New Online Resource

We’re pleased to announce the availability of a new online resource: The Atlas of the Rhode Island Book Trade in the Eighteenth Century. The Atlas integrates a timeline and a map in an attempt to pinpoint as many participants in the book trade (from printers and booksellers to book binders and rag collectors) as possible in space and time. Dragging the timeline left or right (or scrolling a mouse wheel or double clicking at a point in time) adjusts the map view to show only members of the trade in operation at that point in time. The Atlas also features a searchable or browseable database and a number of viewing options, including the option to view the atlas overlaid with eighteenth-century maps of Newport and Providence.

Geographic visualization of all kinds of information abounds on the internet*, but what kind of questions does this resource answer? First, it’s a great way to get a sense of the spread and development of the book trade in the state over the course of the century. Here’s a rough dramatization of the process in twenty seconds of video:

But more particular elements in the story of the book trade become visible through a geographical lens as well. Take the case of Paul Mumford and Mary Maylem, two merchants and booksellers who, according to the Newport Mercury, were married in 1769. In itself not remarkable, but viewing a map of their locations indicates that they were neighbors, operating just across the street from each other. Romance perhaps aided by location. Or a glance at the static map view indicates how many of the book trade’s members operated in locations used previously by someone else in the trade.

Just considering previous posts from this blog, the Atlas offers a number of insights. In our most recent post, it identified the fact that Old Bet’s exhibition was actually taking place in the location used by the printer of the broadside. We can use the Atlas to chart the progress of  Thomas Truman’s exciting late-night experimentations with glowing water. We mentioned the sign of the bunch of grapes when it marked the location of Gladding’s department store, but you can also use the Atlas to find two earlier uses of the sign. And the broadside advertising the visit of a robot to Providence in 1796 gives “Mr. Todd’s bookstore” as one of the locations for ticket sales. Where was Todd’s bookstore at that time? That’s a perfect question for the Atlas.

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* For instance, find out what people think the boundaries of Providence neighborhoods are, based on their Flickr tags at http://boundaries.tomtaylor.co.uk/#2477058 .

 

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.

Happy Independence Day

Yes, it’s true that July 4th is the traditional day of celebrating the 13 American Colonies’ independence from Great Britain. But on 4 May 1776* Rhode Island became the first colony to separate themselves from the crown. The broadside declaration of Rhode Island’s independence featured here is one of only two known copies**:

(The full title is actually the slightly wordier: “An Act Repealing an Act Intituled, ‘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.”)***

One aspect of the American Revolution that this document illustrates clearly is the practical (and often bureaucratic) realities of declaring independence: getting rid of a king means changing a lot of letterhead, or at least removing his name from a lot of documents and ceremonies. It is, after all, technically an act repealing an act.  And after the string of impassioned “whereas”-es  (“. . . confiscate our Property, and spread Fire, Sword and Desolation . . .”) the bulk of the document is all about changing the wording of oaths for civil servants.

This copy of the document also displays the shift from “colony” to “state” in a moment of transition. It was not until July 18th that the Rhode Island General Assembly voted to abandon the word “colony”****, and an early hand has written “State” over each mention of “Colony” in the “General Officers” and “Town Officers” paragraphs of the newly revised oaths:

Henry Ward, the General Assembly’s secretary, signed this copy (and also the Princeton copy), as evidence of its validity.

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* The day began (according to vol. VII, page 512 of Records of the Colony of Rhode Island) with a vote on procuring shovels for the colony’s military brigade.

** The other copy is in Princeton University’s Andre De Coppet Collection. This copy is signed but does not include the emendations of “Colony” to “State”. The original manuscript act is held by the Rhode Island State Archives.

***G1157 Broadsides 1776 No.6:  “An Act Repealing an Act . . .”, [Providence: John Carter, 1776].  Alden #661; Evans 15056; Winship p. 34.

**** Sydney James, Colonial Rhode Island, A History, New York: Scribners, 1975.