Observations on the Seventeen-Year Cicada: A Citizen Scientist Reports from 1824

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For the last two weeks, I have been, well, geeking out as cicadas have begun appearing in my heavily wooded neighborhood in Charlottesville. I’ve seen two waves of the little beasties emerge from beneath the shrubs outside my cottage, and each time, have immediately documented my sightings online. Social-networking and online-news sources this spring alerted me to two websites that are calling on “Citizen Scientists” to document the emergence, one hosted by Radio Lab and the other by National Geographic.

One of the first cicadas to emerge in my neighborhood in Charlottesville, May 15, 2013.

One of the first cicadas to emerge in my neighborhood in Charlottesville, May 15, 2013. It rests on the branch of an Abelia shrub, under which may be seen numerous circular holes from which this and other cicadas emerged. (Photo by Molly Schwartzburg)

Why the big deal? Brood II cicadas (Magicicada septendecim) spend seventeen years living underground before emerging to sing loudly, lay eggs, and then die within about a month. Because of this unusually lengthy life cycle, Brood II cicadas are relatively mysterious to scientists, and a lot of basic questions about their activities remain unanswered. So scientists have been taking advantage of crowdsourcing opportunities to gather information; emergences are spotty (some people will see no cicadas in their yards) and range across hundreds of miles. Projects like the ones I’m participating in will perhaps provide enough data to keep the lab rats busy for, oh, maybe another seventeen years.

I wondered how earlier Virginians experienced cicada emergences, and was thrilled to discover that Special Collections holds a remarkable 200-year-old personal account of a fellow magicicada enthusiast, who wrote his own history of “locusts,” as they were commonly termed in that period. “J. S.” (who felt uncomfortable giving his/her full name to “such a rough draft”) tracked what are now known as Brood II and Brood X, which also emerges every 17 years, and will emerge next in 2021. J. S. explains how careful observation led him to determine that the cicadas feed off the roots of trees while underground (correct!). He also describes with great detail the workings of the female’s “perforator” (now called the “ovipositor”), the mechanism with which she lays her eggs.

J. S.’s  4-page long description of emergences in 1766, 1783, 1800, and 1809 is reproduced here in full, each page first in transcription (with paragraph breaks added and some spelling and punctuation modified for ease of reading), followed by an image of the page. Enjoy!

A short history of the locusts of North America

Several years past some conversation took place between an intimate acquaintance and my self, respecting the locusts. For his information I will throw my Ideas on paper. In the spring of 1766 they made their appearance in Frederick County Virginia and in 1783 the appeared again. Previous to their coming up at this time, I observed the Hoggs were very busy rooting under the Apple trees in the orchard. In a few days the locusts were seen in abundance crawling from the avenues of their subterenious dwellings. A short time after they appeared they were observed to be busily employed in geting released from a covering they had no use for in their present abode. As they appeared to come onely a small distance from the apple trees or the trees of the forrest, I was at a loss for a reason why it was so, and was induced to think that when the eggs they deposited in the small branches of of the trees, were hatched, that the young ones droped down and made their way into the earth, that they remained there a certain number of years. I had heared of several spaces of time mentioned, but there appeared no standard to calculation as to the length of time they remained in the earth, or the depth they decended. All appeared uncertain.

So it passed on untill they came in 1800. The first discovery I then made of their coming was the earth rooted up by the hoggs as heretofore. At this time finding it to be 17 years since their last appearance, it claimed my further attention, and I undertook a more minute investigation of the case. I had an orchard near the house where the trees were planted too close together and some of them had been cut down two or three years before. In conversation with a friend of mine on the subject of the locusts, which appeared in great abundance, we walked into the orchard, and made a prety full examination of their coming out of the earth, and discovered that there was no holes in the ground near the stumps of the trees that had been removed some years previous to that time. This led me to investigate the case further in respect to the means of sustenance & I was now led to believe that they drew their support from the live roots of the trees So I left it until they came the next time.
I was now living In the State of Ohio in the year 1809. In the spring of this year I

First page of A Short History of the Locusts of North America (MSS 9727). (Digitized by Molly Schwartzburg)

First page of A Short History of the Locusts of North America (MSS 9727). (Digitized by Molly Schwartzburg)

I was fencing a garden. I observed in diging the post holes at one corner of the garden, we found many locusts near the Surface, but in the other part we did not discover any. Here the former observation took place. There was the green roots of a shade tree that we had removed, and the locusts were not found further than the roots had spread. This was several years before the time that I expected they would again shew themselves, according to my former calculations, yet I judged we should have another locust year before the time in course. I now made enquiry of some of the former setler that had lived near me, when the locusts had made their appearance last, but none of them appared clear as to the time. And recuring back to the time that I discovered that they did not come up round the dead appletree Stumps, it struck me that it was similar to our not finding any locusts in the holes we dug for the post holes of our garden fence.

This spring the locust came in great abundance. A further examination took place. I took a walk in order to satisfy my curiosity, and after advancing some distance and passing several stumps of trees that had been cut not more than two or three years, and could not find one hole where the locusts had come up, and proceeding on a little further, I discovered one hole, and then another, and casting my eye a little further on, I observed several holes the locusts had made nearly in a straight line. In order to gratify my curiosity a little more, I got a spade and dug till I found the root of an elm tree that was now exactly under the row of holes, the locusts had made, and searching further about the roots of the elm, I discovered there was small open spaces round the roots, where I thought it was at least probable, the locusts had lain and sucked the sap out of the roots. Here they could not have decended more than four or five feet , as the leavel of the creek was not more than that distance.

The knowledge I thought I had gained of their history led me to pry minutely into the manner of their increas. I found that they hatched in a short time after the eggs were deposited in the small branches of the trees, and that they were

Page two.

Page two.

to be found in little clusters on the small lims. In a short time they shed a little coat or shell something similar to that they shed soon after they came out of their [subterenious caverns?.] They shed several of these coverings when they are small of a colour between white and brown. To take hold of them is difficult. They will slip off more like what is calld a flee than any other insect that I know of. They continue on the tender branches of the tree, untill they are something more than half an inch long, and have the resemblance of the locust.

The perforator (as I do not know any name more proper to call it) appears to be perfectly formed at this time for driling the holes in the small branches of the trees where She deposits their eggs. This instrument is about half an inch long and about the thickness of a smallish needle. It is hollow and a seam along the lower part, a little resembling a steel pen, the outer end is shaped a little like the bowl of a spoon with the concave side down, the curved part is brought to a sharp point and both edges are set with sharp teeth so fine that the naked eye can hardly discern them, but when magnifyed appear something like [sickle?] teeth. The motion made with this almost curious instrument in driling the holes is nearly a semicircle and with the little teeth cuting both ways they soon make the hole as deep as the want it.

The egg now appears opening and swelling the tube untill it gets in the concave part, then the egg is deposited and another hole is commenced. So they go on untill they have a douzen or more of eggs in regular order. One end of the first one is [elevated?] about forty degrees, and the next egg is laid part on the first so that they lay in a regular streight line. So beautifully are they aranged that the nicest [illegible?] cant exceed it, and the perforator cant be exceeded by human art. The locust when prepared to decend into the earth as above described, is near three fourths of an inch long, is covered along its back from the hindermost part of the wings to the front of the head, with a hard horny substance perhaps as hard as a cows horn,

Page 3.

Page 3.

and on the foremost part it appears to be formed for diging or penetrating into the earth, (all the work of the great architect) . I think it is likely they ware this armour untill they are nearly ready to leave their house of clay, and about to ascend into the pure and sublime regions of the air. Here their existence is not long in duration. Soon after they arise they shed a coat or covering. It appears to burst on the back and they crawl out, and soon begin their ravages on the tender branches of the fruit and other trees, by piercing them with their small bits and sucking the sap, which appears to be their onely sustenance. I have seen them when about to leave the branch where they have been feeding on, the flow of sap hath been so strong that after the locust leaves the place where he has been feeding the tender juice will run and stand on the branch quite transparent.

There is one more remark that I want to make respecting the locusts. I have found the young locusts more numerous on the branches of the locust trees than any other tree. Whether the locusts took their name from this tree, or the tree from the locusts, I must leave.

