The ABCs of the New England Primer, the most popular textbook in 18th century America. It followed Puritan ideals - stressing rote memorization without creativity, a strict and unforgiving Christianity, and the idea that children were born sinners who had to reach salvation through baptism and learning [x].
July 4, 1827: Slavery completely abolished in New York
In America, July 4th is synonymous with freedom. But there are two things people tend to forget when they’re celebrating America’s independence: one, that the founding fathers were famously mum on the subject of slavery (and that many earned their wealth and status on the backs of slaves), and that, through the 18th century, most Northern colonies/states had slavery. In New Amsterdam, the first slaves were brought over in 1624 by the Dutch East India trading company. The men (and handful of women) brought over in these early years, when New Amsterdam was just a small port village, could be credited with the intense manual labor - clearing of trees, construction of homes, businesses and ships, paving of roads - that helped turn New Amsterdam into a size-able town by the time it became New York.
Under the Dutch, slaves, most of whom came from Angola, were treated as commodities. Many slaves had a half-freedom, which allowed them to earn and keep some wages. Some were able to save up enough money to free themselves or their family members. Free Africans owned homes and businesses, and an enterprising few gained considerable influence and wealth. Under the English, most slaves either worked domestically or in assorted businesses, from stores and taverns to the docks.
New York played a large role in the revolutionary war. Its growing affluence made it a good target, and the British occupied the city for much of the war. Slaves flocked to fight for both sides with the promise of freedom.
In years following the war, slavery continued, but became less profitable as the population of immigrants and poor whites (who were willing to work for meager wages) increased. By 1799, pressure from such groups as the New York Manumission Society (established in 1785 by Quakers) had the New York senate passing a bill for gradual emancipation. Slaves born before July 4th, 1799 remained slaves, but those born after that date would be freed in their twenties.
Many slave owners, in an attempt to squeeze the last bit of profit out of their human chattel, got to work selling their slaves down south under the guise of indentured servitude. Slaves and free blacks were sometimes kidnapped and sold out of state by criminals, while others were sold by signing faulty indenture contracts. The Manumission Society rescued dozens of free blacks from these devious schemes, but census figures show that the black population of New York dropped severely after 1800.
Taking note of the actions of slaveholders, in 1817 Governor Daniel D. Tompkins proposed that all slaves should be freed unconditionally by “some future day, not more remote than the 4th day of July, 1827." He argued that, in a decade, slaves would no longer be profitable to their owners, anyway. The measure passed.
Freedom was not without its restrictions: The right of black men to vote was taken away in 1815. Blacks were viewed by immigrants and poor white as competition, and their ire sometimes grew violent. Many also found themselves pushed out of skilled labor and relegated to the most mundane and low-paying jobs. But July 4th, 1827 certainly took an enormous step towards ensuring that the meaning behind July 4th was applicable to all. More here: [x] [x]
The Four Social Zones of Fifth Avenue, a sketch by Reginald Marsh for a 1922 issue of Vanity Fair. This cartoon shows the distinct neighborhoods in 1920’s Manhattan and their clientele - the young artists and bohemians of downtown, the immigrant workers and socialists of midtown, and the upper-class elite of uptown [x]. Click for a better view.
An anti-Andrew Jackson pamphlet from the 1828 presidential campaign. These “Coffin Handbills” were widely distributed by his opponents, and attacked Jackson for, among other things, executing militiamen and massacring Native Americans. After describing how Jackson personally stabbed a man to death, the handbill asks,
Gentle reader, it is for you to say, whether this man, who carries a sword cane, and is willing to run through the body of any one who may presume to stand in his way, is a fit person to be our President - to be the ruler of a peace loving People!!! [x]
Girls delivering ice, 1918. During World War I, many women took over the jobs of men who had joined the army. The original caption notes, “The ice girls are delivering ice on a route and their work requires brawn as well as the patriotic ambition to help” [x].
The American Continental Congress actually voted for and declared independence on July 2nd. John Adams, in a letter to wife Abigail, thought this date would become a special holiday:
But the Day is past. The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.
I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more. [x]
He was technically right…just off by two days! July 4th was the date written on the final copy of the Declaration, and it stuck. The signing was staggered, complicated by the fact that all the delegates were never in the same room at the same time. Most signed on August 2nd, but the last signature was not placed until 1777. [x]
A “snake oil salesman” is a name for a hack who sells under false advertising - usually by claiming that an ordinary product has extraordinary ingredients. The term comes from Clark Stanley, a Texas businessman who sold medicine made out of “snake oil.” In 1893, he even did demonstrations at the Columbia World Expo in Chicago, where he would kill a rattlesnake and squeeze it, labeling what came out as snake oil. It soon became a lot harder for men like Stanley to blatantly lie about what went into their concoctions with the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, which tried to fight mislabeling of products. His snake oil was tested in 1917 and found to contain mineral oil, beef fat, camphor, turpentine, and pepper…and zero traces of snake oil. For this, Stanley was fined 20 dollars [x].
Believe it or not, the first American women voters lived way back the 18th century! In 1776, early state constitutions granted American women the vote in New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. Through the 1770s and 80s, these rights were slowly stripped away. By the ratification of the American constitution in 1787, New Jersey was the only state left that allowed women’s suffrage. Most states gave the vote to those who could meet certain property and wealth requirements, but New Jersey was unique in not specifying race or gender in their qualifications - meaning free African Americans and unmarried women (widowed or single) who owned 50 pounds’ worth of property could, and did, vote. Unfortunately, this was rescinded in 1807, after a local election was overturned due to massive voter fraud, leading legislators to place the blame on minorities. Said legislator John Condict,
“It cannot for a moment be supposed…that the authors of the constitution meant to entrust the command of our army, and the direction of our state, either to women, to negroes, or to aliens" [x].
Imagine this: an entire working class neighborhood in a bustling city is completely demolished over the course of three decades to make way for modern high-rise condominiums and office space. That’s exactly what happened to the West End neighborhood of Boston in 1958.
Since the 1920’s, the area had been home to thousands of Irish, Italian, and Jewish families, many of whom were working-class, second generation immigrants. Many tried to retain their unique cultural and religious traditions, and the neighborhood was a mixture of families living side-by-side. Street culture ruled: kids played, women congregated and gossiped after church, men smoked on street corners. While the buildings were often dilapidated, West Enders took great pride in making sure their apartments were clean and comfortable. Most importantly, rent was affordable and the location in central Boston would have been unattainable for working class families anywhere else.
By the 1950s, cities across America were undergoing urban renewal projects in efforts to “modernize” and draw affluent, white suburbanites back into the city. The narrow streets, alleys, and dense blocks of tenements didn’t exactly meld with the midcentury idea of a “modern city.” The West End was labeled a slum and scheduled for demolition. Landlords were instructed to stop repairing their buildings, and people who had called the neighborhood home for decades were pushed out to the outer areas of Boston. The entire neighborhood was razed over the course of 30 years and rebuilt from the ground up. While affordable housing units in new condos were promised, those who took the initiative to move back found the old sense of community gone. By the 1980s, it was decided that the project had largely been a failure.
You can learn more about the fate of the West End by visiting the West End Museum in Boston, or checking out the book Urban Villagers by Herbert Gans.
It’s wedding season (but you knew that). This gown was made from a nylon parachute that saved Maj. Claude Hensinger during World War II.
The pilot was returning from a raid over Japan in August 1944 when his engine caught fire. When he proposed to his girlfriend Ruth after the war, he offered her the material from the parachute that saved his life.
She worked with a seamstress to create the bodice, and used the strings on the parachute to shorten the front of the dress and create a train in the back.
It’s not even the only parachute wedding dress in our collection—it wasn’t uncommon for soldiers’ parachutes, made from fabric scarce during the war, to become wedding attire. #ontrend
This pastry princess—check out that crown!—is from the Sally L. Steinberg Collection of Doughnut Ephemera in our National Museum of American History’s Archives Center. (Steinberg also considered herself a doughnut princess, as her grandfather Adolph Levitt was America’s original “doughnut king,” having developed the automatic doughnut making machine and founded the modern American doughnut industry.)
The first Cinco de Mayo celebrations didn’t include margaritas, because they weren’t invented until the 1940s. By the 1970s, the margarita surpassed the martini as the most popular American cocktail.
This is the first frozen margarita machine, invented at a restaurant owned by Mariano Martinez. When blenders couldn’t keep up with the high demand for margs, he found inspiration in the 7-Eleven Slurpee machine. The original retired when Martinez’ restaurant moved 34 years later, and now it’s in our National Museum of American History.
The “First Lady of Song,” Ella Fitzgerald, was born 100 years ago today.
We’re celebrating the centennial of her birth and the legendary career that followed with this portrait on view at our National Portrait Gallery. Dizzy Gillespie, on the right, is all of us as he gazes at Lady Ella in song.
