ALMANACIN THIS ISSUE

• RECENT ACqUISITION

• SPRING PUBLIC PROGRAMS

• ADOPT-A-BOOk

• SEMIANNUAL MEETING

• FALL ExHIBITION AT THE

GROLIER CLUB, NEW YORk

• PROGRAM IN THE HISTORY OF THE

BOOk IN AMERICAN CULTURE

• SUMMER SEMINAR

• CONFERENCES

• ExHIBITION AT THE DAVIS MUSEUM,

WELLESLEY COLLEGE

• CHAVIC SUMMER SEMINAR

• RECOMMENDED READING

• NEW ENGLAND HISTORIC SITES

COLLABORATIVE

• ISAIAH THOMAS - PATRIOT PRINTER

• k-12 WORkSHOPS

• NEW MEMBERS

• NEH CHAIRMAN’S COMMENDATION

• A qUEST FOR NEWSPAPERS

• NEWS

• AAS HERITAGE

MARCH 2012 AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY NUMBER 83

SPRING LECTURESAll, 7:30 p.m.

APRIL

5 Gordon S. Wood

19 Philip F. Gura

MAY

22 Music in Antiquarian Hall

JUNE

5 Jill Lepore

More information online:www.americanantiquarian.org

Looking West in the Early Nineteenth CenturyRECENT GIFT ADDS A REMARkABLE MAP TO THE AAS COLLECTION

This rare 1819 engravedmap of the Western UnitedStates and Mexico is knownin just a dozen impressions.According to scholar (andformer ASECS Fellow)David E. Narrett, this map,which lacks geographic ac-curacy overall, was more ofan “expansionist documentthat challenged Spanishcolonial boundaries.” Bor-ders of British, Spanish andAmerican claims on westernterritory are outlined acrossthe map, and vary widelybetween the three editionswhich were issued. Imagi-nary rivers flow through thewest to drain into the PacificOcean, the Rockies lurchthrough Mexico, and Pike’sPeak, the first appearance ofthat mountain on a map, isout of scale with its sur-roundings.

The map was designedby John H. Robinson (1782-1819), who had a complex personal agenda of conquest and ex-pansionism for both Mexico and the United States. Robinson was a medical doctor who servedas an explorer on the Zebulon Pike Expedition in 1806 and also worked as a both a diplomatand a spy for Secretary of State James Monroe in Mexico. He fought briefly in the Mexicanarmy and wrote a manifesto urging U.S. support for Mexico’s independence. In 1818, towardsthe end of his life, Robinson decided to produce this map as a financial investment, and per-suaded 400 subscribers to sign onto the project for fifteen dollars each. The map was printedon six large sheets from copper plates in Philadelphia, but Robinson died before the map wasready for delivery. This map was the first visual expression of the boundaries that were set bythe Adams/Onís treaty in 1819 and many Americans, like Robinson, grew eager to expand the nation coast-to-coast, into territory legitimately held by European nations. Inmany respects, the birth of the American concept of manifest destiny can be traced back to theRobinson map.

The map arrived in a six-foot-long PVC shipping tube during the Society’s annual meetingin Worcester in October 2011, but due to its extremely large size, was unable to be fully unrolledduring that event. Since its arrival, it has been unrolled, assessed for conservation (an estimatefor treatment has been received and we hope to raise funds needed in the coming months), andphotographed. Several AAS members and Councilors have been able to view the map since October and we hope to make it more widely available soon. The donor, who wishes to remainanonymous, originally contacted the Society by email through his connection with a formerRobert and Charlotte Baron Fellow. We are so pleased that he did, and we greatly appreciatethis generous gift.

A map of Mexico, Louisiana and the Missouri Territory: includingalso the state of Mississippi, Alabama Territory, East & West Florida,Georgia, South Carolina, & part of the island of Cuba. Second edi-tion. Philadelphia: John H. Robinson, printed and hand colored byJohn L. Narstin, 1819.

2

Why History Matters: SIGNATURE SERIES CELEBRATES THE SOCIETY’S BICENTENNIAL

To celebrate the Society’s bicentennialwe are producing a signature series of publicprograms that feature some of our most illus-trious members and performances by accom-plished artists. The broad theme of this seriesis “Why History Matters,” and it will explorea variety of concepts related to the impor-tance and endurance of the discipline, includ-ing what history can teach us, the uses andmisuses of history, history as an inculcationof citizenry, moral lessons it may (or may not)teach us, and the concept of inevitability inthe events of the past. A clear subtext of theseries is also why AAS matters, and ourspeakers will demonstrate the vitality andessence of historic primary source texts andimages and the need to preserve them for thefuture.

Our series will be launched with thePulitzer Prize-winning historian Gordon S.Wood on Thursday, April 5. An AAS memberand the Alva O. Way University ProfessorEmeritus at Brown University, Gordon Woodwill use George Santayana’s often quoted line“those who cannot remember the past arecondemned to repeat it” as a means to exam-ine the nature of the discipline and to explorewhat, if any, lessons history teaches us.

The series will turn directly to the im-portance of AAS as a repository of history inthe second program, featuring Philip F. Gura,the author of the Society’s bicentennial his-tory. Copies of the book will be available. AnAAS member and the William S. NewmanDistinguished Professor of American Litera-ture and Culture at the University of NorthCarolina at Chapel Hill, Philip Gura will de-scribe the many fascinating things he learnedwhile researching and writing this book. This

new work focuses on the intellectual develop-ment of AAS and how it correlates with localand national developments in library science,cultural heritage, and scholarship. He also payscareful attention to the people who haveshaped the collections and activities of the in-stitution.

Our programs take a musical turn with aconcert entitled Thrill of the Trill: Music in theEmerging American Nation (1812-1876) onTuesday, May 22. Featuring Peter H. Bloom onflute, Mary Jane Rupert on the harp, andD'Anna Fortunato, a mezzo-soprano, this pro-gram explores how the classical Europeanrepertoire blended seamlessly with most pop-ular musical entertainments in nineteenth-cen-tury America. Musical selections will includearias by Mozart and Rossini, art songs byBeethoven, and classical instrumentals by var-ious European and American composers –music that was widely heard throughoutAmerica. The program will also show howthis classical music evolved into the melodiesthat resounded at political rallies, from dancehalls, in city streets, on town commons, and inthe hearts of Americans as they hunted forgold, settled the country, and created a vibrantdemocracy.