It is left now to inform that what is wrote is the result of my own observation which begun with the year 1766—1783—1800—1817 were locust years in Frederick and Loudon, Counties, in Virginia. I once related this circumstance to a friend of mine in whom I could place the greatest confidence and he then informed me, that in the year 1749 his Father removed with his famely from Pensylvania to Loudon County Virginia, and it was a locust year. In the year 1817 the locusts onely reached to the crossings in the Aleghany mountain and in 1809 when we had them in Jefferson Ohio they did not reach Pittsburgh until several years after that time, so it is I believe they have 17 years as a stated period of appearance. What changes may take place hereafter we do not know. I onely state what has been the result of my my enquiry

Thy friend
J. S

My name in full is too much to put to such a rough draft as this 3rd mo 16th 1824

Page 4.

Page 4.

The ABCs of Special Collections: C is for

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Welcome to our third installation of the ABCs of Special Collections!  We give you the letter:

C is for Condensed French, which is one of 75 alphabets represented in Frank H. Atkinson’s Atkinson Sign Painting up to Now: A Complete Manual of Sign Painting. Chicago: Frederick J. Drake & Co., 1915 (not yet catalogued. Gift of Nicholas Curtis. Photograph by Caroline Newcomb).

C is for “Calithump”

Webster’s defines “calithump” (variant spellings callithump and calathump) as a somewhat riotous parade, accompanied by the blowing of tin horns and other discordant noises.

Philena Carkin was a young schoolteacher from Massachusetts who came to Charlottesville, Virginia in 1866 as a representative of the American Freedmen’s Aid Commission to teach the newly freed slaves during Reconstruction.  Her Reminiscences of my Life and Work among the Freedmen of Charlottesville, Virginia, from March 1st 1866 to July 1st 1875 (MSS 11123) is a no-nonsense description of Charlottesville, its inhabitants, the University of Virginia, and the surrounding area.  In Chapter five she describes the “calithump” tradition among the University students:

Young men from all parts of the South and some parts of the North came here as students. Anyone living near the University would soon become impressed with the idea that it was a pretty wild and reckless crowd judging from appearances.   Probably the larger part were orderly and studious but the disorderly and reckless elements are always more in evidence from the very fact of their disorderliness, and our experience of them as neighbors did not tend to raise them in our estimation as a whole.  Woe to the unfortunate individual, be he professor or citizen of the town who in any way gained the ill will of one of these students. With faces masked, and torches made of brooms dipped in tar and lighted they would march to his house to the music of tin pans and tin horns, and surrounding the building make night hideous as only yelling demons can.  The victim might not always escape with only a Calithump.  Injury to person and property were not uncommon, and murder not unknown.

Contributed by Margaret Hrabe, Reference Coordinator

Carte de visite of Philena Carkin taken by William Roads. (MSS 11123. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Philena Carkin Reminiscences, 1910. (MSS 11123-a. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

C is for Chinese Seals

Chinese seals are personal name stamps or signatures used on art, contracts, documents, etc. to signify authorship. Seals are created from a variety of materials, including stone, wood, and ivory.  The Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library holds well over 300 Chinese seals, representing individuals from the richest and most powerful (such as emperors) to the ordinary (such as merchants). John Maphis donated the collection in memory of his uncle, Charles Gilmore Maphis.

Contributed by Petrina Jackson, Head of Instruction and Outreach

Chinese Seals, 800 B.C. – 1800 A.D. (MSS 6678. Gift of John Alan Maphis. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Chinese Seals, 800 A.D. – 1800 A.D. (MSS 6678. Gift of John Alan Maphis. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

C is for Cotton

Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a runaway best-seller, second only to the Bible in the number of copies sold in the nineteenth century. Stowe’s publisher commissioned John Greenleaf Whittier, a stalwart abolitionist, to write a poem about the character Little Eva and subsequently printed the words and music on a cotton handkerchief. This artifact of fervent capitalism shows just how deeply slavery was entrenched throughout American society: even the most zealous abolitionist message shamelessly profited from slave labor.

Contributed by Edward Gaynor, Head of Description and Specialist for Virginiana and University Archives

One score of Little Eva Song, printed on a cotton handkerchief.  The words are by John G. Whittier, and the music is by Manuel Emilio. 1852. (Broadside .S68 Z99 1852c. Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

C is for Harry and Caresse Crosby

Perhaps no couple epitomized the Lost Generation in Paris of the twenties more than Harry and Caresse Crosby. Famously wealthy, the two hosted many social events for their artist friends, and pushed the limits of acceptable behavior to the delight of a scandalized public. In 1928 they founded The Black Sun Press in Paris. This highly influential small art press published, among others, James Joyce, Kay Boyle, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Hart Crane, and William Faulkner, as well as editions of their own work. Caresse Crosby continued publishing after Harry’s dramatic suicide in 1929. Special Collections houses more than two dozen titles published by the press.

Contributed by George Riser, Collections and Instruction Assistant

Shown here is an edition of Hart Crane’s The Bridge, 1930, and Harry Crosby’s Mad Queen: Tirades, 1929. (PS 3505 .R272B7 1930b and PS 3505 .R883M3 1929 and, respectively. Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

 C is for Cross-Hatching (sometimes called cross writing)

Cross-hatching was a letter-writing practice popular in the nineteenth century.  In a hand-written letter, the correspondent wrote across the paper in one direction and then turned the paper sideways to write across it at right angles to the original writing on the same page.  This both conserved scarce paper and saved on postage costs.

C is also for cross, which is how an archivist trying to read cross-hatched letters feels at the end of the day.

C is also for cross-eyed; see above.

Contributed by Sharon Defibaugh, Manuscripts and Archives Processor

Cross-hatching used in a letter written by J. S. Wilson to Miss E. E. Richards, no date (MSS 5410. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Don’t forget to catch us next time when we cover the letter “D”!

 

 

This Just In: A Happy Reunion!

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Here at U.Va. Thomas Jefferson looms large both on, and under, Grounds.  It is only fitting that the Small Special Collections Library holds one of the world’s best collections of Jefferson manuscripts.  Some form part of the U.Va. Archives, for Jefferson founded the university and served as its first Rector from 1816 until his death in 1826.  Others have been placed in our care by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns and operates Monticello.  Still more have been acquired over the years through the generosity of many donors, who have either entrusted their Jefferson manuscripts to us or given funds for new acquisitions.

Jefferson is estimated to have written some 19,000 letters during his lifetime.  A great many survive, and a significant number of Jefferson letters and documents remain in private hands.  Given our finite resources, Special Collections can by no means acquire every Jefferson manuscript that comes on the market.  Instead we patiently seek items of high research value, especially the previously unknown and unpublished.  Our latest Jefferson acquisition arrived just last week, and it fits the bill perfectly: an early and highly significant manuscript, previously unknown and unpublished, which is the mate of a manuscript already at U.Va.

Our newly acquired Thomas Jefferson manuscript: the bottom half of a leaf containing his draft revision (ca. November 1769) of the rules under which the Virginia House of Burgesses conducted its business. (Photo by Molly Schwartzburg)

But the story begins in 1988, when Special Collections learned of an unrecorded Jefferson manuscript being offered in an upstate New York auction.  The document, for which we were high bidder, was identified by editors at the Papers of Thomas Jefferson as the top half of a leaf, written on both sides, containing Jefferson’s draft revision of the rules by which Virginia’s House of Burgesses conducted its business.  Jefferson began his political career in 1769 when, at the age of 26, he took a seat in the House of Burgesses in Williamsburg.  In November of that year he was appointed to a committee chaired by Edmund Pendleton, who assigned Jefferson the task of drafting new rules for the House.  Jefferson’s draft was refined in committee before being approved by the House of Burgesses on December 8, 1769.  These rules guided its deliberations in the crucial years leading up to the American Revolution.

In 1997 U.Va.’s incomplete manuscript was published in volume 27 of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, where it was described as Jefferson’s “earliest surviving documentary contribution as a public official to promoting the orderly conduct of legislative business, a subject of enduring interest that culminated during his vice-presidency with the publication in 1801 of his Manual of Parliamentary Practice, which still helps to guide parliamentary procedure in the United States Congress today.”  In some respects it also prefigures Jefferson’s later committee assignment, in June of 1776, to draft another key document: the Declaration of Independence.

Proof that the document’s top and bottom halves were once joined: from left to right, note how the dot of the i and ascenders of the letters h, h and b align perfectly across the divide. (Photo by Molly Schwartzburg)

Last month, on the opening night of the New York Antiquarian Book Fair, I was called over to a dealer’s booth, where a modest scrap of paper was placed in my hands.  It was none other than the missing bottom half of Jefferson’s 1769 draft!  Negotiations were quickly concluded, and last week the two halves were happily, and permanently, reunited.  Once the newly acquired manuscript is fully studied and published, we will know far more about this key episode in Jefferson’s nascent political career and the development of his political thinking.

