“The work of life is earnest and requires earnest men. That success may crown your efforts is the wish of your Classmate and Friend, H. R. Pierce. Natus Jan. 2nd, 1828, Coventry Vt.”

When popular Amherst College student Frazar Stearns died shortly before noon on March 14, 1862, in the Battle of New Bern, North Carolina, another Amherst man lay dead nearby.

They probably did not know each other. Frazar was young and handsome and still in school (Class of 1863), while the other man had graduated with the Class of 1853 and was a teacher, a husband, and a father. He was also not the son of William Augustus Stearns, the sitting president of Amherst College. The college and town were overwhelmed by Frazar’s death, and those Amherst people who in 1862 still remembered the other student nine years after his graduation would not have felt his loss as they did Frazar’s. Much was written about Frazar Stearns at the time, and much has been written since—his death continues to resonate. A cannon and a poet’s verses still testify to his loss. The other Amherst man’s service was noted and recorded in quieter ways, during his class reunion and in the biographical records of his class. His story is not as well known as Frazar’s, and yet they died within an hour of each other on the same day, in the same battle, and apparently in the effort to take the same small but critical part of the battlefield.

The other student’s name was Henry Reuben Pierce. And when he was at Amherst College, he too was young and handsome, with a promising future.

Henry Reuben Pierce. Crystalotype for the albums of the Class of 1853.

Pierce was a native of Coventry, Vermont, the son of Warren and Sally (McManus) Pierce. His biographical file in the Archives and Special Collections suggests a modest beginning, with a struggle toward an education made possible by determination and perseverance. He left home at 16, found work in Northampton and was able to enter Williston Seminary, from which he graduated in 1849. He then entered Amherst College, graduating at the age of 25 (older than today’s average graduate but about the same age as many of his classmates). After leaving Amherst, he had several teaching jobs and a brief stint studying law. The law was not for him, though, and he returned to teaching. His final position –the position he held when he joined the war – was as principal of the high school in Woonsocket, Rhode Island.

Pierce was the kind of man to put his principles into action. After the sobering Battle of Bull Run in July, 1861, when the Union realized that the war would not be an easy win, Pierce responded by traveling to Washington to care for the wounded of his town. He entered the army the following November. Pierce probably had little if any military training before enlisting, but he received the rank of lieutenant in the Fifth Rhode Island heavy artillery and trained for a few months, probably at the Dexter Training Ground in Providence, Rhode Island, before heading to war. A memoir called “A Country Boy’s First Three Months in the Army,” by a fellow member of the 5th Rhode Island, details what Pierce’s first few months in the military must have been like.

Lieutenant Henry R. Pierce (1861)

When Pierce enlisted and left his position at Woonsocket, his pupils presented him with sword. The inscription reads: “Nov. 1861. Lieut. H. R. Pierce. From his pupils of the Woonsocket High School. With love.” It’s the “with love” – set apart and a little bit aflutter — that gets me. It seems heartfelt, as if raw emotion “burst agonized and clear” through the solemnity of the occasion. I have to wonder if the words are necessary to or typical of such inscriptions; I choose to believe that they were added because Pierce was special to his students, that he cared for and inspired them. Coincidentally (for the purposes of this post), Pierce’s sword came up for auction last spring – in the year of the 150th anniversary of the battle (unfortunately, Amherst does not own it).  One of the pictures at the auction site shows the inscription.

“Nov. 1861  Lieut. H.R. Pierce From his Pupils of the Woonsocket High School. WITH LOVE.”
Photograph from the auction in March, 2012.

Surviving accounts say that before he left for war, Pierce camped out overnight in a cemetery and dug his own grave. Apparently, he made a little speech over it. I love this bit of gothic, but at the time it may have seemed to him like good sense and efficiency. One imagines he thought to save his wife the extra piece of anguish of having to choose a site in the event he didn’t return from war.

