Charter Day

346 years ago this November 24th, 1663 George Baxter was called before the General Court of Commissioners and asked to present the charter brought back from England. King Charles II—
—had signed it in July, and it was now being put into effect in Rhode Island. The moment is recorded as follows*:

Voted… That the box in which the King’s gratious letters weare enclosed be opened, and the letters with the broad seale therto affixed, be taken forth and read by Captayne George Baxter in the audiance and view of all the people… and the sayd letters with his Majestyes Royall Stampe, and the broad seale, with much becoming gravity held up on hyght, and presented to the perfect view of the people, and then returned into the box and locked vp by the Governor, in order to the safe keeping of it.

The box referred to above consists of a rectangular section about 3 feet long with a circular appendage for housing the seal. During the transition from the old State House to the new one in 1900 it was discovered in the attic. The original copy of the charter itself  is still located at the State House, where it is on view in its own safe.  But another copy (found among the effects of John Clarke—who was involved with obtaining the charter in 1663—when he died in 1678) was placed on deposit at the Historical Society**.

Beyond its antiquarian interest, though, the 1663 charter is remarkable for its ideals (the text of the charter is available through Yale’s Avalon Project, among other sources). In sanctioning the “livlie experiment” (hence the title of this blog), the charter was a dramatic statement in support of religious liberty and tolerance.

 

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* In John Russell Bartlett, ed. Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. vol. 1 Providence: A. Crawford Greene and Brother, 1856. Pages 508-511.

**  “The Duplicate of the Charter,” and “The Charter Box.”  Rhode Island History 20.4 (October, 1927): 122-4.

Autumn

Now that autumn is in full swing, it’s time to do something with all the apples you’ve picked. To aid in the process, we offer this broadside advertisement from 1863 for a cast iron cider mill:

It looks like the perfect historical apparatus for some of the historical fruit over at the Beineke Library.

This particular grinder has the advantage of speed (60-70 bushels / hour), although from the description, it sounds like the assembly process (“wooding the grinder”) makes Ikea furniture instructions look simple:

Once you have your historic fruit and machinery, you’ll still need a manual: The Cider Maker’s Handbook is available online and also in the real world. In addition to a lot of practical guidance on making the best fermented cider, the book also describes cider presses like this one, a near sibling of a printing press:

RIHS Events

This is a busy time at the Historical Society, and while we have an events calendar as well as a separate listing of Library-specific events, here are three ongoing and upcoming events to keep in mind as you plan the next few weeks:

The first in our series of workshops on Jewish genealogy took place last night, and featured a lot of helpful genealogical advice from George Goodwin and Barbara Carroll. The next session will take place next Wednesday, the 28th, from 6:30-8:30. It’s not too late to register for that session, which will focus on RIHS-specific resources, so visit the calendar for more information on how to do that.

This Saturday is Home Movie Day at the Aldrich House. You can drop off your films (8mm, Super 8, or 16mm) at the Library through Friday. On Saturday, they’ll be on the big screen, and you can get advice on how to care for them. Click here for more information.

Finally, on Saturday, November 7th from 10 to 12:30 we’re offering a workshop on the topic of Caring for Your Family Papers. If you have a box of important family materials that looks like this:then the workshop will be perfect for you. Karen Eberhart, the Library’s Special Collections Curator, will provide a hands-on demonstration of what to do to make sure that the irreplaceable materials documenting your family history are available for the long term. Participants will also receive an archival starter kit with some basic archival supplies. The workshop will be held at the Library, and space is limited, so reserve a spot by calling (401) 273-8107 x12. More information available through the events calendar.

Dancing with the Caroline Islanders

RIHS Collections Assistant Delia Kovac recently came across an item that has everything a Hollywood movie script could ask for: travel, adventure, “natives”, and—of course—dancing:

The Life and Adventures of James F. O’Connell, The Tattoed Man. During a Residence of Eleven Years in New Holland and the Caroline Islands, Providence: J.F. Moore, 1846. (CT275 .O18 A3)

Here’s an outline of the story with some selected quotes:

• O’Connell realizes his mother is a circus performer
• Sails as a cabin boy on a transport ship for female convicts (“… two hundred ‘ladies’—for so I suppose we are bound to style them…”)
• Joins as a crewman on a whaler and ends up in a storm (“the sea looked…as if it was filled with white cats coming to take our vessel by storm”)
• Shipwreck, four grueling days in a lifeboat, death of companions, suggestions of cannibalism, etc., etc.
• Washes up in the Caroline Islands, eating “the flesh of the kangaroo and bandycoot”
• Plenty of racism (the “savages” are “the connecting link between apes and men…”)

So far, an exciting enough life, but it’s the next phase—with its dancing and tattooing that makes O’Connell’s story so successful:

• In 1826, on board another whaler headed to Japan (“bowling along under easy sail”)
• The ship runs into a coral reef (“Captain Backus was, as usual, drunk on the hencoop”)
• In a lifeboat with a missionary’s wife and daughter and some other sailors. The mother and daughter die on the third day in the lifeboat and are buried at sea. Land sighted the next day.
• O’Connell captured by island residents and brought to the canoe-house, where he is poked and prodded (“My companions feared the Indians were cannibals, and that this examination  was to discover whether we were in good roasting case”)
• “In a sort of desperate feeling of recklessness, I determined to try the experiment of dancing upon our savage audience . . . I struck in to Garry Owen, and figured away in that famous jig to the best of my ability and agility.”
• The islanders are pleased. More displays of dancing.
• O’Connell’s dancing is rewarded with a free tattoo from some of the island’s women (” … with a sudden blow from a stick, drove the thorns into my flesh. One needs must when the devil drives; so I summoned all my fortitude, set my teeth, and bore it like a martyr. Between every blow my beauty dipped her thorns in the ink.”)
• O’Connell’s companion doesn’t hold up as well to the tattooing (“He swore and raved without any attention to rule; the way he did it was profane, but not syntaxical or rhetorical”)
• “In the afternoon there came a fresh supply of ladies, who continued tattooing operations on my left arm.”
• Eight full days of tattooing. A month to recover
• “To relieve our weariness, George made a flute of a reed, and fiddle of some light wood; while I, on my part had music in my sole.” (Author’s italics. Surprisingly, he wasn’t killed on the spot for that pun.)
• “The parrots squawled and the dogs howled at a distance, and the scene was romantic enough; but I was more given to dancing than sublime contemplation.”
• Married life: “At night I learned that the young lady who imprinted the last marks upon my arm and breast, was my wife! that last tattooing being part of the marriage ceremony.”
• “My wife was only about fourteen years of age–affectionate, faithful, and fond of baked dogs. During my residence on the island she presented me with two little demi-savages, a girl and a boy…”
• “Happening, however, to awake at midnight, I detected her solacing her grief with a dog’s drum stick…”
• Certain types of cannibalism really are to be expected: “…cannibalism, a practice which is unknown on Bonabee, except, perhaps, so far as tasting an enemy’s heart goes.”
• A variety of failed escape attempts
• O’Connell discovers a “large uninhabited island, upon which were stupendous ruins of a character of architecture differing altogether from the present style of of the islanders.”
• Takes part in a nautical canoe battle between two groups of islanders (prompted by his marriage) that involves deadly slingshots
• Leaves at last on a passing ship and soon gets into a fight with the captain
• Back in Manilla, the captain has O’Connell locked up in jail (“the calabozo”), but he continues to dance
• Apparently, after his return O’Connell and his tattoos were exhibited in circus-fashion.

How much of the story is actually true remains an open question. But in either case, it’s an exciting read.

Rhode Island Radio Lecture on Thursday

Despite being repeatedly and prematurely pronounced dead (at the hand of television, the internet, or whatever comes next), radio is still alive more than a hundred years after its birth.

This Thursday NERFC fellow Helen York will highlight the lives of two Rhode Island radio luminaries: Salty Brine and Warren Walden.

Full event details are available on our events calendar.

More information about Salty Brine is available in his Providence Journal obituary (which includes a slideshow of pictures through the years), and a quick overview with trivia is available through Quahog.org. Or you can stop in at the Library and view our collection of his papers. And for getting into the spirit of the times, Duke University’s collection of print radio advertising offers priceless items like “The Rainbow of Sound.”

Rhode Island Historical Society Awarded $99,400 Grant for Graphics Inventory Project

By Karen Eberhart, Special Collections Curator

From a hand-drawn map of Block Island created in 1661 to footage of Vincent “Buddy” Cianci’s first mayoral campaign in 1974, the Rhode Island Historical Society (RIHS) holds the world’s largest collection of audio and visual materials documenting to the history of Rhode Island.  In this blog on May 14, 2009 Jim DaMico reported on the progress of the Graphics Collection inventory project dedicated to uncovering all the riches within the collection.  We are now pleased to announce the continuation of that project thanks to a $99,400 grant from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).  With this funding, the RIHS can complete the final 3 years of the 5.5 year project to inventory all of our audiovisual materials.

The IMLS is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s 123,000 libraries and 17,500 museums and competition for the grants is always steep.  The RIHS was one of 154 grant recipients of out of a total of 371 applicants to the Museums for America grant program this year.

During the inventory, each item is examined and fundamental information collected in a database.  In the near term, that information will, for the first time, make a large portion of the Graphics division accessible to the public through the RIHS online public catalog, NETOP.  The inventory will also generate statistics that will be indispensible for prioritizing future work and maximizing staff efficiency for years into the future.

Material to be inventoried includes:

• Examples of early color photography such as an autochrome-process glass plate,  circa 1910.
• 1950s recordings on the once-common Dictaphone belts.
• Family photos from the 1840s to the 2000s providing rich documentation of life in Rhode Island.
• Architectural drawings of public buildings as well as of modest single family homes, all representative of the building styles and architectural history of the state.

“This Sanguinary Monster”*: The Pirate Gibbs, pt. 2

The recent high-profile acts of piracy in Somalia have highlighted the divide between the reality of piracy and our romanticized notions of it. But the desire to glamorize the swashbuckling while ignoring the blood and guts is nothing new**. A New York Times article of 1892 cataloging various famous pirates begins, “It cannot but be a source of regret to every true lover of the picturesque that pirates are no more and piracy has lost its popularity. What tremendous fellows they must have been!” The article includes a paragraph on Charles Gibbs, who is described as having a “soft spot for the fair sex” and being “remarkable for quoting the Bible with great frequency and fluency.” Describing Gibbs’ conversion from grocer to pirate, the author asks “who wouldn’t rather be a gallant pirate with a smart vessel and a picked crew than a grocer in Ann Street, near the Tin Pot?”

The previous post offered an overview of Gibbs’ career as offered in a single one of many published accounts of his life and death, Mutiny and Murder: Confession of Charles Gibbs. This post will highlight a few of the other versions of this popular tale that were offered to the public.***

In The Annals of Murder Thomas McDade lists 13 individual editions prior to 1900 offering an account of Gibbs’ life (Although one particular item makes the count a little difficult.). All those that are dated were published in 1831 or 1832. The Historical Society holds seven of those listed as well as two that are not recorded in Annals of Murder. The latter two imprints**** are apparently unique to the Historical Society; no other copies are listed either in OCLC or a number of international library catalogs.

While not unique, one item—Confessions and Execution of the Pirates, Gibbs & Wansley—is by far the most graphically and bibliographically unusual. This is how McDade describes the book’s physical construction*****:

1 p.l., [2]-32 [i.e. 8] p.; 16, 32 [i.e. 8] p.: total 32p.

“I.e.” usually indicates something out of the ordinary, and this publication offers plenty of that. The item appears to be a sammelband made up of three separate publications, as indicated in the collational formula above, but even that is uncertain.

The first eight pages offer a blow-by-blow account of the execution itself, with a strong emphasis on the penitent attitude of the pirates as they faced their death. Thomas Wansley, Gibbs companion and clearly described and depicted as a black pirate in this publication, had apparently been writing poetry in his cell:

On the verso of the poem is the following illustration, just in case we’ve begun to sympathize with the penitent and poetic buccaneers:

These eight pages function as a self-contained, coherent unit, and this is echoed in their physical makeup: they are a single four-leaf gathering.