Reunited at last! The top half is cataloged as MSS 10803; the newly acquired bottom half is presently being accessioned. (Photo by Molly Schwartzburg)

Coincidentally, an exhibition of some of our best Jefferson manuscripts is on view under Grounds through June 8.  Curated in cooperation with Monticello staff, “Thomas Jefferson Revealed” briefly surveys Jefferson’s pre-presidential years and his life at Monticello.  Highlights include a ledger recording Jefferson’s Williamsburg book purchases from 1764-1766; his annotated copy of the London, 1787 edition of Notes on the State of Virginia; a lock of Jefferson’s hair taken on his deathbed, and a letter describing his last hours; and the manuscript autobiography of Isaac Jefferson, a Monticello slave.

Class Notes: Finals Week Edition with Media Studies’ Sports, Media and Society

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Earlier this spring semester, about 40 undergraduates from Allison Wright’s media studies course Sports, Media, & Society came to Special Collections Library for an orientation on finding primary sources.  They were preparing for an assignment that required them to select a primary source and write a paper analyzing its sociohistoric context and relationship to topics covered in class.  Out of the class, six of the student papers rose to the top, so we are featuring them to show their great work!

You may ask, what separated their papers from the rest?  According to Dr. Wright, who is also the Assistant Editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, it was their level of analysis and application of good investigative journalism that made these papers strong ones.  She emphasized that they did good hands-on research, but also clearly integrated primary sources with quality secondary sources.  They went beyond the basic class framework and requirement of the assignment and applied critical thinking skills especially well.

Now check out these fabulous students!

Allison Wright and her students Chris Wood, E.P. Stonehill, Robbie Kemp, and Patrick Schuler (left to right). April 8, 2013 (Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Students Charlotte Clarke and Kayleigh Hentges pictured with their instructor Allison Wright (on the left) round out the group with superior essays.

Let’s take a closer look at their work.

Chris Wood’s “The End of Black Jockeys”

Not all primary sources are accessible on paper: many of them have been provided in a digital format.  That is the case with Fourth-Year student Chris Wood’s choice of Goodwin’s Official Turf Guide, a publication for those interested in horse racing, particularly jockeys and racing associations in the U.S. and Canada. Wood’s selection is not from the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, but it is an example of how these types of materials can be accessible via the Internet.  In this case, it is accessible via the HathiTrust Digital Library.

Chris Wood, Fourth-Year student, displays Goodwin’s Annual Turf Guide. (Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Goodwin’s Annual Turf Guide as viewed on Allison Wright’s tablet.  (Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Excerpt from Chris Wood’s “The End of Black Jockeys”:

Close examination of Goodwin’s Official Turf Guide displays a lack of African American jockeys in the early twentieth century. Goodwin’s Official Turf Guide was the most respected guide to horse racing during this time period and contains information regarding jockey mounts, horse deaths, weight limit rules, gambling guidelines, and other horse racing information from the period. It was published semi-annually, with the second volume always containing the full information from the past year. Comparing the names of jockey mounts from 1905-1908, I found that only the 1907 guide lists more than one black jockey (Goodwin’s). The only two African American jockeys whose names are included in Goodwin’s are Dale Austin and Jimmy Lee (Goodwin’s). Considering that in the first Kentucky Derby, fourteen out of fifteen riders were black and that fifteen of the first twenty-eight Kentucky Derbies were won by African Americans, there must be a reason for the lack of black jockeys listed in these four years of Goodwin’s Official Turf Guide.

E.P. Stonehill’s Whitewashed Columns

Elizabeth (E.P.) Stonehill, Fourth-Year student, selected an editorial column from a 1968 Cavalier Daily (student newspaper of the University of Virginia) to explore the University’s resistance to black athletes after the end of segregation.  The column she used was part two of an editorial/article by Bob Cullen in “The Sports Scene” titled “Orange, Blue, and Lily White II.”

E.P. Stonehill, Fourth-Year student, pictured with Special Collections’ bound copy of the 1968 Cavalier Daily. (Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

The central piece of Stonehill’s essay is Bob Cullen’s article from the Cavalier Daily, entitled “Orange, Blue, and Lily-White.” November 5, 1968. (Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Excerpt from E.P. Stonehill’s “Whitewashed Columns”:

In 1968, the Olympic Project for Human Rights [OPHR] threatened to boycott the Mexico City Olympics as a denunciation of racism within sports and society.  Specifically, OPHR focused on the plight of the black athlete.  Print journalism, in publications such as Life and Sports Illustrated, featured the issue prominently and thus garnered it international attention.  Nearly 2,500 miles away in Charlottesville, Virginia, issues surrounding the black athlete took on a salient position–or, technically, a lack thereof.  Indeed, The Cavalier Daily, the University of Virginia’s student newspaper, ran a two-part series entitled “Orange, Blue, and Lily-White” in its Sports section between November 4 and 5, 1968.  The articles, written by Bob Cullen for his column “The Sports Scene,” criticize the University’s systemic racism and espouse the need to recruit black football players and coaches.  Although comprising only two columns of text, Cullen’s articles reflect the national focus, particularly within print journalism on black athletes.  By framing black athletes within the whole university culture, Cullen’s articles additionally highlight the inherent inability to separate politics from sport and the gradual nature of athletic integration.

Robbie Kemp’s “Sampson’s Lasting Legacy”

Fourth-Year student Robbie Kemp chose two Sports Illustrated articles to examine U.Va. alumnus and basketball great Ralph Sampson’s role as an athlete and a college student. Kemp stated that this assignment exposed him to paper sources again, instead of relying so heavily on databases and proxies as he had become accustomed to doing.

Robbie Kemp, Fourth-Year student, pictured with two of the Sports Illustrated that featured Ralph Sampson as an undergraduate athlete at the University of Virginia. (Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Sports Illustrated article, “His Future is Up in the Air,” by Larry Keith. December 17, 1979. (GV885 .43 .V57 K45 1979. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Excerpt of Robbie Kemp’s “Sampson’s Lasting Legacy”:

Sports Illustrated featured Ralph Sampson in a variety of articles starting with his first season at the University of Virginia in 1979.  The analysis of my sources results from a combination of two specific articles: “His Future Is Up in the Air” by Larry Keith and “Hello, America, We Came Back” by Curry Kirkpatrick. Together, these articles explain both the stellar athletic talents Sampson possessed along with the passion to excel academically.  Sports Illustrated reaches a national audience and is considered the premier weekly sports magazine in the country.  When Larry Keith first published his article in 1979, he was revealing Sampson to an audience that had likely never heard of his accolades in an era before information was spread easily and widely.  By the time Kirkpatrick published his article profiling Sampson’s return to U.Va., it is safe to assume that even the casual basketball fan had been introduced to Sampson.  However, it is important to note that Kirkpatrick’s article does not emphasize the importance of Sampson’s decision as setting a precedent for extremely talented college athletes; perhaps it is with the benefit of hindsight that the lack of this emphasis is glaringly missing.  Ralph Sampson could have easily turned to the NBA after his second season at the University, a move that would have earned him a six-figure salary.  Although earlier quotes alluded to the criticism Sampson received, some NBA general managers approved of the move at the time as Bob Ferry of the Bullets stated, “All kids benefit from four years in college…maybe not basketballwise, but lifewise. They all benefit” (Kirkpatrick 37). Ferry’s opinion is mirrored today by the NBA’s decision to enforce a mandatory one-year waiting period after high school before being draft-eligible, although basketball at the collegiate level is not required.

Patrick Schuler’s Untitled Essay Analyzing Murrell Edmunds’ Letter

Fourth-Year student Patrick Schuler selected a letter from the Papers of Murrell Edmunds for his assignment.  Murrell Edmunds was a poet, novelist, and U.Va. alum, who wrote and spoke out against segregation and the mistreatment of African Americans during the Jim Crow era.  The 1968 letter is from Edmunds to the Editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. In it, he uses examples of incidents in football to admonish University administration for its lack of action against mistreatment of black and Jewish students.