In early February there was a battle on Roanoke Island. Pierce’s 5th was in the area but not directly involved. From Roanoke Island, the men sailed up the Neuse River. And then there was New Bern.

“Plan of the Battle of Newberne.” Map by Robert Knox Sneden, 1832-1918. The original is at the Virginia Historical Society, P.O. Box 7311, Richmond, VA 23221-0311

There are many good accounts of the Battle of New Bern. My reading of several of them (listed below), with Henry Pierce and Frazar Stearns in mind, suggests that the two men were involved in the most important part of the battle, and that they fell within hours of each other, contesting for the same section of the battlefield. In this contest, the Union’s larger number of men ran up against a well-armed Confederate force that had been reinforcing the area for months. The layout of the battlefield limited Union tactics, but when the battle was underway it became apparent fairly early that the Confederates had left a gap – a hole in a wall– that led into a brickyard. This was their weak point. If the Union could pour in and take the gap, they could then drive back the enemy. It was a tricky strategy – bold and dangerous – and Lieutenant Colonel William S. Clark of the 21st Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (Class of 1848 and a chemistry professor at Amherst) took up the challenge.

William S. Clark commanded the 21st Regiment, in which Frazar Stearns served. Clark would have known Henry Pierce from their time together at Amherst College, when Clark was a young professor and Pierce a student.

Initially, the idea was that Clark would surge through the gap –with bayonets and unreliable rifled muskets (many had gotten wet in the previous night’s rain) charging into superior fire — whereupon he would be reinforced by General Reno’s other troops in the Second Brigade. Frazar Stearns was with Clark in the 21st, and it was in this first surge that Stearns fell, around 9:30 a.m., apparently just as the men began to head for the gap. One of his comrades is said to have stayed with him, while the rest of his regiment charged forward.

After a fierce fight, Clark took the brickyard, but he could not hold it. General Reno was too engaged elsewhere on the field to be able to reinforce him, and the fleeing Confederates looked back and realized it. They turned around and Clark was forced to retreat from the brickyard. Subsequently, around 11:00, Clark spoke with Colonel Rodman in General Parke’s Third Brigade, which included the regiments of the 4th and 5th Rhode Island Volunteers. Clark urged Colonel Rodman to take his regiments into the brickyard for a second try at it. It seems to have been at this time that Henry Pierce’s 5th Rhode Island moved in, following the 4th Rhode Island and another regiment from Connecticut.  Like Frazar Stearns, Pierce too fell quickly, shot through the heart within three minutes* of coming under fire. Perhaps he and Stearns were in the front ranks and took that first, deadliest fire. They seem to have died within an hour of each other – Stearns just before noon, two and a half hours after being shot, and Pierce during the second run at the enemy, sometime around 11:00 a.m. Pierce is said to have died immediately.

Both men were part of the victory that day: the assault on the brickyard was successful, as was the larger battle.  New Bern proved to be an important victory for the Union because of the large amount of arms and equipment captured, and because it compromised the enemy’s supply lines.

Pierce’s Company “D” bivouacked that night in a deserted Confederate camp they called “Camp Pierce” in his honor. He was the only officer of the 5th to die that day. His body was shipped back to Rhode Island, where he received a formal burial on April 29, 1862.  The Providence Evening Press had a detailed account of the funeral, which was copied in newspapers elsewhere.

Pierce’s widow, Ann Frances (Tillinghast) Pierce, survived him to 1879. His son, Richard Henry Pierce (Yale 1882), was one of the first men to receive an electrical engineering degree.  He went on to a distinguished, very modern-sounding career, including becoming the Chief Electrical Engineer at the World Columbian Exposition in 1893, and later formed the engineering firm of Pierce & Richardson.

In quiet Oak Hill Cemetery, where Henry Pierce had dug his own grave, his students paid him a final honor: they erected a tall monument, on one side of which they reaffirmed their attachment to him.

“Erected in the memory of their former teacher by the pupils of the Woonsocket High School.” Photograph by “Ryk” at www.findagrave.com

Henry Reuben Pierce’s monument in Oak Hill Cemetery. Photograph by “Ryk” at www.findagrave.com.