The next gathering begins with the image used at the beginning of this post, a title page with vertical text and a full-length portrait of Gibbs. As you can see from the image, this copy was published after the execution, as it describes Gibbs as the pirate “who was executed on the 22nd of April”. Another variant state of the work also in the Library’s holdings is composed of a nearly identical text (the first and last words of each page match) and a slightly, but significantly, different title page. Rather than “Who was executed,” this title page reads “To be Executed.” The only other significant difference is that the publisher’s name is misspelled as “Christitn Brown” rather than “Christian Brown,” possibly providing evidence that the pre-execution version was offered with a hastily put-together title page. In either case, the two variants bracket the moment of execution in a concrete way (Gibbs is alive for the first and not for the second.).

The third and final gathering is a work titled “A Visit to the Condemned Criminals, Gibbs and Wansley, By a Layman.” (It’s unclear whether “layman” in this context indicates that the author is not a professional pirate or not a professional jail-visitor.). Like the first gathering, it is of 4 leaves, and like the first gathering it includes poetry and an image on a page incorrectly numbered “32″:******

And on the preceding page, this illustration of the ultimate end for pirates (or, perhaps, vampires):

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* The description of Gibbs used at the beginning of the narration of his execution in Horrible Confessions of the Pirate and Murderer.

** A recent New Yorker article reviews the legitimate economic and political aspects behind a favorable view of piracy: Caleb Crain, “Bootylicious: What Do the Pirates of Yore Tell Us about Their Modern Counterparts?”  The New Yorker, 2 September 2009.

***Call numbers and titles:

• Vault F 2162 .G44 H8: Horrible Confessions of the Pirate and Murderer; Charles Gibbs, alias James Jeffreys. [s.l.]: Printed for the Purchasers, April 1831.
• Vault F 2161 .G44 C74:  Confession of Charles Gibbs the Pirate. To Be Executed the 22d of April, 1831. New York: Printed and Sold by Christitn [Christian] Brown, n.d.
• Vault F 2161 .G44 L34: The Confessions of Charles Gibbs, the Pirate, Who Acknowledges that He Has Assisted in the Murder of Four Hundred Human Beings! [s.l.]: Printed for the Purchasers, 1831.
  bound with:
  Last Dying Words and Confession of Charles Gibbs, The Pirate. [s.l.]: [s.n.], 1831.
• Vault F 2161 .G44 C748: Confessions and Execution of the Pirates, Gibbs & Wansley. New York: Printed and Sold by Christian Brown, [n.d.]. Includes McDade nos. 337, 342 / 345.

**** Horrible Confessions and The Confession of Charles Gibbs, the Pirate, Who Acknowledges . . . are the unique copies. Oddly, both copies’ imprints state, “Printed for the Purchasers,” a curious attribution that seems, based on searches in WorldCat and the ESTC, to have been used solely in the US during a period from 1775-1831.

***** McDade’s response: “This kind of publication taxes the resources of the bibliographer.”

****** For the numerologico-bibliographers out there, yes, this is a 32-page (16 leaf) item with a central gathering of 8 leaves surrounded by two 4 leaf gatherings, pages 8 and 32 both marked “32″, even though the preceding pages are “5″ and “7″.

“400 Human Beings!”: The Pirate Gibbs, pt. 1

This, the second of the summer’s pirate-themed blog posts, centers on the brutal pirate, Charles Gibbs. A Rhode Island native, Gibbs started out on a life of crime early (he “became addicted to vices uncommon to youths of his age”) and then never let up. After an impressive career with the US Navy (or so claimed Gibbs; doubt has been cast on much of his story), Gibbs tried his hand at the grocery business in Boston. After failing at that occupation, he returned to the sea and soon found himself engaged in a mutiny, which led without much delay into a life of piracy. Eventually captured, Gibbs was hung in New York on 22 April 1831.*

The story was a popular one from the outset: OCLC lists dozens of editions of Gibbs’ narrative published within a few years of the hanging, most following a similar pattern and reprinting practically identical texts. Many now survive in only a few copies; some are unique. The RIHS Library holds a number of these imprints, some of which will be discussed in the next post, but this post centers on Mutiny and Murder: Confession of Charles Gibbs, published by Israel Smith in 1831.** The first image below is of the book’s title page and frontispiece (disposing of a body overboard):

The lengthy subtitle offers a convenient overview of Gibbs’ story–which included an interlude of marriage and  living “like a gentleman”–and rises to the crescendo of “the murder of nearly 400 human beings!”

