Happy Rhody Independence Day!

! Happy Independence Day Rhode Island!

Two full months before the Continental Congress in Philadelphia declared independence from Great Britain, the General Assembly of Rhode Island passed and printed an act renouncing our allegiance to the King of England.

G1157 Broadsides 1776 No.6; Alden 661

“An Act Repealing an Act Intituled [sic], ‘An Act for the More Effectual Securing to His Majesty the Allegiance of His Subjects in this His Colony and Dominion of Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations;’ and Altering the Form of Commissions, of All Writs and Processes in the Courts, and of the Oaths Prescribed by Law.”

(Providence: John Carter, 1776)

Printed in Providence by John Carter, the town’s 3rd printer who operated from1767-1814, the Rhode Island Historical Society holds one of the two known copies of this broadside (the other is at Princeton University).  But to make ours unique, a contemporary, un-named hand wrote the word “State” over each occurrence of “Colony” in the “General Officers” and “Town Officers” paragraphs of the newly revised oaths. The original manuscript of the act is held by the Rhode Island State Archives.

Detail

On July 18th the Rhode Island General Assembly officially voted to abandon the word “colony”, but this early scribe show us the zealous excitement of the day, and heralds the political winds of change that would blow down the Bay and set the rest of the British Colonies in North America on fire.

This year our copy of the Act of Renunciation will be on full display for public viewing at the John Brown House Museum  on May 5 in conjunction with the display of a rare “Dunlap Broadside” of the Declaration of Independence  printed on the night of July 4, 1776 in Philadelphia by John Dunlap. Of the estimated 200 copies printed, there are 24 known copies of the Dunlap imprint still in existence. These were also distributed to each colony in order to be reprinted by the local printers. The RIHS holds two distinct imprints of the R.I. version — both printed at Newport by Solomon Southwick.

Also on display will be some fascinating relics from the Battle of Rhode Island, the medical case of the Burning of the Gaspee participant who bandaged the British captains’ leg and the warrant for any information leading to the capture of any of the Gaspee participants–One hundred pounds which in good Rhode Island tradition was never claimed.

-P. Bean, RIHS Printed Collection Librarian

The Elephant

Unfortunately, this post just missed Elephant Appreciation Day, but better late than never.

“The Elephant”* is a broadside advertising the display in Providence of “the most respectable Animal in the World,” a friendly (but paper-of-consequence-stealing) elephant on its way from Philadelphia to celebrate the Harvard Commencement. Displays like this one were certainly nothing new in an Age of Wonder like the late eighteenth-century: Providence residents had been entertained by an automaton the previous November. And many aspects of the November performance are in place here: once again children get half-price on the $.25 admission, and every effort has been made not to offend the “genteel Company”.

A place was apparently “fitted up” for the elephant in a store behind the Coffee House, which was located where the RISD Auditorium now stands. This also happened to be the location of the publishers of the broadside, John Carter and William Wilkinson, and the broadside offers an interesting example of the goings-on of a print shop of the time. A variant of the broadside depicted here also exists**, but in place of the woodcut illustration of the elephant is a line of type decorations, and the text describing the duration of the elephant’s stay (“till the 8th of July only”) reads simply, “where he will remain a few Days only….”

Thanks to a 1951 article by George G. Goodwin, we also know a lot more about the elephant itself: Her name (Old Bet)***, the fact that she was a two-year-old elephant brought from India and that she was the first elephant ever brought to America. We have Nathaniel Hawthorne’s father to thank, in part, for the account of Bet’s journey to America, as he was a passenger on the ship that made the months-long voyage, and he recorded the experience in a journal.

The end of Bet’s story in America is uncertain, but there is the possibility she was shot by a boy (possibly in Rhode Island) and killed. Whatever the case, Bet’s story is parallel in many ways to a much earlier travelling celebrity pachyderm:

 

Like Bet, the rhinoceros that was the basis for Durer’s famous illustration made a lengthy water voyage, in this case travelling from India to Spain in 1515. The rhinoceros became an international sensation, and for those who couldn’t travel to see it in person, Durer’s impressive (if not entirely accurate) woodcut illustration conveyed a sense of its strength and power. (Perhaps our elephant broadside filled a similar purpose in addition to its advertising role.) While on its way to the Pope, the ship carrying the Rhinoceros wrecked, and the rhinoceros was killed. (Listen to the full story in one of the BBC’s “A History of the World in 100 Objects” podcasts: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tn9vp .)

Shipwrecks, gunshots and a host of other maladies have been the unfortunate side-effect of human interaction with astonishing  and impressive members of the animal world. Among many such cases is the story of the elephant whose difficulties were “heightened by the great quantity of ale the spectators continually gave it”:****

UPDATE: We should have mentioned this great documentary film project to tell “the story of what happens when elephants and Rhode Islanders meet”.

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* Broadsides, 1797. Alden #1532.

 

** Alden #1531.

*** Although the broadside refers to the elephant as male.

**** “An Antiquary of the Last Century,” Littell’s Living Age, 6th ser., vol. 2 (14 April 1894): 94-106.

Talk of the Town, 18th Century-Style

Thanks to the generous support from the following organizations:

Rhode Island Society of the Sons of the Revolution

Rhode Island Society of Colonial Wars

Rhode Island Society of the Sons of the American Revolution

General Society of Colonial Wars

a set of the earliest 101 broadsides in the RIHS collections dating from 1693 to 1777, which were previously not fully catalogued, are now fully accessible to researchers through our online catalog.

Broadsides are generally printed on one side of a sheet of paper and were either posted in public places or offered for sale.  They were used in early America by the government, businesses, and individuals as a way to disseminate information to the public.  They covered every topic conceivable from issues of general concern such as election results, proposed new legislation, and calls to arms to lighter subjects such as social events and theatrical performances.  The most famous example of a broadside is the printed version of the Declaration of Independence.  It was posted in a prominent location in the community to be read by all. The Society holds two Rhode-Island imprints of the Declaration and they were catalogued as part of this project.

The RIHS broadside collection is a truly unique resource.  Just like posters are used today, the majority of broadsides were created as ephemeral items to be posted outside for all to see for a specific purpose and then discarded.  As a result, very few examples of each broadside have survived to the present day.  Of the broadsides cataloged thus far, 46 of them are the only known copies in the world, 8 are one of only 2 copies known to exist, and 17 of these were unknown to scholars in 1949 when John Eliot Alden published his master bibliography: Rhode Island Imprints, 1727-1800. (New York, R.R. Bowker Company).

The broadside depicted here reveals the building tension between the American Colonies and the English Parliament that led to the American Revolution.  The broadside reports on the results of a Town Meeting of the citizens of Newport on January 12, 1774.  At that meeting, the citizens resolved to oppose the duty on tea by the English Parliament and the attempts by the East-India Company to forcibly land the tea at American ports in order to collect the tax.  They characterized it as “a violent attack upon the liberties of America.” The note at the bottom provides further proof of the widespread discontent among the colonists with England.  That town meeting apparently drew one of the biggest crowds despite the extreme cold and all of the resolutions passed without a single dissenting vote.  Only two copies of this broadside are currently known to exist—one at the RIHS and the other at the New York Public Library.

– Karen Eberhart, Special Collections Curator

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Image Citation:

Newport (R.I.)  Colony of Rhode-Island, &c. At a town-meeting held at Newport, the 12th day of January, 1774. Henry Ward, Esq; moderator. [Newport, R.I.]: Printed by Solomon Southwick, [1774].  Alden #543.  Call No.: G1157 Broadsides 1774 No.3

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:

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.

Lincoln and Rhode Island

In the spirit of the widespread celebrations of Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday, we’ll be highlighting a few of the Lincoln-related items in our collections over the next week or so. (Many of the items mentioned will be on display in an exhibition of Lincolniana at the Aldrich House. Also, be sure to attend “An Evening with Lincoln” on February 12th at the First Unitarian Church. See the RIHS website for more details.)

The first item is a broadside poem titled “Lincoln Lies Sleeping” by Nathan Upham. The poem is a quite melancholy dirge (a good deal of “bewailing” and “deep gloom”) that also manages to rise to a political crescendo in which Lincoln offers a posthumous prayer for the forgiveness of John Wilkes Booth and the nation rallies for unity. The somewhat maudlin text is matched by a melody taken from Stephen Foster’s “Under the Willow She’s Sleeping,” a song in which a mother laments the death of her child.

Broadsides of the poem seem to have been quite popular: Edwin Wolf’s American Song Sheets (entry #1263) lists five separate publications; Brown University’s Lincoln Broadsides (search for “Lincoln Lies Sleeping”) provides images of three of them and another two not listed in Wolf.  This is the only variation published in Providence, and the imprint credits “Theodore B. Stayner,” whose only other publication seems to be “Wake Nicodemus,” a widely-published song. Publishing may have been a temporary occupation for Stayner: the 1900 census includes a 59 year old “Theodore B. Stayner” who listed his occupation as “advertiser.”

Lincoln’s assassination prompted national mourning, so it comes as no surprise that “Lincoln Lies Sleeping” is just one example of printed Lincoln ephemera. In addition to Nathan Upham’s poem, a Louise Upham offered “The Nation is Weeping”, which set a similar poem to the same melody.

The Providence response to the Lincoln’s assassination will be the topic of a future post, as will another broadside—one that is also among Rhode Island’s earliest imprints.

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—Additional Resources—

For background information on broadsides, see The Encyclopedia of Ephemera.

To view more early broadsides, try:

• “An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera” (Part of the Library of Congress’ American Memory project. Includes nearly 200 Rhode Island related broadsides.)
• “Dying Speeches & Bloody Murder” (The Harvard Law School Library’s collection of over 500 crime broadsides.)
• The English Broadside Ballad Archive & The Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads