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A M E R I C A N � A N T I Q U A R I A N � S O C I E T Y

Asa Hutchinson Diary

In July 2004 AAS purchased with income from the Harry G. StoddardMemorial Fund an important, hitherto unknown diary kept in 1853 by Asa

B. Hutchinson. Hutchinson (1823-1884) was a member of the HutchinsonFamily Singers, who were among the most famous and significant Americanpopular musical performers in the antebellum period. The group initially con-sisted of Asa, his older brothers Judson and John, and their sister Abby.Starting in 1840, the group performed in cities throughout the northeast, and inlater years they toured in other parts of the country and in Great Britain. Theywere best known for their anti-slavery and temperance songs, and they sang atmany abolition and temperance meetings and conventions. After Abby marriedin 1849 and retired from the group, Asa and his brothers continued as a trioand performed in combinations with other family members into the 1880s. Ithas been estimated that the group gave more than twelve thousand concerts.

Asa’s diary, begun when he was twenty-nine, is nearly two hundred pages inlength and covers the period from January to August 1853. As manager of thegroup Asa included a wealth of detail about the group’s concert engagements,including the practical issues of organizing concerts and arranging travel andlodging. There are frequent descriptions of concerts. For example, in an entrywritten in Boston February 11, 1853, Asa wrote:

Went to the North Bennet Street Church, sang a while. While I alone

was singing “Boatman of the Ohio,” Frederick Douglass made his

appearance — He had been to visit Mrs. H. B. Stowe in relation to

establishing an Industrial Institution for the Coloured folks in this

Country. The funds to come from England. Evening sang to about 500

of the church. The pleasant faces were applause enough.

The diary also contains much of an introspective nature, including Asa’sreligious state and his sometimes-strained relationships with his brothers. Whenon the road, Asa often wrote about missing his wife and children in Milford,New Hampshire. He was ambivalent about his musical career, often longing togo back to farming.

The existence of Asa Hutchinson’s 1853 diary has not been known to schol-ars until now. Its study will offer many new insights into the lives and careers ofone of the most important American musical groups of the nineteenth century.

Thomas KnolesCurator of Manuscripts

Saving America’sTreasures

AAS has been awarded a secondSave America’s Treasures grant,

this one for conservation of the col-lections related to our history of thebook program. The first SaveAmerica’s Treasures grant for$400,000 was awarded in 2001 tohelp with the renovation of the olderbook stacks in Antiquarian Hall.These renovations were made in con-junction with the construction of anew, modern book stack, which iscompletely fitted out with compactshelving. The project to install a fire-suppression system, to upgrade fire-detection and climate-control sys-tems, and to seal airflow among thefive levels of glass-and-steel stackswas completed in 2002.

This new Save America’sTreasures grants is for $100,000,which must be matched by con-tributed funds dollar-for-dollar, is toundertake conservation work onsome of the library’s most heavilyused collections. The success ofAAS’s history of the book programhas put severe pressure on the bookhistory collections. At the center ofthe project is the treatment of a setof manuscript records from two18th-and 19th-century printing andpublishing firms from Philadelphia:the Matthew Carey papers and theMcCarty-Davis papers. The volumescontaining these records need to bedisbound, the paper de-acidified, thecontents microfilmed to reducefuture handling, and the gatheringsresewn and rehoused in acid-freefolders and boxes.

The second largest task in theproject is to treat the seventy-fourbound volumes of newspapers thatIsaiah Thomas himself collected andpresented to the Society as the foun-dation for its unmatched collectionof early American newspapers. Thosein he best condition need only minorbinding or text block repair; butother volumes must be examined,treated, and repaired page by page.

The project also includes treat-ment for about three hundred fiftybroadsides and catalogs relating tothe book and newspaper trades. Ourextensive collection of printed librarycatalogs also receive heavy use bythose scholars interested in readingpatterns, and many volumes andpamphlets in this collection needtreatment and rehousing. Finally, ourholdings of James Feminore Coopermanuscripts need to be stabilized andhoused in acid-free clamshell boxes.

Work on this project will occupyapproximately half the time of AAS’shead conservator Babette Gehnrichand her assistant Laura Oxley and willstretch over the coming two years.

New CouncilorsElected

After the AAS was chartered in1812, with a group of officers

led by President Isaiah Thomas, thefirst members of the Council wereelected in 1813. Among this groupwere Rev. William Bentley of Salem,who was one of the major collectorscontributing to the AAS’s library andits portrait collection; AaronBancroft, a minuteman at Lexingtonand Bunker Hill in his youth and latera leader of the liberal Unitarian move-ment within the CongregationalChurch; Benjamin Russell, aFederalist printer/editor of theColumbian Centinel in Boston andfirst publisher of official laws anddocuments of Congress (he appren-ticed with Isaiah Thomas at theMassachusetts Spy); and GeorgeGibbs, early America’s leading miner-alogist, whose collection was sold toYale University. Since that time thegoverning board of the Society hasincluded scores of remarkable individ-uals, who have helped to shape theinstitution that we know today.

At the annual meeting inOctober, three new members of theCouncil were elected for a three-yearterm. Elliot Bostwick Davis is theJohn Moors Cabot Chair of the Artof the Americas Department of theMuseum of Fine Arts in Boston. Herspecialty is nineteenth-centuryAmerican prints and drawings, andin 1990-91 she was a Jacob HiattFellow at AAS working on a projectcalled called, “American DrawingBooks, 1820-80.” John W.Tyler isthe F. Trubee Davison Chair in histo-ry at Groton School. He also servesas director of publications for theColonial Society and has been aninvaluable adviser to AAS as we haveworked to expand our programs forK-12 teachers. Laurel ThatcherUlrich is the James Duncan PhillipsProfessor of Early American Historyat Harvard University. Her book A

Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha

Ballard based on Her Diary, 1785-

1812 won the Pulitzer Prize for his-tory in 1991. Ulrich collaboratedwith AAS member Laurie Kahn-Leavitt to produce a film based uponA Midwife’s Tale that has beenbroadcast on PBS.

Hutchinson diary

New Members The following were elected at the Annual Meeting in October 2004

Charles ArningLunenburg, Massachusetts

Park Ranger in the John F. ChaffeeBlackstone River Valley NationalHeritage Corridor. Ranger Arning isan author, producer, and host of thetelevision series Along the Blackstone.

He visits AAS frequently for researchon the region’s history.

Carol BerkinNew York, New York

Professor of history at BaruchCollege and deputy chair of theDepartment of History at theGraduate Center. Berkin has workedas a consultant on several PBS andHistory Channel documentaries, andis known for her expertise inwomen’s history.

Richard CheekBelmont, Massachusetts

Freelance photographer and authorof fourteen photographic books.Cheek has devoted his career torecording the visual history ofAmerican architecture and landscapedesign for books serving both schol-arly and popular audiences. HisLand of the Commonwealth: A

Portrait of the Conserved

Landscapes of Massachusetts waspublished in 2000.

Mark W. FullerBoylston, Massachusetts

Northeast Divisional President,Industrial Distribution Group, andchairman of the George F. and SybilH. Fuller Foundation. As a trusteeof the Fuller Foundation, Mr. Fullerhas a long acquaintance with build-ing projects at AAS, such as the newbook stack wing completed in 2001.

David M. LesserWoodbridge, Connecticut

Dealer in fine and antiquarianbooks. His firm, established in 1989,specializes in the social, political, andcultural history of America. Lesserhas long been a valued partner ofAAS in building our collections ofearly American imprints.

Thomas MichieProvidence, Rhode Island

Curator of Decorative Arts at theMuseum of Art, Rhode Island Schoolof Design. Michie has published arti-cles on historical American furniture,silver, wallpaper, architectural pat-tern books, and the China trade.Most recently he curated a show of“Spindles and Spokes: WindsorChairs and Their Legacy inAmerica.”

Willis MonieCooperstown, New York

Book dealer. Monie’s bookshop offersan array of general books andephemera, with a good selection inbaseball, Americana, history, and fic-tion.

John H. MotleyBurlington, Connecticut

Insurance executive and president ofthe Travelers Foundation. Mr.Motley currently serves as chairmanof the Wadsworth AtheneumMuseum of Art, Hartford, and of theTredegar National Civil WarFoundation in Richmond, Virginia, towhich he has donated his extensivecollection of artifacts documentingthe experience of blacks in the CivilWar.

Deane L. RootPittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Professor of music and curator of theCenter for American Music at theUniversity of Pittsburgh. He is pastpresident of the Society for AmericanMusic, and his 1990 critical editionof The Music of Stephen C. Foster

was named an outstanding academicbook by the American LibraryAssociation. More recently he hasdeveloped an innovative summerinstitute to allow classroom teachersto explore American history throughthe lens of music.

Karin WulfBethesda, Maryland

Associate professor of history atAmerican University and book revieweditor of the William & Mary

Quarterly. She is the author of Not

All Wives: Women of Colonial

Philadelphia and co-editor of Milcah

Martha Moore’s Book: A

Commonplace Book from

Revolutionary America and A Novel

Life: Trials of Love and Life in the

Diary of Hannah Callender Sansom,

1758–1788.

Bertram Wyatt-BrownBaltimore, Maryland

Professor of History, emeritus, at theUniversity of Florida, and past presi-dent of the Southern HistoricalAssociation. His many books includeSouthern Honor: Ethics and Behavior

in the Old South; The House of

Percy: Honor, Melancholy, and

Imagination in a Southern Family;The Shaping of Southern Culture:

Honor, Grace, and War, 1760s—

1880s; and, in 2003, Hearts of

Darkness: Wellsprings of a Southern

Literary Tradition.

Member Notes

Connecticut Landmarks (formerlyThe Antiquarian & LandmarksSociety) has selected Charles BeachBarlow as the first recipient of theGeorge Dudley Seymour Medal, anaward which honors an individual orinstitution that has provided consistentleadership and vision in advancing thecause of Connecticut’s heritage.

Dr. Gary Milan of Beverly Hills wasthe victim of a break-in and theft of aportion of his collection of moviememorabilia. Scripts and other mate-rials related to both Casablanca andThe Maltese Falcon were among theitems in a safe that thieves removedfrom his house. The details arereported on Americana Exchange, awebsite for bibliophiles created andmaintained by Bruce McKinney ofSan Francisco.

William Safire has announced thathis last regular column on the Op-Edpage of the New York Times will bepublished in January 2005. Aftermore than thirty years of writing thatcolumn, he will retire it; but he willcontinue to write his “On Language”column for the New York Times

Sunday Magazine. Publisher ArthurO. Sulzberger Jr. said, “The New

York Times without Bill Safire is allbut unimaginable.”

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. was hon-ored by the Franklin and EleanorRoosevelt Institute at a New Yorkdinner in October. Walter Cronkitewas among the guests.

The Council for Higher EducationAccreditation, a private, nonprofitnational organization that coordi-nates accreditation activity in theU.S., has elected Richard Traina ofWorcester as chairman of the boardof directors.

Fellows

The wedding of our 2002-03Northeast Modern LanguagesAssociation fellow Glenn Hendlerto Nina Rowe was featured in theNew York Times “Vows” column.Hendler is an associate professor ofEnglish at Notre Dame Universityand Rowe is an assistant professor inthe Department of Art History andMusic at Fordham University.

Staff

In July, Georgia B. Barnhill, AndrewW. Mellon Curator of Graphic Arts,presented papers at the SHARP con-ference in Lyon and at the AmericanMuseum in Giverny on the relation-ship of French and American lithog-raphy. While Gigi was in France,John B. Hench, vice-president forcollections and programs, was in res-idence at Columbia University, work-ing on his project “A D-Day forAmerican Books Abroad.” Hisresearch was supported by a GilderLehrman Institute of AmericanHistory Fellowship.

Senior cataloger and serials specialistS.J.Wolfe presented papers on nine-teenth-century America’s fascinationwith mummies at the New EnglandHistorical Association meeting andat the SHEAR conference at BrownUniversity.

COMMON-PLACE.ORG

While AAS is a library devoted to old-fashioned materials printed inAmerica before 1877, we are also a research center and a learned soci-

ety pursuing knowledge and disseminating discoveries made in the collectionswith all the twenty-first-century tools at hand. When in 2000 two enterprisingyoung scholars with a good idea for an online journal approached the Society,we found ways to work in partnership with them in launching this venture.Jane Kamensky of Brandeis and Jill Lepore of Boston University (now atHarvard University) originated the idea for the journal and have served tireless-ly as co-editors. They describe it as “an effort to create a common place for historians, curators, archivists, journalists, and history buffs to share what theyknow about early America and to teach each other to ask new questions.”After five years, Kamensky and Lepore are stepping down from the helm.Edward G. Gray, associate professor of history at Florida State University, whohas served as editorial board member and book review editor for Common-place,will take over as editor. He has been involved with the journal since its inception,but in his new position looks forward to exploring “ways to expand Common-

place’s use of non-print media—video, film, sound, and graphic imagery.”Along with the editorial change, the management is also in transition. The

Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History is withdrawing from the gover-nance of the publication but will generously continue as a financial contributorduring this year of transition. Florida State University will now join AAS as anongoverning partner for at least the next four years. The first issue of the newregime will be launched on the Internet in January. It will be a special numberdevoted to the early Pacific; and, along with Gray, Alan Taylor of University ofCalifornia, Davis, will serve as the guest editor. While Common-place is pub-lished exclusively on the Internet, we remind you that this newsletter Almanac

and The Book are printed on paper and mailed to subscribers, but they are alsoavailable at the AAS website: americanantiquarian.org.

The mummy Padihershef

From John Hench’s over-

seas editions collection

The colorful collection of draw-ings, proofs, and print samples

from the New York publishing firm,McLoughlin Brothers, Inc., are nowcleaner and brighter than for manyyears. With a grant from the HealdFoundation, directed by trustee JamesN. Heald 2nd of Worcester, the con-

servation department was able to hirepaper conservator Paula Lupton ofShrewsbury to undertake the massiveproject of cleaning, stabilizing, andproviding appropriate new housingfor over seven hundred illustrationsand one hundred twenty-five picturebooks. The McLoughlin firm pio-neered the systematic use of colorprinting technologies in children’sbooks between the 1850s and 1920s,when the firm was sold to MiltonBradley. The principals continuallyexperimented with color illustration,progressing from hand stenciling, tothe mechanical relief process or zincetching, to the planographic processof chromolithography. This collectionalso includes manuscripts, paste-updummy books, publisher’s catalogs,and a ledger book of picture bookcovers. In addition to illustrations forpopular children’s stories like “The

Volunteer Docents Tell AAS Story

Everyone who works at AAS has heard the refrain: “I have never beeninside the American Antiquarian Society and I have always wondered what

goes on in that handsome building.” To satisfy this curiosity, the Society offersfree public tours of Antiquarian Hall every Wednesday afternoon at threeo’clock, conducted by a group of specially trained docents.

Each week two dedicated and talented volunteers guide visitors through thehistoric main library building. Along the route the docents show and explainsuch items as: Isaiah Thomas’s own eighteenth-century printing press, a collectionof antique furniture including the desk of Governor John Hancock with secretcompartments useful for a revolutionary leader, artifacts such as a vial of teafrom the Boston Tea Party and the Mather family high chair, many historic por-traits and prints, and an extensive collection of Staffordshire pottery made in themid-nineteenth century for the American trade and based upon lithographs thatare also held in the AAS collections. But, of course, the main feature of each touris the behind-the-scenes look at the twenty-five miles of shelving where theSociety’s extensive and priceless collection of printed materials is stored.

Because Antiquarian Hall was originally constructed in 1909 with addi-tions built by each successive generation in 1924, 1950, 1972, and 2002, thetours are also a fascinating look at the history of library construction.Beginning with the glass floors and dark green steel shelving that that are thehallmarks of the original building to the compact shelving and state-of-the-artpreservation environment of the 2002 reinforced concrete book vault, the tourvividly depicts how libraries have evolved over the past century.

Docents also describe the activities and programs of the Society with stopsin the graphic arts, newspapers, manuscripts, and conservation departments,

where visitors frequently see staff and volunteers working with the collections.The tours also feature a short video presentation narrated by Walter Cronkiteon the mission and activities of the Society.

The AAS docent program was developed by outreach director, JamesDavid Moran and is now administrated by events coordinator, Ann-CathrineRapp. The following individuals are or have been part of the AAS docent pro-gram: Marsha Ballantyne, Karen Bernard, Cathy Cairns, Henry (Harry) B.Dewey, Janet (Bunny) Guerrin, Gary Hayward, Hebert Holmes, BarbaraHoran, Nancy Johnson, Nelson Mather, Richard McNamara, Ida Nystrom,and Marilyn Quigley.

The Wednesday tour programs have been so successful that we haveexpanded it to include special tours for professional, civic, and social groups.Additionally, we have offered local historical societies special Wednesdayevening tours of the building with an exhibition of AAS materials from theindividual town or locality.

“Our Wednesday afternoon tours have become extremely popular with awide variety of people,” said Moran. “We frequently see long-time residentswho have never been in the building coming in for their first peek or coming inwith out-of-town guests to show off one of the region’s gems. And, of course,there are the researchers, many of whom have worked in the library for years,who want to see where all the wonderful papers and books that they studyactually come from.”

SURFIN’ AAS

www.americanantiquarian.org has taken on a new look. The official website ofthe American Antiquarian Society was recently redesigned by staff in prepara-tion for offering secure on-line transactions. While all of the old features wereretained and incorporated into the new design, new functionality and betternavigation are hallmarks of the new look.Upcoming events and latest news are featured prominently on the homepage tokeep users informed as to the goings-on at AAS. A new toolbar at the top willallow the visitor to search the site or browse through categories, giving fullaccess to hundreds of pages of information on the American AntiquarianSociety and all of its programs.

Watch for new changes as we will soon be adding secure on-line transactionsto the site for making donations, ordering books, publications, and materialsfrom our “Book Corner,” or for requesting photo-duplication or rights and per-missions.You will soon be able to execute all these transactions online.

McLoughlin Collection Conservation

Three Bears,” “Cinderella,” “MotherGoose Rhymes,” “Sleeping Beauty,”and “The Night Before Christmas,”the drawings include scenes fromfamiliar Bible stories, Pilgrim’s

Progress, and Shakespeare’s plays.The collection is a valuable

research resource, tracing the evolu-

tion of a publishing firm through thelatter half of the nineteenth century.The library acquired the collection inpart by a donation from the lateAAS member Herbert H. Hosmer in1978 and in part through purchasefrom AAS member Justin Schiller in1997. The Heald Foundation’s grantmade it possible for us to provideconservation treatments of the collec-tion so that it can be appreciated in astate much closer to the original. Thecleaning process was particularlychallenging, since printer’s notes andlight pencil drawings in margins andon verso needed to be preserved.Some of the drawings had beenbacked with acidic boards, whichhad to be removed mechanically. Theentire collection is now housed inappropriate mats, folders, and boxesfor safe storage.

Goldilocks

Tour group at Thomas’s press

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AAS HERITAGE KNOW YOUR AAS MEMBERS

One project in connection with the approaching bicentennial is to create a bibliography of AAS members’ autobiographical writings and to begin to collect those not alreadyheld by the library for the Society’s archives. If you have suggestions of additional autobiographies or published diaries by members, please let us know.

As the AAS moves toward its bicentennial, we are aware that the institutionis not just a library, but also a remarkable collection of members, living

and dead, who have contributed to the Society’s heritage. The Society’s currentmembership totals 798; and a total of 2,605 individuals have been elected tomembership since the charter group founded the Society in 1812. Not surpris-ingly, this group of literate and lively individuals has left a body of autobio-graphical writings and published diaries. In fact, two classics of autobiographical literature—The Education of Henry

Adams and The Road from Coorain—are by members: Henry Adams(elected 1884) and Jill Ker Conway (1977), who published two subsequentautobiographical volumes, True North and A Woman’s Education. The Diary

of John Quincy Adams (1839) has been published by the Belknap Press. Twoother AAS members who have served as the nation’s president—TheodoreRoosevelt (1918) and Calvin Coolidge (1925)—published autobiographies,while a fourth, Jimmy Carter (1988), wrote a memoir of his childhood, An

Hour before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood. Roosevelt also wrote aseparate account of a particular time in his life in The Rough Riders. Anothermember who detailed his military experience, this time in the Civil War, wasThomas Wentworth Higginson (1874) in Army Life in a Black Regiment;

later, Higginson wrote more comprehensively about his life in Cheerful Years.We have father-and-son autobiographies in In Retrospect: The History of a

Historian by Arthur M. Schlesinger (1939) and A Life in the 20th Century byArthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (2000).

In My Life as Explorer Roald Amundsen (1906) recounts some of theharshest conditions on the globe, while Paul Mellon’s (1967) Reflections in a

Silver Spoon: A Memoir portrays a life privilege and the responsibilities thatcome with it. A Reporter’s Life by Walter Cronkite (1977) and Palimpsest byGore Vidal (2002) look at the American scene from two very different perspec-tives. In A Walk toward Oregon: A Memoir, Alvin M. Josephy Jr. (1977)chronicles his growing attachment to Native Americans in the West, particular-ly the Nez Perce tribe against the background of major events in the twentiethcentury. Doris Kearns Goodwin (2000) in Wait Till Next Year relates her com-ing of age in parallel with her affection for the beloved Brooklyn Dodgers (latertransferred to the Red Sox). Other current members who have recently pub-lished autobiographical works include: Vartan Gregorian (1991) The Road to

Home: My Life and Times; Forrest McDonald (1988) Recovering the Past, a

historian’s memoir; and Harold T. Miller (1978) Publishing: A Leap from Mind

to Mind.