library’s vast collection of newspapers and comics. Here, she looks at how one of the seminal moments in gay rights — the Stonewall Rebellion, which took place 50 years ago today — was portrayed in newspapers at the time.

The Stonewall uprising was a series of six-day protests that began in the early morning of June 28, 1969, and centered around the Stonewall Inn, a gay tavern in New York City’s Greenwich Village on Christopher Street. This particular event (also called the Stonewall rebellion or Stonewall riots), represents a turning point in the movement for LGBTQ rights. Christopher Street Liberation Day on June 28, 1970, marked the first anniversary of the Stonewall uprising with an assembly on Christopher Street and the first Gay Pride march in U.S. history, covering the 51 blocks to Central Park.

The Stonewall uprising was widely covered in the underground press or alternative newspapers such as Village Voice (New York, NY), Rat Subterranean News (New York, NY), East Village Other (New York, NY), The Berkeley Barb (Berkeley, CA), The Los Angeles Free Press (Los Angeles, CA), Quicksilver Times (Washington, DC), and Great Speckled Bird (Atlanta, GA). Underground press publications started during the radical movements of the 1960s and these papers often played an important role in the U.S. media landscape by covering stories and topics that were underreported by their mainstream counterparts. The Library of Congress has an Underground Newspaper Collection on microfilm that includes several hundred newspaper titles that thrived in the 1960s and early 1970s, most of which are concerned with themes or subjects of particular reference to the era.

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“Thousands of Homosexuals Hold a Protest Rally in Central Park,” New York Times, June 29, 1970

As we celebrate Pride Month at the Library of Congress, we invite you to visit the Library of Congress and have a look at our myriad newspaper collections to find other articles that commemorate the 50th anniversary of Stonewall.

Discover more:

Search and browse issues of the Washington Blade , Washington, D.C.’s principal lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) newspaper through DigDC, a portal to selected digital collections from DC Public Library Special Collections.
An open-access digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines, and journals, drawn from the special collections of participating libraries is available on the Independent Voices website.

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“STONEWALL INCIDENT,” East Village Other, July 9, 1969

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“GAYS HIT NY COPS,” Berkeley Barb, July 4-10, 1969. Source: Independent Voices digital collection.

Pic of the Week: Purple Bison Edition

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A mesmerizing quilt by Cheryl Rounds was included in the “Inspired by Endangered Species: Animals and Plants in Fabric Perspectives,” exhibition in the Library earlier this week. Photo by Shawn Miller.

It’s entirely possible you’ve never seen a purple, blue, orange and gold bison before, and we wanted to correct that before you hit the weekend. The Library’s Science, Technology and Business Division hosted the art quilt display, “Inspired by Endangered Species: Animals and Plants in Fabric Perspectives,” earlier this week, based on the book by Donna Marcinkowski DeSoto. This gorgeous quilt by Cheryl Rounds of Vienna, Va., was one of our favorites.

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New Mystery Photo Contest

Cary O’Dell at the Library’s National Recording Registry is the maestro of our ever-popular Mystery Photo Contest. He’s back with another round, featuring some of Hollywood’s not-so-famous faces. 

Hello my fellow Americans and citizens of the world!

It’s time for a brand new set of old and odd mystery pics! These, like others in the MPC series, came to the Library’s Moving Image section as part of a much larger collection of film, TV and music stills. Most were properly identified…but then there were the stumpers. The ones with no identification. The ones we couldn’t name.

So we need your help. Do any of the people, places or things below look familiar?

A few words of caution:

We’ve tried web-based reverse-image searches.
We have no information beyond what is listed below. There are no dates, locations or titles. They may not be from the United States.
Standards of proof: We’d most like to see the same photo, with the person’s name, in a newspaper, magazine or somesuch. Failing that, another image from the same photo shoot, but with the person named.

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Esther Anderson, publicity still from “The Touchables,” 1968.

We are happy to investigate any legitimate guesses, and always report back on success stories. Like this one: The April MPC photo array got cult film aficionado Joe Bob Briggs’ attention. He tweeted it out to his friends and fans. One said that photo #18 looked like Jamaican actress and filmmaker Esther Anderson.  We reached out to Ms. Anderson and…. she confirmed it was her!

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Esther Anderson, magazine cover from 1968. Courtesy: Esther Anderson.

