Posts from the Manuscripts and Archives Division

Project archivist Elizabeth Delmage has tackled the job of making sense of the U.S. Sanitary Commission’s financial records, beginning with boxes of bundled documents and volumes. The richness of information in these materials provides a window into 19th-century commerce, the history of technology in America and, of course, the world of military supplies and humanitarian relief.

Spring is ahead in the month of March. The anticipation is for the warmer weather to come and for Winter to leave. This was probably the same idea that New Yorkers and many others along the northeast seaboard believed during mid-March, 1888.

The weather forecasters reported slightly warmer temperatures and fair weather, followed by rain. Certainly, there would be nothing to worry about. This was a big mistake one hundred and twenty-three years ago...

The various “relief” activities of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, whether “general relief,” “field relief,” or “special relief,” are reflected throughout its own records, now held in the NYPL's Manuscripts and Archives Division. The group of material known as the “Special Relief Archives,” however, is not quite what you would expect to find from its name. Project archivist Melissa Haley discusses her work with this record group in the collection, which contains documents created at different times in the Commission’s existence and for different purposes. As a result, the contexts of their creation (during and after 

University of Missouri Ph.D. candidate Steven Carl Smith was sitting in a coffee shop near campus when he got the e-mail that changed his life as a young historian.

It was from The New York Public Library, informing him that he had received one of 21 fellowships to do short-term research at its landmark Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street.

After the disappointment of The Fig Leaves are Falling, Dorothy Loudon got a great part in a new musical with much more promise, but this one didn’t even make it to Broadway, despite being, without question, artistically superior.

It may seem surprising to learn that even though the United States Sanitary Commission was officially endorsed by the U.S. government in June 1861, by mutual agreement this civilian organization did not receive federal funding for its work. The USSC's extensive activities—camp and hospital inspections, medical studies and publications, and especially, a wide variety of relief efforts for soldiers—were bankrolled entirely by the private sector.

What happens to a musical unrecorded? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Perhaps, but fortunately not forever in the case of two flop musicals from the late sixties/early seventies that tried to challenge American sexual mores, that also featured the sublime talents of one of the musical theatre’s incomparable divas, before she played Miss Hannighan in Annie and joined the ranks of the great musical stars.

115 East 14th Street. March 1933.
credit: Robert Byrnes Collection of Automat MemorabiliaAsk anyone about the "Big Mac" and immediately one imagines an image of a double hamburger on a sesame seed bun. The golden arches are everywhere.  On Broadway and 42nd Street, New York City boasts one of the largest McDonald's in metropolitan America. 

Say the words "Horn & Hardart," you will probably get a different reaction.  Go back thirty years or more...

The United States Sanitary Commission records might not be the first port of call for anyone interested in studying 19th-century American agriculture or the culinary arts, but the visit could well repay the effort. 

March 3, 1905, was not an auspicious day for Hy Brown.

Brown, an 18-year-old man from California with no known occupation, had been sentenced to death for the murder of Patrick Dunne, an aged storekeeper. On March 3rd, his sentence was carried out, making him the 149th of over 200 men executed by hanging at the California State Prison at San Quentin between 1893 and 1937.

As we work towards our goal of providing optimal access to the collection, we encounter, learn about, and engage with the work of our 19th-century predecessors—the staff of the USSC’s Archive Department and their successors.

Our first blog post announced the United States Sanitary Commission Records Processing Project, a three-year project to comprehensively process (arrange, describe, and physically preserve) the archival records of the United States Sanitary Commission, a civilian organization that supported the health, comfort and efficiency of Union forces during the American Civil War.

"Get out," he said.
"I'm staying."
"I don't need you."
"Don't be a fool. You need someone."
"Not you."
The boy lifted his head from the table. "Don't you talk like that to this nice lady," he slurred.

A decision had to be made.  This argument occurred during the United States Civil War, 1861-1865, in the historical fiction My Name is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira.  Her protagonist, Mary Sutter is a young midwife determined to become a surgeon in nineteenth century America, when a woman doctor was an anomaly.  But the times were not ordinary...

The Brown Pelican (Pelcanus Occidentalis) is described on many web sites as one of seven or eight species of pelicans with a wing span over 7 feet...

November 27, 1846: "William Haynes, a native of Ireland, has been in this country about two years and six months.  He was sent to Blackwells Island three months for selling pernicious books."

The Manuscripts and Archives Division has embarked on a three-year project to comprehensively arrange, describe, and physically preserve the United States Sanitary Commission Records, made possible by a generous donation enabling The New York Public Library to expand access to its archival collections. This blog will introduce you to the organization, its records, and the processing project, with further explorations and updates to follow!

“Men! Give Women Votes to Protect the Children!”

This sentiment, originating during WWI, is an example of the many tools first wave feminists used in their efforts to obtain the right to vote. Women of the first wave argued that the vote would allow them to fix social ills such as poverty, child labor, alcoholism, and the war, and they used these issues as political levers to achieve their suffrage goal. This was not a cynical calculation, however: these early feminists and suffragists believed in their causes and would go far to fight for them. Numerous activists were put on trial, arrested, force-fed, hounded and harassed in the papers for their adherence to the belief that 

Working as an archivist I often come across collection items that change the way I see the world around me. I had such an experience recently when processing a manuscript collection. As I sorted through the papers of a woman who had donated her papers to the library, an article title caught my eye, “Is Feminism Dead?”

Those who are interested in the Feminist movement will remember the Time magazine cover from 1998 that asked this question, featuring the images of four women across a stark black background: Susan B. Anthony, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and…Ally McBeal. The lead article by Ginia Bellafante chastised the newest generation of women for 

Residents of New York City, members of a metropolis that somehow simultaneously operates as a small village, are all familiar with certain “characters” who frequent public spaces. Today it is the “Naked Cowboy” one can find entertaining the tourists in Times Square, the affable gentleman selling vegetable peelers in Union Square, or even the kids who perform gravity-defying acrobatics on the A train. A similar character who was surely familiar to many in the streets of NYC during the nineteen-teens through the nineteen-thirties was Kitty Marion, hawker of the Birth Control Review.