O Say Can You See?

Finding music in unexpected places

An experimental telegraph, a unique device used to spread seeds, an object named the "Greffuhle,” a list of all the places where one man traveled while serving in the Civil War—what do all these objects from the museum's collections have in common?

One would never guess it but in fact each of these items are, or are made out of, violins. In 1875 Elisha Gray was granted a patent for an "Electric Telegraph for Transmitting Musical Tones." One of his telegraph models, part of the Electricity Collection of the museum’s Division of Work and Industry, used a novel approach. A violin was used as a resonator which produced the musical tones transmitted through the telegraph wire. Another item, the unique nineteenth century seeder in the Division of Work and Industry’s Agriculture Collection, actually uses a fiddle bow to spread seeds from a spinning disk.

 
(Left) Elisha Gray, inventor of the Electric Telegraph for Transmitting Musical Tones.(Right) Named for the French nobleman who once owned it, the “Greffuhle” is a rare decorated Stradivarius violin.

There is a violin in the collections used for another purpose: as a war diary. Solomon Conn, a Civil War soldier with Company B of the 87th Indiana Volunteers, recorded a list of his travels and battles on the back of his "Greffuhle” violin, turning the instrument into a unique document of his adventures and military record.

Civil War soldier Solomon Conn of Company B of the 87th Indiana Volunteers used his violin as a record of his travels and battles.

As I quickly realized during my summer internship at the museum, music is a topic which connects with a far broader range of collections than one might expect. My job was to find and catalog all the instances where music is represented in the museum’s artifacts. My sponsor? One member of a brand new and growing Smithsonian community called "Music at the Smithsonian” which is committed to serving as a hub for Smithsonian Institution musical research, exhibitions, education, outreach, and public engagement.

As an initial step of learning about some of the Smithsonian’s musical resources which could inspire such research or programming, I spent my internship discovering music-related objects from all areas of the museum’s collections. I found myself on a journey of discovering how these objects create a deep and nuanced picture of the role of music in American life and of music’s intersection with numerous topics and academic disciplines.

Editor’s note: This is part one of a series. Check out part two for more exciting music discoveries.

Alexis VanZalen is an intern with the Division of Culture and the Arts at the National Museum of American History. 

General Grant’s sword takes the cake

As a member of the Military History Collections Project team, I research the official collection records of the museum for information about the objects being inventoried by my colleagues.

Sounds a little boring, doesn’t it? Sure, some of the accession files that I process simply hold the standard paperwork that contain dry but important legal details,  such as the date on which the museum received the objects. More often, however, the files reveal vivid stories that bring to life the objects and the people who use them, like unusual military uniforms. However, of all the intriguing tales that I have encountered, this one takes the cake.

On March 6, 1962, Ulysses S. Grant III wrote the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution begging for a rather strange loan agreement. His sister and the first grandchild of President Ulysses S. Grant (who was born in the Executive Mansion during his presidency and later married into Russian nobility), Princess Julia Grant Cantacuzene, desired to help throw a most festive tenth anniversary party for the Republican Women’s Conference. In order to cut the eight-foot tall birthday cake, the ladies required an equally impressive carving piece. That utensil just so happened to reside in the Division of Military History in the form of one of General Grant’s swords.

Inscribed “PRESENTED / BY / G.W. Graham. C.B. Lagow. / C.C. Marsh & John Cook. / 1861," this sword and scabbard were given to General Grant in March 1862. Colonel C. C. Marsh remarked that “they were ordered long since, and before a glorious victory…but they have fortunately been delayed…” because it now “affords us an opportunity to express our renewed confidence in your ability as a commander.”

While this arrangement is far from acceptable by today’s standards, museum practices were a little different in the 1960s. In fact, David Miller—our Associate Curator who specializes in firearms and weapons—affirms that the loaning of swords for cake cutting wasn’t all that bizarre. For many years, the Smithsonian Institution cared for Presley O’Bannon’s sword under a loan from the U.S. Marine Corps. “It was routinely sent out to cut the cake at the annual USMC Birthday Ball,” explained Miller. As to its current whereabouts: “That sword is now at the National Museum of the Marine Corps and they don’t use it to cut cake anymore.”

A close up of the hilt. The sword was presented  to the Smithsonian in 1886 by Julia Dent Grant and William H. Vanderbilt.