Patrick Schuler, Fourth-Year student, pictured with two letters written by alum Murrell Edmunds BA 1917, Law 1920, regarding the treatment of black athletes at the University of Virginia during the 1960s. Hook em!  (Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Letter from Murrell Edmunds, U.Va. Class of 1917, to Virginius Dabney, Editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, September 12, 1968. (MSS 5989-x. Published Permission of the Estate of Murrell Edmunds. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Excerpt from Patrick Schuler’s essay:

While the University administration allowed this behavior to continue, the student body was active in promoting racial equality in other areas on life on Grounds. The “University finally actively embraced the ideals of a changing world”, calling for equality throughout the state (100 Years on the Lawn). A flier from February 17, 1969 from the University community calls the Governor and Board of Visitors to address “the affront to the black community posed by the presence on the Board of Visitors of representatives of the segregationist Massive Resistance Movement” and the lack of involvement in improving the lives of African American members of the Charlottesville community (Fliers Concerning Racism at the University of Virginia). The Student Council also declared segregated businesses off-limits to university student organizations. However, as Edmunds argues, the one thing absent from any of the University’s efforts to rid the institution of racism was the treatment of black football players. Racism survived at UVA for quite some time after Harrison Davis, Kent Merritt, Stanley Land, and John Rainey took the field for the first time. The University’s inaction on the football team contradicted their apparent commitment to ridding the community of racism on other fronts, reinforcing the perception that football was a way to maintain the Southern institution of racism.

When we look at the race of today’s best college football players or the roster of the team here at UVA, it is hard to imagine that this was the reality of college football 40 years ago. Murrell Edmund’s letter is a perfect depiction of how football was used as a vehicle to maintain the prejudiced treatment of blacks in the South during the decade following the end of legal segregation. Discrimination against black players did not end when they were allowed to play for Southern universities. While formalized acts of racism were no longer tolerated, college football provided a venue to re-assert the self-perceived superiority of white southerners, as black players were harassed on and off the field. The University of Virginia and other institutions in the South turned a blind eye to their football stadiums to maintain “tradition.”   

Charlotte Clarke’s” Fighting the Feminine Ideal: Social Constructs of Gender and Their Impact on How We Perceive Women in Sport”

Third-Year student Charlotte Clarke chose and analyzed the 1914 published paper, “Girls at Play” by Arthur Kyle Davis.  In her paper, she explores what Davis deemed acceptable behavior and qualities for women participating in sports during the 1910s.

Charlotte Clarke, Third-Year student, photographed with “Girls at Play,” the centerpiece of her essay. (Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

“Girls at Play: A Paper on ‘Forms of Recreation Desirable in Schools for Girls'” by Arthur Kyle Davis, 1914. (LB3608 .D3 1914. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Excerpt from Charlotte Clarke’s “Fighting the Feminine Ideal”:

How female athletes are perceived by society is a topic that has been hotly contested and analyzed in recent years. Through the analysis of the paper “Girls at Play”, which was read before the National Recreation Congress in June of 1914 by Arthur Kyle Davis, A.M., his beliefs and recommendations as to the appropriate and desirable forms of recreation for girls in the early 1900’s are outlined. This paper compares the opinions expressed by Davis in 1914 to the beliefs held in today’s society in regards to women’s participation and success in sport. Through these analyses and comparisons, it will be shown that despite massive gains in equality achieved by women in many areas of society, including sport, there still persists today a perception that sport is a male dominated arena. This paper also explores how and why these beliefs are capable of infiltrating into society, and able to become established and accepted as societal norms.

 

Arthur Kyle Davis was the president of the Southern Female College in Petersburg VA. His father William Thomas Davis founded the college in 1863 and it ran until 1938. Davis presented his paper during an era that was socially extremely different to that of today. Women were subject to discrimination in all areas of their lives and at the time of his reading, women in America did not have the right to vote. At this time, men’s colleges did not accept female students and so between the 1860s and the 1930s, women’s colleges were founded to provide their students with the means to achieve an education that would assist them in their “female duties” as mothers and teachers. In order to demonstrate their respectability, women’s colleges placed many social restrictions on their students, and southern colleges, such as the Southern Female College, were exclusively white until the civil rights era. Society was typically male dominated and women were considered and expected to be more reserved, placid and peaceful in nature.

Kayleigh Hentges’s “Pinpointing Prejudice”

Fourth-Year student Kayleigh Hentges focused her assignment on a 1971 photograph of U.Va. quarterback Harrison Davis, which served as a starting point for discussing the difficulties and major opposition African American football players faced from fellow students and teammates when they integrated the U.Va. football team in 1970.

Fourth-Year Student Kayleigh Hentges pictured with photograph of Harrison Davis, U.Va. quarterback during the 1971 season. (Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

#15 Harrison Davis, U.Va. quarterback, from the Corks and Curls Photograph Archives. 1971 Football Season. (RG-23/48/1.841. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Excerpt from Kayleigh Hentges’s “Pinpointing Prejudices”:

As Harrison Davis took the field in 1971 in the position of starting quarterback for the University of Virginia, his reception was less than enthusiastic, and he realized his college football years wouldn’t be the idealistic football experience that most college football starters envision. The quarterback he replaced was none other than George Allen, a future politician who had transferred from University of California at Los Angeles (Phillips). The unenthusiastic reception, from both fans and students of Davis, along with three other signees- Stanley Land, Kent Merritt and John Rainey, stemmed not from a lack of talent but from their skin color. These four players were the first African Americans to be integrated into the football program at the University of Virginia (“All the Hoos in Hooville..”). Fans and students used even the smallest of mistakes that Davis made on the field as a scapegoat for their dissatisfaction with integration and the replacement of white players. Even his own white teammates would throw the “n-word” out around the four new additions to the team (Scherer). The racism that Davis experienced stands out amongst the others, however, because he was chastised not only for being black but also for his position as a black quarterback. Although the situation has improved today, white quarterbacks still largely outweigh the number of black quarterbacks, with only 6 black quarterbacks in the starting position as of 2011 (Gray). I charge that without the inconclusive scientific studies on the African American body in relation to athletic ability beginning in the 1930’s, the assumptions that “White quarterbacks are smart but not athletic, Black quarterbacks are athletic but not smart” would not have prevailed and a more equal representation between the two races at the quarterback position could exist (Buffington).

Conclusion

We don’t usually get to see the finished product of the work done here by students. We watch them learn to find, request, and handle materials, and then they disappear. Thank you to Dr. Allison Wright, her Sports, Media, and Society class, and especially Chris Wood, EP Stonehill, Robbie Kemp, Patrick Schuler, Charlotte Clarke, and Kayleigh Hentges for sharing with us these wonderful results!

 

 

The ABCs of Special Collections: B is for …

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Welcome to the second post in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library  alphabet series!  And the letter is…

B is for Broken Poster, which is one of 75 alphabets represented in Frank H. Atkinson’s Atkinson Sign Painting up to Now: A Complete Manual of Sign Painting. Chicago: Frederick J. Drake & Co., 1915 (not yet catalogued. Gift of Nicholas Curtis. Photograph by Petrina Jackson).

B is for born-digital

B is for “born-digital,” the term we use in the archival profession for materials that were created in a digital format. The library has been acquiring digital material since the 80’s, first on floppy disks, then CDs, now on hard drives, laptops, or even from the web. Born-digital material will only increase in the coming years and will be preserved alongside our books and manuscript collections.

Contributed by Gretchen Gueguen, Digital Archivist

Examples of 8″, 5.25″, 3.5″ floppy disks from the collections. (Photograph by Gretchen Gueguen)

An internal hard drive from a laptop computer manufactured ca. 1991, being imaged by the Forensic Recovery of Evidence Device (FRED). (Photograph by Gretchen Gueguen)

 B is for Richard Brautigan

Richard Brautigan, best known for his 1967 novel Trout Fishing in America, was one of the seminal figures in the burgeoning San Francisco counterculture scene in the 1950s and ’60s.  While never attaining mainstream success, his work was wildly popular among the anti-establishment crowd of the psychedelic era.  A search of VIRGO, our online catalog, reveals 58 records related to Brautigan, including broadsides, chapbooks, posters, manuscripts, and books, such as Plant This Book with packets of seeds found inside the cover.

Contributed by George Riser, Collections and Instruction Assistant

Cover of Trout Fishing in America: A Novel by Richard Brautigan. The book was published in 1967. (PS3503 .R2736T6 1967. Gift of Marvin Tatum. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Cover of Please Plant This Book by Brautigan. Enclosed in the book are poem-covered packets of seeds. (PS3503 .R2736P54 1968, Gift of Marvin Taylor. Photograph by Petrina Jackson )

 B is for the Bruce Family of “Berry Hill”

The Papers of the Bruce Family (MSS 2692, -a through -f) provide a window in time to 18th- and 19th-century southern plantation life.  The family’s personal and business records include the operations of one of Virginia’s largest plantations and its influence on the South’s tobacco culture.  Of particular interest are the lists and inventories of enslaved African Americans.  Located in Halifax County, the Greek Revival mansion built by James Cole Bruce in 1842, “Berry Hill,” was the center of an agrarian economic and social community.

