Archive for the ‘Trends in Database Use’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Franklin scholar uses America’s Historical Newspapers to trace an ingenious hoax

Thursday, February 16th, 2012

Carla Mulford, Dept. of English, Penn State University

In December 2008 an essay about one of Benjamin Franklin’s cleverest hoaxes was published in The Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. Written by distinguished Franklin scholar Carla Mulford, “Benjamin Franklin’s Savage Eloquence: Hoaxes from the Press at Passy, 1782” was awarded the prestigious William L. Mitchell Prize from the Bibliographical Society of America on January 27, 2012.

As explained in the Bibliographical Society’s press release, Dr. Mulford’s article…

Source: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association (Dec. 2008)

concerns the printing, distribution, rhetorical strategy, and impact of Franklin’s bogus Supplement to the Boston Independent Chronicle, no. 705, dated 12 March 1782.  In its distributed second impression, this single-leaf extra contained two principal texts by Franklin that purport to be by others.  On the front is a report by an American Captain, Samuel Gerrish, on his capturing a cargo of human scalps taken in recent years “by the Senneka Indians from the Inhabitants of the Frontiers,” with incriminating documentation transcribed within the article (including an Indian’s note asking that the scalps be sent “over the Water to the great King” with the starving Indians’ request for better treatment). The second item, not present in the undistributed first printing of the hoax as a single-sided broadside, was a purported letter by John Paul Jones to the British administrator Sir Joseph Yorke, who had previously failed to honor a prisoner exchange agreement with Jones and had written disparaging testimonies regarding Jones and the related events. To fill out the pages of the paper, the hoax also contains advertisements typical of the Boston Independent Chronicle. 

Click to open prize-winning essay in PDF.

In her prize-winning essay, Mulford, Associate Professor of English at Penn State University and Founding President of the Society of Early Americanists, explains the “continued life of the first article (on the harvest of scalps),” which soon appeared in American newspapers and which was reprinted at least 34 times, “well into the nineteenth century, when it had the unintended effect of justifying hostilities to American Indians.” An appendix of “Nineteenth-Century Newspaper Re-Publications of the Supplement” concludes her study.

Among the high praise from the judges was this comment:

Dr. Mulford “displays a remarkable knowledge and control of the vast Franklin materials, primary and secondary, along with an excellent, precise bibliographical approach. A rare combination.”

Professor Mulford recently acknowledged the benefits of using Readex databases in her research for this article and her forthcoming book, Benjamin Franklin and the Ends of Empire:

America’s Historical Newspapers enabled me to trace the different contemporary and then later uses of the ‘scalping’ hoax. By way of background, let me point out that Franklin was profoundly troubled that the British military was paying Native peoples to create devastation on British Americans’ homes and to kill the people. Franklin had spent much of his time while in Pennsylvania (decades earlier) figuring out how best to negotiate peacefully with Indians. So he was outraged when the Indians became (by necessity and in an effort to preserve their own sovereignty) involved in the fray between Britons in North America and those in England. The Readex database made it possible for me to discover the posthumous uses to which Franklin’s hoax had been put, and, with terrible irony, I discovered that it was used to promulgate a form of Indian-hating by Americans in North America. The original target, British peoples in England, was lost, and the Indians received the central, negative thrust of the hoax. I think Franklin would have found this appalling. So I traced the uses of the hoax and made a record of it, so that others might see how periodical circulation takes on a life of its own.

Prof. Mulford is preparing an article about her use of the Archive of Americana, including Early American Imprints and Early American Newspapers.  Look for it in a future issue of The Readex Report.

Be Sociable, Share!

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in American History, Announcements, Digital Humanities, Journalism History, Print Culture, Trends in Database Use | No Comments »

Just published — The Readex Report: February 2012

Tuesday, February 14th, 2012

In our latest issue: The emancipation efforts of a forgotten Founding Father; a felonious figure pens a revered evangelical reference; and social media’s unprecedented impact on academic networking.

The Connecticut Webster on Slavery

By Joshua Kendall, author of The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster’s Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture

The pure-bred New Englander revered the Constitution. Though the eloquent statesman hated slavery, he sought to eradicate this evil without destroying the union. Division was anathema to him, as could perhaps be guessed from his ancestral name, Webster, which means “uniter” in Anglo-Saxon. And some three score and eight years before the outbreak of the Civil War, whose 150th anniversary we commemorated last spring, he advocated a moderate course designed to steer clear of bloodshed.…(read article)

A Reverend Revealed: The Real Identity of One of the Most Influential (and Simplistic) Thinkers of the 19th Century

By James Lutzweiler, Archivist and Rare Book Curator, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

Pulitzer Prize winner William H. Goetzmann of Yale and the University of Texas was secure enough in his scholarship to be his own severest critic. About Beyond the Revolution: A History of American Thought from Paine to Pragmatism, the last book he wrote before his death in September 2010, Goetzmann lamented to this writer (who contributed one of the book’s backcover dust jacket reviews) shortly after its publication that he had forgotten to include a few thinkers he had intended to discuss. For a second editon, I would have suggested to him that he slightly modify the subtitle to read “…from Paine to Premillenialism,” and to have dedicated a chapter at least as long as that on Paine to a relatively unknown but enormously influential character called Cyrus Ingerson Scofield—when he wasn’t being called by his criminal alias “Charlie Ingerson.” (read article)

Academic Networking 2.0: Historians and Social Media

By Michael D. Hattem, PhD Student, Yale University

As the academic job market in history continues to shrink, networking has become something no tenure-track hopeful can afford to ignore. At the same time, the rise of social media has afforded historians with new and inventive ways to network with colleagues from around the world. Whether posting from conferences in real-time on Twitter, connecting with fellow historians on Facebook, or playing active roles in the blogosphere, younger historians are utilizing social media for both professional networking and scholarly development. (read article)

Subscribe today to receive the next quarterly issue of The Readex Report in your inbox. Browse previous issues in our archive. If you would like to comment, contribute or suggest an article, please email The Readex Report editor: readexreport@readex.com.

