Odd Fellows Indeed

Secret societies have an enduring appeal and they’ve prompted speculation about their motivations and influence for a long time. Why are they secretive? What powerful people are members, and how does their membership affect their decisions? Popular fiction and movies frequently base their plots on groups like the Freemasons or Illuminati or other shadowy organizations.

But secret societies aren’t entirely serious all the time. The item depicted above* is a compilation of three separate pieces of printed ephemera dealing with TRIAEOAOF: The Rhode Island Association of Economical and Odd Fellows (also known to detractors as The Rascally and Ignorant Abominable Officious Evil Arrogant Odd Fellows).

The top item is a brief (but typographically fascinating) announcement of a Saturday evening meeting in 1826. It employs backward type, upside-down type, and type of varying sizes to express either chaotic whimsy or a parody of secretive encrypted messages:

It is attached to the second item, a “circular” providing more details about the event, which must have been an interesting affair if it followed the description here:

The final item is a ticket to the meeting, filled out for Pardon Miller. The 1826 Providence city directory lists Miller as a watchmaker located at 47 Cheapside**. The directory also lists a John Wilder, who is described as an inn-keeper at 18 Market Square, which is presumably where the event was held.

According to a memoir of the period, TRIAEOAOF was founded as a debating society in 1825 and took upon itself the mission of properly celebrating historical anniversaries such as Washington’s birthday.*** Apparently the group’s members were drawn from Providence’s most important and powerful citizens, and the group was able to exert real influence in state politics.

Although similarly named, TRIAEOAOF apparently bore no relation to the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, which also later operated in Providence. The Odd Fellows Directory**** of 1845 offers a brief history of the organization, which wasn’t founded in Providence until 1829, three years later than the item discussed here. Outlining the founding of the Rhode Island IOOF—a much more serious and religiously-focused organization than TRIAEOAOF, to gauge by the Directory—the author describes “a strong prejudice which was felt toward all secret societies”, and the IOOF was forced to close between 1832 (only three years after their founding) and 1843.

RIHS collections include much more material related to organizations like these, including the papers of the Rhode Island branch of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.

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* Broadsides-G1157, 1826

** He is also listed in James Gibbs’ “Horologic Rhode Island Visited.”  Bulletin of the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors 14 (1970): 807. His brief biography includes mention of his being a first lieutenant in the Militia.

***Almon Danforth Hodges, Almon Danforth Hodges and his neighbors: An autobiographical sketch of a typical old New Englander. [T.R. Marvin & Son, Printers], 1909. Pages 153-6 detail the founding of TRIAEOAOF and its activities.

**** B. F. Moore, The Odd Fellows Directory. Providence: B. F. Moore, 1845. HS 969 .R4 O3 1845.

Thomas Tew

*******Updated, 9 October 2009 below******

Check out today’s Providence Journal for Thomas Morgan’s article on the Rhode Island pirate Thomas Tew (page E6 in the print edition and also available online). Tew’s story, along with those of many other pirates can be found in Edward Rowe Snow’s Pirates and Buccaneers of the Atlantic Coast, which is available at the Research Library (CT6860 .S65). And we’ll be highlighting a few more pirate-related items from the collection later this summer.

**Update:

Brown’s Steven Lubar has provided pictures of an interesting, and interestingly re-purposed, Tew artifact.

July 4 Walking Tour of Fox Point

A Fox Point Fourth of July

On July 4th, the scheduled 11:00 a.m. walking tour will be a patriotic stroll through the Fox Point neighborhood. Come celebrate the life and works of Providence native George M. Cohan, the original Yankee Doodle Dandy. He was born in one of the oldest and most diverse neighborhoods in Providence, and is associated by his birth and patriotic songs with the Fourth of July. Learn about the ever-changing character of Fox Point, from its first colonial settlements through the waves of Irish, then Portuguese and Cape Verdean immigration, to the impacts of urban and highway development today. The tour begins at the George M. Cohan Plaza in Providence. Reservations are requested. $10 per person.

Saturday, July 4, 11:00 a.m.
Tour departs from:
Reflections Café
8 Governor Street, Providence
Tickets: $10 each
To RSVP: Dalila Goulart
(401) 331-8575 x45 or programs@rihs.org

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Primary source institutions like libraries, museums, and historical societies are often filled with repurposed objects, items originally intended to fulfill one task that prove perfect for something else entirely: an almanac used as a diary, a ledger book used as a canvas for a Native American artist’s depiction of a battle scene and any number of cases in which the best tool for the job was whatever happened to be at hand. It’s a recycling impulse  that’s  particularly resonant in times of economic difficulty.

Pictured here are the front and back of a blotter from the papers of Edward Carrington* (more about what a blotter is in a moment), and it offers a perfect example of just this type of practical recycling.

Front:

Back:

Paper purchased in the nineteenth century (as today) was sold in reams, and ream wrappers were to a ream of paper as dust jackets are to a book: They protected the paper itself and also offered some advertising for the papermaker.** This wrapper indicates the papermaker—A. C. & W. Curtis of Newton, Massachusetts***—, the fact that the paper is wove paper rather than laid paper, and the paper’s size, in this case pot (named for the watermark image of a pot commonly used on paper of this size).

Anyone not familiar with nineteenth-century accounting and record-keeping practices might still be wondering what a blotter actually is. Physically it was a blank book composed (in this case and others from among the dozens in the Carrington Collection) of 96 pages (made from 24 full sheets of paper). The blotter operated as a kind of working book in which various transactions might be noted during the day before eventually being stored in a more permanent form, such as a ledger.

Here’s a more contemporary explanation of blotters, or “day-books” from Salder’s Business Book-keeping & Practice (1897):

As the images of the Carrington blotter above indicate, even the wrapper was used for pen trials, quick sums, and even some stray doodling. Waste not, want not.

(For more information about ream wrappers, see the entry in the Encyclopedia of Ephemera.)

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*MSS 333, sg1, ser2, subser7, box 5, folder 3

** The American Antiquarian Society has an extensive collection of ream wrappers.

*** According to Lyman Horace Weeks (A History of Paper-Manufacturing in the United States, 1690 – 1916, New York, 1916. Pages 197-8) Simon Elliott and Solomon Curtis opened  the earliest paper mills in the Newton area. Allen C. and William Curtis took over the Curtis and Elliot mills in 1834. According to this account of an 1837 exhibition, they were the first New England papermakers to produce paper colored in the vat. A claim worth further investigation.