Our spring series concludes with a talk byJill Lepore on Tuesday, June 5, in which she ex-plores what questions history can answer andwhat it can only ask. An AAS member andDavid S. kemper ’41 Professor of AmericanHistory at Harvard University, Lepore will usethe most popular parlor game of the nine-teenth century, The Mansion of Happiness, asa springboard to explore how people sought the meaning of life and death throughoutAmerican history.

Copies of The American AntiquarianSociety, 1812-2012: A BicentennialHistory will be available at AAS or canbe ordered online through Oak knollBooks (www.oakknoll.com).

SPRING PUBLIC PROGRAMS

Clockwise from top, left: The Village School, a lith-ograph published as a supplement to The WeeklyCall, a short-lived newspaper in Plymouth andWoodbury counties, Iowa, ca. 1884; The Mansionof Happiness board game [detail]; advertisement forA. Fiot, music publisher and importer of musical in-struments in Philadelphia; and the Society’s bicen-tennial history.

3

ADOPT-A-BOOKThe fifth annual Adopt-a-Book program will take place in An-

tiquarian Hall on Tuesday, April 3, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. Theformat for this popular evening event is the same as previous years:approximately 200 recently acquired collection items will be ondisplay in Antiquarian Hall with brief captions written by the cu-rators. Each item – from rare books, pamphlets, newspapers, andmanuscripts to a variety of prints – can be adopted via a donation(amounts for each are specified). That adoption becomes part ofits catalog record, and the funds raised are used by curators fornew acquisitions. A decorative bookplate identifies the individualswho have adopted an item, and whether it is in their name, or inmemory or honor of others. In addition to being an enjoyableevening, this event is an important source of funding. The inform-ative, and often humorous, descriptions of items on display willbe posted online in March. In fact, many adoptions take place inadvance of the event. Details are available at www.american-antiquarian.org/adoptabook12.htm.

One item in the 2012 Adopt-a-Bookcatalog:

Little Red Riding Hood. New York:McLoughlin Bros., ca. 1871-1875.The McLoughlin Bros. company spe-cialized in publishing traditional fairytales in a wide variety of book for-mats, including this printed color pic-ture book issued as part of AuntFriendly’s Colored Picture Books. Inthis picture Little Red first encountersthe salivating wolf while she is pick-ing flowers, symbolizing her youthfulinnocence. Adopt this book for $35.

2012 SEMIANNUAL MEETING IN BOSTONThe Semiannual Meeting will be held at

the Boston Athenaeum on April 20, 2012 at3:30 p.m. The keynote speaker, Philip F. Gura,will talk about his recently completed book,The American Antiquarian Society, 1812-2012: A Bicentennial History. The previousevening, he will be speaking in AntiquarianHall as part of the Spring Public Program Se-ries, “Why History Matters.”

Author and AAS member Nicholas

A major exhibition at the Grolier Club celebrating theSociety’s bicentennial – In Pursuit of a Vision: Two HundredYears of Collecting Americana at the American AntiquarianSociety – opens on September 11. The show, in the GrolierClub’s ground floor gallery, will be open through November17. An illustrated exhibition catalog with essays by AAS curators will also be available.

Eighteen of the over 175 items in the exhibition are in-cluded on a banner (left) that will make its début at the 52ndAnnual New York Antiquarian Book Fair, April 12-15, atthe Park Avenue Armory. Details about the event are postedon the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America web-site, www.abaa.com.

BICENTENNIAL EXHIBITION IN NEW YORK

Basbanes has written the following about thebicentennial history: “On the occasion of itsbicentennial, this uniquely American libraryhas published a copiously illustrated historythat is at once scholarly in purpose, rich inprobing insight, and brimming with narrativedetail. While keenly alert to the evolution ofthe Society, Philip F. Gura’s guiding approachhas been more finely focused on its intellectualdevelopment as a cultural repository of ex-

traordinary consequence, with careful atten-tion given to the people who have shapedand nurtured it into the twenty-first century.The founding spirit of this remarkable insti-tution—a bookman for the ages “touchedearly by the gentlest of infirmities, biblioma-nia”—would be mightily pleased, I am cer-tain, with this magisterial tribute to hisenduring legacy.” Copies of the book will beavailable at the meeting.

American Antiquarian Society

A research library of American history & culture

Bicentennial Celebration - 2012

4

PROGRAM IN THE HISTORY OF THE BOOk SUMMER SEMINAR

African American Cultures of PrintThe 2012 Summer Seminar in the History of the Book,

July 8-13, will be led by Lara Langer Cohen, assistant professor of English at Wayne State University, and JordanAlexander Stein, assistant professor of English, University ofColorado at Boulder. They are the co-editors of Early AfricanAmerican Print Culture in Theory and Practice, Universityof Pennsylvania Press (forthcoming in 2012).

The seminar will address how the study of African Amer-ican literature changes when seen from the perspective ofprint culture, and how the study of print culture changeswhen focused on African American archives. In the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries, African Americans partici-pated in a rapidly emergent print culture as authors, editors,printers, readers, teachers, and librarians, among other roles.At the same time, African Americans frequently furnishedthe subject matter for this print culture, in ways they did notalways control. Seminar participants will explore AfricanAmericans’ diverse contributions to early American print cul-ture, both on the page and off, drawing on the AmericanAntiquarian Society’s extensive collections of materials

related to African Americans, from political newspapers to children’s books, from racist broadsides to anti-slavery almanacs, and from city directories to emigrationist tracts. These investigations will be supplemented with readings of recent work bridging critical race studies and material culture. Together we will ask how the methodologies of print culture might help us reconsider familiar notions of authorship and identity,and how African American materials might transfigure conceptual standbys of print culture studies such as circulation and publics.