Contributed by Margaret Hrabe, Reference Coordinator

Berry Hill parlor, n.d. (Prints File. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Letterbook opened to a letter from “Berry Hill,” related to the tobacco crop. (MSS 2692-c. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

List and Inventory of the Negroes (Men and Boys) on the Plantation of Messrs. Bruce, Seddon and Wilkins. St. James Parish, Louisiana, “Wilton” near Convent. November 22, 1849 (MSS 2692. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

List and Inventory of the Negroes (Women, Girls, and Infants) on the Plantation of Messrs. Bruce, Seddon and Wilkins. St. James Parish, Louisiana, “Wilton” near Convent. November 22, 1849 (MSS 2692. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

I hope you join us in a couple of weeks when the letter of interest is C.  Until then, “C” you soon!

Walter Whitman, before Leaves of Grass

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This week, we feature a guest post from Special Collections staff member George Riser:

When Walt Whitman released his ‘idiomatic book of my land’ in 1855, he was thirty-six years old. Leaves of Grass, then twelve untitled poems in free style verse, was fully the work of an author who financed the printing, assisted in the typesetting, designed the extravagant cover, and acted as publisher and salesman. Though praised by Ralph Waldo Emerson in a private letter–“I greet you at the beginning of a great career”–the poems initially bewildered or shocked most early readers, not only in their lack of conventional rhyme and meter, but also in their use “of language and subject matter so coarse and crude as to be not fit for a mixed audience” (Charles Eliot Norton, Putnam’s Monthly: A Magazine of Literature, Science, and Arts, 6 September 1855).  Not all of the critics were so kind. Rufus Griswold in his review in Criterion in November 1855 wrote, “as to the volume itself…it is impossible to imagine how any man’s fancy could have conceived such a mass of stupid filth unless he were possessed of the soul of a sentimental donkey that had died of disappointed love” (Oddly, one of our Library’s copies of the first printings is a presentation to Rufus Griswold). Charles A. Dana, writing in the July issue of The New York Daily Tribune, notes “the poems certainly original in their external form, have been shaped on no pre-existent model out of the author’s own brain. Indeed, his independence often becomes coarse and defiant. His language is too frequently reckless and indecent.”

Can a work of art as original as Leaves of Grass spring out of “no pre-existent model,” simply from “the author’s own brain?” Our library holds twenty-five items that pre-date the first printing of Leaves of Grass in 1855. A look at this publication history can give, in many cases, insight into the genesis of the wild, innovative poems that formed the then revolutionary book of poems.

Whitman’s first published piece, “Death in the School-Room” appeared in The Democratic Review in August 1841. Written when Whitman was 21, the story drew on his experience as an itinerant teacher and was an indictment of what he called “the old-fashioned school-masters with their reliance on discipline and corporal punishment.”

Front cover of The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, (December 1841), which featured Whitman’s story “Bervance: or, Father and Son.” (PS3222 .B47 1841, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature. Photo by Molly Schwartzburg.)

An early poem, “Death of the Nature-Lover,” appearing in Brother Jonathan in March 1843, and attributed to Walter Whitman, uses a strict meter and rhyme, though it employs Whitmanesque themes:

Not in a gorgeous hall of pride

Where tears fall thick, and loved ones sigh,

Wished he, when the dark hour approached

To drop his veil of flesh and die.

The title page from Brother Jonathan, (New York, N.Y.: March 11, 1843) featuring Whitman’s poem, “Death of the Nature-Lover.” (PS3222 .D45 1843, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature. Photo by Molly Schwartzburg.)

Whitman worked for many of the serial publications that printed his early work, usually as compositor, pressman, or editor, including a stint with John Neal, publisher of Brother Jonathan. Neal, a popular novelist of the time, wrote in his 1823 novel, Randolph, “I do, in my heart, believe we shall live to see poetry done away with–the poetry of form I mean–of rhyme, measure, and cadence.…poetry will disencumber itself of rhyme and measure and talk in prose–with a sort of rhythm, I admit,” lines that Whitman seemingly took to heart.

Whitman’s “Death of the Nature-Lover” as it appeared in Brother Jonathan, above. (Photo by Molly Schwartzburg.)

Ralph Waldo Emerson contributed to many of the same publications as Whitman, and called upon American writers to “strike an original relation with the universe.’”Whitman took heed, writing, ‘”I was simmering, simmering, simmering; Emerson brought me to a boil.”

Whitman also worked for and contributed to The Broadway Journal at the time it was owned and edited by Edgar Allan Poe. The 29 November 1845 issue features a piece by Whitman, “Art-singing and Heart-singing,” that gives credit to a popular, though low, American singing style. In the November 20 issue of the same year, Poe responding to criticisms of a recent poetry reading, takes issue with a number of critics (to one: “we advise her to get drunk, too, and as soon as possible—for when sober she is a disgrace to her sex—on account of being so awfully stupid”), and ends with “a note to correspondents – ‘Many thanks to W.W.’”  Whitman may have learned a lesson in withstanding critical condemnation from Poe, who spent his editorial career inviting invective.

The opening lines of Whitman’s essay, “Art-Singing and Heart-Singing,” printed in The Broadway Journal, (November 29, 1845). This issue was edited by Edgar Allen Poe. (PS3222 .A7 1845, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature. Photo  by Molly Schwartzburg.)

Poe thanks correspondents for their assistance in his “Editorial Miscellany,’ for The Broadway Journal issue, (November 22, 1845), including ‘W.W.,’ purportedly Walt Whitman. (PS3222 .A7 1845, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature. Photo by Molly Schwartzburg.)

 

Poe and Whitman were linked more than once in professional publications. In this image, we see editor Thomas Dunn English thank collaborators, including Edgar A. Poe and Walter Whitman, in the opening pages of the March 1845 issue of The Aristidean. (A 1846 .A75, Tracy W. McGregor Library of American History. Photo by Molly Schwartzburg.)

In 1942, Whitman published his only full length novel, Franklin Evans or The Inebriate: A Tale of the Times in Park Benjamin’s paper, The New World. Franklin Evans was a novel of temperance that was an embarrassment to Whitman in his old age, but reflected an early concern for alcoholism, which may have affected his father and his brother-in-law. It is also a theme that appears in later editions of Leaves of Grass, though lacking the sensationalist style popular at that time.

The front cover of The New World (New York, N.Y.: 1842) featuring the first printing of Walt Whitman’s Franklin Evans; or, The Inebriate. A Tale of the Times. (PS3222 .F7 1842, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature. Photo by Molly Schwartzburg.)

These are but a few examples of Whitman’s early writings that can give insight into the origins of the remarkable book of poems, Leaves of Grass.

In closing, we include a passage from that volume’s first edition, and one last contemporary commentary:

Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos, disorderly, fleshly, and sensual, no sentimentalist, no stander above men or women or apart from them, no more modest than immodest…

–Leaves of Grass

Walt Whitman is a printer by trade, whose punctuation is as loose as his morality, and who no more minds his ems than his p’s and q’s.

–Anonymous from The Washington Daily National Intelligencer, (18 February 1856)

 

This Just In: Horsing Around!

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From time to time the Small Special Collections Library receives a transformative gift that reshapes its collections and collecting in unexpected, unusual, and ultimately very beneficial ways.  One such gift was the 1985 bequest of the Marion duPont Scott Sporting Collection.  A direct descendant of E. I. du Pont de Nemours (founder of the eponymous chemical company), Marion duPont Scott (1894-1983) was an internationally renowned horse breeder and equestrian who lived for many years at Montpelier—once the home of president James Madison—some 25 miles northeast of Charlottesville.  She also formed a major collection of sporting literature—especially books, manuscripts, and periodicals relating to horses and horse-racing (though sports such as fishing, hunting, even cockfighting, are also represented)—that was entrusted to the U.Va. Library.  Accompanying the 1,200-item gift was a generous acquisitions endowment that has so far enabled us to more than double the collection’s size.