It’s a publicity photo from “The Touchables,” a 1968 British romp about love and sex in the rock scene of the era. Anderson, whom the BBC dubbed “the Caribbean’s first lady of film and music” in 2007, has had a career as an accomplished actress, model, photographer and businesswoman. She starred opposite Sidney Poitier in his 1973 film, “A Warm December.” She was also present at the creation of Bob Marley and the Wailers, filmed their first rehearsal, and her 2011 film using her long-ago footage, “Bob Marley: The Making of a Legend,” won multiple awards. Now 72, she’s living in London and Paris. Thanks again to Joe and friends for picking her out!

Here you go with the new round. Good luck to one and all!

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#1 Based on the set, costumes and the date (“1647”), this seems to be from a production of “Knickerbocker Holiday.”  BUT: it does not sync with 1944’s “Holiday” film, the original Broadway production or the early TV version.
[image error]#2.We have yet to identify these two gentlemen or determine why they might be pictured together.
[image error]#3. We have not been able to determine if this is from a film? A musical duo?  We can’t even agree if it is two men, two women or one of each!  (We do know it is NOT rockers Wendy & Lisa. We reached out, and they said, “Not us.”)


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#4. This seems to be a band from the 1980s or early ‘90s.  (Look at that hair! Those tats!)  But we don’t know who they are individually, collectively or where they’re from.
[image error]#5. Our version of an internet troll.  This might be from a film that was originally aimed at some (very brave) children.  Again, it might not be U.S. in origin.
[image error]#6.This gentleman looks quite official with the map of the world behind him and pictures of boats to boot. But who is he?


[image error]#7. This harem girl has long had us stumped.  Who is she and, if this is from a film, what film?
[image error]#8. This might be from a film or documentary. Recognize this woman or the mural behind her?
[image error]#9. We assume that this actress is from the silent film era—Edwina Booth? Jeanette Loff? Someone else entirely?

 

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The Will of Claudia Izard: An Uneasy Antebellum Testament

This is a guest post by Julie Miller, a historian in the Manuscript Division. It offers a window into the social realities of South Carolina in the days leading up to the Civil War, when very different ideas of “freedom” existed side by side. As any reader will notice, such issues persist in different form today.

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 Henry and Claudia Izard lived at a house called “The Elms” outside Charleston, inherited from Henry’s parents, Ralph and Alice Delancey Izard. After “The Elms” burned in 1807, before his marriage to Claudia, Henry rebuilt it. By 1940, when it was photographed by the Historic American Buildings Survey, the house was in ruins again. Historic American Buildings Survey Photographer C.Ol Greene May. 1940. The Elms (Ruins), University Boulevard (U.S. Route 78), Otranto, Charleston County, SC. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

When 84-year-old Charleston widow Claudia Smith Izard made her will in 1853 she showed how two of the most heated issues of her day, slavery and women’s rights, resonated in her life and in the lives of the people around her. Today Izard’s will is at the Library of Congress, along with other papers of the Izard family.

As a young woman Claudia Smith earned a place in Charleston’s mythology when, judged “the wittiest woman in Charleston,” she was chosen to sit next to George Washington at a banquet when he visited the city as president in 1791. Despite her popularity, Claudia, who possessed a substantial income and a house of her own, remained single until 1814 when she was 46. Then she married planter Henry Izard, a widower younger than herself with five children. Henry’s parents, who are the subject of a portrait by John Singleton Copley, were Ralph Izard, an American diplomat in Europe during the Revolutionary War, later a South Carolina congressman and senator, and Alice Delancey Izard.

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Ralph and Alice Izard, painted by John Singleton Copley, 1775. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

On his engagement, Henry Izard wrote his mother from Claudia’s house in Charleston: “I last evening brought my little adventure to a close, & am now writing in a room of which I am by courtesy of law, the master.” On receiving this Alice Izard wrote her daughter, dwelling on what Claudia had given up: “She was independent, was beloved by many friends, & saw them often. Now she has a master & a husband not of the gentlest nature.” He was also entangled in debt, and his mother hoped the money and property Claudia brought to the marriage would “help to put him at ease in his affairs.” But Claudia’s money was not enough to save him. In 1826 Henry, who had also suffered the deaths of several of his children, committed suicide.

Twenty-seven years after this catastrophe Claudia Izard wrote her will. With no surviving children of her own, she left her money and property to her nieces, grandnieces and a female friend. Only five men are named in the will, and three of these were her executors. Two men received cash not for themselves, but in trust for their daughters. To those women to whom she left substantial property, Claudia specified that it was for their “sole and separate use and free from the control and debts of her husband.” For those who were unmarried, the phrase “any husband she may have” was substituted for “husband.”

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The beginning of Claudia Izard’s will.

These legal phrases hedged against the reality that husbands were legally entitled to own or control their wives’ property after marriage. This is what Henry Izard meant when he declared himself “by courtesy of law, the master” of Claudia’s house. By the middle of the 19th century states were beginning to pass married women’s property acts that overturned the hegemony of husbands, but when Claudia Izard wrote her will South Carolina had yet to do so.

When Claudia, who had regained control of her property at her husband’s death, chose to leave it to the women of her family and protect it from their husbands, she was using a legal remedy that allowed married women to retain control of their property. She may also have been expressing what she felt about being subject to Henry Izard as her master. Her own subjection, however, did not prevent her from subjecting others. Nine slaves are named in her will. The story of one of them, Louisa, her enslaved “maid servant,” is revealing.

Claudia left Louisa to a grandniece, along with $500, “the interest on which sum I request that she will appropriate to the comfortable clothing and maintaining” of Louisa for the rest of her life. To another grandniece Claudia gave three of Louisa’s children: Benjamin, William and Harry (and added to the gift in the same sentence: “my dessert spoons gravy spoons and silver butter knife”). She made special provisions for William, requesting that he be allowed to “live with and attend upon his grandmother so long as she may desire him to do so.”

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Excerpt from Claudia Izard’s will, giving away Louisa’s son Harry along with “dessert spoons.”

Claudia’s treatment of Louisa and her family complicates the picture of her as an upholder of women’s rights. It also makes no moral sense. How was she able to provide for Louisa’s comfort and consider the feelings of William’s grandmother while at the same time wrenching their family apart?

Claudia’s ability to compartmentalize freedom and slavery was the same thing that enabled Thomas Jefferson, another slave owner, to write “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence. She and Jefferson were products of the same culture of slave-holding, but separated by time. By the 1850s the idealism of the revolutionary era, which made it possible even for slaveholders to imagine an end to slavery, had faded in the South. More than three quarters of a century after Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, tensions between North and South over the admission of western territories as free or slave states had made Southerners dig in their heels, arguing that they took better care of their slaves than northern manufacturers did of their workers. Claudia Izard’s will, which robs people of their liberty even as it pretends to provide for their comfort, is a product of the decade before the Civil War when these tensions were blazing.

When Claudia Izard wrote her will she could not know that time would turn it into a historical artifact. She also could not anticipate that with the collapse of the Confederacy in 1865, a decade after her death, her plans for Louisa and her family would also collapse and they would be free.

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25 Years of LOC.gov

What does the Library of Congress website have in common with Justin Bieber, Harry Styles, Amazon.com, the TV show “Friends” and Netscape’s first web browser? Give up? They were all born 25 years ago. (If you had other guesses share them in the comments!)

We debuted our website at the American Library Association (ALA) annual conference in Miami on June 22, 1994. By the way, the ALA conference is in Washington, D.C. this week and today we expect thousands of attendees to visit the Library!

Since the launch of loc.gov we have put more of the Library online including U.S. federal legislative information, vital services from the U.S. Copyright Office and millions of items from our collections. It’s hard to pick highlights, but here goes:

Earliest known draft of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address
“Migrant Mother” photo
Audio interviews with formerly enslaved people
Papers of Rosa Parks
Fire insurance maps that show the evolution of communities across America
Early motion pictures from Thomas Edison
WPA posters
Rare books
Historical newspapers

Just this year, online additions include the Omar Ibn Said Collection, featuring the only known extant narrative written in Arabic by an enslaved person in the U.S., thousands more public domain books, a collection of rare Persian language materials, the 2016 U.S. Election Web Archive, content exploring women’s suffrage including the papers of Carrie Chapman Catt, a new exhibition and crowdsourcing campaign.

We publish recordings of hundreds of events we host every year. Our curators tell great stories on our blogs and many of those stories are about how you use the Library.

We now receive two million visits each week to Library websites.

Even before the debut of our site in 1994, the Library was connecting with users via the Internet using Gopher, TELNET and File Transfer Protocol (FTP). The loc.gov domain was registered in 1990. Tom Littlejohn, an information technology specialist (who thankfully still works here), sent the first loc.gov e-mail in September 1990.

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First loc.gov e-mail sent September 7, 1990. Do you know what your first e-mail was?

Nowadays, you don’t have to e-mail Tom if you need help. We have a whole crew of people standing by to answer your questions. You can also connect with us on social media.

Thank You, Web Archives

Our web archives allowed me to pull together this trip down memory lane of previous versions of the loc.gov home page. You can explore the history of thousands of websites thanks to our web archiving program. Do you remember any of these loc.gov looks from the past? Click on the image to explore the web archive.

June 16, 1997

Very early web archives didn’t consistently capture image content. As you can see, this has improved over the years.

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May 5, 1999

We were getting ready for the Library’s bicentennial.

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June 3, 2001

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November 13, 2002

Note that part of the current Web Archive banner appears in the upper right of this screenshot.

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April 19, 2005

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July 20, 2008

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July 29, 2010

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December 21, 2012

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October 1, 2014

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February 14, 2018

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June 20, 2019

No archive yet for this version of the website!

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Whew, that was a long trip. Thanks for taking it with us. I’m not making any predictions about what this timeline will look like in another 25 years, or how we’ll be communicating with each other, but you can!

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My Job: Introducing the Library’s Einstein Distinguished Educator

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Kellie Taylor. Photo by Ars Nova.

Kellie Taylor is the Library’s first-ever Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator. The fellowship program appoints accomplished K–12 teachers of science, technology, engineering and mathematics — the STEM fields — to collaborate with federal agencies and congressional offices in advancing STEM education across the country.

Taylor has a doctorate in educational technology from Boise State University. She teaches K–5 engineering at the Galileo STEM Academy, a public school in Eagle, Idaho. She started at the Library last September and will be in residence until July in the Learning and Innovation Office.

As a STEM teacher, what resources at the Library captivate you?

I can’t get enough of the Alexander Graham Bell papers. His notebooks about kites and aeronautics include not only data sets and photographs, but also hand-sketched measured drawings that can inspire students to imagine their own designs. Bell’s correspondence with his wife, Mabel Hubbard Bell, provides insights into his successes and failures — of which there were more than a few.

“My dear — I do so appreciate all the wonderful unfailing, uncomplaining patience that you have shown in all your work and the quiet persistent courage with which you have gone on after one failure after another,” Mable wrote to her husband. “How many have there been, how often an experiment from which you hoped great things, has proved contrary. How very very few and far apart have been your successes.  And yet nothing has been able to shake your faith, to stop you in your work.”

Bell’s papers can inspire students to create new designs while learning about past innovations  — and also encourage them to persevere.

What are a couple of your stand-out projects so far?

In collaboration with the Young Readers Center, I developed the “History of Printing Family Workshop: From Clay Seals to 3D Printing.” Adults attend the pilot workshop with the children in their lives to learn about the history and importance of printing through hands-on activities, and they design their own type or stamps in a web-based computer-aided design, or CAD, platform. The primary sources used in the activities help highlight the advancements in printing, promote creative imaginings for the future of print technology and encourage creation using modern print technology.

As an engineering teacher, I enjoy connecting hands-on activities to the history revealed by primary sources. In collaboration with Carolyn Bennett, this year’s teacher-in-residence, I created a project that allows students to learn about the history of bugle calls in the Civil War as a form of communication and then program their own bugle calls. With this one project, students can then learn about creating music, coding, and communication. A sample program and instructions are available on the Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) Teacher Network, which is funded by a grant from the Library.

How are you sharing the resources you’ve discovered?

The TPS Teacher Network has been essential for organizing materials as well as making them available for public use. The free network connects educators to resources and professional development opportunities for using primary sources from the Library’s collections. Materials for any activities I develop can be found on the network, including projects still in development. Many of these activities are featured on the Learning and Innovation Office’s blog, Teaching with the Library of Congress. I have also been able to write articles for the National Science Teachers Association journal to which the Learning and Innovation Office contributes monthly.

Within my home state of Idaho, I’m working with the Idaho Department of Education, the Idaho Commission for Libraries and the Idaho STEM Action Center to create opportunities for professional development and resources for Idaho educators to integrate primary sources into the classroom through STEM.

How will your year at the Library inform your teaching?

The digitization of collections makes the Library available to anyone with internet access. I’ll continue to develop and share activities when I am back in the classroom. I value the real-world contextualization that primary-source analysis provides students. I can’t wait for my students to dive in!

What do you wish more STEM educators knew about the Library?

There really is something for everyone. Integrating primary sources into classroom instruction connects students to the history of technology. Activities such as the “History of Printing Workshop” foster inquiry through analysis of primary sources and hands-on learning. And that they should challenge students to identify problems within primary sources and develop their own solutions.

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