Be Sociable, Share!

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in American History, Announcements, Digital Humanities, Journalism History, Primary Sources in the Classroom, Trends in Database Use | No Comments »

Chocolate: A Readex Sampler (by Louis E. Grivetti)

Monday, February 13th, 2012

Chocolate: A Readex Sampler

By Louis E. Grivetti, Professor of Nutrition, Emeritus, University of California, Davis

International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) 2010 Award Finalist in the Culinary History category

Between the years 1998-2008 my large research team had the good fortune to be funded by a generous grant from Mars, Incorporated, to investigate the culinary, medicinal, and social history of chocolate.1 Our initial research focused on chocolate-related information from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, and the transfer of medical-related uses of chocolate into Western Europe. Between the years 2004-2008 our research shifted to the introduction, distribution, and social uses of chocolate within North America. To this end we paid special attention to cacao/chocolate-related aspects of agronomy, anthropology, archaeology and art history, culinary arts, diet and nutrition, economics, ethnic and gender studies, geography, history, legal and medical issues, and social uses.

Click to enlarge

Our research team drew extensively on Colonial Era and Federal Era documents available through Early American Newspapers, especially chocolate/cacao-related advertisements, articles, price currents, obituaries, and shipping news documents. As a scholar who formerly spent months using microfilm documents—winding and re-winding reels searching for specific documents on specific dates—I report here that the new technologies available through Readex have made my work and that of my students a hundred times easier. Now, with a click of our computer “mice,” team members can retrieve thousands of documents that previously would have taken weeks to amass.

Presented here are examples that provide a brief “taste” of these chocolate-related documents.

ACCIDENTS AND NEGLIGENCE

Chocolate manufacturing required roasting and preparing cacao beans prior to milling, and fires were commonplace. Boston chocolate-maker Daniel Jacobs lost not only his business but his house:

The building … contained, besides the furniture, provisions, &c. 3,000 lb. of cocoa, and several 100 lb. of chocolate, which were nearly or quite all destroyed. The loss, at a moderate computation, is said to amount to Fire Hundred Pounds, lawful money (Boston Post Boy, March 30th, 1772, page 3).

Lack of adult supervision of children sometimes led to terrible consequences as with this tragic report:

One morning last week a child about 3 years old accidentally overset a large sauce-pan of hot chocolate into its bosom, whereby it was so terribly scalded that it died soon after (Boston Evening Post, December 2nd, 1765, page 3).

CRIME

Brothers Bossenor and William Foster, mid 18th-century Boston merchants, repeatedly had bad luck as their establishment was burglarized several times:

Whereas some evil-minded person or persons have again broke open the store of the subscribers, on Spear’s Wharf, and last night took from thence a number of articles amongst which was two firkins butter, about 50 or 60 lb. of chocolate mark’d W. Call, and S. Snow, half a barrel of coffee, nine or ten pair lynn shoes, some cocoa and sugar. (The Boston News-Letter and New-England Chronicle, February 9th, 1769, page 2).

Unscrupulous chocolate manufacturers sometimes “extended” their products by adding brick dust, chalk, and other items. Joseph Mann fought against this trend and criticized merchants who defrauded customers:

Joseph Mann … sells Chocolate, which will be warranted free of any Adulteration, likewise New-England Mustard, manufactured by said Mann, who will be glad of the Continuance of his former Customers, and thankfully receive the Favour [sic] of others (Boston Post Boy, March 6th, 1769, page 2).

DISEASE: SMALLPOX

The 1764 Boston smallpox epidemic struck in January and by February a number of chocolate merchants relocated to the periphery of the city to escape the pox. Rebecca Walker, manager of a general store opposite the Blue-ball near Mill Bridge, relocated to Roxbury where she resided at the home of Nathaniel Felton, Scythe-Maker, and sold:

All sorts of garden seeds imported in the last ship from London … Peas, beans, red and white clover and other grass seeds; hemp seed; Cheshire Cheese; Flour of Mustard; Jordan Almonds; Florence Oyl; split and boiling Peas; Stone and Glass Ware; Chimney Tiles; Kippen’s Snuff; Pipes, Spices, Sugar, Chocolate; English and Scotch GOODS, &c. (Boston Gazette and Country Journal, February 20th, 1764, page 4).

By early summer 1764 brothers John and Thomas Stevenson sought to offset the public’s smallpox fears through creative advertising. They announced that the disease was due to contaminated goods that entered the port of Boston—but if vessels were off-loaded elsewhere and merchandise transported overland, such items would be “free of the Infection of the Small-Pox” (The Boston Evening Post, June 25th, 1764, page 4).

ECONOMICS: COST OF LIVING

An anonymous pastor identified only as “TW” complained of high prices for food and life essentials. He described his living conditions in 1747 and longed for earlier days in 1707 when he purchased items at inexpensive rates: butter (6 pence/pound), cheese (2 pence/pound), dozen eggs (2 pence), beef and mutton (2 ½ pence/pound), pork and veal (3 pence/pound), sugar (6 pence/pound), chocolate (2 shillings & 6 pence = 18 pence/pound), and molasses (1 shilling & 10 pence = 22 pence/gallon). His concerns documented the importance of chocolate as an expensive but essential dietary item (The Boston Evening Post, December 14th, 1747, p. 2).