The Smithsonian Institution replied that it would be happy to loan a sword, provided that the sword be delivered directly to a member of the Grant family rather than the organization because of its historical value. Curator Edgar Howell even recommended a specific sword out of the four Grant swords in the museum’s collections because of “its direct connection with one of Grant’s early victories” and, more importantly, “its clean cut lines.”

This sword is referred to as the “Donelson Sword” in the accession file because it was presented to General Grant in 1862 following the Union victory at Fort Donelson. It was given to the Smithsonian in 1886 by Julia Dent Grant and William H. Vanderbilt along with about 225 other objects related to the military and political careers of Ulysses S. Grant.

This document from the accession file illustrates the agreement made by the Smithsonian Institution to release the sword to Edgar Howell on April 15, 1962 for its secure delivery to Julia Grant Cantacuzene.

The anniversary party for the Republican Women’s Conference—which had been gathering female leaders from across the United States for spring meetings since 1953—received much anticipation. A Washington Post article titled “Gen. Grant Sword To Cut GOP Cake” described the gigantic confection as a four-tiered cake composed of three “dummy” layers of plywood topped off with an eighteen-inch tall edible cake layer. The entire creation would “be covered with sugar frosting and garlanded with edible sugar trimmings in flag red and blue-on-white background.”

On the evening of Sunday, April 15, 1962, Edgar Howell personally escorted General Grant’s sword to Julia Grant Cantacuzene in the Continental Room of the Statler Hilton in Washington, D.C. Princess Cantacuzene then passed the cake cutter to some of the female leaders of the Republican Party. From their specially constructed “cake walk” platform, they ceremoniously sliced the “elephant-sized cake.” Howell carefully returned the sword to the museum that night. Later that week, Cantacuzene wrote a warm letter of thanks to the Secretary of the Smithsonian, stating that “without the loan of the sword much of the interest and romance would have been lacking in the celebration.”

Today, you can find this sword in the National Museum of American History’s “Communities in a Changing Nation” exhibition. The icing remnants may be long gone, but it’s still serving up some great stories.

Lauren Jaeger is a Collections Documentation Contractor in Collections Documentation Services with the Military History Collections Project at the National Museum of American History.

 

Research raises questions about Civil War printing blocks

During the 1970s the museum purchased a small collection of printing blocks purported to have been used to produce Civil War issues of Harper’s Weekly. I’ve been interested to research the history of the blocks for some time, and have hoped to find the images in print in order to catalog them properly and identify their subjects, titles, and artists (both original and graphic, such as the engraver). As the full run of Harper’s Weekly is now digitized and online I, with the help of more than one intern, was able to determine that none of the blocks in this collection were published in Harper’s Weekly.

So where did these printing blocks come from? Through more research, I did discover several of the printed images in a two-volume, post-War, 1885 publication, The Pictorial Battles of the Civil War…. by Benjamin La Bree. The title page of Volume II records that the La Bree’s volumes are “illustrated by upwards of 1000 engravings made during the War from sketches by artists….” The publisher of the 1885 volumes was The Sherman Publishing Company of New York, which could have retrieved the blocks from some local repository. New York City’s Lower Manhattan was a hub of wood engraving establishments during this period, with potential stockpiles of used engraved blocks.

The 1885 printed title for the above chalk-filled engraved woodblock was “Refugee Negros Encamped Near Bergen Point, N.J. During the Riot in New York” The image was reproduced on page 232 of The Pictorial Battles of the Civil War, Vol. II, Sherman Publishing Co., New York, 1885.

This chalk-filled engraved woodblock was title “Camp of the First District Negro Volunteers on Mason’s Island, Opposite Georgetown, D.C.” The image was reproduced on page 187 of The Pictorial Battles of the Civil War, Vol. II, Sherman Publishing Co., New York, 1885.

Beginning in the mid-19th century, imagery began to be a much used addition to the printed word. Earlier use of imagery was generally limited to a small number of simple line drawings used in books, or for newspaper headlines, almanac covers, and the like. The Civil War must certainly have been an incentive to journalistic efforts to produce as many images as possible, if for no other reason than to answer readers’ demands for more information about the events of the war and the activities which may have affected their loved ones.