One goal of the seminar will be to consider how print technologies participated in the formation of racial identity in the United States. Tothat end, we will examine how a wide variety of printed texts render blackness culturally legible, from visual representations of the distinctionbetween blackness and whiteness to textbooks for freedmen’s schools. We will also attend to how representations of race change across printedformats—for example, by tracing Phillis Wheatley’s poems as they move from manuscript to broadside to book. Still another goal of the seminarwill be to examine the reciprocal effects of racialization on the mediascape of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We will accordingly beconcerned with the ways that racialization influences phenomena like the mass production of abolitionist literature, forms of middle-class self-representation such as literary societies, and emerging statistics-based reform efforts. We will pay close attention to the relations between visualand verbal media, asking how these shaped different ideas about race, as well as how they interacted with one another.

A key concern of the seminar will be to interrogate the definition of “African American print culture” itself. In particular, we hope to movethis definition beyond authorship to account for the numerous other ways in which African American cultural workers contributed to an expanding print culture, both within African American communities and across the color line.

The seminar will be of interest to graduate students, faculty, and librarians from a range of fields, including African American studies, bookhistory, media studies, English, history, art history, and American studies. Details are posted on the AAS website.

Spring ConferencesAAS-sponsored sessions are scheduled at the

following academic conferences:

AMERICAN LITERATURE ASSOCIATIONMay 24-27, 2012, San Francisco, Calif.Panel: Early American ReligionsChair: Nancy Ruttenberg, Stanford UniversityAbram Van Engen, Trinity University (Texas),

“Eliza’s Disposition: Freedom, Free Will, andReligion in The Coquette”

Wendy R. Roberts, Northwestern University,“‘The Sound in Faith’: Ralph Erskine’sGospel Sonnets and the Poetic Form ofCalvinism”

Chris Phillips, Lafayette College, “The Advent ofthe U.S. Catholic Hymnal”

Panel: Tories, Traitors, and Spies: Loyalists ofthe American Revolution

Chair and Comment: Ruma Chopra, San JoseState University

Tim Compeau, University of Western Ontario,“Raising Loyalists: Cross-Border Sons inEarly Canada, 1784-1820”

Printing Office, Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, albumen photographtaken after 1885.

Ivy Linton Stabell, University of Connecticut“Treason, Disobedience, and Animal Cruelty:Loyalists Behaving Badly in Early Nineteenth-Century Children’s Nonfiction”

Ben Chapin, University of California, San Diego,“A View of the Controversy: Loyalists, Patri-ots, Creoles, and the War of Identity”

kacy Tillman, University of Tampa, “FemaleLoyalist Letter-Journals”

NATIVE AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUSSTUDIES ASSOCIATION

June 3-6, 2012, Uncasville, Conn.Panel: Native American Studies and the Early

American ArchiveChair: Paul Erickson, AASSean P. Harvey, Seton Hall University, “Ideolo-

gies of Empire and Evidence of Negotiationin Native-Language Texts”

Robert L. Gunn, University of Texas at El Paso,“John Dunn Hunter, Pan-Indianism, and thePolitics of Indian Languages”

Gina Marie Caison, University of California,

Davis, “On Not knowing: Jack D. Forbes’Hunter Methodology, Indian Removal, andthe Archive”

SOCIETY FOR HISTORIANS OF THE EARLYAMERICAN REPUBLIC (SHEAR)

July 19-22, 2012, Baltimore, Md.Panel: An Archive in the Early Republic:

The Bicentennial of the American Antiquarian Society

Chair: Rob Schoeberlein, Maryland State andBaltimore City Archives

Alea Henle, University of Connecticut, “‘TheyWill Become Antique’: Isaiah Thomas’ Antiquarian Philosophy”

Thomas knoles, AAS, “In Pursuit of New OldBooks: Christopher Columbus Baldwinand the American Antiquarian Society”

James Snead, California State UniversityNorthridge, “The kentucky Mummy: Col-lections, Competition, and the First Decadeof the American Antiquarian Society”

Comment: Paul Erickson, AAS

5

The exhibition With a French Accent:French and American Lithography before 1860opened at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College on March 14, where it will be on viewthrough June 3. The well-attended opening included remarks from the Consul General,Christophe Guilhue, who praised the exhibi-tion as a highlight of a month-long series ofFrench cultural events in Boston.

Drawn entirely from AAS collections, thisshow explores the influence of French expertiseand design on American lithography. A one-day symposium, “French and American Li-thography: History and Practice,” will be heldon March 31 at Wellesley. Details are availableon the AAS and Davis Museum websites. Anillustrated catalog featuring five essays and all38 prints in the exhibition is available throughOak knoll Books.

Georgia Barnhill and Lauren Hewesbegan work on this project in 1995. They com-piled a list of nearly 100 French or French-trained lithographers active in the UnitedStates during the antebellum period; scouredarchives for journal entries, customs paper-work, and ship manifests left behind by Americans traveling to Paris to learn theprocess; and gathered American newspaper reports about the dissemination of the technology.

Invented in Germany in the late 1790s, lithography swept across Europe and wasquickly embraced by artists in England andFrance. Based on the principal that oil andwater do not mix, lithographs were createdusing oil-based crayon on a polished stone,

dampened before printing. Theprocess permitted large editions, giventhe durability of the stone, and freedrawing with tonal variations with thecrayon. It was the French, with an em-phasis on strong drawing skills andbold technique, who had the greatestinfluence on early lithography in theUnited States.

In the 1820s, several Americanartists and publishers traveled to Parisand returned with equipment, prints,and knowledge. A decade later, expe-rienced French lithographic pressmenand artists immigrated to the UnitedStates to work in Boston, New York,and Phila-delphia. At the sametime, imported French lithographscould be purchased from Americanbooksellers and fancy goods shops;entrepreneurs were buy-ing prints wholesale inParis and reselling themin places like Baltimoreand Milwaukee; andAmerican lithographerscopied popular Frenchimages and adapted themfor the local audience.