An anonymous letter written in 1728 also complained of high prices. He stated that at one time his family of eight needed only 12 shillings/week for food but with current high prices he was unable to supply his family essentials, such as butter, cheese, sugar, coffee, tea, and chocolate and that he also could not afford cider, fruits, liquor, tobacco, or wine. He lamented that his economic deprivations made it impossible to be hospitable and to perform acts of charity (New England Weekly Journal, November 25th, 1728, page 2).

ECONOMICS: PRICE CURRENTS AND SHIPPING NEWS DOCUMENTS

Price Current broadsides, commonly published in newspapers, announced what were considered fair prices for basic foods, beverages, hardware, and household essentials. Early American Newspapers contains several thousand Price Currents. Using these documents we captured chocolate-related data by city and date, tracked the information by geographical location (from Georgia northward to Canada), then considered the impacts of season (winter vs. summer prices) and potential hazard/risk (i.e., hurricane season and war years) on chocolate prices. By matching Price Current data with parallel chocolate-related advertisements, we observed that several North American chocolate merchants sometimes stockpiled enormous quantities of raw cacao beans or ground cocoa—up to 120,000 pounds—to offset seasonal and hazard-related market fluctuations

(John Parker & Sons, Independent Chronicle, April 18th, 1811, page 2; F. Beck, Columbian Centinel [sic], October 10th, 1812, page 1; Munson & Barnard, Boston Gazette, February 3rd, 1814, page 3).

Early American Newspapers includes thousands of shipping news articles, which announced the arrival/departure of ships at the major east coast ports. These allowed detailed economic analysis of the cacao/chocolate trade. Information provided included name and type of ship, master/captain, associated cargo, ports of origin and destination, and sometimes the names of chocolate-related merchants who received the cargos.

ETHICS: SLAVERY

Slave documents sometimes contained chocolate-related information. James Lubbuck, for example, identified himself a “chocolate grinder” and offered a 3£ reward for the return of his runaway slave (New England Weekly Journal, September 4th, 1727, page 2).

Boston merchant Daniel Sharley advertised that his runaway slave:

[Was] used to grind Chocolate and carry it about for Sale (The Boston News-Letter and New-England Chronicle, June 2nd, 1763, page 3).

John Maxwell, chocolate merchant, died in 1733 and his obituary notice reported a basic inventory of household goods for sale that included:

A Negro Woman, about Twenty Years of age, can do household work and grind chocolate very well; at the above said house (The Boston News-Letter, May 31st, 1733, page 2).

GENDER AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

Dorothy Jones and Jane Barnard opened the first chocolate house in Boston prior to the establishment of newspapers in New England. Their petition to the Boston Selectmen in 1670 included the following notation:

To keepe a house of publique Entertainment for the sellinge of Coffee and Chucalettoe2

Sixty years later Mrs. Reed (no first name provided) advertised the opening of her chocolate shop on King-Street, Boston and invited gentlemen patrons to drink chocolate, coffee, or tea and spend their leisure reading the news—with beverages served any time of day (Boston Gazette, September 13th, 1731, page 2).

By 1755 Mary Ballard had opened her coffee, tea, and chocolate house also on King Street. Her advertisements also were directed towards wealthy gentlemen, since chocolate was expensive and proper women did not frequent chocolate houses whether in England or North America:

For the Entertainment of Gentlemen, Benefit of Commerce and Dispatch of Business, a Coffee-house is this Day opened in King Street … Gentlemen who are pleased to use the House, may at any Time of the Day, after the Manner of those in London, have Tea, Coffee, or Chocolate, and constant Attendance given by their humble Servant, Mary Ballard (Boston Evening Post, December 8th, 1755, page 2).

POLITICS AND MILITARY ISSUES

Boston merchants sometimes asserted their loyalties overtly or subtly through newspaper advertisements. Daniel Jones sold chocolate at his general store on Newbury Street. In 1760 he published a series of newspaper advertisements announcing that:

Officers and Soldiers who have been in this Province Service may be supplied with … articles on short credit till their muster rolls are made up, as usual, the soldiers being well recommended (Boston Post-Boy, December 15th, 1760, page. 4).

Elizabeth Perkins advertised her political leanings in 1773 when she announced the location of her shop being “two doors below the British Coffee-House, North Side of King Street” where she sold chocolate and groceries (Boston Evening Post, August 30th, 1773, page 4).

George Fechem, chocolate-maker and probable loyalist, announced the sale of his mill and chocolate-related equipment in the fall of 1776:

A good chocolate mill, which will go with a horse and grind 120wt of chocolate in a day. Said mill consists of three good kettles, with twelve pestles in a kettle well leaded, nine dozen pans, one good nut cracker, a good musline [cloth] to clean the shells from nuts. Any Person wanting the same may apply to GEORGE FECHEM, near Watertown Bridge (Boston Gazette and Country Journal, September 9th, 1776, page 4).

CLIMATE, TEMPERATURE, AND HEALTH

Samuel Watts manufactured chocolate near the Boston Prison Yard. During the fall of 1751 unseasonably high temperatures threatened his business and he published the following apology:

By reason of the heat of the weather, he [i.e. Samuel Watts] has been unable to supply his customers with chocolate for these few weeks past, and fears to the loss of many of them (The Boston Gazette or Weekly Journal, October 8th, 1751, page 2).

A mid-18th century chocolate-related statement of consumer concern received front page notice and warned that drinking hot chocolate served at temperatures higher than body heat would:

Thicken the blood [and] relax and weaken the Nerves and Stomach, and thereby hurt the Digestion, & produce Colics, &c (The Boston Gazette or Weekly Journal, March 5th, 1751, page 1).

CODA

Our candidate for the first chocolate-related advertisement to appear in a North American English newspaper is the following, although we continue to search for an even earlier account:

To be sold in Boston at the Ware-house of Mr. James Leblond on the Long Wharf near the Swing-Bridge, new Lisbon Salt … also Rum, Sugar, Molasses, Wine, Brandy, sweet Oyl, Indigo … Cocoa, Chocolate, with all sorts of Spice, either by Wholesale or Retale [sic], at reasonable Rates (The Boston News-Letter, December 3rd, 1705, page 4).

Early American Newspapers provides the street names and general addresses for nearly 1,000 chocolate-related establishments in Boston from 1705 into the 19th century.3 An enjoyable educational activity would be to walk the streets of “old” Boston and search out these addresses, identify current ownership and commercial activities, and determine whether or not a chocolate link has been maintained between past and present.

About the Author

Louis Grivetti is Professor of Nutrition, Emeritus, at the University of California, Davis. He received his Ph.D. in geography (1976) at the University of California, Davis, with complementary training in nutrition and food science. His research specializations include the geography and history of food, edible wild plants and human survival during drought, and diet in antiquity. Professor Grivetti and Howard-Yana Shapiro are Co-Editors of the recently published book Chocolate: History, Culture, and Heritage (Wiley, 2009). The article above first appeared in the April 2011 issue of The Readex Report.

REFERENCES CITED:

1Grivetti, L.E. and Shapiro, H.-Y., Editors. 2009. Chocolate. History, Culture, and Heritage. Hoboken, New Jersey: A. John Wiley & Sons.

2Gay, J.F. 2009. Chocolate. Production and Uses in 17th and 18th Century North America. p. 281. In: Grivetti and Shapiro Editors (above).

3Grivetti, L.E. 2009. Boston Chocolate, 1700-1825. People, Occupations, and Addresses. pp. 817-835. In: Grivetti and Shapiro Editors (above).

Be Sociable, Share!

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in American History, Digital Humanities, Print Culture, Trends in Database Use, World History | No Comments »

How to Get Ahead: Century-Old Advice for the “Woman of Business”

Monday, February 6th, 2012

From The Idaho Statesman (April 30, 1911). Source: American Newspaper Archives

Today’s woman has a wealth of information at her fingertips on how to get ahead at work. Books such as Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office, Hard Ball for Women and Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman; magazines such as Pink; and numerous blogs all offer advice to the up-and-coming woman of business. In the 19th century unprecedented numbers of women joined the workforce and thus entered into the public sphere for the first time. Many did so out of necessity, but some were motivated by ambition. What advice was available to the ambitious woman of business in the 19th century?

Along with books and women’s magazines, mainstream newspapers began to offer advice to women on achieving business success. Much of this advice literature was written by women. Women held each other to high standards. Even by their own sex, women were often thought too naturally tender-hearted and sentimental to be good at business. An article from The Chicago Record, written by a woman and reprinted by The Kansas City Star, sternly advised women to be appropriately business-like and not to confuse business with philanthropy for “it may be questioned whether half the failures in business ventures by young women do not arise from this simple fact.”1

The author warned the woman of business that she had exchanged “the privilege of special courtesy to her sex” for “independence and business reciprocity.” In other words, a woman should expect no special treatment because she was a woman.

Others argued that the very skills that enabled a woman to be a good wife and mother also made her a business woman. Mrs. S. M. Perkins in the Cleveland Plain Dealer asked:

A woman who carefully looks after the details of housekeeping and trains up a family of children, taking them through the mumps, measles, whooping cough and the teething period, and attends to getting of twenty-one meals, such as his lordship will not grumble about; and keeps a house in order—bed making, sweeping, dusting, house cleaning, washing and ironing, finding school books for children and mending their little torn garments—is not such a one a businesswoman?2

The “world is full of business women,” Mrs. Perkins continued, but what made women different from men is that “women [had] more conscience, more moral integrity.”3

As a result, she concluded, “we somehow expect unusual worth in a woman.”4 Once a woman had established her business reputation, she must work hard at keeping it because, as the author said, “a woman cannot afford to break her word. It will ruin her reputation to do it.”5 By keeping her word, people would trust her and help her succeed, the author advised. It was universally acknowledged that standards were higher for women.

Women business pioneers were often interviewed by the press. One such business pioneer was Mrs. Frank Leslie, born Miriam Follin (1836-1914), once known as “the handsomest newspaperman in the United States.”6 When her second husband, Frank Leslie, died in 1880, Miriam was left with a contested will and a publishing enterprise in deep debt. Upon the deathbed request of her husband to save his business, Miriam legally became Frank Leslie. This gave her legal rights to all Frank Leslie publications, even over the objections of her stepson, Frank Leslie, Jr. and his brother. She turned the enterprise around by selling off unprofitable publications and developing a new publishing strategy that returned the business to profit.

From The Idaho Statesman (April 30, 1911). Source: American Newspaper Archives

In 1902, she sold the business and gave up the name Frank Leslie, stylizing herself as “the Baroness de Bazus,” which she claimed was an old family title. The Baroness made several observations about business women in her interview with Ada Patterson in The Idaho Statesman.

First, she said that women were too conservative: “They are too timid to essay new paths.”7 She also said that women sometimes expected special treatment:

I had 50 women in my employ at one time, and I noticed their tendency to arrive late and stay late. They would say to me, “But so long as I do my work does it matter whether I come into the office at 9 or 11?” And I would answer, “Perhaps not in your individual case. But If I granted this privilege to one, the other women, and the men too, would have a right to expect it. The office would be demoralized.”8

But what was essential for a woman’s success in business was “to forget her sex in dealing with men,” she said.”9 Business women were often seen to be using feminine wiles to get ahead. Or at least they had to fight the perception they were. The illustration (by a male artist) that accompanied her interview is a good example of such perceptions, depicting a woman coquettishly trying to balance on a tight rope, while holding a pole with a businessman on one end and a bag of money labeled business on the other.

Not surprisingly, many women were often subject to sexual harassment. The New York Tribune reported that women who had gone out to solicit advertising were repeatedly subjected to “improper advances.” The Tribune displayed an unsympathetic attitude towards such reports, saying merely that advertising, being too public a profession, may not be suitable for young women and perhaps should be reserved for those over 40. It recommended less public pursuits such as handicrafts, nursing, designing, and higher levels of domestic service for the young career woman. But no matter the profession, the New York Tribune stated unequivocally, “a pure woman, provided always that her dignity and pure manner express her purity, needs no lion to protect her, wherever she may go.”10

Over 40 years later in 1911 the Baroness admitted that she smiled when she heard of women being harassed in offices, stating, “if women are preyed upon, it is because they allow themselves to be preyed upon. If women practice allurements during business hours, they must not be appalled if men regard these coquetries as overtures.”11

Given that the Baroness, a reputed beauty of her times, divorced her second husband and married her boss, Frank Leslie, one wonders what means she used to get ahead. She did, however, have a pragmatic attitude toward life, recommending that business women marry because men were “necessary evils.”

If you are traveling you are treated with more respect, and you are not so likely to be cheated if you are attended by a husband….when I walk downstairs, I need the support of a man’s arm or a banister, I don’t care which, but I need one. As society is in the world today, it is almost necessary to have a husband.12

In sum, advice given to business women of the 19th century:

• Don’t play “nice”

• Utilize women’s traditional skill sets and strengths

• Expect standards to be higher for women

• Be more adventurous; try new paths

• Expect and give no special treatment

• Be pragmatic.

In over 100 years, has business advice for women changed much?

Notes

1“Some Hints and Good Advice to Business Women,” Kansas City Star, January 23, 1894, p.  14.

2“Business Women,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 21, 1897, p. 10.

3Ibid

4Ibid

5Ibid

6“Hints to Business Women by a Baroness: The Former Mrs. Frank Leslie Tells How To Succeed.”  The Idaho Statesman, April 30, 1911, p. 3.

7Ibid

8Ibid

9Ibid

10“For Business Women,” The New York Tribune, June 21, 1871, p. 4.

11“Hints to Business Women,” ibid.

12Ibid

Be Sociable, Share!

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in American History, Digital Humanities, Journalism History, Primary Sources in the Classroom, Print Culture, Trends in Database Use | No Comments »

Teaching Early American Literature at Lenoir-Rhyne University

Monday, January 30th, 2012

Dr. Julie Voss

Recent discussion on EARAM-L, the listserv of the Society of Early Americanists, centered on the shortcomings of anthologies for teaching early American literature to undergraduates. Julie R. Voss, assistant professor of English and coordinator of the American Studies Program at Lenoir-Rhyne University, wrote:

I teach at a small school with no rare books collections; however, we do have access to the online Early American Imprints collection. This semester, my students in Colonial American Literature are working with primary texts from this archive, after studying several works available in modern editions. (This course is intended to “expose” students to colonial lit, not “cover” the period, so I don’t fly through an anthology.) They seem to be enjoying the experience, and they are learning a great deal about early literature and culture, as well as about research and editing.

Prof. Voss has now written an article about her class’s experience – “Accomplishing Something: Using Early American Imprints to Introduce Students to the Era and to the Field” – for publication in the fall 2012 issue of The Readex Report. To subscribe to this quarterly Readex e-publication, please use this form.

Be Sociable, Share!

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in American Literature, Primary Sources in the Classroom, Trends in Database Use | No Comments »

Finding Fatalism and Overconfidence in a Cruel Port (by Ian Olivo Read)

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

Finding Fatalism and Overconfidence in a Cruel Port: The Bubonic Plague’s First Appearance in Brazil

By Ian Olivo Read, Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies, Soka University of America

Published by Stanford University Press on January 25, 2012

On October 18, 1899, Brazilian health officials declared that bubonic plague had arrived. Bacteriologists identified the bacteria in samples taken from sick patients in Santos, a port city that had grown rapidly due to Brazil’s coffee boom. For much of history, people reacted to the news of plague with panic, flight and violence. When plague struck Santos, however, the town did not empty of its residents, international ships were not quarantined outside the port, and authorities or militias did not form “rifle cordons” at roads leading out of town. In fact, according to one report, “the news that bubonic plague had broken out in Santos seems to have made an impression everywhere but here. Santistas are, as a rule, of a somewhat skeptic frame of mind and reports about sickness and epidemics do not frighten them unduly.”

Source: Latin American Newspapers, 1805-1922

This was Brazil’s first recorded outbreak of plague, but it was only one of a chain of epidemics that had occurred since 1894 when plague had escaped from its natural reservoirs among rodents in the Himalayas. The Yersinias pestis pathogen spread eastward, facilitated by busy colonial networks and the quickening pace of globalization. For the next 50 years it struck various port cities and coastal areas of nearly every continent. When the third bubonic plague pandemic crossed the Atlantic to reach South America in 1899, its victims suffered no differently than elsewhere. In its first stages, the infected developed painful and swollen lymph glands, fever and aches. As bacteria overwhelmed the immune system, fever turned to shock, organ failure and, for about 50 percent of those who contracted the disease, death. Not only did the third pandemic spread plague among humans throughout the world, it also introduced the Yersinias pestis to other species of rodents on multiple continents, where the bacteria persist today in these relatively new natural reservoirs.

Bubonic plague has long been a fearsome disease, and is described as such in biblical writings. This was its first appearance in a deeply Catholic country, where many more people understood its propagation divinely rather than pathogenically. Yet why did Santos residents react with nonchalance? First, plague in this locality, or any other for that matter, cannot be understood without the larger epidemiological context. By the end of the nineteenth century, Santos had developed an international reputation as a dirty and dangerous place due to its unshakable pestilence. American mariners called Santos the “cemetery to the world.” For John Masefield, the English poet, “it’s a cruel port is Santos, and a hungry land.” Of biggest blame was yellow fever, a virus that had seen very little place in Brazil before 1849, but developed as fierce epidemics with nearly annual appearances in the 1850s, 1870s and 1890s. So many foreign mariners died, in fact, that even when the city built a large new cemetery in 1854, bones had to be dug up and the holes filled with fresh corpses less than every two years. After decades of attempts to eliminate “effluvia,” drain swamps and initiate sweeping public health reforms, many Santistas saw epidemics as an intractable part of their daily life and town character.

The second reason why Santos residents reacted so coolly was that many did not think it would become a serious problem. Literate Brazilians had tracked the disease through newspaper reports from its first Asian outbreaks in 1894 to its movement to the Middle East and Europe in 1899. Early epidemics, such as those in Hong Kong and Bombay, prompted concern because of high death tolls. But these were distant lands, with little connection to South America. Furthermore, few believed it could spread beyond Asia. They were proven wrong, of course, as the disease leapt continents over the next five years. Geographically it broadened in scope, but in virulence it appeared to diminish. Brazilian newspapers reported that after its arrival to Egypt and Portugal bubonic plague did not develop into frightening proportions. These reports also lent confidence to exciting new developments in bacteriology that allowed doctors to identify Yersinias pestis in a microscope. Additionally, the millenniums-old mystery on why swarms of dead rats foretold outbreaks of plague was explained by a communicable germ. In 1895, Alexandre Yersin at the Pasteur Institute in France developed the first anti-plague serum, but Brazilian newspapers of the day spent more time discussing how local health authorities could acquire or manufacture the serum than how trials of Yersin’s serum in Canton and Bombay had largely failed.

In sum, it was a combination of fatalism among some, and overconfidence in medicine’s ability to limit the epidemic’s effects among others that allowed the town to largely escape panic when a new deadly disease knocked on its backdoor. Nonchalance was not shared nationally, nor did it diminish a serious public health reaction. Soon after, federal and state governments created institutions that eventually acquired world renown, such as the Butantan and Oswaldo Cruz Institutes. These organizations helped fight plague, which took root and slowly persisted in Brazil, but never became epidemic. Finally, bubonic plague arrived at the end of a five-decade period of unusual epidemiological activity that had profound, yet still unknown, consequences on the country’s society and economy.

In the detailed account of the outbreak of plague in Santos, or the larger story of the changing epidemiological environment and its consequences in Brazil, there are new digital history tools at our disposal, including Latin American Newspapers, 1805-1922. In the last decade historians have witnessed a revolution in digitizing and OCR technology. This has allowed millions of pages of old newspapers to be digitized, converted to machine readable text, placed within database programs and made accessible on the Internet. As a result, the proverbial needle in the haystack can be now found by typing “needle” into a search bar. In many respects these tools are still too new to have all their problems solved. Digitized newspaper quality is sometimes subpar, humans still do much better than OCR programs in deciphering low quality text, and the website interfaces that direct searches to information can be cumbersome or slow. Despite these limitations, these new tools give historians much more power in separating the informational wheat from what was previously an overwhelming amount of chaff.

For more information on this research, please visit http://eraofepidemics.squarespace.com/

About the Author

Ian Olivo Read, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies at Soka University of America, in southern Orange County, California. Read previously taught at Stanford University, University of Puget Sound and the University of California, Berkeley. He has written on the history of the United Fruit Company, elite networks in Brazil and Mexico, and the health and medical treatment of Brazilian slaves. His new book, The Hierarchies of Slavery in Santos, Brazil, 1822-1888, was published by Stanford University Press on January 25, 2012. Linda Lewin, University of California, Berkeley, says Read’s book “offers the most comprehensive view of a discrete, urban Brazilian slave population yet to be produced and is a very important contribution to the history of slavery, not only in Brazil but also in comparative perspective.” The article above first appeared in the April 2011 issue of The Readex Report.

Sources

Myron J. Echenberg, “Pestis Redux: The Initial Years of the Third Bubonic Plague Pandemic, 1894-1901,” Journal of World History, Vol. 13, No. 2, Fall 2002, 429-449; Myron J. Echenberg, Plague Ports: The Global Urban Impact of Bubon Plague, 1894-1901, New York: New York University Press, 2007; Jornal do Commercio¸ (Rio de Janeiro), 1894-99; O Estado do São Paulo (São Paulo), 1894-99; and Brazilian Review (Rio de Janeiro), 1899.

Be Sociable, Share!

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Collection Development, Digital Humanities, Primary Sources in the Classroom, Trends in Database Use, World History | No Comments »

The Real War Horses of America

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

Michael Morpurgo’s fictional story “War Horse” has gone from a beloved children’s book to successful stage production to bestselling Hollywood movie directed by Steven Spielberg. But who were the real war horses of America?

American Red Star poster. Credit: www.usmilitariaforum.com

Between 1914 and 1918, the United States sent almost one million horses to the European forces, particularly the British. When America entered the war, another 182,000 horses were taken overseas by the American Expeditionary Forces. Only 200 horses returned to the U.S., and 60,000 were killed outright.1 As the nation’s equine population and trained cavalry mounts became seriously depleted, many wild horses, including American Mustangs, were utilized. Supplying war horses was considered a patriotic act, and Americans were proud of their contribution.

