I was at the New York Public Library today working on a few projects. One of my objectives was to do some preliminary research for a book I may try to pitch. I won’t go too much into the details just yet because it is very much in the nascent stages. For now I will say that I have found a Civil War-related topic that I feel has been under-explored and that fits into several aspects of the war that I find intriguing. We’ll see where it goes. Another reason I went to 42nd Street was to do some research for an encyclopedia article I am writing. Actually, to say I have been writing is a little premature. For about two weeks I have been researching the Miami Hurricane of 1926. The research has now reached that point of procrastination where you know the subject well and realize you have enough material to cover the assignment, but don’t quite yet have the gumption to sit down and crank it out. In this case it is about 1,250 words, or five type-written pages. With the deadline still about five weeks away I figured it was too nice to stay in the house. So, off to the library I went to do my literature review for the possible book and to look at a few final sources for the encyclopedia article.

I had made an appointment in the Rare Books in advance to look at a few items. One of them, which I had found in the NYPL catalog a few days earlier, was a book of letters written by a couple to a loved one in the immediate aftermath of the storm. When the librarian brought it to my table it turned out, to my surprise, to be a miniature. If you have never seen one before here is an example

Miniature book like the one I saw today

Right away I realized that the book would probably not be helpful for my research. I have always loved artist books, though, and this one was especially beautiful. The book contained selections from a few letters and was typeset by hand over three decades after the natural disaster. One could read the entire thing in five minutes. It was not entirely clear from the information contained, but apparently the letters were written by a husband and wife who were corresponding to their daughter that they were well after the devastating storm. Now, all these years later in the late 1950s the presumed daughter, or other member of the family–the author/typesetter had the same last name as the husband and wife–was lovingly creating this small piece of art. The print run was all of fifty copies, and the New York Public Library’s was donated to the institution in 1961.

The content of the letters, the beautiful typesetting, the miniature binding–it was all quite moving. Then I noticed something was off: the date of the hurricane was incorrect. Someone, presumably the daughter/typesetter working all those years later, had the hurricane as taking place on September 13, 1926 instead of the correct September 18. Worse, because she missed the date of the hurricane she missed the subsequent days of the aftermath. From all my research I know more about the hurricane than I ever thought I would, and knew for certain that the dates were off. I figured it had to be the daughter because the parents would have known, having written the letters during the event. All I could think of was that she saw the “18” on the first letter and mistook it for a “13.” Or, the letters were not dated and she mistakenly believed the hurricane struck on the 13th. There is no way ever to know.

I didn’t know what to make of the whole thing. Disappointment? Sadness? Amusement? Some combination of the two? Heck, I was probably the first person to be looking at the thing in the more than fifty years since it was donated to the library. In the end, I pointed it out to the two librarians on duty, told them the story, and then returned it. One of them put it back in its little container and that was that. The whole episode lasted maybe twenty minutes, but I could not stop thinking about it the rest of the day.

(image of miniature book/Tomasz Sienicki)

1859 family Bible

When I was getting my MLS in the mid-1990s our professor told the class one day with a laugh that the question he was asked the most was, “How much is my Bible worth?” The answer is usually, “Not much.” This is because the family Bible was a ubiquitous part of most American households in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. A book isn’t “rare” if millions of regular folk own one. Many American families had only two books in the home: the Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare. Family Bibles were especially plentiful in the north Texas town where I went to grad school. Though the area where I lived had transformed into a contemporary Sunbelt town, there were still a substantial number of Old Families in the community who traced their heritage back to the original settler families of the 1870s and immediately thereafter. I knew many of them through my volunteering at the local historical museum. No one will get rich on Antiques Roadshow selling their Bible, but they are nonetheless a fascinating part of our individual and collective heritage.

(image/David Ball)

Sherman to Lincoln: Savannah has fallen, December 1864

The Huntington Library, owner of perhaps the best collection of Civil War regimental histories in existence, announced this week that it has acquired a sizable collection of Civil War telegrams thought to have been lost or destroyed decades ago. The World Wide Web has changed the way we have lived over the past twenty years. Hard as it is to imagine however, the telegraph transformed the lives of mid-nineteenth century Americans even more extensively. When Samuel Morse sent the first ever telegraphic message, from Washington, DC to Baltimore in May 1844, he altered people’s concepts of time and space. News that previously took months to arrive by ship or horse now travelled in real time. If Morse’s code had existed during the War of 1812 General Andrew Jackson would not have fought the British at New Orleans in January 1815, two weeks after the Treaty of Ghent ended the conflict.

The U.S. Army was quick to understand the signifiance of telegraphy and embraced the new technology quickly. (Not coincidentally, the military also understood the signifance of the internet after the Second World War and quickly embraced that technology as well.)  Unfortunately the various presidential administrations of the 1840s and 50s were less quick to adapt. When Lincoln was inaugurated and the war came he was reduced to leaving the White House and venturing to the War Department and elsewhere for war news. That would be the equivalent today of the president and White House staff having no internet access and leaving the grounds to get their news from sources who are better plugged in.

The telegrams are in several dozen leather binders and once belonged to Thomas T. Eckert, assistant general superintendent of the United States Military Telegraph. Prior to serving in this capacity Eckert served on McClellan’s staff. After the war he worked for railroad magnate Jay Gould. Gould also went on to acquire Western Union. Only a fraction of the correspondance has been previously published. Over 100 telegrams in the Eckert collection are by Lincoln himself. The Huntington will display a portion of the material in two exhibits later in the year. Hopefully they will digitize at least some of this material in the future as well.

(image/War Department, Office of the Military Telegraph; NARA)

As a librarian myself I can tell you that our nation’s libraries hold many of our country’s greatest treasures.  This goes for the Library of Congress across the street from the Capitol Building to the tiny institution somewhere in Smalltown America with its Vertical File of irreplaceable local ephemera.  Through December 31^st one our country’s best public libraries has a cross-section of its Civil War era artifacts on display.  My personal favorite (seen in the video) is the William Lloyd Garrison death mask.  I have seen the Lincoln death mask at the New-York Historical Society and there is something moving about seeing such an item knowing its provenance.

Alexander’s Ragtime Band, Irving Berlin
(Source: Duke University; Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons)

Earlier this week the Library of Congress announced the release of what it is calling the National Jukebox.  According to the LOC :

Works by Fletcher Henderson, Al Jolson, George M. Cohan, Eddie Cantor, Will Rogers, Alberta Hunter, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Leopold Stokowski, Arturo Toscanini, and opera stars Enrico Caruso, Nellie Melba and Geraldine Farrar are all covered, as are such original recordings as the Paul Whiteman Concert Orchestra’s “Rhapsody in Blue” with George Gershwin on piano, and Nora Bayes’ “Over There.”

Visitors to the National Jukebox will be able to listen to available recordings on a streaming-only basis, as well as view thousands of label images, record-catalog illustrations, and artist and performer bios. In addition, users can further explore the catalog by accessing special interactive features, listening to playlists curated by Library staff, and creating and sharing their own playlists.