Inscription on Pierce’s monument. Photograph by “Ryk” at www.findagrave.com.

And so, if I may, here’s to Henry Reuben Pierce, member of the Class of 1853. From Amherst College. With love.

Ribbon from a class album page containing clippings about Pierce’s death.

Websites related to the Battle of New Bern (1862):

* http://archive.org/details/historyoffifthre01unit (see esp pgs 38-46)http://archive.org/details/ambroseburnside00woodrich
http://archive.org/stream/rhodeislandinreb00stone#page/n11/mode/2up 

http://archive.org/details/adjutantstearns00st

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_New_Bernhttp://newbernhistorical.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Battlefield_Walking_Tour_112312.pdf

http://www.charlotteartillery.org/index.html

http://ncmuseumofhistory.org/wgo/press_03062012.html

http://archive.org/details/memoirsofrhodeis00bart

http://books.google.com/books?id=CyEwAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA119&lpg=PA119&dq=%22An+important+truth+is+bound+up+in+the+expression%22+%22Lieut.+H.+R.+Pierce%22&source=bl&ots=EU9XcbSt31&sig=nUQ9HUQPHO2wuV4JHlpuIWVWSfY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xvo0UYf6MMPR0wHsz4HoBg&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22An%20important%20truth%20is%20bound%20up%20in%20the%20expression%22%20%22Lieut.%20H.%20R.%20Pierce%22&f=false

Please join the chair of the PIDB, Ambassador Nancy Soderberg, for a discussion about Secrecy and Security: The Future of Classification Reform.  Ambassador Soderberg will discuss the PIDB report and the Board’s future work at a forum hosted by the Brennan Center for Justice on Thursday, March 14, 2013 from 12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (1779 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036).  The panel will be moderated by Steven Aftergood, Director, Project on Government Secrecy, Federation of American Scientists.  Bob Litt, General Counsel, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, J. William Leonard, Former Director (2002-2007), Information Security Oversight Office and Elizabeth Goitein, Co-Director, Liberty and National Security Program, Brennan Center for Justice will also be panelists discussing the future of classification reform and the broader implications for our national security system.

Lunch will be served.  Space is limited.  Please see http://www.brennancenter.org/event/secrecy-and-security-future-classification-reform for more information and to reserve your seat.

We were very lucky to get a visit last Friday from some exceptional students. They’re part of the Fulbright Foreign Student Program, so they were from countries around the world. One component of their visit to the US is a volunteer session, so 14 of them showed up at PPL, ready to do some volunteer transcription. (Thanks to Justin Dunnavant for the photos.)

Our Nicholson Whaling Collection is well known as one of the best collections of whaling logbooks in the country. But the collection also includes quite a few other resources, including nearly 60 boxes of manuscript materials. (They’re described in a collection guide on our website.) So after getting a brief introduction to Special Collections, they set to work transcribing one small portion, the letters of Daniel D. Mowry.

Mowry went to sea as an 18-year-old, and it didn’t take long for him to regret the decision. We have letters from Mowry to his parents during the period from 1858 to 1861, at which point he abandoned ship in Auckland, New Zealand. He continued to write home from Auckland and Sydney, Australia for years.

The Fulbright student volunteers set out to transcribe the manuscripts and help fill out the story, and in just a few short hours they made quite a bit of progress.

Here’s a short sample (transcribed by Sylmina Alkaff), in which Mowry tells his parents that he’s abandoning the voyage:

Dear Father & Mother
You will no doubt be much surprised when you get this letter to hear that I am no longer in the Sea (Gull). I left the ship about four weeks previous to this date….
My dear Father and Mother I have done a thing which you will at first blame me for. But could you know all could you
but know what I have endured and what I have seen with my own eyes you would blame me not. Her thirty three months I staid in that ship and they were months of misery to me. I took no comfort of my life neither did any of the ships company.