Below is a depiction of one of the more barbarous moments in a barbarous life: the pirates dropping a woman who had been treated brutally over the rail:

This image has a lot to recommend it: the stylized, scalloped waves set against the patterns of the sky and sails; the nautically- and perspectivally-challenged depiction of the ship; and the pathos of the (apparently foot-less) victim of the “horrid transaction”. But its greatest virtue might be the faces of the villains. First, a man who seems—if it’s not reading too much into a dozen or so lines cut into a woodblock to depict a face—hardened to the life of killing women and dropping them overboard:

His partner, on the other hand, doesn’t display the same sangfroid about the deed. (Gibbs himself claimed to have interceded on the woman’s behalf; perhaps the illustrator is attempting to capture that ambivalence.):

Mutiny and Murder, as is the case with many of the accounts, is clear to offer a moral to the story, which is made explicit in this case through an “Address to Youth,” which is dramatically placed between the account of Gibbs’ sentencing and his execution. (Another edition*** features an “Addenda, by a Lady,” which does the same job.) The book traces the seeds of Gibbs’ development to his youth (“he was refractory, ungovernable, and disobedient to his parents!”) and finds him penitent in his final moments. Considering his sins Gibbs says “I thought of my good and affectionate parents and of their Godlike advice” (p. 10). Though the narrative is made up mostly of violence and various other forms of anti-social behavior, it’s also scattered with notes of remorse, much in the manner of Hollywood gangster movies that end with the bad guys dead or in jail. Under the guise of “learning from their mistakes” we’re allowed to enjoy the violence and bad behavior.

In its moralizing and publication of confession, this account of Gibbs’ life and death hearkens back to the earlier tradition of the published accounts of the Ordinary of Newgate in England in the 17th and 18th centuries (available through the fantastic Proceedings of the Old Bailey website****).

The next post will take a look at some of the many other publications of the story of Gibbs’ life.

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* Read the full narrative online at  http://books.google.com/books?id=BJQqAAAAMAAJ (or stop by the library to view a real copy).

** Vault F 2161 .G44 M99 c.2

*** Last Dying Words and Confession . . . (Vault F 2161 .G44 L34, item 2)

**** The advanced search, which allows one to search by crime or by punishment provides hours of entertainment. Ever wanted to find the stories of people branded on the cheek for the crime of pocket picking? Now you can. (Martha Bromley seems to have been the only one so unfortunate in that particular manner.) And for more true crime stories, see the Harvard Law School’s Dying Speeches & Bloody Murder website, which makes digital copies of crime broadsides available.

Diamonds

The Historical Society is pleased to announce that thanks to a grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation, we’ll be preserving an important example of early Rhode Island film making.

In 1915 the Eastern Film Company of Providence created a feature crime drama called Diamonds. It is one of the many films that Eastern Film Company made between 1914 and 1917, but one of the few that survive and one of only 14 films owned by the RIHS that were created by Eastern.  The exact plot for the film is not clear due to the unstable condition of the film, but we do know it includes a scene at the Narragansett Pier, an iconic locale in southern Rhode Island.  In addition to providing documentary evidence of Rhode Island at the time, Diamonds is also important in the history of film making as an example of an early film created before California became the dominant location for the film industry.

Diamonds is part of the Gordon Collection at the RIHS, a large collection of nitrate films found in a warehouse in Providence in the 1940s and donated in the 1970s.  No documentation on any of these films survives, apart from what little was written about them in the contemporary press.

