Tale of Two Books

When is the same book not the same book?

One of my greatest joys at the Library has been cataloging the unparalleled Rhode Island Imprint Collection of books printed in Rhode Island from 1800 to 1835. This week I was delighted to find what I believe to be the first full geography printed in R.I. –an 1822 Providence imprint from Miller & Hutchens, at No.1  Market Square (upstairs), of Luke Drury’s A Geography for Schools….Atlas of Forty Luminous and Concise Maps.

Title Page RI Imprint 1822

And luminous they are, documenting the burgeoning nation of the United States in its adolescence following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803-04, showing the vague and evolving boundaries of the nations of South America, and depicting the familiar coves of Narragansett Bay with a somewhat malformed version of Block Island.

Then I find a second copy. Why? Why! Why keep two?! Because a lot can happen to a book in 190 years. Like  Christopher.

Christopher was apparently the one-time owner of the second copy. But it seems he spent less time studying geography than pursuing some of his other interests. Like Indians.

But mostly he liked to paste labels. Textile labels to be exact. And we might speculate that his family was in the textile business and furnish his fine collection that mutilated this copy.

So we will keep these two brother books together. One a fine example of early 19th century printing of maps and geographic history. And one an object that gives evidence to the daily life of a Rhode Island child of that same time. So two copies of the same imprint are briefly alike, but then changed when they are taken into the lives of their owners.

~P.S.Bean, Printed Collection Librarian

New Policy! Cameras allowed starting July 1 at the RIHS Library!

Credit: BigTallGuy, from Flickr

New Policy! Cameras allowed starting July 1 at the RIHS Library!

The Rhode Island Historical Society has in its mission a kind of paradox. Our responsibilities are twofold: to PRESERVE the Collection, and to provide ACCESS to said incredible Collection.  These two goals sometimes appear to stand in direct opposition to each other, as with our policy that certain  items cannot be photocopied because of their age, fragility, or binding.

However, in the interest of increasing access and ease of research, we are instituting a new policy at the library.  Starting JULY 1st, 2011, we will allow researchers to bring cameras into the library.  Many materials in our collections are too fragile for a photocopying machine but can be photographed without damage.  Researchers will now be allowed, in certain circumstances, to take photographs of our materials with their own cameras to make research copies.

There are some limits, of course. Researchers wishing to use their personal cameras must be current Members of the Rhode Island Historical Society and must purchase a Camera Pass (good for one day). All materials to be photographed must be pre-approved.  And of course, in accordance with copyright law, just like our photocopy policy, photos taken of historical materials are for study purposes only, and may not be published or exhibited in print or online. For that, we have a Rights & Reproductions division. We welcome you to contact us for more details.

Providence Vaudeville

“Spring of ’17“, an online resource created by Micah Salkind, recreates the topography of Providence theaters in the early twentieth century. The site offers six walking tours (use the historic images and online map for a virtual tour or print out one of the Google Maps and hit the streets) and a downloadable audio tour.

Definitely worth a visit.

Grog O’ Clock (Martin Page, part I)

Faced with a diary or a memoir or a collection of someone’s correspondence, it’s a natural impulse to try to recreate an image of what that person might have been like. In some cases—and Martin Page is one of those cases—the picture that emerges is surprisingly colorful and complex.

Born in 1772, Page spent nearly half a century at sea, rising from cabin boy to captain. So it’s not surprising that his “cyphering book”* would include maps and charts like this one:

This particular map likely depicts the islands off the coast of Gotheburg, Sweden, an area also featured in other manuscript maps in the collection,** and it features details like a very nice ship:

and Monopoly-style houses at the base of what looks like a cell-phone tower:

A lesson on right triangles offers another opportunity for Page’s artistic skills to shine. The assignment involves finding the height of a steeple:

Strictly speaking, of course, most of the illustration is unnecessary; all that Page really needed was a vertical line to represent a steeple. But that’s not nearly as much fun as sketching out an entire steeple and it’s bell, tower and flag, and once it’s gone that far, he might as well put the rest of the building in too. The level of detail extends even to the clock and its inscription:

Before there was “Beer O’Clock“, there was Grog Time.

(In the next post we’ll leave Page’s artistic abilities to focus on his literary merit…)

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* “Cyphering book” of Martin Page, 1805-15, in the Martin Page Papers, MSS 599, Box 1, Folder 15, Rhode Island Historical Society. www.rihs.org/mssinv/Mss599.htm

A ciphering book operated as a notebook in which to work out problems and also save formulas and examples for the future, as suggested in Samuel Read Hall’s Lectures on School-Keeping, published not long after this cipher book was used.

** In many of the maps (located in folder 13), Page has pasted in printed illustrations of ships, presumably cut from books.

The Land of Generica

Nathaniel Bowditch’s American Practical Navigator is the classic manual for sailors, offering practical (not surprisingly) advice for all manner of maritime situations. Our Technical Services Librarian recently added a copy to our online catalog, which gave me a reason to look through the volume, and I came across the following image (borrowed from Google Books):

Click to view in Google Books

Designed as an teaching aid for future navigators, this map depicts all the usual parts of the map labeled generically (e.g. the “Ocean” ocean surrounds the island “Island”), creating an imaginary land of the generic (not to be confused with Generica proper). If you’re interested in this type of imaginary cartography, the Strange Maps blog has many more examples

Here be Cannons, or, Where the Horses are “Boney and Strong”

Charles Blaskowitz, "A Chart of Narragansett Bay," 1777.

War brings a new perspective to most things, including maps. The surveying for this map of the Narragansett Bay was originally undertaken in the 1760s by Charles Blaskowitz. At that time, the British government was contemplating the placement of a naval yard in Newport.* With the onset of war in the following decade, the map came to serve other purposes. Here are a few interesting details:

The map’s text includes a description of the colony of Rhode Island at the time as viewed by a British functionary (a transcription and more discussion of the map are available at the Gaspee Virtual Archives):

"The horses are boney and strong"

Idyllic descriptions of New World fecundity (“Fish of all kinds are in the greatest plenty and perfection. The horses are boney and strong, the Meat Cattle and Sheep are much the largest in America, the Butter and Cheese excellent, and every necessary of Life in Attendance”) are balanced against cultural condescension (“It has a Town House, Market House, Library and a spacious Parade, but there is few private Buildings in it worth notice”). The colony’s notable religious tolerance is also pointed out.

The map also includes details of military importance:

"In this part of the country there is a Furnace and an Iron Foundry where they cast cannons"

Not exactly Here Be Dragons, but similar in its way. The map also lists gun batteries (with the number of guns and size of cannon balls—18 or 24 pounds—they fired), principal farms and farm owners in the colony and soundings throughout the Bay. (Someone with the time might compare the soundings in 1764 with more recent numbers.)

A copy of the map in the David Rumsey Collection is, like this one, divided into 16 sections and mounted. The Rumsey copy includes images of the slipcase in which the sections were originally housed.

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* Based on a letter presumably written by Robert Melville and reprinted as “A British Navy Yard Contemplated in Newport, R.I., in 1764.” in The Rhode Island Historical Magazine, vol. 6 (1885-6), pages 42-7. In the letter Blaskowitz is referred to as “Mr. Charles Blaskerwich” and described as “an able surveyor,” although young.