It should be a great story when it’s all told. Within the next few months we’ll plan to have the images online with the transcriptions by the Fulbright students. Since they were working with limited time, many of the letters are not yet fully transcribed, so blog readers can have a chance to put some of the pieces of the story together as well by doing some voluntary, online transcription work of your own.

Thanks again, Fulbright students!

Beginning in 1947, Jewish and secular civic groups formed the Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons in a public campaign to liberalize U.S. immigration quotas, with the hope that many more Holocaust survivors would be permitted to settle in America.

With this goal in mind, radio programs were produced that addressed not only general public attitudes about immigration, but also, indirectly, postwar anti-Semitism. These programs were primarily aired over New York area radio stations, but were also disseminated to local radio stations throughout the United States. 

Three years after the end of World War II, there were still over a million refugees (Displaced Persons, or DPs) in Germany, Austria, and Italy.  Most of them resided in camps and assembly centers administered initially by the U.N. Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, and later by the International Refugee Organization in cooperation with the U.S. Army, and were unwilling to return to their countries of origin, where they still faced persecution or which were then under the dominion of the Soviets. Restrictive immigration quotas made only a few of them eligible for U.S. visas, and Jewish organizations felt that immigration laws particularly discriminated against Jews.

This half-hour program from about 1948, “The Arrival of Delayed Pilgrims,” produced by the Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons or one of its affiliate organizations, United Service for New Americans, is an example of the type of rhetoric DP advocates were prepared to use to create public pressure for the liberalization of immigration policy. “DP,” someone decided, could really stand for “delayed pilgrims” rather than “displaced persons.” This new label placed Jews and other foreigners languishing in refugee camps firmly in the context of American immigration history: on the same continuum with the Mayflower pilgrims, who — as advocates were quick to point out — were also refugees from oppression. This particular program combines two genres favored by DP radio programs: interviews with arriving immigrants as their ships dock in New York Harbor, in which they are sometimes coached to express patriotic sentiments (e.g., “America is a land of freedom for everyone”); and dramatizations, which were used to humanize an abstract political issue by making it easier for audiences to identify with individual DPs.

Here, the dramatizations also include a Senate debate about DP immigration policy.  An actor playing Florida Sen. Claude Pepper appeals to the humanitarian sentiments of his listeners by pointing out that sections of the proposed Wiley-Revercomb bill favoring the immigration of agricultural workers discriminate against “the most persecuted of the DPs,” the Jews. He goes on to ask if the bill’s purpose was to recruit farmers or to provide “sanctuary for a persecuted, a miserable, a wretched, a homeless people?” Another actor playing New Mexico Sen. Dennis Chavez affirms that taking in the DPs is in America’s best interests, arguing that  “America would not have been the America we have today if it had not been for the immigrants who poured across our borders and took upon their strong shoulders the work of building America.”

At the heart of the program is the story of “Mr. Lind,” a Holocaust survivor from Poland whose heartrending wartime experiences are dramatized in flashback as he is questioned by a U.S. immigration official. Over and over, it is stressed that Mr. Lind is a “big man,” in order to dispel public fears that all Holocaust survivors were sickly and would be incapable of supporting themselves. This particular program is notable in that it is open about the fact that Jewish DPs were considered to be specifically discriminated against by U.S. immigration policy.  Many other DP radio programs skirted this fact, eager not to emphasize the Jewishness of their characters at a time when polls indicated that anti-semitism was at an all-time high in the United States.

Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection.

Note: Some poor audio quality due to condition of original recording.

Today we’re taking a peek into the medically and scientifically obsolete. As home to many scientifically minded faculty and students throughout the nineteenth century, Amherst College acquired a significant collection of literature from now defunct practices.

MesmerismMesmerism and animal magnetism were based on the premise that the body contained a magnetic fluid flowing throughout it that could be influenced by the movement of magnets or the laying on of hands. This could produce an altered state with a wide range of possibilities for treating disease (including pain-free surgery, yikes!) Hypnotism as a practice and theory developed slightly later and is still in use in some contexts.

