One of the greatest parts of my job is making collections more accessible to you. This week, we here at the Delaware Historical Society took another stride toward this effort as we completed the digitization of the Szymanski Photograph Collection!

Szymanski experimenting with interior light in his home

The collection has an amazing story. Henry Szymanski, Sr., a Polish-American teenager, lived at 2^nd and Lombard in Wilmington during the late 1930s. He became interested in photography through the local Boys Club and eventually began experimenting with various techniques on his Brownie camera. In 1938, several business owners from Wilmington’s East Side, a historically black neighborhood just blocks from Henry’s home, contracted him to photograph their businesses. Most likely these men and women did not have much money and therefore could not afford to hire a professional photographer.

Fletcher G. White at his service station, 828 Walnut Street, February 1938

The partnership resulted in a series of beautiful images that documents the daily lives of an otherwise under-represented population. During the 1930s, the East Side felt the effects of the Depression that swept the entire nation. Despite this, the neighborhood remained culturally vibrant through its locally-owned businesses and cultural festivals.

August Quarterly, 1939

In 2003, the images were donated to the Delaware Historical Society by Henry Szymanski’s son. Until now, only a small sliver of the collection has been viewed outside of the Research Library. In February 2012, Vice President Biden commissioned a small exhibit of the images for his home in D.C. Later that year, the photographs were shown at the Greater Wilmington Convention and Visitors Bureau. And this past February, the City-County Building held a “Lunch and Learn” session which featured a curatorial talk and presentations from long-time East Side residents.

The collection contains approximately 350 images, and all can now be viewed via our online catalog. To see the photos, click “S” under “Browse Collections” and scroll down the page to find “Szymanski Photograph Collection.” If you’re interested in obtaining reproductions, please contact me at hischumacher@dehistory.org or 302-295-2386. I hope you enjoy these photographs as much as we do here at DHS!

–Heather

The Sampler Archive Project Team documenting Mary Tatnall’s sampler

So far, June is shaping up to be a busy month here at the Delaware Historical Society and we have started it on a high note with the kick off of the Sampler Archive Project here in Delaware. This project, a collaboration between the University of Delaware’s WinterthurProgram in American Material Culture, the University of Oregon, and the Sampler Consortium (an international organization of scholars dedicated to the study of samplers and embroideries), aims to locate and document American samplers in public and private collections and create a publicly accessible online database.  Information for the project is being gathered at a series of sampler id days to be held in each state, and (rather appropriately!) Delaware is once again first.  Not only is Delaware the first state to have its samplers documented for the project, the Delaware Historical Society served as the first host venue in the state.  It’s good to be first!

Our sampler documentation event, held at the Delaware History Museum, was a two-day affair.  One day was set aside for the project team to photograph and document the Delaware Historical Society’s sampler collection and the other was for the general public to bring in their own family samplers for inclusion in the project.  Both days were a great success, with thirty-seven of our samplers and twenty-six from the general public being added to the archive.  This was also a great opportunity for us to show off some of our Delaware treasures and share their stories with people who just love samplers.

Sampler by Mary Tatnall

A few stand-out examples from our collection include a 1755 sampler stitched by Mary Tatnall (1736-1809), the daughter of Edward and Elizabeth Pennock Tatnall of Wilmington. She married William Marshall in 1757 and they went on to have a large family of eight children.  This sampler came to us from her great-great granddaughter.  Mary’s sampler is in a very good state of preservation and is carefully stitched with geometric floral designs and several short poems with instructive moral themes.

Sampler by Deborah Ferris

Another wonderful Wilmington sampler in our collection was stitched in 1783 by Deborah Ferris (1773-1844), the daughter of cabinetmaker Ziba and Edith Ferris. The Ferris family was prominent in Wilmington and in 1800 Deborah co-founded the Female Benevolent Society, a poor relief group that was one of the earliest charity organizations in the state.  Deborah’s sampler is quite an achievement for a ten-year-old, with nine separate blocks of text with biblical and morally instructive themes in addition to a family genealogy and her letters and numbers.