In 1916 the Idaho Daily Statesmen declared about the Mustang: “The little western pony may not be up to cavalry standards, but he is a good little Ford, and will get you there and be up and about the next morning, and if cactus is the only food, he will take it and smile, leaving the regulation Packard waiting for the oats to catch up.”2 The quality of Allied war horses was seen as a key differentiator in the war. As the Duluth News Tribune asserted in 1918: “When the enemy finally begins its big retreat, it is the Allies’ horses that will keep the Germans on the run.”3

Horses were mainly used for transport, not only of solders but also for hauling artillery, ambulances and supply wagons. They were better suited than vehicles to traveling through deep mud and over rough terrain. They were also helpful in raising soldier morale. The bond between soldier and horse was well documented in the newspapers at the time.

In a feature on how farm horses were trained to become war horses, a Kansas City Star reporter wrote in 1917: “A private will tell how some particular horse will follow him about the lot. ‘Somebody’s pet,’ he explains. ‘I’ve taken a fancy to the darn little cuss.”4 

All the men feel that way about horses, explained the Star’s reporter: “A young lieutenant has a pony with a coffee pot brand on him. He calls him ‘Coffee’ and talk to him as if he were a human.”5

News reports of horses’ heroism, loyalty to their soldiers, and grief when they were lost were common. Typical headlines read: “Charger stood beside Dead Master between Firing Lines for Two Days” and “Faithful Horse Returns to Master.” The Kansas City Star published the photograph above in 1916 with the headine “Faithful Horse Awaits Master in Vain.”6

Not surprisingly, individual horses also became heroes during World War I. One example was Kidron, the war horse ridden by General John J. (“Black Jack”) Pershing, leader of the American Expeditionary Forces. A striking dark bay horse with two white hind socks, Kidron captured the imagination of the American people because he was often used by Pershing in victory parades and seen in ceremonial photos. He became a symbol of all that was noble about the war, despite huge losses of equine and human alike. The news of Kidron’s release from quarantine and his safe entry into the United States in 1920 made headlines across the country.

Unfortunately, most horses did not make it back. They were killed by artillery fire, suffered from skin disorders and disease, and were injured by poison gas. An article published in the Aberdeen Daily News in 1915 estimated that twenty days was the war horse’s average existence at the front.7

Moved to action by the plight of war horses, Americans appealed to Secretary of War Newton D. Baker to help equines overseas. On May 22, 1916, Baker asked the American Humane Association to establish a welfare service for horses and mules in the U.S. Army. This organization became the American Red Star Relief, which still exists today as part of the American Humane Association’s emergency services.

After the war, relief societies sprung up across the U.S. to help bring the horses home and to provide care for them after the war. On October 15, 1921, a plaque commissioned by the American Red Star was unveiled in the War Department in memory of the equine suffering during World War I. It reads:

This tablet commemorates the service and sufferings of the 243,135 mules and horses employed by the American Expeditionary Forces overseas during the Great World War, which terminated November 11, 1918, and which resulted in the death of 68,682 of those animals. What they suffered is beyond words to describe. A fitting tribute to their important services has been given by the commander-in-chief of the American Expeditionary Forces, General John J. Pershing, who has written: “The army horses and mules proved of inestimable value in prosecuting the war to a successful conclusion. They were found in all the theaters of preparation and operation doing their silent but faithful work without the faculty for hoping for any reward or compensation.”8

For more remarkable stories in America’s Historical Newspapers, search “war horse,” “war horse relief,” “American Red Star” or “American Red Star Animal Relief.”

Notes

1 International Museum of the Horse (The Horse in Transition: The Horse in World War I, 1914-1918). Retrieved 1-3-2012).

2 “American War Horse,” Idaho Daily Statesman, June 21, 1916, p. 4).

3 “War Horse Gets Full Education,” Duluth News Tribune, (Aug. 30, 1918, p. 2).

4 “When the Plough Horse Changes to a War Horse,” Kansas City Star (Nov. 25, 1917, p. 1).

5 Ibid

6 “Faithful Horse Awaits Master in Vain,” Kansas City Star, (Dec. 28, 1916, p. 4).

7 “War Horses’ Brief Life,” Aberdeen Daily News (Feb. 4, 1915, p. 3).

8 Spielberg’s War Horse: Animal Heroes of the Great War (Part 1).   Accessed  Jan 3, 2012.

Be Sociable, Share!

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in American History, Journalism History, Primary Sources in the Classroom, Trends in Database Use, World History | No Comments »

300 Years of News in the Library: An ALA Midwinter Breakfast Session

Thursday, December 29th, 2011

 

During the upcoming ALA Midwinter Conference, a special breakfast session—hosted by NewsBank and Readex—will focus on the evolution of news. This Sunday morning event will include the following presentations and a question session with the speakers:

The Research Power of Digitized Historical Newspapers

Michelle Harper, Senior Director, Product Management, Historical Newspapers and Periodicals, NewsBank

American newspapers have preserved essential records and detailed accounts of nearly every facet of local, regional and national life. Now searchable online, these diverse archives span centuries of social, cultural, political and local history. This presentation will explore how public and academic library patrons can benefit from a multitude of newly available newspaper archives for wide-ranging research.

The Future of Online Newspapers

Chuck Palsho, President, Media Services Division, NewsBank

What does the future of newspapers mean for libraries that provide access to news today? How will evolving trends in news production, publishing and consumption as well as new patterns in information economics impact news research? This presentation will cover the changes taking place in today’s newspaper industry.

To request an invitation to this breakfast event, which will run from 8:00 to 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, Jan. 22, please contact your account representative or readexmarketing@readex.com.

Be Sociable, Share!

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Announcements, Journalism History, Trends in Database Use | No Comments »

A uniquely valuable archive of translated foreign materials

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

 

Discover Joint Publications Research Service Reports

China has emerged as a global power. We can all recite the formidable facts: most populous state on earth. Second largest global economy. World’s largest military. But what do we really know about a culture half a world away, the machinations of the country’s ruling party, or the day-to-day lives of its citizens? Where can one find authentic accounts that provide unfiltered insight into a nation’s socioeconomic, political, environmental, military, religious, and scientific issues and events-including those that reveal the naked truth about China’s inexorable rise?

Enter Joint Publications Research Service (JPRS) Reports, 1957-1994, the ideal resource for developing a holistic understanding of cultures across the globe. This digital collection features English-language translations of foreign-language monographs, reports, serials, journals and newspapers from regions throughout the world—four million pages from 130,000+ reports, all told. Much of the information is quite rare; in fact, few libraries or institutions outside of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Library of Congress hold a complete collection. With an emphasis on communist and developing countries, this fully searchable resource is an essential tool for students and scholars at academic institutions worldwide.

The comprehensive Readex digital edition of JPRS Reports, 1957-1994, is now available by request for live preview. It features an intuitive interface that includes digital full-text searching, metadata search assistance and an individual bibliographic record for each JPRS Report. In addition, JPRS Reports, 1957-1994, will be cross-searchable with the Readex digital edition of Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports, 1941-1996.

For more information or to arrange a product trial, contact Readex at 800.762.8182, sales@readex.com or use this form.

Be Sociable, Share!

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Announcements, Cataloging and Indexing, Collection Development, New Collections, Product Updates, Trends in Database Use, World History | No Comments »

D.B. Cooper: An American Original

Monday, November 21st, 2011

Artist's sketch of D. B. Cooper (Photo: Seattle FBI)

The first aircraft hijackings were political. Leave it to American ingenuity to monetize the action! D.B. Cooper, not his real name, did it in 1971.  

Dan Cooper bought a ticket on Thanksgiving Eve 1971 from Portland to Seattle on Northwest Orient Flight 305. During the brief flight, he passed a note to a stewardess claiming to have a bomb and showed her a briefcase containing eight red cylinders wired to a battery. His instructions were for four parachutes and $200,000 in $20 bills to be delivered to the plane at the Seattle Tacoma Airport and for the plane to be refueled.

This was done. He released the passengers and stewardesses. Flight 305 took off, headed for Mexico via Reno, Nevada. Somewhere along the way, over southern Washington, Cooper parachuted out of the plane. It was dark and rainy and he was jumping into a wilderness area wearing a trench coat and street shoes, carrying the money and his briefcase. He has never been found. Nor has his body.

The Seattle Times, Nov. 25, 1971

A few days later a letter from Cooper or someone else was received by authorities:

The Oregonian, Nov. 30, 1971

In the fall of 1973, a Portland paper offered a $1,000 reward for the first person to bring in a $20 bill with a serial number from the list of twenties the FBI had released. They had filmed all the bills to get this information. The reward was never claimed. None of the bills have circulated since 1971.

Dallas Morning News, Nov. 23, 1973

 Six years later in 1979 a placard from the plane about the operation of the rear stairs was found: 

The Seattle Times, Jan. 17, 1979

And in 1980, some of the money was found along the Columbia River. The rest, which has a 2011 purchasing price equivalence of over $1 million, has never turned up.

This past summer it was reported in The Telegraph of London, UK, that the FBI are now investigating an individual who has been dead for 10 years. He had not previously been under suspicion. They are hoping to find fingerprints to compare to those taken from the cabin of the plane back in 1971. They also have some DNA evidence from a tie clip of Cooper’s which they can compare to the suspect, if they find any of his DNA.  

Here’s the key paragraph from the July 30, 2011 Telegraph story, “The 40-Year Mystery of America’s Greatest Skyjacking.” Ayn Dietrich, described in the article as “a former analyst with the bureau who is now tasked with handling inquiries about the Cooper case,” is speaking to Alex Hannaford, the Telegraph’s reporter:

 “You’re the first to know this, but we do actually have a new suspect we’re looking at. And it comes from a credible lead who came to our attention recently via a law enforcement colleague.” I’m stunned. Dietrich says she can’t tell me much more, but like all the Cooper sleuths I’ve met over the past few days, I too have become a little obsessed with the case. “The credible lead is somebody whose possible connection to the hijacker is strong,” she says. “And the suspect is not a name that’s come up before.” Dietrich says agents have sent an item that belongs to him for testing at the forensics lab in Quantico, Virginia. “We’re hoping there are fingerprints they can take off of it,” she says. “It would be a significant lead. And this is looking like our most promising one to date.”

D.B. Cooper was not merely a successful criminal, assuming he survived the jump. He became a folk hero. Within a week or so, tee shirts were for sale with the slogan “D.B. Cooper – Where are you?” 

The Oregonian, Dec. 2, 1971

Later that December a bowling alley advertised a cash prize tournament with the tagline “D.B. Cooper didn’t get all the money in the northwest.”   

The Sunday Oregonian, Dec. 12, 1971

I don’t know why Cooper would have been viewed in this positive light. I’m guessing that it was the fact his crime was seen as successful—relatively nonviolent, if stressful for the passengers and crew. The victim was a corporation and in the late 1960s and early ’70s corporations were often cast as the villain by members of the counterculture. One of the interviewees in Hannaford’s story basically says he was “sticking it to the man.” A bar in Ariel, Washington, has been holding a D.B. Cooper Day since 1973 on the day after Thanksgiving . They’ll hold it again this month, on the 40th anniversary of this unsolved crime.

Be Sociable, Share!

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in American History, Primary Sources in the Classroom, Trends in Database Use | No Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »