Happy Thanks Givin

The image below is taken from a copy of the 1812 New England Almanack. This almanac and a few others will be the topic of upcoming posts, but for now the entry for 26 November is a reminder of Thanksgivings past. The owner has interleaved blank paper to provide a convenient space for recording events and thoughts opposite the original almanac pages:

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:

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.

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.