Sampler by Sally Truitt

Sampler by Margaret Wallace

Our collection also contains two interesting Kent County samplers. One of these pieces, stitched by M. Sarah (Sally) Truitt in 1795, really impressed the documenters with both its fine workmanship and excellent original condition. Sally Truitt (1780-1803) was the daughter of George and Margaret Hodgson Truitt of Camden. Her father was the 18th Governor of Delaware from 1808-11. Sally married James H. Fisher in 1801 and died in 1803, shortly after the birth of her second child.  Our other, somewhat plainer, Kent county sampler also hails from Camden, and was stitched in 1824 by Margaret Wallace, a young Quaker girl who learned her sewing skills at the Quaker Academy in the meetinghouse in Camden.

We are very proud to have been able to contribute to this project and look forward to seeing the Sampler Archive Project’s database up and running in early 2014. The project will also be holding additional documentation days in Kent and Sussex counties over the summer.   In the meantime, if you just can’t wait to discover more about our fascinating sampler collection, we invite you to visit our online catalogue.

Jennifer

Mother AUMP Church in Wilmington was founded by Peter Spencer in 1813. From Zebley photo album.

In 1813, Peter Spencer established the first independent African American religious denomination in the United States. Spencer and other remarkable black Delawareans of his generation asserted their people’s right to liberty, autonomy, and equality through the creation of churches. Their actions challenged the United States to live up to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence.

Our upcoming exhibit, Forging Faith, Building Freedom, will explore and celebrate these diverse African American faith experiences.  We are working with some outstanding church leaders from around the state who have lent objects, photographs, and other materials to help bring this story to life.

We have also utilized many items from our own collections. Of particular interest are the Zebley photo albums. During the 1930s and 1940s, Frank Zebley traveled the state researching and photographing all of the active churches he could locate. His book, The Churches of Delaware, was published in 1947. A great many of them are African American churches and Zebley’s exhaustive research provides concise histories of each congregation. Although his photographs often show only the exterior of the buildings, they manage to capture a glimpse into the congregational life.

Zoar Methodist Episcopal Church near Selbyville, ca. 1940s. From Zebley photo album.

Without Zebley’s albums much of this history would be lost. In the foreword of his book, Zebley writes, “Some churches have excellent records but many of the churches have no records or poorly-kept ones. Some church records have been destroyed in fires, while in extreme cases, the records have been loaned to unidentified persons and not returned.”

We hope that this exhibit and the research we have put forth will fill in some of the gaps in this very significant and remarkable story. Please stay tuned for other behind-the-scenes action on Forging Faith, and we hope you’ll be there to celebrate its opening on September 26, 2013!

–Heather

Fans are often a hot favorite when it comes to historic fashion accessories, but this month the Delaware Historical Society had the opportunity to play host to the biggest fan “fan club” of them all,  the Fan Association of North America, who were visiting Wilmington for their annual convention.  As part of their schedule of activities, they visited the Read House and Gardens for a special tour of the house that featured some of our fans in period room settings throughout the house, in addition to a special exhibit of fans from our collection. Our fans range from the late eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, so, not only were we able to share a nice variety with our FANA visitors, we also had the opportunity to share some of our collection’s interesting Delaware stories as well.

One of our oldest fans from the late eighteenth century originally belonged to Jane Richardson McKinly (1727-1805), wife of Dr. John McKinly (1721-1796), who served in the Delaware General Assembly and was the first elected President (governor) of Delaware. This fan has pierced ivory sticks and a paper leaf that is printed and hand-painted with a fashionable Classical scene.  Even more exciting, it still has its original cardboard box from the period that is inscribed “Aunt McKinly’s fan – given to sister Jane.” We had originally dated this fan to circa 1780, but thanks to input from our FANA visitors, it seems it is closer to circa 1760, which is older than we thought!

