Rediscovering an American Community of Color in Worcester

Martha (Patsy) Perkins, 1901

Loretta reports:

A little over a hundred years ago, a white photographer took hundreds of pictures of people in central Massachusetts. Among these were more than 230 portraits of people of color who lived within easy walking distance of my home. I had no idea this community existed until I went to see Rediscovering an American Community of Color: The Photographs of William Bullard at the Worcester Art Museum.

There are several amazing things about this exhibition. First, the glass negatives survived for over a century and ended in the hands of a collector who was also a devoted Worcester historian.* Second, the photographer’s logbook also survived, and stayed with the photographs. Third, thanks to his granddaughter’s making the connection between tiny numbers on the negatives and the logbook, it became possible to identify the people in the photographs. Thus, the Clark University students who researched the photographs were able to contact many of their subjects’ descendants. Also, during my third visit to the exhibition (yes, it’s that good, that moving), I got to meet one of those descendants.

The Beaver Brook neighborhood became a new home when the Ku Klux Klan and white backlash, combined with a national depression and the end of Reconstruction, destroyed the lives that former slaves had been making for themselves in the South. They came north, and some came to Worcester, “a city with a deep abolitionist tradition and influential white residents sympathetic to their plight.”**

Thomas A. and Margaret Dillon Family, about 1904

Since it’s impossible to do the show justice in a blog post, I offer links.

The Worcester Art Museum page on the Bullard exhibition includes several reviews well worth reading as well as a short YouTube video.

This exhibition runs until 25 February—only a few more weeks. However, thanks to Clark University’s collaboration with the museum, we can see many of the images at the website, Rediscovering an American Community of Color: The Photographs of William Bullard, 1897-1917.

There you’ll find not only a gallery of the photos, but also a page about the collection and the photographer, a map of the neighborhood in 1911, essays connected to the images, and a chance to add information and/or comment on individual photos.

I also highly recommend the beautiful exhibition catalog.

*Frank J. Morrill, a retired history teacher and collector, and definitely and delightfully a Nerdy History Person.
**quote from exhibition catalog.

Images: William Bullard, Martha (Patsy) Perkins, 1901  and Thomas A. and Margaret Dillon Family, about 1904, courtesy of Frank Morrill, Clark University and Worcester Art Museum.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Friday Video: Maj. Sullivan Ballou's Final Letter to His Wife, 1861

Susan reporting,

It's hard to believe that Ken Burns's monumental documentary, "The Civil War", is now nearly thirty years old. Debuting in 1990, it captured the tragedy of the American Civil War with words, music, and images that many of us still haven't forgotten.

This is one of the most memorable segments: the final letter that Major Sullivan Ballou wrote home to his wife Sarah. Ballou served with the 2nd Rhode Island Infantry, and like many of the war's soldiers on both sides, he'd left behind not only a wife and sons, but also a prospering career. He had been a respected lawyer and was House Speaker in the Rhode Island legislature when he enlisted to defend his country and his beliefs. This letter was never mailed, but was found in his belongings after he died from injuries after the First Battle of Bull Run in July, 1861. Ballou was 32 at the time of his death; Sarah was only 24, and never remarried. His words to her are eloquent and achingly beautiful, and so full of love that it hurts.

This weekend we mark Memorial Day in the United States. I hope that, in the middle of the picnics, sales, and pool openings for the holiday weekend, you'll pause for a moment and think of Major Ballou and all the other soldiers, from every war, who have made such sacrifices for us. More than ever, it's a message we need to remember, especially in an era where the world seems more unsure by the day.

If you received this post via email, you may be seeing a black box or empty space where the video should be. Please click here to view the video.

Memorial Day Poem: The Volunteer

View at source here

Loretta reports:

Many U.S. holidays have become associated with long weekends, sales, and parties.  This is not necessarily a bad thing—in the case of Memorial Day, for instance. Men and women died fighting to keep the USA going.  As well as remembering the dead, we’re celebrating what they fought for, and the commercialism is part of who we are, warts & all.

However, the holiday commenced, originally not as an excuse for sales or barbecues or the date after which white shoes may be donned.  It started out as Decoration Day, a day of remembrance for the Civil War dead.

In 1920, when this poem was published, the Civil War was vividly within people’s direct experience as well as their memories.  The poetry in the book is of its time, and bound to be sentimental and sad, not so appealing to the ironic 21st century sensibility.

Read at source here

But our blog’s about offering insights into social history, and poetic recitations were still part of everyday life in the early 20th century.

This one’s more restrained than the average, and all the more moving, perhaps, for that reason.

Read at source here

You can read our other posts about Memorial Day here, here, here, here, and here.









The poems are from  
Holiday selections for readings and recitations, compiled by Sara Sigourney Rice, 1920

Return Engagement: The Sad Civil War Story of Jenny Wade, 1863

Isabella reporting,

This blog was suggested by a schoolmate of my daughter's, a girl who saw the little leather purse, left, and thought the story behind it might make a good TNHG post.  She's right – and what intrigued me the most is that she's just about the same age as the young woman who originally owned that purse.

Born in Gettysburg, PA, Jenny Wade (1843-1863), below, was a seamstress employed by her mother. A fervent Union supporter, she was likely engaged to marry Johnston Hastings "Jack" Skelly, a corporal in the 87th Pennsylvania. In one of those terrible coincidences of history, Jenny, her mother, and her younger siblings left their home on the first of July, 1863, for the house of her sister, Georgia McClellan, which they believed to be in a safer location in the center of town. The war had suddenly become inescapable, with nearly 160,000 Confederate and Unions soldiers converging on their small Pennsylvania town. As the battle raged nearby, Jennie and her sister made loaves of bread, running out to the street to give them to the Union troops marching past on their way to join the fighting.

With gunfire ringing throughout their neighborhood (more than 150 bullets have been found in the walls of the McClellan house), the women struggled to keep life as normal as possible. Early on the warm Friday morning of July 3, Jennie was standing in her sister's kitchen, kneading dough for more bread. The small leather purse, above, was in her pocket while she worked.

As she bent over the dough, a Confederate sharpshooter's bullet entered the kitchen and struck Jennie. The ball pierced her left shoulder and passed through her heart, finally burying itself against the bones of her corset. Jennie died instantly. Her body was discovered by Union soldiers, and she was buried in the back yard of the house. Legend says that her grief-stricken mother went on to finish the bread that Jennie had been kneading, giving the loaves to Union soldiers along with the story of her daughter's death.

When the horrific Battle of Gettysburg was finally over, the casualties on both sides were estimated at between 46,000 and 51,000 soldiers – the highest number for any Civil War battle. Yet only one civilian was killed: Jennie Wade. Within a week, her sweetheart, Jack Skelly, was also dead, perishing from wounds received at the Battle of Winchester. Looking at that remarkably ordinary little leather purse, it's hard not to think of Jennie and Jack, and all the hopes and dreams that must have ended for so many young couples in that hot July of 1863.

Above: Jennie Wade purse, Christian C. Sanderson Museum, Chadd's Ford, PA
Below: Jennie Wade, detail, Wade Family daguerreotype
Many thanks to Hannah Boettcher for suggesting this post! 

Independence Day 1894

Independence Day of the Future

Loretta reports:

Independence Day, more usually known these days as the Fourth of July, has often been an occasion in this country for passing significant legislation or calling attention to inequalities.

According to the Library of Congress website:

"In 1859, the Banneker Institute of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, urged African Americans to celebrate Independence Day while bearing witness to the inconsistencies between the ideals espoused in the Declaration of Independence and the practice of slavery."

You can read more about that here.


Unlike many Puck illustrations, whose historical/political references don't ring bells with modern readers, this 1894 Independence Day print is pretty easy to read.  When you don't know the specific political context or recognize the names, it's impossible to get the joke.  But this one, like the Valentine's Day illustration I posted on my own blog, doesn't require historical scholarship.  I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions about what provoked it and what it says about attitudes of the time and whether or not we've come a long way since then.

Illustration courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.

Appomattox and Beyond

Loretta reports:

On this day in 1865, at Appomattox Court House, General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant, general-in-chief of all United States forces.  The surrender didn’t end the Civil War.  It took several more months, and the death of President Lincoln, before the fighting ended completely, after 600,000 men had been killed.

A Virginia Girl in the Civil War, 1861-1865 is told from the point of view of a wife of a Confederate soldier, but this excerpt, which I found initially via the Library of Congress, struck me as particularly poignant.  And universal.

The author has been waiting for several days, with increasing panic, for her husband to return from the war.

~~~

Do you know how it is to feel in your sleep that some one is looking at you? This is the sort of sensation that aroused me the next morning, and I opened my eyes in the early dawn to find my husband standing by the bed with clasped hands looking down at me.

Ah, we were happy—we were happy! Ragged, defeated, broken, we but had each other and that was enough.
...We are prosperous now, our heads are nearly white; little grandchildren cluster about us and listen with interest to grandpapa's and grandmamma's tales of the days when they "fought and bled and died together." They can't understand how such nice people as the Yankees and ourselves ever could have fought each other. "It doesn't seem reasonable," says Nellie the third, who is engaged to a gentleman from Boston, where we sent her to cultivate her musical talents, but where she applied herself to other matters, 'it doesn't seem reasonable, grandmamma, when you could just as easily have settled it all comfortably without any fighting. How glad I am I wasn't living then! How thankful I am that 'Old Glory' floats alike over North and South, now!'

And so am I, my darling, so am I!

~~~

—A Virginia Girl in the Civil War, 1861-1865: Being a Record of the Actual Experiences of the Wife of a Confederate Officer.

Photographs courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.

Above:  Unidentified young soldier in Union uniform with musket, bayonet, and knapsack.

Below: Unidentified soldier in Confederate uniform

A Civil War Submarine Mystery

Loretta reports:

During a very short visit to Charleston, SC, I happened upon this interesting object.  As the sign makes clear, this isn’t an accurate image of the famous Civil War submarine—famous, that is to lots of people who aren’t me.  I had never heard of the H.L. Hunley—the Civil War is not my favorite historical era—but Nerdy History Girl took over, and I commenced sleuthing.

In February 1864, the Hunley sank a Union ship, the USS Housatonic.  This, the first successful submarine attack, turned out not to be a major turning point in the war:  The Hunley sank, too, shortly thereafter, losing all eight of its men, while the Union ship lost only five of its entire crew.  Still this was definitely a major development in naval warfare.

Along with being amazed that eight men could fit into this thing and turn cranks to make it go, I was particularly interested, as a Nerdy History Girl, in the difference between what the Hunley was believed to look like, as of info available in 1967, and what it did look like, once it was recovered and uncovered.

The reconstruction outside the Charleston Museum is a good example of how tricky it can be to recreate the past and how slippery facts can be.  The Hunley was raised in 2000 after an extensive search, and it’s only very recently that scientists seem to have pinned down what happened to it, though they’ve still some details to work out.

Women's History in a Strand of Silk

Isabella/Susan reporting:

Earlier this year, I wrote this post about 19th c schoolgirl needlework that had recently appeared in an exhibition at Winterthur Museum. One of our wise readers (and we do love our wise readers!) wrote to say that while she had enjoyed the post, Winterthur's exhibition wasn't telling the whole story by featuring pieces almost entirely from the northern American states. Where were the samplers and other fancy stitchery done by the girls of the South?

She was right, too. Many histories of 19th c American needlework emphasis the schools and handiwork of girls in the big northern cities of Boston, New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. Very few feature the handiwork of southern girls. Some historians go so far as to claim that needlework simply wasn't important to these girls and women, or that the reason for so comparatively few surviving pieces in auctions and museums was because the humid climate destroyed them, or even that they were used for bandages in the Civil War.

None of those "explanations" is true. The reality is much less dramatic: few examples turn up for sale because Southern families tend to hang on to their heirlooms. Great-great-grandmother's prized sampler was simply too cherished to sell or be left behind, and their small size made them easy even for a family displaced by the Civil War to carry with them.

One group is working hard to change these perceptions. The Tennessee Sampler Survey is not only tracking down and documenting samplers and other needlework with Tennessee ties, but also creating an on-line resource exhibition of the pieces. The website is invaluable for collectors and historians, and inspiring to modern needleworkers. More importantly, it also gives names and voices to the hundreds of girls and women who worked these beautiful pieces, and the long-gone schools and academies they attended.

Women's history is seldom written as boldly as that of men. Sometimes it isn't written with ink and paper at all, but with a strand of silk thread on linen.

Above: Sampler worked by Frances (Fanny) Matilda Batey (1842-1926.) Completed 1862, at Franklin College, Nashville, TN. Silk & wool on linen.
Many thanks to Janet Hasson, director & genealogist of the Tennessee Sampler Survey, for her assistance with this post. 

Friday Video: Bugler's Cry: A History of Taps

After some inexplicable glitch at YouTube last night, we're finally able to post this wonderful Friday Video to continue our observation of Memorial Day. The bugle call known as Taps is 150 years old this year, and from the first notes it's both instantly recognizable and hauntingly evocative – and especially appropriate for this weekend.

Location, Location, Location - Especially for Two Historic Virginia Houses

Susan reporting:

My internet connection has returned to life, but Loretta's remains buried beneath snow and fallen trees. I'll be carrying on in her stead until she digs out - we hope sooner rather than later!

"Location, location, location" is the mantra of every real estate agent when it comes to judging the value of a property. Historic houses are no different, with fate and fortune playing their part, too.

