Schlesinger Library

Out of the blue, in March, came a call from the great-granddaughter of Edna Lamprey Stantial. Stantial was for many years archivist of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Her name is familiar to those who study that era, but there is no significant collection of her papers anywhere.  That made the answer to the question of whether Schlesinger Library would be interested in Stantial’s papers easy – yes!

When the cartons arrived in June, it became clear just what a gift—to the library and to scholarship—the Stantial papers are.  There are dozens of letters among the leading American suffragists, including Alice Stone Blackwell, Carrie Chapman Catt, and Maud Wood Park (Radcliffe ’98), whose gift in 1943 of women’s materials to her alma mater became the nucleus of the Women’s Archives, later the Schlesinger Library. Additionally, the collection contains articles, photographs, clippings, and rare ephemera.

Most importantly, the papers continue the story of the struggle for women’s rights into the decades beyond the passage of the 19^th amendment, offering  insight into the issues with which women wrestled, the strategies they employed, and the relationships they forged into the 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s.

Among the exciting finds in the Stantial papers are these stirring words to “Woman’s America,” sung to the tune of “America” as well as programs for suffrage pageants and parades, like this one in Connecticut in 1914. The programs often included photographs of the movement’s leaders with their children, making the point that they were young, beautiful, married, and mothers.

While the collection is closed until processed, general information is available from the HOLLIS record at http://tinyurl.com/3rca72q .

Lyrics to Woman's America

Mrs. Thomas Hepburn, President of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association and Chairman of the Parade Committee

Students arriving at Harvard this year with smart phones in hand might not consider how students of yesteryear communicated.  In 1914, a Radcliffe student would have read the following in the Red Book (Radcliffe’s student  handbook).

“Read the bulletin boards daily for all notices.
Look every day at the letter boards
under your initial for all notes and mail.
The letter board in Fay House is for U.S.
mail and official mail; the one in Agassiz
House is for all other notes. Students are
held responsible for all notices on the bulletin
board and official letter board.”

“Messages for students are not taken at the
office telephone. Students should have their
friends call them up on the Agassiz House
telephone, Cambridge 22581”

Radcliffe College student handbooks from 1904 to 1970 were recently digitized:

http://tinyurl.com/3wo77g4  1904-1919

http://tinyurl.com/3ss5sfz  1920-1970

The fight for woman suffrage was long and hard-fought by several generations of women. In 1902, Susan B. Anthony inscribed the following to fellow suffragist, Caroline H. Dall in the just completed volume four of The History of Woman Suffrage:

This closes the records of the 19th century of work done by and for women – what the 20th century will show – no one can foresee – but that it will be vastly more and better – we cannot fail to believe – But you & I have done the best we knew – and so must rest content – leaving all to younger hands. Your sincere friend and coworker, Susan B. Anthony.

Hollis:http://tinyurl.com/3rp32qf

Radcliffe student carrying on in Hopper’s footsteps with a later version of the Mark computer

Grace Murray Hopper (“Amazing Grace”) was interviewed in Schlesinger Library’s Women in the Federal Government Oral History Project. Hopper relates in the interview that as a child she loved taking things like clocks apart and trying to put them back together. She went on to get her PhD from Yale in 1934 and to teach mathematics at Vassar until 1943, when, wanting to make a direct contribution to the war effort, she joined the Naval Reserve. She had a short bit of training—“thirty days to learn how to take orders, and thirty days to learn how to give orders.” Hopper was then commissioned and sent to Harvard to work with Commander Howard Aiken, a pioneer in computing and the conceptual designer behind Mark I, the first large-scale digital computer. (A piece of it is on display in the Science Center.) There were no distinctions as to which jobs were for men and which for women. Hopper became a programmer. In 1949, she went to work for Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation and worked on designing UNIVAC. The company was in an old mill building with a junkyard on one side and a graveyard on the other, and the talk was “if UNIVAC didn’t work, we’d throw it out one side and we’d jump out the other.” Hopper stayed with the company until 1971. Her memo “Layette for a Computer,” described the software that should come with the delivery of a computer. She was involved in the development of FLOW-MATIC, COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language), and many other computer languages and compilers. In 1966 she retired from the Naval Reserve, but was recalled a year later for six months. Six months became many years, and she worked for the Naval Data Automation Command until 1986, finally retiring as a Rear Admiral. In 1969 she received the first Computer Science Man-of-the-Year Award. The Navy has a guided missile destroyer named for her, the USS Hopper, commissioned in 1997.

One of the most powerful documents to come across the Schlesinger Library conservation bench is this single-leaf manuscript from the recently processed Additional Papers of the Poor Family. The document is the manumission for “Elisabeth, a negro woman,” dated 1778. It has been folded into eighths, resulting in some wear and loss of ink along the folds. The verso of the document shows some calculations, possibly relating to the terms of the manumission, and a faded notation, “Negro Bet” – most likely Elisabeth’s diminutive name. It is easy to imagine that this important document was kept carefully in a drawer or wooden box, which could explain the square of discoloration on the back. Conservation treatment will entail: testing the ink for solubility; careful washing; and subtle mending so that the document can be handled safely, without further loss to the text. This manumission has held together for over 200 years and as stewards of this historical document, it is the Library’s job to see that it lasts even longer to convey its powerful message for generations to come.

Transcript of the manumission text:
These certify, whome it doth or may concern: that in consequence of thirty eight pound, seven shilling and six pence in continental bills & twelves weeks labour in the winter season, rec’d of Elisabeth a negro woman wich I lately bo’t of Charls Putman have thot fit by & with the advice & concent of the selectmen of Plainfield: to emancipate & make free the said Elisabeth & I do hereby for my self my heirs & [assigns?] make free set at liberty & forever discharge the said Elisabeth from serving me or my heirs &cetera. But it is to be understood that I gave to said Putman my note of hand for one hundred Spanish [ ?] milled silver dollers & that in case said Putman shall obtain more of me on said note than the consideration above mentioned as he now refuses to receive continental money in pament therefor in that case said Elisabeth is to make good all damages that I shall sustain on that account.
In testimony whereof I have hearunto set my hand and seal: done in Plainfield this 28th day of September 1778
-Sam’l Fox

Text of the manumission

The reverse side of the manumission showing calculations and text "Negro Bet"

2011 Final List Schlesinger Library Grants

http://theater.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/theater/reviews/the-normal-heart-on-broadway-theater-review.html