By the 1850s, severalFrench lithographic firmsopened offices in NewYork City. They sold a va-riety of lithographs, allmade in France, includingsheets drawn from theirEuropean stock, as wellas specially publishedviews of cities and genrescenes by popular Americanartists like William SydneyMount. French lithographic influ-ence was diverse and widespreadand raised the quality of Americanproduction while presenting in-ventive possibilities that echoedthrough the art as it continued toevolve in the United States.

Research for this exhibitionand the accompanying publica-tion was made possible by the Flo-rence Gould Foundation of NewYork, with support at the DavisMuseum from the Marjorie Schechter Bronf-man ’38 and Gerald Bronfman Endowmentfor Works on Paper. The symposium is gener-ously supported by Jay and Deborah Last,Wellesley College Friends of Art, and theGrace Slack McNeil Program for Studies inAmerican Art.

With a French Accent: French and American Lithography before 1860

The Power of Music, lithographic print byAlphonse Léon Noel, based on the painting byWilliam Sydney Mount, Goupil, Vibert & Co.,Paris & New York, 1848.

[cont. from page 4]

AMERICAN STUDIES ASSOCIATIONNovember 15-18, 2012, San Juan, Puerto RicoPanel: Circuits of Empire: Communication

and Circulation in the Early CaribbeanChair: Paul Erickson, AASJason Sharples, assistant professor of history,

Catholic University of America, “‘Set[ting]a Period to that Trouble’: Narratives ofImagined Violence and Race in Exchangesbetween the Caribbean and North Americain the 18th Century”

Alpen Razi, Ph.D. candidate, department ofEnglish and Book History & Print CultureProgram, University of Toronto “InkFloods of the Black Atlantic: The FreeColoured Periodical in Emancipation-EraJamaica”

John Patrick Leary, assistant professor of Eng-lish, Wayne State University, “Reconstruct-ing Nationhood: Cuba’s Ten Years’ War inthe Caribbean Press”

Comment: kameika Murphy, Ph.D. candidatein Atlantic history, Clark University

The exhibition at the Davis Museum(above) and curators Lauren Hewes andGeorgia Barnhill with the Consul Generalof France, Christophe Guilhue.

6

RECOMMENDED READING

We invited John Demos, our 2012 Mellon Distinguished Scholar in Residence, to recommend several books. He responded that narrative history,largely discounted by professional historians during the middle decades of the twentieth century, has come back into fashion. Noteworthy examples of this still rising trend might include the following:

Robert Rosenstone, Mirror in the Shrine (pub-lished in 1988 and thus a true forerunner)recreates the lives of three American residentsof Japan in the late-nineteenth century, in proseso richly evocative as to become a kind of“moving camera” on the whole field of inter-cultural encounter.

Simon Schama, Dead Certainties, UnwarrantedSpeculations (1991) enacts a taut, tight-wire exploration of the boundary between historyand fiction, through a two-part portrayal – first,the famously moving death of a British general,General James Wolfe (quebec, 1759); and, sec-ond, the notorious Parkman-Webster murdertrial (Boston, 1849-50).

Patricia Cline Cohen, The Murder of HelenJewett (1998) is a gripping whodunnit (aboutanother, quite different, nineteenth-centurycriminal case) that succeeds, through superb ef-forts of historical contextualizing, in openingto view the entire social and cultural landscapeof early American cities.

Craig Harline, Conversions (2011) casts abrilliant light on the process of personal trans-formation, by comparing the experience of aseventeenth-century, Dutch-born monk withthat of a late twentieth-century AmericanProtestant-turned Mormon-turned agnostic(and gay) “seeker.”

The 2012 CHAViC Summer Seminar, Seeing the American Civil War: How VisualCulture Recorded, Interpreted, and Remembered the Conflict, will be held at AASfrom Sunday, June 17 through Friday, June 22. The seminar will be led by JoshuaBrown, executive director of the American Social History Project and professor ofhistory at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, with assistance fromLauren B. Hewes, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Graphic Arts, and Georgia Barnhill,director of the Center for Historic American Visual Culture at AAS.

Sessions will focus on the range of visual media that represented people, events,places, and policies during the Civil War. Discussions and supplemental readings willaddress the ways photographs, paintings, news illustrations, prints, cartoons, maps,textiles, and monuments affected perception and opinion during and after the conflict.Participants will also have access to the Society's varied collections of visual andprinted materials to pursue their own interests.

Guest lecturers and their topics include David Jaffee of the Bard Graduate Center(photographing the war), Lynne Z. Bassett, curator and textile historian (Civil Wartextiles in context), Debra Block of the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at theBoston Public Library (mapping the war), Richard West, collector and historian (po-litical cartoons), and Patricia Hills, professor of art history at Boston University(painting the Civil War).

Please see the CHAViC website for more information (www.chavic.org/ Summerseminar2012.htm), or contact Georgia Barnhill at AAS.

Seeing the American Civil War: How Visual Culture Recorded, Interpreted, and Remembered the Conflict

Center for Historic American Visual Culture (CHAViC) Summer Seminar

Winslow Homer, Campaign Sketches: The Letter forHome, 1863, and Our Jolly Cook, 1864, lithographicprints published by L. Prang & Co., Boston.

7

New England Historic Site Collaborative

As a member of the New England Historic Site Collaborative, AAS will host ahalf-day professional development work-shop for teachers from Glendale, California,on March 30. This three-day program, whichis underwritten by a Teaching American History grant from the U. S. Department ofEducation, will serve a total of 26 fifth- andeighth-grade teachers at participating sites:

AAS, Slater Mill, the Deerfield Teachers’ Cen-ter, the Rhode Island Historical Society,Plimoth Plantation, Old Sturbridge Village,the Massachusetts Historical Society, and theTsongas Industrial History Center.

The three workshop sessions at AAS willinclude “Eighteenth-Century Print Culture,”introducing the world of Colonial printersand their impact on the American Revolution,

with a particular focus on Isaiah Thomas;“Drawing Us to War,” a popular session thatAAS has developed for elementary schoolteachers examining images of events fromthe Stamp Act crisis through the signing ofthe Declaration of Independence; and “Side-by-Side Broadsides,” comparing Loyalist andWhig accounts of the battles of Lexingtonand Concord.

Isaiah Thomas – Patriot Printer in the Worcester Public Schools

As part of the bicentennial celebration, AAS collaborated withthe Worcester organization CultureLEAP (Learning through Edu-cation & Arts Partnerships) to bring Isaiah Thomas (as portrayedby professional actor Neil Gustafson) to every fifth grade in theWorcester Public Schools. This one-man play, Isaiah Thomas – Patriot Printer, describes Thomas’s life and the crucial role he playedin the years leading up to the American Revolution and afterward.Teachers can expand on the program with resources on the AAS-sponsored website,www.TeachUSHistory.org, which provides lesson plans and digital copies of historic images and documents inAAS collections.

CultureLEAP, which links students and teachers with the ex-tensive cultural resources of Worcester County, received funding forthis program from MassHumanities, the Fuller Foundation, andTarget.

Isaiah Thomas – Patriot Printer was written and produced byJames David Moran, director of outreach at AAS, and is enjoyinga renaissance this year following its highly acclaimed run in 2000-06. To date, over 6,000 people throughout New England have seenthe show.

We were delighted when AAS member Glen Pomeroy ex-pressed an interest in getting involved with this program. He beganin the schools by setting the stage, explaining that Isaiah Thomaswould be speaking to the audience as if it were 1812. He also toldthe students about AAS and its collections. Rave reviews have beencoming in from students as well as their teachers.

TEACHING AMERICAN HISTORY AT AASAAS director of outreach James David

Moran invited all Teaching American History(TAH) project directors in New England to theSociety in February to discuss the ways workdone through TAH funding can continue nowthat this Federal initiative has ended. Thirty-two TAH project directors, project evaluators,educators at historic sites, members of boththe Massachusetts and U.S. Departments ofEducation, and representatives of other organ-izations met at AAS on February 17 for a full-day symposium.

Many of the TAH-funded programs ledto the creation of websites where educatorshave posted lesson plans and curriculum units,as well as primary source materials. Thisgroup decided to use institutional websites,

such as AAS’s www.TeachUSHistory.org, asclearinghouses and central online directoriesconnecting the sites established by school dis-tricts and smaller historical organizations.Another outcome of this meeting was to in-crease the awareness of the positive impact ofthe TAH program through presentations atnational and regional conferences, media cov-erage of projects in their last year of funding,and making more school administrators andcurriculum coordinators aware of the workcreated by classroom instructors.

AAS has been involved with this pro-gram since 2000, principally in partnershipwith the Worcester Public Schools, and hasdeveloped a robust series of programs for elementary and high school teachers.

Through consecutive multi-year grants, AAShas brought together scholars, curators, mu-sicians, actors, and experts in a wide array offields to explore topics in American history.Thanks to this program, AAS and other or-ganizations have built a strong framework forcontinuing to engage and inspire historyteachers and through them, students in NewEngland and beyond. One of the outcomes ofTAH is expected to be a continuing k-12 pro-gram at AAS, available to individual schoolsor school districts.

This regional meeting of TAH directorswas one of the first of its kind in the country.The U.S. Department of Education hopes toreplicate AAS’s leadership role and establishother regional meetings in the coming months.

Above: AAS member Glen Pomeroyat his own elementary school, theTatnuck Magnet School. More than100 fifth and sixth graders werespellbound during the performanceand asked lots of questions after-ward. Right: Neil Gustafson as Isaiah Thomas.

8

NEW MEMBERS

Twenty new members were elected at theannual meeting on October 21, 2011 inWorcester. Each member formally accepts hisor her election to complete this process.

STEPHEN ARONLos Angeles, CaliforniaStephen Aron is a professor of history at theUniversity of California, Los Angeles, andchair of the Institute for the Study of theAmerican West at the Autry National Center.His books include How the West was Lost:The Transformation of Kentucky from DanielBoone to Henry Clay (1996); Trading Cul-tures: The Worlds of Western Merchants, co-edited with Jeremy Adelman (2001); andAmerican Confluence: The Missouri Frontierfrom Borderland to Border State (2006).

THOMAS AUGSTNew York, New YorkThomas Augst is an associate professor ofEnglish at New York University. A formerAAS fellow (Reese Fellowship, 1999, and Peterson Fellowship, 2004), he is the authorof The Clerk’s Tale: Young Men and MoralLife in Nineteenth-Century America (2003),a finalist for the Modern Language Associa-tion’s Prize for a First Book; co-editor of Libraries as Agencies of Culture (2002); andco-editor of Institutions of Reading: The Social Life of Libraries in the United States(2007).

MARDGES BACONCambridge, MassachusettsMardges Bacon is the Matthews Distin-guished University Professor in the School ofArchitecture at Northeastern University. Aspecialist in American architectural andurban history, she has published widely in herfield. She has served on the advisory board ofBuildings of the United States: Connecticut,and as a director of the New England Chap-ter of the Society of Architectural Historians.She and her bookseller husband Charles B.Wood, also a member, have been longtimeand generous supporters of the Society.

JESSIE LITTLE DOE BAIRDMashpee, MassachusettsJessie Little Doe Baird, a citizen of the Mash-pee Wampanoag Tribe and member of itsTribal Council, is co-founder and director ofthe Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Proj-ect. Wampanoag (or Wôpanâak) was spokenby tens of thousands of people in southeast-ern New England when Puritan settlers arrived and ceased to be spoken by the

middle of the nineteenth century. She is a 2010John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Founda-tion Fellow, honored for her work in revivingthe language of her ancestors.

NED BLACKHAWKNew Haven, ConnecticutNed Blackhawk, a Western Shoshone (Te-Moak), is professor of history and Americanstudies at Yale University. He is the author ofViolence Over the Land: Indians and Empiresin the Early American West (2006), which re-ceived the Frederick Jackson Turner Awardfrom the Organization of American Historiansin 2007, and a Book of the Decade Award fromthe Native American and Indigenous Studies As-sociation in 2011.

STEVE BOLICKFramingham, MassachusettsSteve Bolick is the proprietor of Aiglatson(“nostalgia,” spelled backwards), dealing in pre-1900 ephemera and Americana with a specialinterest in graphic content. His interest inephemera began during his 30-year career as aninsurance broker and consultant, and he becamemore extensively involved after retiring in 1997.Throughout the year, he sets aside choice itemsand offers them, reasonably priced, to the Soci-ety. While many of those items have beengraphic materials, they have also included man-uscripts, children’s books, and newspapers.

JOANNA BROOKSSan Diego, CaliforniaJoanna Brooks is associate professor and chairof the department of English and ComparativeLiterature at San Diego State University. Herfirst book American Lazarus: Religion and theRise of African-American and Native AmericanLiteratures (2003) was awarded the WilliamSanders Scarborough Prize by the Modern Lan-guage Association. She is also the editor of TheCollected Writings of Samson Occom Mohe-gan: Literature and Leadership in Eighteenth-Century America (2006) and TransatlanticFeminisms in the Age of Revolutions (2011).

KATHLEEN DUVALChapel Hill, North Carolinakathleen DuVal is associate professor and di-rector of undergraduate studies in the historydepartment at the University of North Carolinaat Chapel Hill. Her publications include TheNative Ground: Indians and Colonists in theHeart of the Continent (2006) and Interpretinga Continent: Voices from Colonial America(2009), co-edited with John DuVal. She is

currently writing Independence Lost: TheGulf Coast in the American Revolution, tobe published by Random House.

GERALD F. FITZGERALD, JR.Inverness, IllinoisGerald F. Fitzgerald, Jr. shared with his latefather – an AAS member from 2007 until hisdeath in 2010 – not only his name and hisprofession as a banker, but also a great lovefor collecting. A founder of Cornerstone Na-tional Bank and Trust and president andCEO of Cornerstone Bancorp, Inc. he wasrecently honored by the Chicago Bible Soci-ety with its 2011 Gutenberg Award.

GREGORY A. GIBSONGloucester, MassachusettsGregory Gibson is the proprietor of TenPound Island Book Company. An antiquar-ian book dealer since 1976, he is one of theleading specialists on old and rare maritimebooks and manuscripts. He is the author ofthree nonfiction books and a novel, includ-ing Gone Boy (1999), Demon of the Waters(2004), and Hubert's Freaks (2008). Withfellow bookseller Matthew Needle, he re-cently donated to AAS the manuscript mem-oir of legendary book scout Benjamin Tighe.

ANTHONY GRAFTONPrinceton, New JerseyAnthony Grafton is the Henry Putnam Uni-versity Professor of History at PrincetonUniversity. A leading historian of books andreaders, he also studies the long-term historyof scholarly practices and a wide range oftopics in cultural and intellectual history. Heis the author of 10 books and co-author, ed-itor, co-editor, or translator of nine others.He is also a contributor to The New Repub-lic, The American Scholar, and The NewYork Review of Books.

PEKKA HÄMÄLÄINENSanta Barbara, CaliforniaPekka Hämäläinen is a professor of historyat the University of California at Santa Bar-bara. His first book, The Comanche Empire(2008), received 10 major prizes, includingthe Bancroft Prize and the Merle CurtiAward. He is also a co-editor of Major Prob-lems in the History of the North AmericanBorderlands (2011), and is currently atwork on a book titled The Shapes of Power:Frontiers, Borderlands, Middle Grounds,and Empires in North America, 1600-1900.

9

STEPHANIE MCCURRYPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania Stephanie McCurry is a professor and un-dergraduate curriculum chair in the historydepartment at the University of Pennsylva-nia. She is the author of Masters of SmallWorlds: Yeoman Households, Gender Rela-tions, and the Political Culture of the Ante-bellum South Carolina Low Country(1995) which received numerous awards in-cluding the John Hope Franklin PublicationPrize of the American Studies Association,and Confederate Reckoning: Power and Pol-itics in the Civil War South (2010), as wellas many articles and review essays.

JOSHUA MICAH MARSHALL

New York, New YorkJoshua Marshall is the founder and pub-lisher of TalkingPointsMemo.com, whichhas expanded since 2000 into a network ofsites under TPM Media. He began his careeras a journalist and editor, and has con-tributed to The American Prospect, Wash-ington Monthly, The Atlantic, The NewYorker, and Salon.com. He is also a colum-nist for Time.com and the Capitol Hillnewspaper, The Hill. Before turning to newmedia, he earned a Ph.D. in early Americanhistory at Brown University, a field in whichhe still has active interest.

TIYA MILES

Ann Arbor, MichiganTiya Miles is a professor of history in theProgram in American Culture at the Univer-sity of Michigan. She is the author of TiesThat Bind: The Story of an Afro-CherokeeFamily in Slavery and Freedom (2005),which was awarded the Frederick JacksonTurner Award from the Organization ofAmerican Historians, and The House onDiamond Hill: A Cherokee Plantation Story(2010), which won the National Council onPublic History and Georgia Historical Soci-ety book awards. She is a 2011 MacArthurFellow.

M. STEPHEN MILLER

New Britain, ConnecticutM. Stephen Miller has collected, written andlectured about, and organized exhibitions onShaker endeavors for more than 30 years. Hiscollection includes over 14,000 examples of ad-vertising ephemera, the most comprehensivecollection extant. In addition to many articles,he is the author of From Shaker Lands andShaker Hands: A Survey of the Industries(2007) and the editor of 10 books. He curatedInspired Innovations: A Celebration of ShakerIngenuity at the New Britain Museum of Amer-ican Art and co-wrote a book of the same titlein 2010.

GARY Y. OKIHIRONew York, New YorkGary Okihiro is a professor of internationaland public affairs at Columbia University andwas founding director of the university’s Centerfor the Study of Ethnicity and Race. His booksinclude Common Ground: Reimagining Amer-ican History (2001); The Columbia Guide toAsian American History (2001); Island World:A History of Hawaii and the United States(2008); and Pineapple Culture: A History ofthe Tropical and Temperate Zones (2009). Heis a recipient of the lifetime achievement awardfrom the American Studies Association.

WILLIAM O. PETTIT IIIAlbany, New YorkWilliam O. Pettit III is a landscape and seascapepainter whose subjects include the Catskills andeastern New York State and Cape Cod. Hestudied art at Middlebury College, the Worces-ter Art Museum, and the Sage Colleges. For thepast 30 years, he has also enjoyed collectingevery edition and translation he can find ofMelville’s Moby Dick – he has 180 so far –which he calls “one man’s obsession with anobsession.” His father, William O. Pettit, Jr., isalso a member (elected in 1979) and a generoussupporter of the Society.

SETH ROCKMANProvidence, Rhode IslandSeth Rockman is an associate professor ofhistory at Brown University. His bookScraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Sur-vival in Early Baltimore (2009) won theMerle Curti Prize from the Organization ofAmerican Historians, the Philip Taft LaborHistory Book Award, and the H.L. MitchellPrize from the Southern Historical Associ-ation. A 2007 AAS-NEH Fellow, he is cur-rently writing a book about shoes, shovels,hats, and hoes manufactured in the Northfor use on Southern slave plantations.

SAMUEL J. SCINTADenver, ColoradoSam Scinta is president and publisher ofFulcrum Publishing, Inc. in Golden, Col-orado, and a collector of nineteenth- andtwentieth-century books. The creator of thebestselling Speaker’s Corner Books series oncontemporary political affairs, he has co-authored and edited numerous books, in-cluding Parting Shots from My Brittle Bow,with Sen. Eugene McCarthy (2004). Hisforthcoming book is Native Americans inState and Local Governments, with DavidWillkins. As the son-in-law of Charlotteand Robert Baron, he is well acquaintedwith AAS.

From The Farmers and mechanics almanack, for the year ofour Lord 1845 ... Carefully calculated for the latitude andmeridian of Philadelphia. This illustration is included in theexhibition Men of the Young Republic on the AAS website.

10

A NATIONAL AWARD & A STANDING OVATION

Philip Lampi was honored for over fourdecades of research on early American votingrecords on February 16, when he became thefirst recipient of the NEH Chairman’s Com-mendation.

An overview of “A New Nation Votes”preceded the award presentation by NEHchairman Jim Leach. Following Phil Lampi,the speakers included Erik Beck, project man-ager at Tufts University and AAS; Andrew Robertson, a project advisor; andAAS president Ellen S. Dunlap.

Head of Readers’ Services ElizabethPope posted a recap and links to other mediacoverage on the AAS blog, www.pastispre-sent.org, and AAS fellow Joseph Adelmanwrote about the impact of “A New NationVotes” on historical scholarship in Common-place (www.common-place.org) This eventwas also featured on the front page of theWorcester Telegram & Gazette, accompaniedby an online slide show.

Philip Lampi (left), lead researcher for “A NewNation Votes,” with Jim Leach, Chairman ofthe National Endowment for the Humanities.

A Quest for NewspapersThanks to a short piece in the Akron

Beacon Journal on December 8, curator Vincent Golden recently heard from a donorwho has several Civil War-era newspapersthat he would like to give AAS, including onethat reports Lincoln’s assassination. Akronjournalist Bob Dyer began his Beacon Journalpiece recalling that he had saved a 1964newspaper (proclaiming a championship winby the Cleveland Browns) through variousmoves over the years, but with nowhere nearthe care that the Society dedicates to its col-lections. He went on to describe AAS, notingthat he would usually promote a local organ-ization, but that the Summit County (Ohio)Historical Society had limited means andspace for preserving newspapers publishedbefore 1877, and that the place for those isclearly AAS.

The AAS online catalog – and especiallythe issue-specific newspaper catalog, Clarence– identifies which papers the Society doeshave, but it’s safe to say that Vince Goldencan answer that question, too. A number ofother journalists have also taken up the causearound the country – the Bellevue (Illinois)News-Democrat, the Parkersburg News(West Virginia), and the Gallion Inquirer

(Ohio) – all pointingprospective donors to AAS.

The assurance that pa-pers will be carefully pre-served and made availableto researchers – genealo-gists, graduate students,writers, teachers, and ofcourse, historians – has ledmany local historical soci-eties to transfer their news-paper holdings to AAS. InFebruary, Vince Goldenspoke at the New EnglandNewspaper and Press Asso-ciation’s convention andtrade show, describing howhis quest for newspapers has taken himcross-country in a U-Haul truck to pick updonations. An article about his talk, titled“Chasing the Dumpster,” is available onlineat www.seapubs.com/eBulletin2-9-12/sto-ries _ convention_dumpster.htm.

AAS has over 2 million newspapers andis continually adding to its collections, cur-rently at a rate of about 30,000 issues a year.Even as the Society celebrates its 200th an-niversary, that drive to collect is as strong as

ever. If an item was printed before 1877 andwe do not have it (or the example that may bedonated is different or in better condition),AAS is interested. This includes everythingfrom newspapers, books, pamphlets, andprints to handwritten materials, such as lettersor diaries. Please direct inquiries about donat-ing materials to AAS to the head of acquisi-tions, Peg Lesinski (plesinski@mwa.org).

Curator Vincent Golden and AAS presidentEllen S. Dunlap with newspapers in the AAScollection.

11

NEWS FROM MEMBERS, FELLOWS & STAFF

MEMBERS’ NEWS

Deanna Marcum has joined Ithaka S+R, effective January 2012, as managing directorleading its research and strategic consultingservices as a part of the larger organization,ITHAkA. She was previously Associate Librarian for Library Services at the Libraryof Congress, and has served as president ofthe Council on Library and Information Re-sources (CLIR) and as dean of the CatholicUniversity School of Library and InformationScience. In June 2011, she received the MelvilDewey Medal from the American Libraries Association, its highest honor, inrecognition of her leadership and distin-guished career.

Robert Peck, a senior fellow of the Academyof Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, was givenan honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the University of Delaware inJanuary, where he gave the keynote addressfor winter commencement. Last summer, hespent two months in Mongolia working on aclimate change study. He is currently guest curator of an exhibit of Edward Lear’s natural history paintings at the Houghton Library at Harvard (April 2-August 8), in celebration of the bicentennial of Lear’s birth.He will be speaking on Lear at a joint meetingof the Linnean Society and the Society for the History of Natural History in London in September. Robert Peck is also the co-authorof A Glorious Enterprise, a history of the

Academy of Natural Sciences, founded in 1812and the oldest natural history museum in thecountry.

Dale Cockrell, director of the Center for Popular Music at Middle Tennessee State University and president of Pa’s Fiddle Record-ings, has been working with PBS on a specialconcert to be aired in June, Pa’s Fiddle: Amer-ica’s Music. Songs from the Pa’s Fiddle Projectwere performed by well known musicians, in-cluding Randy Travis, Ronnie Milsap, RodneyAtkins, Natalie Grant, and The Roys.

Charles “Pa” Ingalls, father of authorLaura Ingalls Wilder, was an accomplished fid-dler, and the Little House on the Prairie booksidentify 127 songs. Dale Cockrell’s companyhas recorded a new CD featuring songs men-tioned in the books. It will be available in June and can be ordered in advance at www.laura-ingalls-wilder.com.

Carla Mulford, associate professor of Englishat Penn State University and the founding pres-ident of the Society of Early Americanists, wasawarded the William L. Mitchell Prize for Bib-liography or Documentary Work on EarlyBritish Periodicals or Newspapers by the Bib-liographical Society of America in January2012. Her award-winning publication, “Ben-jamin Franklin’s Savage Eloquence: Hoaxesfrom the Press at Passy, 1782,” was publishedin The Proceedings of the American Philo-sophical Society (Vol. 152, No. 4, December2008). FELLOWS’ NEWS

Adam Gordon (Hench Post-DissertationFellow, 2011-12) has been named assistantprofessor of English at Whitman College inWalla Walla, Washington.

Recent AAS fellows who were hired totenure-track teaching positions this year in-clude Sari Altschuler (Legacy Fellow, 2011-12); Matthew Bahar (Legacy, 2010-11);Gina Marie Caison (Last, 2011-12); Chris-tine DeLucia (Peterson, 2011-12); JonathanNash (Peterson, 2011-12); Christopher Pastore (Peterson, 2010-11); Kelly Ross(Last, 2009-10); and Jonathan Senchyne(Last, 2009-10).

STAFF NEWS

Matthew Shakespeare joined the Society’ssenior managers in November as executivevice-president for external affairs. He isworking closely with staff on bicentennialplanning, with a particular focus on cele-bratory events in October, as well as key development and programming initiatives.

Ashley Janes recently joined the staff as a receptionist in Antiquarian Hall.

AAS bids farewell to curator of books DavidWhitesell at the end of March, when he becomes curator in the Albert and ShirleySmall Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia.

Thank you!AAS welcomes your support in a variety of ways:

Donations of collection materials are appreciated. We are interested in anything printed in this countryfrom colonial times through 1876 that is not already in an AAS collection. Please contact Peg Lesinski,head of acquisitions, if you have items to donate; she will get your offer to the right curator.

Financial support is crucial to the work done at AAS. Details on the Isaiah Thomas Society, GeorgeBancroft Society, Esther Forbes Society, endowed funds and fellowships, and the annual fund are on theAAS website. Please contact John keenum, vice president for development, with specific questions. Donorsare thanked in the annual report.

The Society’s seal first appeared in 1820. In January, the Council voted toissue membership diplomas “to which the seal of the Society shall be affixed”and later that year, the seal was featured on the engraved title page of the firstvolume of Archaeologia Americana: The Transactions and Collections of the

American Antiquarian Society. Like most early initiatives of the Society (the char-ter, its founding collection, and even Antiquarian Hall itself), the seal was thebrainchild of Isaiah Thomas. John R. Penniman turned a sketch done by Thomasinto a drawing in 1815. The price quoted for a die was deemed too high and nofurther action was taken, until Thomas took charge. He enclosed the drawing ina March 27, 1819, letter to the Hartford engraver, Abner Reed, and paid him$25.00 in June. December minutes record that “a seal for the Society has beenhandsomely engraved and presented this evening to the Society by the President.”

The motto “nec poterit ferrum nec edax abolere vetustas” is from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Book 15, line 872), and when combined with line 871, reads“Now I have completed my work, which neither sword nor devouring Time will

be able to destroy.” Thomas’s choice seems to speak for itself—or does it? The text can be considered a sign of his anticipation of a securefuture for the Society, but these lines might also have held special resonance.

Thomas’s initial gift of books does not include a copy of Ovid’s narrative poem, but he was aware of these lines. His copy of SamuelButler’s Hudibras (London, 1739; repr. Troy, New York, 1806) opens with a preface declaring that poets are born, not taught. The authorthen backpedaled in a way that would surely have appealed to Thomas: “some who have had very little human learning, but were enduedwith a large share of natural wit … have become the most celebrated poets of the age they lived in.” The two lines from Ovid are cited asproof that while “he had not had the happiness of an academical education, as some affirm, it may be perceived, throughout his whole poem,that he had read much and was very well accomplished in the most useful parts of human learning.” Is it surprising that the self-taughtThomas inscribed this page when he gave this volume to the Society in 1820?

– Caroline F. Sloat

AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY185 Salisbury StreetWorcesterMassachusetts

01609-1634

Nonprofit

Organization

U. S. Postage

P A I D

Permit No. 416

Worcester, MA

01609-1634

AAS Heritage

ISSN #1098-7878

THE ORIGIN OF THE SOCIETY’S SEAL

The Society’s seal with the inscription: Designed by I. Thomas;Drawn by John R. Penniman, Boston, 1815.”

The American Antiquarian Society isfunded in part by the MassachusettsCultural Council, a state agency thatsupports public programs in the arts,humanities, and sciences.