Diamonds currently exists only as a negative on cellulose nitrate film.  Nitrate was the first plastic used as the base for photographic negatives and is very unstable and quite flammable (see the video below).  Small rolls of film deemed unusable would sometimes be sold by film companies to kids who would light one end like a fuse and watch the film go up like flashpaper.  Nitrate film burns fast and bright.  The replacement of nitrate plastic with the more stable acetate plastic, aka “safety” film, happened slowly starting in 1908 with the production of the first safety film for still cameras.  The production and use of nitrate plastic for use in photography didn’t end completely until the 1960s.*.

In addition to this inherent flaw, Diamonds is also showing signs of decomposition, thanks to poor storage conditions earlier in its life. So for these reasons—and also in the hope of making the film more accessible—we’ll soon be working with Cinema Arts, a Pennsylvania film restorer to create preservation copies of the film**. We’ll also be creating a DVD copy to make the film easier to use for researchers, and we hope to screen a copy of the movie during an event next year.

Through a similar collaborative process, the Historical Society has already preserved a number of important early films, including My Lady of the Lilacs, an image from which appears below.

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*National Park Service. Museum Handbook, Part I, Appendix M, Management of Cellulose Nitrate and Cellulose Ester Film, 1999. http://www.nps.gov/museum/publications/MHI/AppendM.pdf

** Tech Specs: One 35mm fine grain master(wet gate from original nitrate negative), one 35mm duplicate negative, one 35mm black and white projection print, and one Beta SP video master.

Robots in Providence

The item described here answers the age-old question of what to do on a Saturday afternoon. In this case, the Saturday afternoon in question is November 19, 1796 at 3:00 PM. And the entertainment is a demonstration of a “Chinese automaton figure”.

Depicted above is a broadside from our graphics collection (Broadsides, 1796)*, which advertises the exhibition. An automaton is essentially a robot, and people have been building automata for centuries, ranging from programmable robots of the 1st century BCE, through a medieval floating robot band to automata that are still produced today (including the Chuck E Cheese animatronic animals).

In this case, the automaton performed “feats on the rope”—which, judging from the woodcut illustration, included playing a triangle on a tightrope: seemingly an impressive accomplishment for a robot even today. All this would be exciting enough in its own right, but this performance gains extra intrigue by showcasing a “Chinese” automaton. In 1796, it’s likely that the average Rhode Islander would never have seen anyone from China before. In fact, Chinese settlement in Rhode Island wouldn’t begin in earnest until late in the nineteenth century: the 1865 census reported only a single Chinese resident in the entire state.** As Lena Reynoso points out, “the first ‘foreigners’ exhibited in America often had no pulse.”***

Pieces of ephemeral advertising like this also offer a unique view into the social anxieties of their time. Note, for instance, that four separate rooms were to be provided in Mr. Thurber’s Tavern, ensuring that “Ladies or select Companies will be less incommoded” and that a police officer will be in attendance “to keep good Order.” Apparently the promoter, “Mr. Cressin”—who also toured the country with a pair of monkeys named Gibonne and Coco—was forced to relocate his show from Newburyport’s rowdy wharf area.****

And what was the cost of this entertaining afternoon? There are a number of ways to measure the relative worth of a 1796 dollar to a 2009 dollar, and they give a range of values for what that $.25 would be worth today:

• $4.20: A little less than today’s matinée movie ticket, if measured by the most literal scale, the Consumer Price Index.
• $68.99: A discount ticket to a Broadway show, if measured as a portion of the typical wage of an unskilled worker.
• $8,601.29: Buying a plasma widescreen TV and home theater sound system, if measured as a relative share of the Gross Domestic Product.

Throwing out the high value, it’s clear that a visit to the automaton exhibition would have been an expensive, if not prohibitively so, afternoon or evening of entertainment. But probably worth every penny.

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* Alden, #1506

** See Patrick T. Conley, Rhode Island Ethnic Heritage Fact Sheets. Providence: Rhode Island Publications Society, 1980. pp. 34-6.

*** Lena Reynoso, “Tourism, Bodies and Display in America 1769-1900.”  Early America Review (Winter/Spring 2008). http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/2008_winter_spring/popular-american-amusements.html. (Part of Archiving Early America, an ad-supported website)

**** Scott C. Martin, Cultural change and the market revolution in America, 1789-1860. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.