Frontispiece to part 2 of Cesare Fiaschi, Trattato dell’imbrigliare, maneggiare, et ferrare cavalli (Bologna, 1556)

How does one build such a collection in ways that not only honor the donor’s wishes but enhance its value to U.Va. and the international research community?  The challenge has been an exciting one, for sporting and horses are subjects that permit us to forge stronger connections between the Scott Collection and our other diverse holdings.  Here are a few examples drawn from many recent Scott Collection acquisitions.

Woodcut illustration from Cesare Fiaschi, Trattato dell’imbrigliare, maneggiare, et ferrare cavalli (Bologna, 1556)

We were able to obtain at auction a fine first-edition copy of a classic sixteenth-century work on horsemanship: Cesare Fiaschi’s Trattato dell’imbrigliare, attegiare, & ferrare cavalla, published in Bologna in 1556.  This book now takes pride of place as the earliest work in the Scott Collection.  Master of a famed riding academy founded in Ferrara in 1534, Fiaschi distilled in his book a lifetime’s knowledge concerning the training, equipping, and shoeing of horses.  The work is also a notable example of early Italian book illustration, filled with dozens of woodcuts depicting bits, bridles, and horseshoes. Of particular note are the unusual diagrams mixing horse, rider, and music, which accompany Fiaschi’s famous explication of why tempo and rhythm are crucial to expert riding.

Engraved plate from Johann Elias Ridinger, Verstellung und Beschreibung derer Schul und Campagne Pferden nach ihren Lectionen (Augsburg, 1760)

Another classic equestrian manual, published two centuries later, is Johann Elias Ridinger’s Verstellung und Beschreibung derer Schul und Campagne Pferden nach ihren Lectionen (Augsburg, 1760).  A noted German engraver, Ridinger (1698-1767) was renowned for his depictions of animals, especially horses.  For this rare self-published work Ridinger prepared sixty finely engraved plates to illustrate the bilingual German and French text.  As was typical of the time, Ridinger’s manual concentrates on riding maneuvers useful for a cavalry officer.

During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, some of the finest color-plate books ever created were published in England.  These works, which embraced a wide range of subjects, typically were illustrated with hand-colored aquatint plates.  One of the most popular English illustrators working in the genre was Henry Thomas Alken (1785-1851), who combined a gift for caricature and love of sporting to illustrate many notable works on horse racing, fox-hunting, and other sports.  The Scott Collection contains copies of nearly half of Alken’s sporting books, many of which are quite rare, and we are actively pursuing the remainder.

A one-foot section from Henry Alken’s panorama, A trip to Melton Mowbray (London, 1822), which is 26 feet in length.

Our latest Alken acquisition is his delightful A trip to Melton Mowbray, published in 1822.  This 26-foot-long panorama consists of 14 hand-colored aquatint plates pasted together end-to-end and was originally issued wound around a wooden spindle.  In our copy the plates have been separated and mounted in an album for easier viewing.  The Leicestershire town of Melton Mowbray, known for its pork pies and Stilton cheese, has for centuries also been famous as a fox-hunting mecca.  In this work Alken imagines first the comic misadventures of a sporting party journeying from London to Melton Mowbray, and then its participation in the hunt.

One of two newly acquired pencil drawings by Henry Alken for his book, Ideas, accidental and incidental to hunting (London, ca. 1826)

As fine as they are, the color-plate works cannot do proper justice to Alken’s artistry, for something is inevitably lost in the process of translating his exquisite line drawings into the tonal process of aquatint.  Hence we were delighted to acquire two original Alken pencil drawings made for another sporting book: Ideas, accidental and incidental to hunting and other sports (ca. 1826).  By placing the drawings side-by-side with Alken’s books, we can teach in the most effective way possible both Alken’s remarkable artistry and the manner in which etchers translated his work to aquatint plates.

Advertisement for Sloan’s ointment in The complete farrier, or, Horse doctor (Chicago, 1848)

The Scott Collection is also strong in ancillary literature concerning horses.  Here we are less interested in collecting comprehensively than in acquiring the particularly rare, significant, and out-of-the ordinary works that add distinction to a major research holding.  In the area of veterinary medicine, for instance, we snapped up the second known copy of an early Chicago imprint: The complete farrier, or horse doctor, published by W. B. Sloan in 1848.  Sloan was a Chicago purveyor of patent medicines, and the primary objective of this veterinary handbook was to advertise his horse ointment (“The best horse medicine in the world!”) and related products to upper Midwest horse owners.

Frontispiece and title page to The wonders of the horse (New York, 1836)

Literature featuring horses and equestrian sports also figures prominently in the Scott Collection.  An unusual acquisition in this area is The wonders of the horse, recorded in anecdotes, and interspersed with poetry (New York, 1836).  Written for a juvenile audience and first published in London in 1808, this illustrated work anthologizes short extracts about horses from contemporary literature and periodicals.  This fine copy is resplendent in its original publisher’s binding of dark green ribbon-embossed cloth with a red glazed paper label printed in gold pasted to the front cover.

Horse breeders take pedigree as seriously as humans take genealogy, and we have taken advantage of an unusual opportunity to acquire several hundred late nineteenth-century catalogs issued by American horse farms and auction firms.  Today these catalogs are extremely rare, especially in such a concentrated holding, yet they are essential sources for tracing race horse  pedigrees.  These join other catalogs and several complementary manuscript collections previously acquired for the Scott Collection that document the history of the American horse breeding industry.  We have also added a variety of early trade catalogs featuring products suitable for raising and racing horses, such as an 1890 color-illustrated booklet featuring blankets for the well-dressed horse.  These provide a wonderful complement to the extensive and diverse collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century trade catalogs recently given to us by Albert Small.

An opening from Jesse Haney’s Art of training animals (New York, 1869)

Other items in the Scott Collection document the roles horses have played in providing entertainment in circuses, exhibitions, and touring shows.  Equestrian and other animal acts have long been circus staples, and they became even more popular in the mid-nineteenth century with the rise of the touring circus.  Haney’s art of training animals (New York, 1869) was one of the first general handbooks in the field.  It begins with a long section on training horses to perform various tricks and to “act” in horse dramas, followed by another long section on training dogs. Other chapters concern elephants, lions, tigers, monkeys, pigs, rats and mice, seals, and birds, though we are told that “cats do not appear to be favorite subjects of the trainer’s art.”  Another new acquisition is a profusely illustrated “autobiography” of famed circus horse Princess Trixie, the “Queen of all educated horses.”  This pamphlet was sold on the road, wherever Princess Trixie was engaged to perform.

Keepsake pamphlet (ca. 1905) sold at performances by Princess Trixie, “Queen of all educated horses”

 

The ABCs of Special Collections: A is for…

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There are so many items in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library that it would be impossible to tell you about each and every one.  However, in our new series, the ABCs of Special Collections, which will run every two weeks for the next year, the library’s staff will share with you some of the unsung as well as better-known items of Special Collections.  So today, we bring you the letter…

A is for Atkinson Tuscan Roman (light), which is one of 75 alphabets represented in Frank H. Atkinson’s Atkinson Sign Painting up to Now: A Complete Manual of Sign Painting. Chicago: Frederick J. Drake & Co., 1915 (not yet catalogued. Gift of Nicholas Curtis. Photograph by Petrina Jackson).

A is for abecedarium

An abecedarium is an alphabetical wordbook used as a primer for teaching reading and spelling.  Among the many examples in Special Collections are those published by Henkel Press, a German language press in New Market, Virginia, that supplied newspapers, religious materials, and children’s books to communities throughout the Shenandoah Valley. Also shown here are examples of fine press and mechanical books as well as modern primers using various subjects to present the alphabet.

Contributed by Edward Gaynor, Head of Technical Services and Specialist for Virginiana and University Archives

Both of these alphabet books, written in German, were authored by Ambrose Henkel. The opened book is entitled Das grosse A B C Buch and was published in 1820. The closed book is entitled Das kleine A B C Buch, oder erste Anfangs Buchlein and was published in 1816. (Das grosse A B C, PF3114 .H35 1820, Gift of Chevalier E. Reynolds and Das kleine A B C, PF3114 .H38 1816, from the Henkel-Miller Family Papers, MSS 14434. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Jolly Jump-Ups ABC Book was illustrated by Geraldine Clyne and published in 1948. (PZ92 .F6 J66 1948b, Brenda Forman Collection of Pop-Up and Moveable Books. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

A is for Amos Bronson Alcott

Amos Bronson Alcott, father of Louisa May, friend of Emerson and Thoreau, was a leading figure of the Transcendentalist Movement in the middle of the 19th-century. His efforts at educational reform and utopian living were considered radical at the time, and though ultimately unsuccessful, his writings remain influential today. A search of VIRGO, our online catalog, features 27 hits related to Alcott, including letters to his famous daughter, and books he authored.

Contributed by George Riser, Collections and Instruction Assistant

Amos Bronson Alcott, n.d. (MSS 7052-c, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Louisa May Alcott and actor James Murdoch, n.d. (MSS 7052-c, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Letter from A. Bronson Alcott to his daughter Louisa May on the occasion of their shared birthday, 29 Nov. 1848. (MSS 7052-c, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

The verso of Alcott’s November 1848 letter to his daughter Louisa May. (MSS 7052-c, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

A is for Ambrotype

Ambrotypes are sharply detailed, one-of-a-kind photographs on glass, packaged in protective cases similar to those used for daguerreotypes.  An ambrotype is essentially a collodion on glass negative that is intentionally underexposed so that the negative image appears as a positive image when viewed against a dark background.  The process of making ambrotypes was patented in the United States in 1854 by James Ambrose Cutting.  The popularity of ambrotypes was short-lived, however, and the process was soon displaced by the growing popularity of albumen prints.

Contributed by Eliza Gilligan, Book and Paper Conservator, University of Virginia Library; text from the George Eastman House Photography Collections Online Glossary http://www.geh.org/taschen/htmlsrc/glossary.html

Featured is the ambrotype of “Mammy Kitty” from the Ellis Family Daguerreotypes. Accompanying the image is a note that reads, “The faithful servant of Charles and Mrs. K. Ellis.” Died in Richmond in 1864. Our mother’s mammy.” (MSS 2516-c. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

A is for American History

One of the cornerstones of the University of Virginia Special Collections is the American history library of Tracy W. McGregor (1869-1936).  A unique call number classification scheme for the McGregor Library begins with “A” and is followed by the date of publication.  A further delineation identifies the specific volume.  The earliest volume in the collection is “A 1475 .P76” for the first edition of Ptolemy’s Cosmographia, printed in 1475.  It represents pre-discovery science and geography of the world before Columbus.

Contributed by Margaret Hrabe, Reference Coordinator

Tracy W. McGregor in an undated photograph. (Prints File, Gift of Mildred White. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

 

Ptolemy’s Cosmographia. (A 1475 .P76, Tracy W. McGregor Library of American History. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

A is for Assiduous

It might also, in this case, stand for “artist” as they both define the life and personality of Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966). His paintings are a legacy of devotion to divine detail.  Creativity flowed from him like oil from a tube of artist’s paints, to the extent that the color cobalt blue came to be known as “Parrish Blue” by generations of artists who followed in his footsteps. Even his autographs reflect the care, detail, and flair of a born artist; why give in to mundane repetition when an upstroke here, a hook there, and a swash everywhere would embellish the letter more beautifully?

Contributed by Donna Stapley, Assistant to the Director

Maxfield Parrish’s signature, ca. 1901-1910 (MSS 6953, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature).

 

Maxfield Parrish’s signature, ca. 1901-1910 (MSS 6953, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature. Photograph by Petrina Jackson).

Maxfield Parrish’s signature, ca. 1901-1910 (MSS 6953, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature. Photograph by Petrina Jackson).

Maxfield Parrish’s signature, ca. 1901-1910 (MSS 6953, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature. Photograph by Petrina Jackson).

Maxfield Parrish created detailed, stunning paintings. This one is from “The History of the Young King of the Black Isles.” The Arabian Nights: Their Best Known Tales edited by Kate Douglas Wiggin and Nora A. Smith, and illustrated by Maxfield Parrish. The caption, which accompanies this illustration, reads, “When he came to this part of his narrative the young king could not restrain his tears.”

We hope you enjoyed today’s selections from the letter A, from the A is for Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library!

The Taxman: What a Founder, a Poet, and a Fascist Have in Common

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Tax records are probably the last thing you would think that Special Collections libraries possess. However, along with our many books, photographs, letters, drawings, and more, the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library has financial records, such as tax materials, in its many collections documenting the life and work of people and their businesses.  These records document how citizens pay the government for services and benefits, and as such reveal much about those citizens’ work, but they also serve a secondary use: for instance, a tax form close at hand might become the surface for a draft of a literary work.  This post shows both utilities of these most ubiquitous records through their use by the famous–and infamous.

Imagining Thomas Jefferson’s Debt and Wealth Through Sheriff Ledgers

In colonial Albemarle County, Virginia, as in some other Virginia counties, the sheriff collected taxes.  Thomas Jefferson, as a major plantation and slave owner, was, of course, not exempt from these taxes.

Image of Thomas Jefferson, engraved by T. Johnson from the painting by Gilbert Stuart. (MSS 5845. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

During the American Revolutionary War, Nicholas Hamner was the Sheriff of Albemarle County.  As a duty of his office, he kept a ledger of all of the citizens who owed and paid taxes in the county.  We hold one of those ledgers, dated from 1782-1783, the last two years of the Revolutionary War.  Shown here is the tax assessment for Thomas Jefferson.  Jefferson was taxed on his land and moveable property, including his slaves and cattle.  He also had to pay a parish levy, which covers ministers’ salaries, church upkeep, and aid to the poor and orphans:

Nicholas Hamner’s Sheriff’s Ledger for the assessment of taxes in Albemarle County, Va. for the year 1782, opened to the page spread numbered 49. The last entry on the spread is Thomas Jefferson. On the verso (left) is the list of debts/taxes he has to pay, while on the recto (right) is the list of tax credits/payments he has made. (MSS 3455. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Detail of Jefferson’s debt or taxes owed for the year 1782.  The taxes were all assessed in British Pounds. Here you can see that Jefferson has to pay a land tax, a poll tax for two white males, a property tax on 129 slaves, 23 horses and six wheels.  He also has to pay parish levies, which defrays the cost of ministers, upkeep of the churches, and aid to the poor and orphans.  Further research might explain how or why he was assessed for the named people on the list, such as Mary Moore. (MSS 3455. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Detail of Jefferson’s credits or payment of his taxes for  1782.  On September 18, 1782, 12 days after the death of his wife Martha, Jefferson paid part of his taxes by cash.  He also paid by way of George Nicolson and W. Nicolson; a tax historian might be able to explain this detail.  Jefferson has a zero balance by April of the following year 1783.

Seeing the Evolution of Walt Whitman’s Poetry Through His Chosen Surface: Tax Forms

Poet Walt Whitman lived, worked as a journalist, and wrote poetry in New York during the 1840s and 1850s.  It is here that he composed his poems for the third edition of Leaves of Grass.  He wrote his poems on scraps of paper. Some of the paper were melon-colored, while others were plain, and still more were actual tax forms from the city of Williamsburgh (Brooklyn).  Whitman worked in a print shop as well as at the Brooklyn Times, so it is likely the paper was produced as part of a job printing at one of his places of employment.  The Special Collections Library holds a number of handwritten poetry drafts on these particular tax forms, as part of the massive fragmentary draft for the third edition of Leaves of Grass, one of the cornerstones of the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.  Fredson Bowers, bibliographer and professor of English at the University of Virginia from 1938 to 1975, used all manner of physical evidence available to him in these artifacts to reconstruct the manuscript’s likely original order.

Engraving of Walt Whitman from the frontispiece of the third edition, first issue of Leaves of Grass (PS 3201. 1860 copy 4, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Whitman drafted his poems on all different scraps of paper, including the backs of tax forms from the City of Williamsburgh [Brooklyn, NY].  During the 1850s, Whitman worked at a printing shop and the Brooklyn Times newspaper, where it is likely that they did many job printings, including these tax forms.  This featured manuscript copy of a poem, written on the back of the tax form, would later become part of the third edition of Leaves of Grass. (MSS 3829, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Detail of tax form on which Whitman wrote some of his poems for the third edition of Leaves of Grass. (MSS 3829, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Reading Hitler’s Rise Through His Falling Taxes

Oron Hale was an historian, University of Virginia professor, U.S. Army Major with the Intelligence Division of the War Department during World War II, and Commissioner for Bavaria with the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany. During his government service in Germany, he witnessed first-hand the rise of Hitler and National Socialism in Europe; after the war he took part in a special mission of the U.S. War Department’s Historical (Shuster) Commission in Germany, interrogating the surviving defeated leaders of the Third Reich, including Hermann Göring, Wilhelm Keitel, Karl Dönitz, and Joachim von Ribbentrop among others.

The Oron Hale Papers at the Special Collections Library include his personal and office correspondence, manuscripts of his published writings, records relating to his academic activities and government service in Germany, and declassified intelligence reports.  One unexpected, and fascinating component of the collection is the set of contemporary photostats of Adolf Hitler’s tax returns from 1925 through 1935, which were among the documents seized by the Allies during the war.

Photograph of Oron J. Hale, ca. 1942.  At the time of this photograph, Hale was a U.S. Major, serving with the Intelligence Division of the War Department General Staff in Washington. (MSS 12800-a. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Hitler’s taxes show his metamorphosis from struggling writer to powerful–and financially well-off–dictator in a relatively short amount of time.

First page of Hitler’s completed 1925 tax forms. Here you can see his signature and the statement of his profession as writer (Schriftsteller) from Munich (München). He owns no real estate property. (MSS 12800-a. Photograph by Petrina Jackson.)

On page 3 of Hitler’s 1925 tax form, Hitler’s property tax declaration is limited to one writing desk and two bookshelves with books. The combined cost of those items was 1000 Reichsmark. (MSS 12800-a. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Signed, final page of Hitler’s 1925 tax forms. (MSS 12800-a. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Here are some other points of interest in his tax files found in notes, translated by Hale, from Hitler’s tax files:

In 1925, Hitler buys a motor-car II A 6699 in February 1925 for 20.000 Reichsmark (RM), but must explain to the tax office where he got the money for this purchase. He responds that he borrows it from a bank.  In this year he also asks for an extension to pay his taxes by installments.

In 1933, the Minister of Finance makes a decision that Hitler is not to pay any income tax on his fees as Reichskanzler (chancellor of the empire).

In 1934, The Reichsminister of Finance decides that Hitler may deduct 50% of his income as propaganda costs.

The final translated note is from Dr. Lizius (senior finance government official and manager of finances for Munich-West), and it reads:  “On Febr. 25, 1935 President Mirre called me by telephone and said, that Staatssekretär Reinhardt had informed the Führer of the apprehension concerning his exemption from taxation as Head of the State and that the Führer dealt the opinion of Herr Mirre and Reinhardt.  The order, that the Führer should be tax-free, thereby would be final.  Upon that I withdrew all records of the Führer from the ordinary business performance and put them under lock.”

These documents–and those of Thomas Jefferson and Walt Whitman–are a very particular kind of historical evidence, and our collections are replete with other fascinating examples. Who knew tax records weren’t just mundane frustrations we are happy to file away as quickly as possible each year? And who knows what stories our own tax forms might tell someday?

***

I would like to extend a special thanks to Chad Wellmon, assistant professor of Germanic languages and literatures for helping me by translating into English the German tax documents.

I would also like to give a special thanks to my colleagues Heather Riser, Special Collections’ head of reference and research services, and Donna Stapley, Assistant to the Special Collections director, for their research help with interpreting the 1782 Sheriff’s ledger.

 

Black Alumni Weekend: Manuscripts and Mimosas

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Every other year, hundreds of black alumni come back to Grounds to have fun with old friends, reminisce about their time at the University, and attend insightful open houses and seminars, ranging from education to entertainment to entrepreneurship.

The staff at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, including Director Nicole Bouché and Head of Instruction and Outreach Petrina Jackson, hosted a number of alumni at the Library’s “Manuscripts and Mimosas” event.  The aptly named event featured some of Special Collections’ most recent acquisitions in African-American materials, a digital story of the early years of Black Greek-letter organizations at the University, and refreshing mimosas and pastries.  Note: No manuscripts were harmed during this event.  There was no contact between the refreshments and the manuscript materials.

African-American history is a key component of our collection development, and we are committed to documenting the institutions, communities, and people who influence this culture.  The alumni, family and friends who attended “Manuscripts and Mimosas” got a first-hand view of some of the books, manuscripts, photographs, and broadsides that comprise our African-American collections and materials.

Petrina Jackson discusses some of the collection materials with alumni and friends. (Photograph by Gretchen Gueguen)

Event goers view recent African-American acquisitions. (Photograph by Gretchen Gueguen)

Here is a sampling of what they saw.

Featured is the title page of Walker’s Appeal, in Four Articles: Together with a Preamble to the Colored Citizens of the World, But in Particular, and Very Expressly to Those of the United States of America. The 1829 anti-slavery tract Walker’s Appeal is considered by many, the most radical document of its kind. In his book, David Walker, a free black man originally from the South, but living in Boston, advocates for slaves to rise up against their masters, refutes African colonization to Liberia, and attacks Thomas Jefferson’s views on blacks. (E446. W15 1829, Purchased from the Robert and Virginia Tunstall Trust Fund, 2010/2011-2011/2012. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

In this June 10th, 1862 letter, soldier Aaron Sager writes to his sister Emma, regarding his service in the Union Army and his encounter with black people. This letter, accompanied by its transcript, is one of a several Sager Brother Civil War letters written by Captain Aaron and Sergeant George J. Sager, who were from Syracuse, NY and served in the 76th and 149th NY regiments, respectively. (MSS 15190, Purchased from the Coles-Special Collections Fund 2010/2011. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

An undated photograph of John Washington and one page from his slave narrative, entitled “Memorys of the Past,” are featured. The narrative, which was written after the Civil War, describes Washington’s life as a slave in Fredericksburg and Richmond, Va., where he was hired out, ownership by the Ware family, marriage, his escape to freedom across the Rappahannock River in 1862, scouting for the Union Army, identifying prominent Southern sympathizers, and avoiding Confederate Colonel John S. Mosby’s men. (MSS 15000, Purchased from the Robert and Virginia Tunstall Trust Fund, 2011/2012. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

This Reconstruction era document promotes a barbeque for the purpose of supporting African-American political candidates, civil rights, and fair voting practices. (Broadside 1869 .G73, Purchased from the Associates Endowment Fund, 2011/2012. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Pictured are two photographs, ca. 1950s, of the Board of Directors of the First State Bank and the minutes for a 1922 stakeholders’ meeting. We recently acquired this fantastic collection, documenting this African-American owned bank from Danville, Virginia. The bank thrives even today. (MSS 15550. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

Featured is a page from the Peabody High School Yearbook (Petersburg, VA), 1939. The pages were mimeographed with pasted photographic prints. The volume includes a dedication, photographs of the school, faculty, and individual seniors, a class poem, class photographs and histories, and activity photographs and description, including clubs and athletics. (MSS 15284, Purchased from the Byrd Fund 2012/2013. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

The Negro Motorist Green Book: An International Travel Guide, 1949 Edition, was created by Victor Hugo Green, an African-American postal worker and civic leader from Harlem, NY. The book listed safe places (hotels, restaurants, nightclubs, etc.) for black people to stay when traveling during the Jim Crow era. (Not yet cataloged. Photograph by Petrina Jackson)

We also showed the digital story Black Greek Letter Organizations at the University of Virginia: The Early Years.  The story gives a snapshot of the founding, service, and social life of the National Pan-Hellenic Council’s historically black fraternities and sororities at the University from 1973 to 1985.  Happily, there were alumni at the event who saw photos of themselves that they had not seen in years.  This surprise made for lots of fun, spontaneous responses from the audience!

The audience watches the digital story Black Greek Letter Organizations at the University of Virginia: The Early Years. (Photograph by Gretchen Gueguen)

Because Special Collections is the home of the University Archives (UA), documenting the University’s history is central to what we do.  The UA is filled with official records from the institution itself, but the student experience is under-documented.  This is woefully true in the case of black students.  One of the goals of the Library is to change that, but that can’t happen without alumni themselves.

 

Flyer created by Jeff Hill.

An alumna asks a question, regarding donating photographs. (Photograph by Gretchen Gueguen)

Based on responses from alumni at the event, we can safely say that the event was a great success.  One such response was a tweet from alum Quentin @AvenueSwank in which he states, “The UVA special collections library is amazing! Manuscripts and mimosas was super enlightening #uvabaw.”  We look forward to having another event like this when alumni come back home to U.Va. for the next Black Alumni Weekend!

I would like to extend a special thank you to my colleague, Digital Archivist Gretchen Gueguen, who took time out of her Saturday desk shift to take so many great photographs of the event and to Sarah Nyanjom, Assistant Director of Reunions, for all of her help in planning the event logistics and providing the mimosas and refreshments.

We look forward to seeing you all in 2015!