Wood engravers were copyists and elaborators of imagery prepared in the field by illustrators and photographers who were sent out by newspapers and publishing houses to record the events of the war. The published paper engravings are often all that remain of the work of the original illustrators, photographers, and engravers.

By 1870, publishing establishments like Harper & Brothers, and their rival, Frank Leslie, are said to have together “employed approximately one hundred of the four hundred or so engravers in the country . . . In 1869, Harper and Brothers employed steadily thirty-five engravers, and the house of Frank Leslie an average of sixty.”* During the war, each issue of Harper’s Weekly, only one of the company’s many products, used about 40 engravings, some filling a full spread, others filling one page and many sharing a page with some ten others. Each full spread engraving could require a full day’s work by several individuals who prepared, at least for the Harper’s establishment, some of the finest wood engravings of the time.

What happened to all of those blocks? Traditionally, engraved blocks were kept for reprinted editions by either the publisher or the client, or thrown away. Why were our printing blocks kept, and by whom? It appears the imagery was considered important enough in the 1880s for The Sherman Publishing Company to reproduce in their set of large coffee table volumes. Perhaps the publication was a response to the slew of other pictorial Civil War volumes produced by other companies during this period. In any case, the republishing of the engravings seems to have been an impressive undertaking.

Three of the finer engraved wood blocks in our collection are reproduced here. Two of them were reproduced in the 1885 publication and we at least know their titles. The third, of the building marked “Howard House,” does not appear in the 1885 publication and does not quite fit other illustrations imaging what might be the Howard House in Elkton, Maryland, or the Howard House in Ellicott City, Maryland.

This chalk-filled engraved woodblock of the Civil War period may depict the (riots at) Howard House (in Ellicott City, Maryland). The location for a print of this block has yet to be discovered.

As for the original publisher of the engraved images, the research goes on. Logical next steps include researching other weekly or monthly illustrated newspapers of the period like Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. An eye to the style of engraving and a modicum of patience should produce some results!

• “Notes on Some Wood Engravers of North American Insects” by Harry B. Weiss and Grace M. Ziegler for Journal of the New York Entomological Society, Vol. 36, No. 4, December 1928.

Joan Boudreau is Curator, Division of Culture and the Arts at the National Museum of American History.

 

Civil War portraits: Where personal and public meet (VIDEO)

We are just at the beginning of several years of marking the 150th anniversary of the Civil War; and we’ve still got a long way to go. As it turns out, there really is a lot to say about how photographs shaped the public’s knowledge and experience of the war. We can also reverse that and look at how people shaped photographs to leave a legacy of how they personally experienced and understood the war.

Boston-area photographer George K. Warren assembled cartes de visites that he and others made into an album. Close examination of the sitters begins to suggest what his political leanings might have been.

This summer, the museum started a collaboration with film-making students from American University’s School of Communication. My intern and I developed a plan for a series of short videos about Civil War-era images from the Photographic History Collection. Our first video is about cartes de visite albums.

You can also find a video about a mystery pair of glasses and the Time Trial of John Brown, also created by AU students.

This album page shows a variety of portrait posing styles. The compiler of this album added Civil War related portraits as a matter of course, suggesting the Civil War was just another of her life’s events.

While the photographs of battlefields are absolutely compelling, I’m really interested in the ways in which personal relationships with photography during a national crisis help us understand the nuances of past individual experiences. By drilling down to the personal, the complexities of the political, social and cultural life are revealed and create a richer history. For me, it all started with a 1860s yearbook from Rutgers. But that’s another story.

Shannon Perich is Associate Curator for the Photographic History Collection at the National Museum of American History.

How should John Brown be remembered?

An  actor portrays abolitionist John Brown

This summer, the National Museum of American History’s History Alive! Theater program brought visitors the Time Trial of John Brown. A controversial character in American history, John Brown was a radical abolitionist in the mid-19th century. Brown advocated violence to combat slavery and led armed insurrections that would lead to his execution.

This is the second show in the Time Trials series, which invites visitors to serve as jurors in a short hearing for a historical person. In the Time Trial of John Brown, audience members deliberate on John Brown’s contested legacy and decide how he should be remembered in American history.

Check out the video below to get a sense of the process behind the show and why we’re so interested in getting people talking about history.

How do you think John Brown should be remembered?

Susan Evans is Daily Programs and Theater Coordinator and Julia Imbriaco is Floor Manager at the National Museum of American History.