This house, above left, sits forlornly in Port Royal, VA, and is known as the Brockenbrough-Peyton House. Today Port Royal is little more than a tiny, sleepy village (I've written about it before here), but when it was founded in the 17th c, its location on the banks of the Rappahannock River made it an important center for the export of tobacco to England. Port Royal's taverns, warehouses, and churches, an academy and a Masonic Lodge were thriving when this house was built around 1760. The earliest known owner was Champe Brokenbrough, who passed the house to his daughter, a Mrs. Peyton. At the time of the Civil War, the house was shared by her children: her son, Randolph Peyton, and his two unmarried sisters, Sarah Jane and Lucy.

None of this would be remembered now – except that Sarah Jane and Lucy were alone in the house on April 25, 1865. John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, was struggling to escape with several accomplices to the South through Maryland, and the party begged Sarah Jane for shelter.  Not realizing who they were, she briefly let them inside the house to rest. Soon, however, the impropriety of having strange men under her roof while her brother was away made Sarah Jane have second thoughts, and she sent the men on to the Garrett Farm (where they were eventually captured, and Booth killed.)

But despite so much history, the Brockenbrough-Peyton House has suffered greatly. Not only have the lands and gardens that must have once surrounded it vanished, but in the mid-20th c, the house's elegant interior was gutted and the woodwork sold (it's now in the Nelson-Atkins Art Gallery in Kansas City, MO.) Today it sits with boarded windows and blue building tarp tied to its back, bravely waiting for the huge amount of money necessary to restore it.

I can't help but think of another house that has fared much more happily. Belonging to distant cousin (and similarly named) Peyton Randolph, the house, right, was built at nearly the same time in the 18th c and in a similar style, and was also funded by tobacco-money. But the Peyton Randolph House was built in Williamsburg, where it became part of Colonial Williamsburg with its future secured by Rockefeller money, while less than a hudred miles away, the Brockenbrough-Peyton House languishes in Port Royal.

Location, location, location....

Left: Brockenbrough-Peyton House, Port Royal, VA
Right: Peyton Randolph House, Williamsburg, Va. Photo courtesy of Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

The Sad Civil War Story of Jennie Wade, 1863

Susan reporting:

This blog was suggested by a schoolmate of my daughter's, a girl who saw the little leather purse, left, and thought the story behind it might make a good TNHG post.  She's right – and what intrigued me the most is that she's just about the same age as the young woman who originally owned that purse.

Born in Gettysburg, PA, Jenny Wade (1843-1863), below, was a seamstress employed by her mother. A fervent Union supporter, she was likely engaged to marry Johnston Hastings "Jack" Skelly, a corporal in the 87th Pennsylvania. In one of those terrible coincidences of history, Jenny, her mother, and her younger siblings left their home on the first of July, 1863, for the house of her sister, Georgia McClellan, which they believed to be in a safer location in the center of town. The war had suddenly become inescapable, with nearly 160,000 Confederate and Unions soldiers converging on their small Pennsylvania town. As the battle raged nearby, Jennie and her sister made loaves of bread, running out to the street to give them to the Union troops marching past on their way to join the fighting.

With gunfire ringing throughout their neighborhood (more than 150 bullets have been found in the walls of the McClellan house), the women struggled to keep life as normal as possible. Early on the warm Friday morning of July 3, Jennie was standing in her sister's kitchen, kneading dough for more bread. The small leather purse, above, was in her pocket while she worked.

As she bent over the dough, a Confederate sharpshooter's bullet entered the kitchen and struck Jennie. The ball pierced her left shoulder and passed through her heart, finally burying itself against the bones of her corset. Jennie died instantly. Her body was discovered by Union soldiers, and she was buried in the back yard of the house. Legend says that her grief-stricken mother went on to finish the bread that Jennie had been kneading, giving the loaves to Union soldiers along with the story of her daughter's death.

When the horrific Battle of Gettysburg was finally over, the casualties on both sides were estimated at between 46,000 and 51,000 soldiers – the highest number for any Civil War battle. Yet only one civilian was killed: Jennie Wade. Within a week, her sweetheart, Jack Skelly, was also dead, perishing from wounds received at the Battle of Winchester. Looking at that remarkably ordinary little leather purse, it's hard not to think of Jennie and Jack, and all the hopes and dreams that must have ended for so many young couples in that hot July of 1863.

Above: Jennie Wade purse, Christian C. Sanderson Museum, Chadd's Ford, PA
Below: Jennie Wade, detail, Wade Family daguerreotype
Many thanks to Hannah Boettcher for suggesting this post!