Kenneth Spencer Research Library

As an elder millennial who loved history as a child and grew up with American Girl, I’ve been excited about the company’s 40th anniversary this year. As a result, I will be sharing a series of posts highlighting Spencer collection materials that connect to AG’s six original historical characters, in chronological order of when they “lived”: Felicity Merriman, Josefina Montoya, Kirsten Larson, Addy Walker, Samantha Parkington, and Molly McIntyre. Each post will focus on a different character and explore a selection of items that relate to the time and place in which she “lived” and topics or themes explored in her stories.

When readers meet Felicity Merriman, she is a “spunky, sprightly” nine-year-old girl living in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1774. Her stories are set against the backdrop of rising tensions between Patriots and Loyalists just before the American Revolution, and the theme of independence runs throughout them. Felicity herself balks at learning expected housewifery skills, and she attempts to free a beloved horse named Penny from an abusive owner. The questions of freedom, liberty, and equality asked in the stories are not extended to the enslaved characters (and one free person of color) who are mentioned or implied. Other topics in Felicity’s books include education for girls, illnesses and injuries, British taxation especially on tea, her father’s store, and maintaining friendships in the face of disagreements.

Selected pages in The Ladies’ Diary, or, Woman’s Almanack for the Year of Our Lord 1774. Published in London between 1704 and 1841, The Ladies’ Diary, or, Woman’s Almanack famously featured puzzles and mathematical questions in addition to calendars and important dates. Spencer’s 1774 copy appears to feature a red two-pence duty tax stamp. It is also bound with nine other popular Company of Stationers almanacs from the same year; similar volumes from several years between 1744 and 1826 can also be found at Spencer under the call number “Bond B17.” Call Number: Bond B17 1774. Click images to enlarge.

The title page and publication note of An Oration Delivered March 5, 1774: At the Request of the Inhabitants of the Town of Boston; To Commemorate the Bloody Tragedy of the Fifth of March 1770 by John Hancock, Boston: 1774. “Some boast of being friends to government,” Hancock asserted in this speech. “I am a friend to righteous government, to a government founded upon the principles of reason and justice; but I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny.” This speech can be read online through the Massachusetts Historical Society; a transcription is available through the UMKC School of Law “Famous Trials” website. Call Number: D845. Click images to enlarge.

The frontispiece (left) and title page (middle) of The Experienced English Housekeeper, for the Use and Ease of Ladies, Housekeepers, Cooks, &c. by Elizabeth Raffald, London: 1778. On the right is a fold-out copper plate diagram of a first-course dinner arrangement consisting of 25 dishes, part of what Raffald calls a “grand table”: “January being a month when entertainments are most used, and most wanted, from that motive I have drawn my dinner at that season of the year.” A second copper plate diagram shows another 25 dishes, and Raffald asserts that the third (dessert) course “must” therefore “be of the same number.” Call Number: C3670. Click images to enlarge.

The title page and a selection of treatments in Every Man His Own Physician by John Theobald, London: 1766 (a “new edition, improved). Historically known as chlorosis, “green sickness” was primarily diagnosed in young, unmarried teenage girls. “Gripes” is an older term for influenza. Note that the cure for headaches includes “leeches behind the ears.” Call Number: B9522. Click images to enlarge.

Selected Additional Collection Items

Colonial British America, Virginia, and Williamsburg

• Map, North America, as Divided Amongst the European Powers, London: 1774. Call Number: Orbis Maps 1:85.
• The Office and Authority of a Justice of Peace Explained and Digested, Under Proper Titles by Richard Starke, Williamsburg: 1774. Includes a section on penalties for (ahem, Felicity) stealing horses. George Washington had a copy of this work in his library. Call Number: C14997.
• Map, A New and Correct Map of North America, With the West India Islands; Divided According to the Last Treaty of Peace, Concluded at Paris. 10th. Feby. 1763, London: 1777. Call Number: N6 Orbis 1:81.
• Map, Bowles’s New Map of North America and the West Indies, London: 1781. Call Number: N7 Orbis 1:82.
• Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson, London: 1787. Call Number: C1485.
• Colonial Williamsburg, the First Twenty-Five Years; A Report, 1952. Call Number: RH D1411.

Rising Tensions Before the American Revolution

• First [-Fifth] Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire [sic] into the Nature, State, and Condition, of the East India Company, and of the British Affairs in the East Indies, London: 1773? These reports document the UK Parliament’s investigation into the East India Company in 1772 and 1773. One result of this inquiry was the Tea Act of 1773, which features prominently in Felicity’s stories. Call Number: G374 v.3 items 6-10.
• Considerations on the Measures Carrying on With Respect to the British Colonies in North America, anonymously written by Matthew Robinson, 2nd Baron Rokeby, London: 1774. Call Number: 18th century Prose 716.
• Extracts from the Votes and Proceedings of the American Continental Congress, Held at Philadelphia, on the Fifth of September, 1774, Philadelphia: 1774. Call Number: 18th century Prose 2275.
• American Independence the Interest and Glory of Great Britain by John Cartwright, London: 1774. Call Number: C1497.
• Speech of Edmund Burke, Esq. on American Taxation, April 19, 1774, London: 1775. Call Number: C3454 item 3.

Slavery in Colonial British America

• A Caution to Great Britain and Her Colonies, in a Short Representation of the Calamitous State of the Enslaved Negroes in the British Dominions by Anthony Benezet, London: 1767. Call Number: C3749.
• Thoughts Upon Slavery by John Wesley, London: 1774. Call Number: Howey B2111.
• Fragment of an Original Letter on the Slavery of the Negroes; Written in the Year 1776 by Thomas Day, London: 1784. Call Number: Howey C3950 item 2.

Household Matters and Girls’ Education

• The Ready Calculator: or, Trader’s Certain Guide, in Computing the Price, or Amount of Any Quantity of Goods and Merchandizes by Thomas Slack, London: 1771. Call Number: Howey B856.
• An Essay Upon Nursing and the Management of Children, From Their Birth to Three Years of Age by William Cadogan, Boston: 1772. Call Number: C1801.
• Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, Addressed to a Young Lady. In Two Volumes by Mrs. (Hester) Chapone, London: 1773. Call Number: B3783.
• An Essay on the Learning, Genius, and Abilities of the Fair-Sex: Proving Them Not Inferior to Man, From a Variety of Examples, Extracted From Ancient and Modern History, an English translation of Defensa de las mujer by Benito Jerónimo Feijoo y Montenegro, London: 1774. Call Number: B7649.
• The Toilet of Flora, an English translation (with alterations) of La toilette de flore by Pierre-Joseph Buc’hoz, London: 1775. Contains “a collection of the most simple and approved methods of preparing baths, essences, pomatums, powders, perfumes, sweet-scented waters, and opiates for preserving and whitening the teeth” with “receipts [recipes] for cosmetics of every kind, that can smooth and brighten the skin, give force to beauty, and take off the appearance of old age and decay.” Call Number: B8738.
• The Complete Vermin-Killer: A Valuable and Useful Companion for Families, in Town and Country, London: 1777. Includes “safe and quick methods of destroying bugs, lice, fleas, rats, mice, moles, weazels [sic], caterpillars, frogs, pismires, snails, frogs, moths, earwigs, wasps, pole-cats, badgers, foxes, otters, and fish and birds of all kinds.” Also includes “useful family receipts, for the preparation of medicines” and “directions for the purchase, management and cure of horses.” Call Number: Ellis Omnia C437.

Horses

• Observations Upon the Shoeing of Horses: With an Anatomical Description of the Bones in the Foot of a Horse by James Clark, Edinburgh: 1770. Call Number: 18th century Prose 1841.
• A Treatise on Cattle: Shewing the Most Approved Methods of Breeding, Rearing, and Fitting for Use, Horses, Asses, Mules, Horned Cattle, Sheep, Goats, and Swine by John Mills, Dublin: 1776. Call Number: C4072.

Caitlin Klepper
Public Engagement Librarian

Much as Martha Stewart sought to guide the American home-makers of the 1980 and 1990’s through the intricacies of family care and entertaining, so were authors such as Sarah Rutledge endeavoring to do over one-hundred years earlier. Rutledge published The Carolina Housewife by a Lady of Charleston in 1847 to provide her contemporaries with “receipts for dishes that have been made in our own houses, and with no more elaborate abattrie de cuisine than that belonging to families of moderate income” (Rutledge, p. iv, 1979 edition). As a longtime reader of books related to cooking and the domestic arts, I have observed that writers of these tomes feel a fierce pride about their local flora, fauna, and the manner in which these things are combined to create meals. Additionally, they often feel it is their duty to give instruction to the readers that as keepers of home and family; they are also guardians of the physical and moral well-being of the body of their community and even their nation.
KSU

While researching Rutledge’s book, I was pleased to find the work of a contemporary in the Spencer Research Library collection. While not strictly a cookbook, Resources of the Southern fields and forests, medical, economical, and agricultural, by Francis Peyre Porcher, fits nicely within the domestic economy genre. Porcher, a physician for the Confederacy during the Civil War, was granted a stay from service to write and publish this “Hand-book of scientific and popular knowledge, as regards the medicinal, economical and useful properties of the Trees, Plants and Shrubs found within the Southern States, whether employed in the arts, for manufacturing purposes, or in domestic economy, to supply for present as well as future want” (p. v, 1869 edition). The contents of its nearly 800 pages are a rich repository of botanical information, important today as they describe many plants now extinct or nearly so, including the much-beloved heirloom grain, Carolina Gold Rice.

    

Title page (l) and text page (r) of Resources of the
Southern Fields and Forests
(Charleston: Walker, Evans & Cogswell, 1869).
Call Number: C6678 item 1. Click images to enlarge.

It is in Porcher’s introduction to the Spencer’s 1869 edition, though, that we gain a peek into some less than botanical thoughts running underneath this seemingly straightforward text; those being about the abolishment of slavery and its effect on the southern states. The 1869 introduction is seven pages longer than the 1863 edition (written during the war), much of its added length owing to Porcher’s description of how the south’s many swamps and bogs must continue to be converted into farmable land. This was work that until emancipation, had been carried out by African and African-descent people held in slavery in the southern states. He writes, “[i]t is true that much of this work was done under the system of primogeniture, when it was in the power and to the interest of the owner of the soil…to look for the permanent welfare of his descendants.” While not mentioning slavery, Porcher seems to imply that the “owner of the soil” also “owns” the workers of the soil. Porcher acknowledges that the task of reclamation will be impossible without governmental assistance.

In his final paragraphs, he writes, “the State; which should, when it becomes necessary, perform for its citizens those acts of public utility, the right or ability to do which depended on systems and institutions which it has, from reasons of policy or interest, abolished or destroyed, and being deprived of which, they suffer” (p. xv). Once again, Porcher does not mention slavery directly, but instead uses the word “institution” in its place. The idea of slavery being an institution was first made popular by the South Carolina statesman, John Calhoun, when he spoke of it as the South’s ‘peculiar domestick(sic) institution’. Though veiled in euphemism, Porcher makes clear that he believes that the end of slavery is a punishment for the southern states; a punishment by which “they suffer”. This deprivation renders its population unable to protect its physical and moral interests.

Advertisement page from
Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests, 1869.
Call Number: C6678 item 1.
Click image to enlarge.

Roberta Woodrick
Assistant Conservator, General Collections
Conservation Services

The success of and critical acclaim for the recent film 12 Years a Slave has generated an increased public discourse about the history, significance, and lasting implications of slavery in the United States. Beyond Spencer’s African American Experience collections, a perhaps surprising number of sources in both the Kansas Collection and Special Collections highlight various components of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century slavery from multiple points of view.

“I have seen mothers kissing for the last time the faces of their dead offspring,”
wrote Solomon Northup in Twelve Years a Slave, “I have seen them looking down
into the grave, as the earth fell with a dull sound upon their coffins,
hiding them from their eyes forever; but never have I seen
such an exhibition of intense, unmeasured, and unbounded grief, as when Eliza was parted
from her child.” Call Number: Howey B1584. Click image to enlarge.

When researching the past, it’s important to keep in mind that the written historical record – including published and unpublished sources – reflects various contexts within the broader society in which they were originally produced. In Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America, historian Ira Berlin describes the relationship between masters and slaves as “profoundly asymmetrical,” writing that it was constantly being negotiated but “always informed by the master’s near monopoly of force.” However, Berlin also asserts that

Knowing that a person was a slave does not tell everything about him or her. Put another way, slaveholders severely circumscribed the lives of enslaved people, but they never fully defined them. Slaves were neither extensions of their owners’ will nor the products of the market’s demand. The slaves’ history – like all human history – was made not only by what was done to them but also what they did for themselves (2).

Given this context, it’s not surprising that a population of people denied the ability to read and write over the course of generations did not produce voluminous written documentation. However, as Berlin hints at, the written record is not completely bereft of accounts by free and formerly enslaved African Americans, describing their own experiences in their own voices.

Andrew Williams’ narrative is the sole unpublished, handwritten narrative by a formerly enslaved person in Spencer’s collections. Williams (d. 1913) was a slave near Springfield, Missouri, who served in the Civil War and survived Quantrill’s 1863 raid on Lawrence. Williams’ eleven-page narrative begins around the time he acquired his freedom and describes his experiences in the Civil War.

Andrew Williams, along with his mother and siblings,
was freed in September 1862 by the 6th Kansas Regiment,
described on this page of his narrative. During the raid on his owner’s farm,
the soldiers also killed livestock and confiscated guns and food.
Andrew Williams Collection. Call Number: RH MS P42. Click image to enlarge.

More numerous in Spencer’s holdings are published narratives by former slaves, including Olaudah Equiano, Juan Francisco Manzano, Sojourner Truth, Henry Box Brown, John Thompson, Thomas H. Jones, and Jermain Wesley Loguen. Also among Spencer’s holdings is an early printing of Solomon Northup’s narrative, Twelve Years a Slave.

“It was the Sabbath of the Lord…peace and happiness seemed to reign everywhere,
save in the bosoms of Epps and his panting victim and
the silent witnesses around him.” Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave.
Call Number: Howey B1584. Click image to enlarge.

“They embraced me, and with tears flowing down their cheeks,
hung upon my neck,” wrote Solomon Northup at the end of his narrative,
Twelve Years a Slave. “But I draw a veil over a scene
which can better be imagined than described.”
Call Number: Howey B1584. Click image to enlarge.

Supplementing these sources are unpublished documents and published accounts by slaveholders and others who vigorously defended the system and by whites who passionately opposed it. Several of these works are based on the author’s personal observations of the treatment of slaves.

For example, Spencer’s Kansas Collection contains the estate records for Jackson County, Missouri, resident John Bartleson. These documents relate to the Bartleson enslaved African Americans and their legal disposition as property in the settlement of the estate. Additionally, the Kansas Collection also includes bound volumes of records from Natchez, Mississippi, located on bluffs above the Mississippi River about 100 miles upriver from New Orleans. Home to wealthy planters’ city mansions, antebellum Natchez had the most millionaires per capita of any city in the United States. These materials don’t directly address the experiences of enslaved African Americans, whose work created that wealth. However, much can be derived from these meticulous records, which document the management required to operate a sizable plantation and the business transactions of other local enterprises like a medical practice, medical society, and general store.

Pages from “a full inventory” of John Bartleson’s property showing
six slaves listed as part of his personal estate, 1848.
John Bartleson Estate Collection. Call Number: RH MS 867. Click image to enlarge.

Auctioneer’s report from 1853 listing individual and total prices for
Charles, Clara and child, Courtney, Thomas, Fanny, Mary, and William.
It is assumed that they were members of one family separated by this sale
“at the Court House door in the City of Independence [Missouri].”
John Bartleson Estate Collection. Call Number: RH MS 867. Click image to enlarge.

Finally, numerous printed volumes in Spencer’s holdings show slavery was a much-considered topic that was also hotly debated in government and in public. Especially strong are works examining slavery and the slave trade in Great Britain and the British Empire in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Other works, focusing on the United States, show how the dispute over Kansas and the expansion of slavery into new territories was waged in print and how Kansas became a political and physical battleground for pro- and antislavery forces.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services