Clairvoyant Medicine, Homeopathy, and the Movement-cure

This charming book contains a full listing of treatments for every illness conceivable – all dictated by Mrs. Lucina Tuttle while in a clairvoyant state!

Homeopathy has been battling for legitimacy for a long time now.

The movement-cure, applicable to “every chronic disease”, entails the vigorous shaking, rubbing or kneading of the patient by a practitioner.

Galvanism or Medical Electricity

Medical electricity wins my prize for the most dubious of the “sciences” preserved in our collections. In the nineteenth century though, it made a certain amount of sense. People knew that the body used electricity and had discovered that electrical current applied to the body correctly caused movement, clearly indicating a powerful medical tool to the scientists of the day. As with many of the other theories, what was presented as a cure-all and applied indiscriminately in the nineteenth century still has application in modern medicine, but in much more defined situations and doses.

A better look at the Electrical Machine.

And from 1802, the “theory and practice of medical electricity; and demonstrated to be an infallible cure of fever, inflammation and many other diseases”.

Hydropathy or the Water-Cure

Illustration from The Domestic Practice of Hydropathy by Edward Johnson, 1856.

Hydropathy was a remarkably benign form of treatment, although it required a significant investment of time and energy. The patient was subject to series of baths, showers and rubdowns of varying temperatures and intensities, often many times a day. Water-cure practitioners claimed that their treatment could cure nearly everything, and water-cure establishments were wildly popular for quite a long time; they often functioned as upper class spas or retreats. The students and faculty of Amherst College would have had ready access to hydropathic treatment, as nearby Northampton and Florence had water-cure establishments as early as 1845.

Also charming (although so surprisingly reasonable in content as to be almost unsuitable for this post), is the Hydropathic Cookbook, containing the sort of healthful recipes that people who bathe multiple times a day might desire.

Compound Oxygen Treatment
This treatment, which consists of breathing a mixture oxygen and nitrogen, also can claim the saving grace of being relatively harmless. The course of treatment seems to have been devised and published on by on G. R. Starkey of Philadelphia, but not taken up by many others. Starkey’s full text on the method can be found on the Internet Archive.

In a similar vein, The Breath of Life, or mal-Respiration, and its effects upon the enjoyments & life of man, by George Catlin, 1864, sets out to cure all the ills of humanity by convincing everyone to breath through their noses. Catlin wades into the dubious waters of early anthropology, claiming that native peoples sleep with their mouths closed and by this virtue are healthy, attractive and have good teeth.

Phrenology/Physiognomy

New Physiognomy or, Signs of Character by Samuel R. Well, 1867.

Phrenology is where we really hit the pseudoscience motherlode. As explored in the post on President Hitchcock’s head examination, phrenology was the practice of deducing information about a person’s character and habits from their head shape and topography (physiognomy focuses on the face as the locus of information). While the individual application often proved a harmless enough diversion, the theory was used to codify social prejudice around race, gender and class.

Fowler and Wells Publishers

The Amherst archives’ large holdings of books on phrenology and water-cure are thanks largely to Orson Squire Fowler, class of 1834, who was a well known practicing phrenologist and one third of the publishing partnership of Fowler & Wells. Fowler & Wells published hundreds of books on phrenology, water-cure and other topics that would now be found in the “wellness” or “lifestyle” section of the book store. The Amherst College library holds some 90 of these titles.

From Zora in Florida, edited by Steve Glassman and Kathryn Lee Seidel. Florida Collection, PS3515 .U789 Z955 1991.

Zora Neale Hurston moved to St. Augustine at the beginning of World War II for a quiet place to write. While in St. Augustine, she taught part-time at the local black college, Florida Normal. She did not get along well with the administrators of the college after she became involved in a dispute between serviceman being trained at the signal corps school at the college and the college president. Zora sent a letter to Walter White, the executive secretary of the NAACP in November 1942, telling him she thought the soldiers were living in inadequate living quarters and blamed him for putting pressure on Florida Normal to allow the government  the use of the school when Fisk, Hampton, and Tuskegee had wanted the training at their schools. Zora did not see the argument settled because she left St. Augustine in early 1943 to move to Daytona Beach where she lived on a houseboat she had purchased.

I have had to go through a long, long, dark tunnel to come out to the light again. But I had the feeling all the time that you believed in me ~Zora Neale Hurston

From Crossing the Creek: The Literary Friendship of Zora Neale Hurston and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.

In 1942, while in St. Augustine, Zora became friends with Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, who lived part-time in St. Augustine, as her husband, Norton Baskin, owned the Castle Warden Hotel located there. Zora’s autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road and Marjorie’s Cross Creek were both published in 1942. Zora invited Marjorie to speak to her class, and in turn, Marjorie invited her to tea at the Castle Warden, a segregated hotel. When writing about Marjorie’s invitation to the hotel in Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography, Robert E. Hemenway says, “Later, realizing what she had done, she gave special orders to the elevator man to take Zora immediately up to the Rawlings residence on the fourth floor. But Zora had lived in the South for a long time; she went in through the kitchen and walked up the stairs. Safe in the apartment she was her usual vibrant self, causing Rawlings to admit to her husband that she had never in her life had such a stimulating visit”.

The 1940′s were a time of personal hardships for both women; they struggled with their writing and experienced health issues and had various other issues. They remained friends through the years, and Zora visited Marjorie’s home Cross Creek.

Our Florida Collection includes books written by them and about them, and we also have theses and dissertations written by Florida State University students on their lives and works.

And without my writing, I am nothing ~Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

In 1957, two years before his death, Frank Lloyd Wright sat down with WNYC to discuss his design philosophy, exhibiting his trademark eloquence and blistering opinions. The year of this interview marks an explosion of commissions for Wright, who by then had been practicing architecture for 70 years.

In 1957, two years before his death, Frank Lloyd Wright sat down with WNYC to discuss his design philosophy, exhibiting his trademark eloquence and blistering opinions. The year of this interview marks an explosion of commissions for Wright, who by then had been practicing architecture for 70 years.

Wright mainly designed homes until 1957-58, when he took on 90 new projects, many for public buildings. Over all, Wright’s last decade was his most prolific, accounting for nearly one-third of his oeuvre. This interview was recorded in his Plaza Hotel apartment where he’d moved two years earlier in order to oversee construction of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, on which he had been working for 14 years. Here, Wright neatly dismisses the project’s many critics, promising “…a new point of view…it’s going to be so enlivening and refreshing that it will make some of these painters quite ashamed of the protest that they issued against it.”

In this interview, Wright also expresses distaste for the nascent designs of Sydney Opera House, as well as the U.S. Air Force Academy structure, whose designers he lambasts as “Poetry Crushers with a capital P.” The Academy’s use of an advisory committee of architects prompts Wright to remark that “an architect is either an inspiration or…he’s merely a committee-mind…a liability.” 

Asked whether he’s acquainted with New York’s planned Lincoln Center complex, Wright remarks, “I think it wouldn’t do me any good to become acquainted with it. I suggest the other way around: they become…acquainted with the ones that I’m doing.”

Two notable influences on the young Wright were his itinerant childhood (his father was a traveling minister), and years spent on his uncle’s Wisconsin farm where he “learned…the region in every line and feature…the modeling of the hills, the weaving and fabric that clings to them, the look of it all in tender green or covered with snow or in full glow of summer.” His mother, a school teacher, enhanced his understanding of structure by giving him a set of newly invented blocks developed by revolutionary German educator Friedrich Fröbel whose theories laid the foundations for modern education.

Beyond architecture, Wright is also noted as a singularly influential and innovative urban planner, interior designer, architectural writer, and educator. He is noted for his often prescient, sometimes embattled philosophical and social views, a range well displayed in this broadcast, when in the middle of describing his new designs for homes with children’s playrooms, he can’t help but point out that “the American family should be three, not four…and above that, heavily taxed, more and more as they increase in number.” (Wright fathered seven children.)

Recognized by the American Institute of Architects as “the greatest American architect of all time,” Frank Lloyd Wright was born in Richland Center, Wis., and went on to design 1,141 structures — including houses, offices, churches, clinics, schools, libraries, bridges, and museums — 532 of which were built. Today, 409 are still standing, nearly one-third of them listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Wright died in 1959, six months before the Guggenheim opened.

Asked what architects could do to help build “a better society and civilization,” Wright slips into an uncharacteristically heartfelt tone, suggesting they “study nature, seriously, intelligently, and with feeling, and appreciation.” He also warns that if New York City doesn’t acquire more green space immediately, it will be “uninhabitable.”

At least four of Wright’s descendants became architects, one of whom, his son John Lloyd Wright, invented Lincoln Logs. Other descendants include an architecture professor, two interior designers, a master woodworker, and the actress Anne Baxter, who is Wright’s granddaughter.

Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection.

(Photo of Frank Lloyd Wright © Bettmann/CORBIS/Corbis Images)

A gap in the Scottish archival record has been filled with the transfer of the archives of Stirling District Asylum to the University of Stirling. Part of a larger transfer of historical records to the University Archives by NHS Forth Valley, the records of Stirling District Asylum (later known as Bellsdyke Hospital) provide a detailed account of the care and treatment of mental health patients in Central Scotland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This semester we have begun work on a project with a team of student volunteers (thanks Catherine, David, Ian and Jennifer!) to prepare these records for public consultation in our archives reading room.

The case books contain enclosures such as letters relating to the treatment of patients.

The project team will be working on a set of 50 volumes of case books which provide detailed records of the care and condition of patients in the hospital beginning in 1869. These volumes were working documents, regularly updated by medical staff. They include many enclosures relating to the treatment of patients – both medical records such as temperature charts and personal material such as correspondence. From the 1890s onwards the case books also include photographs of the patients which are pasted onto the pages of the volumes, a common practice also seen in contemporary case books from other Scottish asylums.

From the 1890s onwards photographs of patients were pasted into the pages of the volumes.

Basic cleaning of the volumes is being carried out, with dust and surface dirt being removed using conservation-quality natural hair brushes. The enclosures, many of which are secured to the pages of the volumes with metal clips and pins are being carefully removed to be stored alongside the volumes. Further cleaning of the pages of the volumes is then carried out where required using chemical sponges – conservation-quality cleaners which carefully remove the dust and grime which has accumulated over more than a century of use and storage.

Surface dust being removed from the pages of a case book with a brush.

Once cleaned and catalogued these volumes will be made available for use in our archives reading room. Academic researchers across a range of disciplines will find a wealth of social, historical and medical material in the records. Comparative studies with other Scottish Asylums will also be possible for the first time. The collection will also be of interest to family historians, opening up a new source of genealogical information.

We’re coming up on the one-year anniversary of an exciting discovery at Brown University of a rare Paul Revere engraving. (Here’s the NY Times article discussing the discovery.) This Wednesday at the Providence Athenaeum, you can hear all about the print and its discovery from the people who found it. Marie Malchody, Holly Snyder and Richard Noble will offer a lecture titled “‘Buried with Him by Baptism’: A Revere Print Unearthed” at 5:30 PM, and a copy of the engraving will be on display as well. More information is available here. This lecture is part of the John Russell Bartlett Society’s 2013 events series. Other JRBS events are listed online at the JRBS website.

Thanks to funding from the British Columbia History Digitization Program, we’ve completed a project to digitize 512 maps and plans in our holdings. Here are some highlights from the project. We’ve provided links to descriptions in our database so you can click through to the full-resolution versions of the maps if you’d like to examine them in detail. Here’s the link for the map below.

Panoramic view of the City of Vancouver, 1898. Detail from reference code AM1594-: MAP 547

The project makes these maps available to everyone quickly online, and makes them easy to re-use. It reduces damage to the oversized originals due to handling, as they no longer have to be retrieved from storage. Very light-sensitive materials, like blueprints, may be kept in the dark so they don’t fade.

Before the maps are scanned, we clean them as much as possible and then repair any tears that would make the map hard to understand or catch in the scanner. The maps need to be flattened to remove buckling or folds so that all the information can be captured.

1963 Zoning map in need of repair

We have a large-format scanner that will take objects up to 54 inches wide and 0.6 inches thick. Maps in good shape can be scanned on their own, but if they are especially delicate or have a bumpy surface they will have to be enclosed in an acetate sheet during the scan.

Map being scanned

Many of the maps that were created for City projects used standard base maps created by Engineering, and then added other information.

Here’s a 1978 base map of the entire city (and you can see it full-sized here).

City of Vancouver base map 1978. Reference Code AM1594-: MAP 1034

Here’s that 1978 base map revised to 1980 on which all park sites as of June 1980 have been coloured in green pencil (and the full-sized version).

City of Vancouver park sites, 1980. Reference code AM1594-: MAP 1032

Maps may contain information other than geographical. This 1938 Plan of School Buildings and Properties has a table of additional information about each school: the number of rooms, the street address and the type of school (elementary, junior high or high). (Full-sized version).

Plan of school buildings and properties (1938) for the use of the Board of School Trustees. Reference code AM1594-: MAP 1041

Some of our maps depict plans rather than reality. This shows a proposed canal between Port Moody and the Pitt River, as well as a canal and lock system on Burrard Inlet and a diversion of  Seymour Creek. (Full-sized version).

Sketch of proposed interurban canal and harbour development for Greater Vancouver, B.C. Reference code AM1594-: MAP 11

Here’s a detail from the sketch above showing the Burrard Inlet locks.

Detail from Reference code AM1594-: MAP 11

Our first City Archivist, Major Matthews, created maps based on his knowledge of Vancouver’s history. (Full version).

It might have been Albert City, 1858, New Georgia 1792 : it was Granville, 1870, British Columbia, 1871 : it is Vancouver, 1886, British Columbia, 1871 : it is Vancouver, 1886, Canada, 1867, Reference code AM1594-: MAP 109

This one was drawn on linen and you can see the weave if you zoom in. You can see how hard it can be to erase information on a linen map without leaving a trace. It’s obvious where the name “Strathcona Place” used to be.

DETAIL from Reference code AM1594-: MAP 109

We also have some nautical charts. Here’s one from 1891 that shows lighthouses (in red), the depth of the water, what’s under the water (mud, shells, rock, etc), and other useful navigational aids. (Full version).

Burrard Inlet, 1891. Detail from reference code AM1594-: MAP 50

Here’s a detailed look at the land on which people were living in Stanley Park near Brockton Point in 1934. (Full version).

Plan showing lands occupied in Stanley Park near Brockton Point, City of Vancouver B.C., April 14, 1934. Detail from reference code AM1594-: MAP 6

This tourist guide from 1898 helped the traveler by showing transportation (ship, rail, electric tram) and services (customs, post office, hospital, churches, Hotel Vancouver, Molson Bank) rather than attractions. (Full version).

Tourist guide map of Vancouver City and Park. Detail from reference code AM1594-: MAP 35

We even have maps that are so old that Vancouver does not appear. This 1787 map, despite being from the “latest and best authorities”, has a big gap where most of British Columbia should be. (Full version).

North America : drawn from the latest and best authorities, 1787. Detail from reference code AM1594-: MAP 290

Have a project that uses one of these maps? Let us know! We love to hear how our holdings are being used.

This digitization project was made possible by funding from the British Columbia History Digitization Program at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, University of British Columbia.