The photographer, William P. Gottlieb, learned to use a camera so that he could include images in his weekly music column for TheWashington Post. Today, his photos of jazz musicians from the 1930s and ’40s are regarded as invaluable visual records of jazz’s Golden Age.
Friday plans include a cold beverage? Meet the beer fridge of 1899.
It’s from a catalog of by L. H. Mace & Co. of New York, now in our @smithsonianlibraries. Early refrigerators used insulation (with an inch between two sets of walls) and circulation to move cool air from the ice chamber throughout the space.
Inside this refrigerator, there were places for kegs to rest and shelves in the lower part of the refrigerator could be removed, making it possible to chill two more kegs.
Photo: Photograph of Mae Reeves and a group of women standing on stairs, Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift from Mae Reeves and her children, Donna Limerick and William Mincey, Jr.
African American women have been wearing fancy hats for generations to church. In 1940, Mae Reeves started Mae’s Millinery Shop in 1940 in Philadelphia, PA with a $500 bank loan. The shop stayed open until 1997 and helped dress some of the most famous African American women in the country, including iconic singers Marian Anderson,Ella FitzgeraldandLena Horne.
Reeves was known for making all of her customers feel welcomed and special, whether they were domestic workers, professional women, or socialites from Philadelphia’s affluent suburban Main Line. Customer’s at Mae’s would sit at her dressing table or on her settee, telling stories and sharing their troubles.
Photo: Pink mushroom hat with flowers from Mae’s Millinery Shop, Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
In our Power of Place exhibition, we recreated a portion of Reeves’ shop to showcase this African American tradition. Our shop includes its original red-neon sign, sewing machine, antique store furniture and hats.
View artifacts from Mae’s Millinery Shop in our collection: s.si.edu/2oVlbFj
We love this history (and the word millinery) from our @nmaahc.
Picture the scene: A bustling New England tavern, December 1785. Two patrons sit at the bar, swapping war stories and discussing nascent U.S. political philosophy over mugs of… of what, exactly?
MSU Special Collections recently acquired an early American tavern keeper’s account book that can help answer that question—recording what American revolutionaries and their contemporaries were drinking (and eating) over two centuries ago.
Dating from December 1785 through 1788, this tavern keeper’s logbook tracks the sale of brandy, rum, flips, slings, toddies and other contemporary beverages, illustrating the drinking habits of 18th century New Englanders. There are some entries for meals, and for sales of salt, sugar, and other commodities (as well as “one cake of chocolate”), but unsurprisingly the most popular fare was liquid in nature.
While the barkeep’s name remains anonymous, it is easy enough to trace the ledger to Sterling, Massachusetts—the town’s name is written several times across the tattered paper covers, and a number of personal names penned in the book can be found in Sterling’s early town records.
This manuscript account book is in amazingly good shape considering its age (231 years old) and heavy use, and it gives us a rare insight into the types of transactions that must have been commonplace at shops and taverns of the period. So join us in raising a mug of brandy flip (or a slice of chocolate cake, if you prefer) in honor of our recent acquisition!
First published in 1796, American Cookery by Amelia Simmons is considered the first true American cookbook, with recipes for such indigenous foods as pumpkins, cranberries, and cornmeal. Cookbooks published here previously were English in origin with food and recipes written for English audiences.
American Cookery is the bedrock for all important cookbook collections and MSU Special Collections is fortunate to hold several early editions of the work, including the second printing of the first edition, published in 1798. We recently acquired another—the 1808 edition—published in Troy, New York.
Any early edition of this important work is special, but this particular volume is extra special for its provenance. Boldly written on the inside of the front cover is the name “Ruth Doty,” who moved to Detroit from Troy, New York with her merchant husband Ellis Doty (a descendant of Edward Doty who came to America on the Mayflower). This volume was published three years after their marriage in 1805, so perhaps this was one of Ruth’s first cookbooks—and most likely journeyed with her over ten years as she and her growing family made their way west to Detroit by the early 1820s.
In addition to the inscription of Ruth Doty, there are other ownership clues in the book. On the inside of the back cover there are two manuscript recipes for cakes, in a different hand than Ruth’s. Most intriguing of all, on the verso of the title page is what looks like the name of another Doty… Can you make out what it says?
One can only speculate as to whether the cookbook stayed in the Doty family after Ruth’s death in 1866 at the age of 82, but its remarkably good shape despite its age, travels, and use clearly suggests that whoever owned the book realized its importance and historical value.
A collection of photographs of Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), and the Potomac River taken between 1859 and 1861. These are some of the earliest photographs taken in Harpers Ferry. The photos were published by Edward Anthony and the New York Stereoscopic Company.