Fan that belonged to Jane Richardson McKinly

Fan that belonged to Marguerite Badailh Lewden

Another of our fans with an interesting pedigree originally belonged to Marguerite Badailh Lewden (1783-1859), the French wife of Josiah Lewden (1770-1812), a sea captain from Christiana, Delaware and the second son of John Lewden (1739-1809).  They married on January 23, 1808 in Libourne, France, and had three sons, so the family has descendants in both France and Delaware.  Marguerite’s French-made fan, with its heavily gilded, japanned sticks and lithographed paper leaf featuring colorful eighteenth-century genre scenes, dates to between 1840 & 1850 and its exceptionally good condition impressed everyone.

Fan that belonged to Jean Kane Foulke

One of our most interesting fans from the early twentieth century (the last gasp of the fan as a serious fashion accessory) originally belonged to Jean Kane Foulke (1891-1985), the wife of Eleuthere Paul du Pont (1887-1950), the founder of Du Pont Motors and later President of Indian Motorcycles.  This brisé fan dates to around 1905 and has solid rosewood sticks that are hand-painted with pink, purple, and white floral motifs on one side, and the royal blue initials”JCF” on gold shield backgrounds on the reverse. According to the donor (her son), the”C” middle initial was an artist’s mistake.

So, all in all, the afternoon went well and our FANA visitors seemed to enjoy themselves.  This is just a small sampling of what is currently on view. The fan exhibit will remain at the Read House and Gardens through July 31, 2013 so, as the weather starts to heat up, come and check out some cool historic accessories!

Jennifer

In 1638, a group of Swedish settlers arrived on the shores of present-day Wilmington. Here, they established homes and churches and forged strong, peaceful relationships with their Lenni Lenape neighbors. New Sweden, as they called it, was the first permanent European settlement in the Delaware River Valley.

But just seventeen years later, the colony was conquered by the Dutch, and then again by the English a few years after that. New Sweden ceased to exist, and its brief life faded from memory.

Or did it?

Prince Bertil of Sweden addresses crowd at The Rocks in 1938. President Franklin D. Roosevelt looks on.

Centuries passed, and in 1938, Delawareans, Swedes, and Finns gathered together to celebrate the 300^th anniversary of the founding of New Sweden. Monuments were built. Swedish royalty traveled across the Atlantic to America. Thousands gathered in the streets for parades, music, and other fanfare. Since then, similar events have been organized for every twenty-fifth anniversary.

But why? What is the legacy of New Sweden? How does this short-lived settlement continue to bring people together nearly 400 years later?

These are the questions I asked as I began research for our library exhibit, New Sweden at 375. I was struck by the genuine connection that remains between these nations, even to this day. I thought that the unique distinction as Sweden’s lone experiment in the New World contributed to the persistent cultural memory. And this may be. But I believe it really comes down to the hard work and dedication of people throughout the 20^th century who helped uncover this “lost” history and share it with the public. People like Christopher Ward, president of the Delaware Tercentenary Commission in 1938, laid the groundwork for decades of friendship and sharing between these nations.

A Sister Cities Program between Kalmar, Sweden and Wilmington, Delaware was established in 1963. Here, members of the program gather in front of the Rocks Monument.

We are eagerly anticipating next month’s visit by King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden when the next chapter in this intriguing story will be written. In anticipation of this event, come explore New Sweden at 375 now open in our Willingtown Square Gallery!

–Heather

Sorry for the long absence, folks! There are SO many things going on at DHS right now, I hope you will hop on over to our website to check out our exciting upcoming events.

March is Women’s History Month, and there are literally HUNDREDS of stories of Delaware women to be found within our collections. There are doubtless thousands more that haven’t survived over time. So you can understand why it’s difficult to choose just one (or even a few!) to feature here this month. That being said, lately I have been partial to the Marjorie Speakman Collection, in part because of the beautiful photos contained there.

Marjorie Willoughby was born on July 10, 1889 in Philadelphia to a prosperous family. Early in Marjorie’s life, her father squandered away much of their fortune. Marjorie’s mother eventually left him and took the children to Delaware where she found work as a seamstress. This experience left an large impression on Marjorie. In 1908, Marjorie married Cummins Elliot Speakman, an insurance representative, and the couple had three children. The Speakmans lived in historic Belmont Hall in Smyrna Delaware. When the family suffered economic hardships a few years later, Marjorie began a thriving asparagus plantation at Belmont Hall to support them. She later claimed that her children went through college “on asparagus.”

Model Eleanor Gundy in Bird-Speakman Philadelphia fashion show, ca. 1940s.

In 1934, she opened a small shop, Bird Speakman, Inc., in Wilmington. Later, she founded Marjorie Speakman Inc., a children’s specialty shop in Greenville, and Bird-Speakman Ltd., in the Tidewater Inn, in Easton, Maryland with a branch in Rehoboth Beach. Bird-Speakman Inc. became the prestige shop for women’s apparel in Wilmington, as well as the rest of Delaware, until it closed in 1966.

In addition to her business, Speakman was an advocate for small businesses, the arts, and various political causes. In the years following World War II, she was actively involved in efforts to provide aid to European countries and traveled to Paris on many occasions in this endeavor. One of her most prestigious appointments was to the National Board of Consultants to the Small Business Administration during Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidency. In 1964 Marjorie received the Wesley College award with citation. She later became a prolific writer and had her own column, It Seems To Me, in the Wilmington Morning News and fashion notes for the Sunday Morning Star. In these columns she discussed issues of local and national interest and was not afraid to put forward her own ideas on many topics. Marjorie died in 1978.

As a businesswoman in the mid-20th century, Marjorie often found herself in a male-dominated world. She was the only female consultant on Eisenhower’s Small Business Committee.

Marjorie was an important businesswoman and advocate who accomplished much in her lifetime. But perhaps it’s her strength of character that makes her story so interesting. To learn more about Marjorie, check out this interview with Barry Corke, a graduate student at the University of Delaware who has researched her story extensively. We’d love to hear about YOUR favorite Delaware woman. What stories intrigue you?

 

–Heather

In the final installment of our series “The Intern Files,” Joey Kennedy talks about his experience working with photographs and conducting exhibit research. We would like to congratulate Joey on his recent acceptance to the University of Delaware and wish him luck on his journey to becoming a historian!

This past September, I stumbled upon the Delaware Historical Society while walking to my job a couple blocks south on Market Street. I was applying to transfer to the University of Delaware, and as a history major, I knew this was a perfect place to gain experience. Now, as a junior, I feel much more confident in my choice of majors as well as my job prospects after graduation.

During the past few months, I have worked on two different projects. The first was preliminary research for the upcoming exhibit, Forging Faith, Building Freedom. In 1947, Frank Zebley published a book called Churches of Delaware. Among the churches he spent years researching were numerous African-American churches. My first task was to research each of them to determine if they still existed. If they did, I searched for contact information so the historical society could reach out to them. While many of the smaller congregations have since ceased to exist, the cornerstone churches of the AME and AUMP movements are still flourishing today.

Mother AUMP, located in Wilmington, is the first church in America entirely organized and operated by African Americans.

I have also been working to catalog the Aero Services Corporation Collection of Aerial Photographs, which date from the 1920s-1940s. Founded in Philadelphia in 1919, the Aero Services Corporation was slow to take off until Virgil Kaufmann, a World War I reconnaissance pilot, began working there in 1924. In 1927, Kaufmann bought the company.

In an attempt to drum up business, Aero Services offered wealthy families the chance to see their estates and mansions from above. Here is Nemours, the estate of Alfred I. du Pont. The collection features several other du Pont estates as well.

Kaufmann was a pioneer in the field of aerial photography, and his experiments were the origin of many techniques and uses of the technology. He tried things like holding the camera out the window while flying, turning the throttle all the way down to reduce shake, and he was the first to cut a hole in the bottom of his plane to get an unobstructed view. Later, during the New Deal of the 1930s, Aero Services did work for the US Geological Survey and the Tennessee Valley Authority. The aerial photographs, combined with technology to detect land contours, helped develop many parts of America, especially Appalachia. After his retirement, Kaufmann kept all of the original photographic negatives in his barn in Pennsylvania. When he died in 1985, the negatives were released to the appropriate historical agencies. The Delaware Historical Society obtained the images in 1988, and now you can find them yourself on Ask Caesar!

–Joey

In this second installment of our series “The Intern Files,” we hear from Ruby Harrington who has worked on a wide variety of projects in the Research Library this month. For the staff here, this has been a great opportunity to help mentor and train a potential future archivist!

To college students like myself, the question, “Where are you from?” is posed quite frequently, by new friends, professors, and intern supervisors, to name a few. Well, in the last six months my answer has become a little more complex. Though I have attended the University of Delaware for the past two and a half years, my family recently relocated to Wilmington, Delaware, 2600 miles away from the Orange County, California town where I grew up. While I’ll always be “from” California, my growing affinity for Delaware – cultivated in many childhood trips to visit extended family, and of course my time at UD – in addition to my enduring interest in American history, led me to seek an internship with the research library at the Delaware Historical Society.

Announcement for upcoming Emancipation Day Celebration, 1899

Archival work has appealed to me since my high school internship at the National Archives division of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library & Museum. To me, archivists are the unsung heroes of history – the people who preserve the “puzzle pieces” (historical documents and objects) so that they can be put together to form a complete picture. I have enjoyed shuffling through file folders and book boxes, both preserving and organizing the records, and getting a glimpse of a groundbreaking state’s story.  Since Delaware is so small, I often come across mentions of places that I have been.  For instance, I found mid-1800s notebooks from Woodside Farm, which is now a popular Hockessin creamery.  Days after I viewed the now-shuttered Bancroft Mills on a visit to Alapocas Run State Park, I stumbled across records from the Bancroft & Sons Company.  Incidentally, Samuel Bancroft served as president of Every Evening, a Wilmington newspaper – the post-Civil War issues of which I have referenced in an ongoing research project of Emancipation Day celebrations among the African-American citizens of Wilmington.  Through my internship with the Delaware Historical Society, I have both enriched my own understanding of the first state’s past and helped to ensure that Delaware’s story will continue to be uncovered.

–Ruby

Utility of Bancroft products in World War II, 1946

Swatches for determining official state flag colors. Produced by Joseph Bancroft & Sons, Co., 1954.

Historical objects are one way for everyone to preserve and share unique stories; and museum collections in particular offer a treasure trove of such stories for interested researchers to tap into.  Even the everyday objects that we don’t give much thought to are often of interest to someone, as turned out to be the case with our latest research visitor, Meaghan Reddick, a candidate for the Smithsonian Master’s Program in the History of Decorative Arts at George Mason University.  Meaghan is doing research on eighteenth and nineteenth-century shoes and is looking at the role labels played in marketing and fashion retail. She contacted us to see if we had any shoes in our collection that had surviving original maker’s labels from the period. 

At the time, this seemed to me quite a tall order, given that shoes were made to be worn (and worn out), but until you start looking, you never know what you are going to find and it turned out we had more than I expected.  Our collection contains ten pairs of shoes and two single shoes that still have their original labels.  This doesn’t sound like a lot, but on older shoes a label is a rare find, and our little group spans the late eighteenth up to the mid-nineteenth centuries, which was a boon for Meaghan.

Four of these pairs had Paris labels, which is not surprising since, then as now, France was one of the world’s fashion capitals. The rest were from Philadelphia and had labels from a nice range of  makers and retailers, including  Mrs. R. Smith, Ladies’ Boot and Shoe Manufacturer of 21 North 6^th Street, Martin Rice of 10 Second Street, J. Neill, David Fuller, and Henry Wireman.  Perhaps the most fascinating find of the day was two late 1700s shoes with Philadelphia labels, both of which have a Delaware story to tell.

One of these shoes has a label in excellent condition for “Ebenezer Breed, Philadelphia.”  Breed, a Quaker born in the shoe-trade town of Lynn, MA, came to Philadelphia in 1786 and soon became one of the leading shoe dealers in the city.  This white silk wedding shoe originally belonged to Dorcas Armitage Lewis, daughter of Frances Elizabeth Cooch and John Armitage, a biscuit baker.  Dorcas was born on November 17, 1762 and married Phillip Lewis II of Kent County, DE on January 1, 1791.  They lived on the east side of Academy Street in Newark DE on land now owned by the University of Delaware and were the parents of five children, only one of whom made it to adulthood.  Dorcas herself died on February 24, 1800, probably as a result of childbirth.  A sad story, but her shoe remained a family relic until it came here.

Our other shoe, a fancy gold-tone leather high-heeled shoe, originally belonged to Rachel McCleary, the adopted daughter of Governor Richard Bassett, a Revolutionary War veteran and delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787.  Unfortunately, only half of the label for this shoe has survived in legible condition so we cannot be 100% certain of its maker at this point, but we were still able to clearly read “Eben…Philadelphia”  (it would be really exciting if the same label in better condition were to turn up elsewhere on another shoe and help us figure it out!) This shoe was part of Rachel’s 1767 wedding outfit when she married Dr. Joshua Clayton (1744-1798), an aide and surgeon to George Washington at the Battle of the Brandywine and later Governor of Delaware from 1793-1796.  The shoe descended in her family until it was donated to us by her great, great, great granddaughter.

It was interesting to get a glimpse into the prominent role that Philadelphia played in serving the needs of the fashion-conscious here in the First State.  Meaghan’s research is still in the early stages but it will be interesting to see how it progresses. We look forward to hearing more about what she discovers. 

Jennifer

2013 is shaping up to be a busy year for us here at DHS. We have many exciting programs in the works, and that means there’s lots to do! This month, we’ve been fortunate to have the help of three interns. Not only is it wonderful to have the extra pairs of hands, but we appreciate the unique set of skills and interests that they each offer. We thought it would be fun to let them share their experiences in order to give you a behind-the-scenes look at what we’re up to. First up is Meg!

I have always been a “nerd” (and I use nerd in the most endearing way possible). We all have our things that we’re nerdy about–mine is photography and books. It’s been that way since I was a child when I read every night before bed and took my first blurry photographs of my family’s cats. Now in my adult life I’ve continued my photography and love of books into my studies at the University of Delaware. I am majoring in Fine Arts with a concentration in Photography and Sculpture, and I also work in the Book Conservation lab in the Morris Library on-campus. Part of my requirements of not only graduating, but my own goals of gaining necessary life skills, was to obtain an internship. I found the Delaware Historical Society when my advanced photography class came for a visit. I was immediately captured by the wealth of information and the fact that I could see myself working in an environment like this. I knew all the skills I’ve developed over these past few years would be very helpful to the staff here at DHS.

Ambrotype of William Parker, ca. 1860s. Photo by Meg Thomas.

Interning here has been a fun excursion into the history of the city I’ve grown up in and it’s been a great journey so far. On one hand, I find myself marveling at how little I actually know and on the other, I’m thanking my parents for being zealous in involving me in local historical camps and programs when I was a kid. Within my first week, I was scanning photos of Old Swedes Church where my sock-covered feet ran through the snow for the Santa Lucia Festival when I was 9, taking photographs of newspaper articles about African-American voting rights from the late 1800s, and reading a letter written by Abraham Lincoln to some local schoolchildren, thanking them for their support. My nerdy photographic side is constantly being entertained because of DHS events and collections work. One memorable moment was when I photographed a pair of Ambrotypes of a soon-to-be married couple from the Civil War era. Not only do we have their portraits that they sent to each other, but we also have snippets of their correspondence. Needless to say, it was fascinating to get a peak into their lives.

Students from Kuumba Academy decorate Old Town Hall for holiday event. Photo by Meg Thomas.

There’s always something new to learn and I’m excited to continue with my internship at the Delaware Historical Society!

–Meg