Seeking Pride in Our Collections

By Hannah Byrne 

Like so many employees across the Smithsonian (and at museums, libraries, archives, and cultural heritage institutions around the world), at the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives we are anxious to get back into collections to pick up research projects we put down at the start of the pandemic.  At the Archives, we help collect, preserve, and tell the stories of Smithsonian employees and community members. One research project that was halted by our departure, was looking more closely at our collections to understand the history and experience of LGBTQ+ employees at the Institution. 

As we celebrate Pride this year, we’re looking back at one of the founding documents of the Smithsonian Lesbian and Gay Issues Committee. In this memo, Smithsonian employees Leonard Hirsch and Eric Keller, as representatives of the committee, sought formal recognition from Smithsonian administration for the group to operate and advocate effectively for LGBTQ+ employees across the Institution. The memo--luckily for us was already digitized--accompanied the group’s founding guidelines. We learn so much from this document: the group’s origin and connection to National Coming Out Day, the invisibility of LGBTQ+ employees at the Smithsonian, and the work they hope to accomplish as an advocacy group. When we return to the archives, we hope to explore more collections related to this topic to learn more about this group, more about the diversity of their members, more about their initiatives, and more about their successes and challenges to advocate for LGBTQ+ employees at the Institution. 

Memorandum from Leonard P. Hirsch to James Early, June 3, 1991, page 1, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 15-218, Image no. SIA2017-045374a.

Memorandum from Leonard P. Hirsch to James Early, June 3, 1991, page 2, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 15-218, Image no. SIA2017-045374b.

Hannah Byrne, Program Assistant, Institutional History Division,

Smithsonian Institution Archives, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives

Celebrating Smithsonian Women in Women's History Month

By Pamela Henson

Smithsonian Institution Archives has a wide array of photographs of women since our early years, but some stand out more than others. I am particularly fond of this image of a group of women celebrating a retirement. Like the flowers Nellie Smith is holding, they are arranged like a bouquet of flowers themselves! But this is a group of very important women at SI in 1930 – they ran a lot of major offices. Louise Pearson moved with Alexander Wetmore to the Secretary’s Office when he became Secretary in 1944 and kept the Institution running. Miss Nellie Smith was replaced by Helena M. Weiss, who was later SI Registrar. When Weiss retired she was replaced by seven separate unit heads. Their titles don’t capture their responsibilities. Moodey was an “Aid” in Geology, but actually curated the gem collection for many years.  As “clerks” to the Institution’s top administrators, this select group of friends kept the Institution humming.

Luncheon for Nellie Smith, 31 July 1930, at the Ye Old Inn. Photograph Probably taken by Narcissus H. Smith, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 7177, Box 13, Folder 16, neg. #SIA- 94-4431.
 Image:  https://ids.si.edu/ids/deliveryService?id=SIA-94-4431  

This image is from a luncheon given by these friends in honor of the retirement of Miss Nellie H. Smith at Ye Old Inn on Thursday, July 31, 1930. She was appointed in March 1890 and spent 40 years at the Smithsonian. Top L to R: Louise A. Rosenbusch, Principal Clerk, Office of Dr. William H. Holmes, Director, National Gallery of Art, now the Smithsonian American Art Museum; Louise Pearson, Secretary to Dr. Alexander Wetmore, Assistant Secretary, SI (later the sixth Secretary of the Smithsonian, 1944-1952); and Narcissus Smith, Clerk to the Editor, Dr. M. Benjamin, United States National Museum (USNM). Bottom L to R: Helen A. Olmsted, Principal Clerk, Office of Mr. W. de C. Ravenel, Administrative Assistant to the Secretary, USNM; Nellie Smith, Clerk, Division of Correspondence and Documents, USNM; and Margaret W. Moodey, Aid, Geology in charge of Gem Collection, working for many years with G.P. Merrill, Head Curator, Department of Geology.

Pamela Henson, Ph.D., Historian, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives

Reconnecting Through Old Collections: Or, Why You Should Milk the Archives

Of all the pontification, witty lines, and great advice presented in my college speech class, one line stuck with me to this day. Delivered in the midst of an otherwise unmemorable speech, the line was simple and poignant. “Milk your grandparents.” Now, this advice was, it should be made clear, not to be taken literally; rather, he was advising that we, as college students, take time to sit down with our family members, listen to their stories, and, in doing so, make them ours. Much as it was important in the novel The Giver, written by Lois Lowry and published in 1993, this work of transmission, of passing down stories and emotions to the next generation, is still of utmost importance. By keeping our cultural memory alive, we are maintaining that which makes us truly human.

Now, you might ask, what does milking your grandparents have to do with the Smithsonian Institution? Moreover, why is this blog philosophizing about cultural transmission being posted during Archives Month? The answer to this is simple; I am proposing that we, as scholars, historians, and enthusiasts alike should think of archives in much the same way that we do our family’s stories, recognizing that much of their power comes from them staying within the public’s collective memory. In a way, this emphasis on public memory has already been emerging within the museum world, at least among scholars. Frequently, museums and archives, such as those whose collections are highlighted on this blog, are labeled under the broad category of memory institutions. This, however, does not go far enough. To keep something as part of our cultural memory, we must do more than merely preserve artifacts and documents in vaults and basements. Rather, these items need to be regularly accessed, touched, and read for them to continue to be valuable to the nation’s collective understanding of the world and its past. To be honest, this is a task far too big to place on the shoulders of archivists and curators alone—even though they have been doing great work! This work, which I like to call “milking the archives,” is most effectively done by members of the public and others who can ingest these often forgotten stories and, in doing so, return them to the public memory.

To illustrate this, it is helpful to look at the Francis Mair Collection, which several colleagues and I are currently processing. A member of the industrial design firm Landor and Associates, Inc., Francis Mair (or Fran, as he was known), had a keen interest in the history of his craft. This interest would draw him, eventually, to a position at the head of the Landor firm’s Museum of Packaging Antiquities. Housed in Landor and Associates’ unique headquarters (the firm operated many of its executive functions out of a retired steamboat named Klamath, which rested permanently near Pier 5 of San Francisco Bay), the museum collected, often through Mair’s business connections, a large amount of items, recording the history of packaging in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Documented well, with its story previously told, the museum is not, however, what I seek to highlight; rather, I want to bring forward a story that, even within Smithsonian circles, was forgotten. This story is the collaboration between the late National Museum of American History curator David Shayt and Mair as they worked to build the Museum of Packaging Antiquities.

In this photograph, ca.1990s, used courtesy of Alison Oswald, David Shayt can be seen holding a Holles Allen Experimental Bow, one of the many items he was responsible for acquiring, preserving, and curating at the National Museum of American History.

In processing the Francis Mair Collection, I noticed several letters that were written on letterhead from the Smithsonian Museum of History and Technology (the former name of the National Museum of American History). After looking more closely through the letters, I realized that they spanned several years, starting before David Shayt had been employed by the Smithsonian. In fact, the letters start with a copy of Shayt’s resume, presumably the one with which he applied to work with Mair. Shayt’s resume notes that, even while completing military service abroad, he still found ways to work within the museum field, assisting with several exhibitions.

Resume: David Shayt, ca. 1977. Francis Mair Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History.

The letters show a deepening relationship between Shayt and Mair, one in which Shayt, as the younger partner, had much both to learn and to offer. One of the highlights is a unique letter from Mair to Shayt’s parents, noting that David had asked Mair to “express to [Shayt’s parents his] feelings about [David’s] presence here, his activities, and how delighted we are to have him here.” Later in the letter, Mair notes that “the changes for the better that he is making are most welcome to us because we have very little budgetwise to do this sort of thing.”

Letter from Francis Mair to Mr. and Mrs. Shayt, August 10, 1977. Francis Mair Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History.

This phrase, “very little budgetwise,” would prove to be the item, however, that Shayt’s father most focused on. Despite noting that “Both Mrs. Shayt and I are . . . happy to hear that David’s contribution is of no small significance,” he would still spend the bulk of his letter struggling openly over his son’s decision to enter the museum field. Writing back, he uses the above quote from Mair’s letter to explain why he “can’t get enthralled at the prospect of David [his son] mapping out for himself a museum career.” In this, Shayt’s father echoes the
questioning that many parents have surely done over the career choices of their children, expressing deep-seated fears about the remuneration provided by various types of work.

Letter from Alvin Shayt to Francis Mair, August 15, 1977. Francis Mair Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History.

Another letter, however, tells a far more positive tale. In this letter, written by Shayt to Fran Mair, he tells of his first period of time working with the Smithsonian’s collections. Commenting that he still looks back fondly upon the summer he spent working at the Landor Museum of Packaging Antiquities, he also notes the vast disparity in resources between the two museums, stating “I still feel humbled & a bit intimidated after having left so recently the Packaging Museum.” Beyond this, the letter is warm and kind, noting that despite the weather turning “awfully cold,” he is “still managing to hoof it down to Constitution Ave. to the museum.”

Letter from David Shayt to Francis Mair, November 16, 1977. Francis Mair Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History.

Over his career working at the Smithsonian, Shayt would collect, document, and tell many stories, touching a large number of people both within the Archives Center and throughout the Smithsonian Institution. The story of his time with Mair, however, was lost from the collective memory. Only through a series of interactions, of milking the staff of the Archives Center, of milking the documents within the Archives Center, has this chunk of life been brought to life again. This work is what is what I refer to in advocating milking the archives, that of returning good stories back to the forefront of people’s minds.

If you have a desire to keep stories like this one alive, know that the door to the Archives Center is open to any researcher who would like to seek out and retell some of the lost stories and, in doing so, Milk the Archives for all they are worth. For more information on the Francis Mair Collection and all others held by the Archives Center, feel free to head over to our website or send us an email. We would love to hear from you! We only ask that, prior to coming in to research, you make an appointment, so that we can more effectively serve you.

Kevin DeVries, Archives Center Intern
National Museum of American History, Archives Center

Flashback Friday: Behind the Scenes at the Cultural Resources Center

Smithsonian Institution Archives, image number 2003-37857. 

Family Day at the National Museum of the American Indian, Cultural Resources Center, October 25, 2003. Visitors tour the center and view the collection storage area for baskets and other artifacts. The Cultural Resources Center is designed to house the museum's collections in a manner that is sensitive to both tribal and museum requirements for access and preservation. It also serves as a vital resource center for new approaches to the study and presentation of the history and culture of Native peoples. 

Lisa Fthenakis, Program Assistant

Smithsonian Institution Archives

A Day in the Life of Secretary Joseph Henry

During our blog-a-thon for American Archives Month, we are taking a look back at some of our favorite posts that give readers a peek into the many archives at the Smithsonian and a few of the things you can find inside them. This post was originally posted on July 11, 2013. 

Have you ever wondered what life was like in 1853? By looking through the letters of the Smithsonian’s first Secretary, Joseph Henry, you will soon find out that politics, business, and the stifling heat are not just headlines that fill today’s news.

Letter from Henry to Bache, page one, July 11, 1853
Smithsonian Institution Archives, SIA2012-2670

This letter, like much of Henry’s correspondence, sheds light on life in the early days of the Smithsonian and the nation’s capital. Written by Henry on July 11, 1853, to his close friend Alexander Bache, a leading American scientist of the time, the letter describes the events of his life and seeks advice from Bache. Across Smithsonian collections, letters like this not only give us factual information, but also aid us in painting a more detailed picture of the people who wrote them. As researchers, this detail allows us to understand why people make certain decisions and highlights the complexities of people’s personalities.

Joseph Henry, c. 1865, Smithsonian Institution Archives, SIA2012-7654

For example, Henry could be viewed as both gruff and amiable in just a few pages. On the one hand, he writes that the then Assistant Secretary, Spencer Baird, needed “a few hard knocks . . . [to] keep him in the proper course.” Yet, throughout the letter Henry gives others compliments and asks about Bache’s family. Personal nuances such as these, found in the documents give us a window to see beyond these individuals as a mere series of facts, but as true people whose personal make-up we can begin to understand.

Though sometimes the handwriting is difficult to read, these letters are worth the eye strain. The stories and commonalities with our lives today that are pulled out of these documents really do make the past come alive. Whether you agree or disagree with everything written in the letters is part of the fun in trying to understand the past...however, I think we can all agree that DC is a hot place to live in the summer.

Courtney Bellizzi
Smithsonian Institution Archives

Flashback Friday: Behind the Scenes at Smithsonian Libraries

Smithsonian Institution Archives, image number MAH-3666. 

The library in the United States National Museum Building, now known as the Arts & Industries Building, was located in the Northwest Pavilion. This space was later know as the Jewett Room after Charles Coffin Jewett, the Smithsonian's first librarian. Later, this room housed the rare book collection. John Murdoch, Librarian of the Smithsonian Institution, sits at a desk. Murdoch was formerly the Assistant Librarian of the National Museum Library and succeeded Miss Jane A. Turner as Librarian on April 1, 1887.

Lisa Fthenakis, Program Assistant

Smithsonian Institution Archives

Flashback Friday: Behind the Scenes at Smithsonian Institution Archives

Smithsonian Institution Archives, image number 2004-10338. 

Jim Wallace, Lorie Aceto, and Roberta Diemer among the negative files in Office of Printing and Photographic Service's (OPPS) cold storage vault in 1983, then located in the National Museum of American History. Today, the cold storage vault is run by the Smithsonian Institution Archives, and has moved to a Smithsonian collections storage facility in Maryland. 

To learn more about the Smithsonian Institution Archives's photo collections and its cold storage facility, check out this blog post by photo archivist Marguerite Roby. 

Lisa Fthenakis, Program Assistant

Smithsonian Institution Archives

Behind the Archives: Donation and Acquisition of a 10,000-Piece Collection

Collections frequently take a long journey from acquisition to access. Many of the patrons who visit the Archives Center at the National Museum of American History (NMAH) are there to use this amazing repository for research, but don’t know how the material got there. 

This question of how and who donated or sold the material made me interested in finding a donor or seller who gave a collection to the museum and would be willing to tell me about it. That’s how I was introduced to William (Larry) Bird, Ph.D. and his postcard collection. This blog post will take you through my first-hand experience with the donation and acquisition process.

Larry is a bit of a donor anomaly, as he is a former Curator at NMAH in the political history division and is now a curator emeritus in the same division. I had the pleasure of sitting down with him and discussing his very large collection. His picture postcard collection consists of over 10,000 postcards of a very unusual variety. Larry described how this collection was begun accidentally, stemming from another project he was working on at the time. He first became interested in postcards with holiday themes as depicted in window fronts, stores, and parades, for his book Holidays on Display. Larry became increasingly fascinated with postcards and attended paper and postcard shows. This is how he amassed most of his collection, because “you could get one of them for basically a nickel.” He also clarified that the reason many of them were so cheap was due to their being primarily from the 1950s with a glossy finish. To the “high-brow” collectors these were postcards whose value was low, and therefore they didn’t mind letting go of them.

BIG HAIR: Early American by Hanover Kitchens Limited Hanover Ontario Canada
Early American is the atmosphere created by this attractive kitchen, with its authentic looking hammered iron hardware and rich brown Honey Beige color. Courtesy William L. Bird. Archives Center, National Museum of American History. 

However, to Larry, these postcards captured moments in American history and what we deemed worthy of putting on a postcard. Many of them advertised products and services. “[It was a great window into] people and their stuff.” He donated his collection to the Archives Center in May of 2018. Bird curated the collection in three ways. First, he always had specific objectives while collecting. Second, he physically arranged the postcards into topical categories like “Dams” and “Horses”. Third, he created a Flickr account that links fun and innovative topics across categories. An example of such a category is “Saddle Up,” containing “vintage postcards of horses, ponies, [and] riders riding.” These categories give us a peek into the many stores, motels, hairstyles, clothes, and other entities that have since disappeared. When asked which category of his collection was his favorite, he chuckled and replied, “Big Hair.” Big Hair is also categorized under “Allure and beauty” and “Vintage postcards”. The image featured here was actually an advertisement for kitchen cabinets, but placing it in the “Big Hair” category provides added cultural meaning. Due to the way he organized his collection, the Archives Center now can maintain his insights while processing. 

Bird also digitized ALL of his postcards and made them available via Flickr. The Archives Center will get to take advantage of his work by using his scans to provide access to the collection. With Larry’s role finished, the collection is now ready to continue its journey into the hands of researchers.

Foucault Pendulum, Museum of History and Technology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
The Foucault Pendulum demonstrates the rotation of the earth. The earth (and therefore the floor) rotates daily, while the pendulum always swings in the same straight line and therefore lags behind. Courtesy William L. Bird. Archives Center, National Museum of American History. 

The job of an acquisition archivist is a very exciting and complex endeavor. An archivist is a person who strives to “understand and preserve the past on behalf of the future”. Acquisition is the first step the collection takes on its way to being preserved for the future and taking its place in the repository. When a collection makes its way into a repository it is usually either a donation or a purchase. Here at the Smithsonian Institution, there are policies in place that must be followed in order to acquire a collection for the Museum’s Archives Center. The Archives Center’s primary acquisition archivist is Craig Orr. Craig explained to me that the first step he takes is to make sure a prospective collection fits the mission of the Museum and Archives Center. Once he has determined that a collection will "fit," he must get it approved by the chair of the division. While this sounds easy enough, many questions arise when an acquisition is proposed. The acquisition archivist and the chair of the division might not see eye to eye every time when interpreting the mission of the repository. However, once approved, if the collection is over ten cubic feet in size, it also must be approved by the Collections Management Committee. Larry donated over 10,000 postcards but, but the collection size was less than five cubic feet and therefore not reviewed by the committee. The collection now awaits processing in the Archives Center. It was truly amazing to see a collection from the side of the donor and take a peek into the realm of acquisitions.

Today due to the progress of technology we seldom use postcards as a quick means of communication. Most new postcards are purchased nowadays as souvenir items. While they have fallen out of fashion, Larry’s postcards, now Archives Center collection number 1465, the "Larry Bird Postcard Collection," gives us a glimpse into the American past. Through these snapshots of America, we are able to see what photographs were once deemed worthy of circulating as postcards in our ever-changing society.

Sarah K. Rung, Summer 2018 Intern
Archives Center, National Museum of American History

How Computers Came to the Smithsonian Libraries

In the beginning, few offices at the Smithsonian used computers. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory used MIT’s IBM 704 to calculate the orbit of the Russia's Sputnik satellite, another office used an IBM 360 to keep track of grant applications, the Fiscal Division (accounting office) was running some programs on an IBM 1440, and the natural history museum was just awakening to the tremendous potential of collections automation. Yet there was another area well suited to computerization: the Smithsonian libraries. A copy of a book in one library was the same as a copy in another library. The information about one book was similar to the information about another book --- title, author, publisher, publication date, etc. This made it easy to devise data formats that could be applied to all libraries. The Library of Congress pioneered a format called MARC (MAchine-Readable Cataloging).

Mary A. Huffer, Acting Director of Smithsonian Institution Libraries who introduced computer automation,
in the Catalog Room of the Smithsonian Central Library in the National Museum of Natural History.
Smithsonian Institution Archives, Image Number OPA-68-26A.

At the behest of Smithsonian Secretary Ripley, the libraries scattered throughout Smithsonian museums and offices were brought under one central office – the Smithsonian Institution Libraries (SIL). This office mandated a conversion from the Dewey Decimal system of cataloging books to the Library of Congress method. Some of the branch libraries were in bad shape, both in regard to physical condition and cataloging. The Zoo, as an example, “had a little library in two or three rooms of an old house [Holt House] --in fact, some of the books were shelved in the men's room, and they had to go knock on the door to get in this cubbyhole of this old administrative building.”

Cataloging and purchasing books were both expensive and labor-intensive. They were obvious early candidates for automation. The Acting Director of SIL, Mary A. Huffer, so far as we know, had no background in computer technology. Yet she was to prove remarkably resourceful in automating the libraries. She sought advice and software from the Interior Department, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the National Air and Space Administration. By March 1965, she had a long-range plan in mind:

Our first application will be the business application in our acquisitions program. We have to keep a tally of 80-some accounts, and we are one of the few units where purchase orders are written and go out directly, so we are trying to tie our system into the Fiscal system and to coordinate these to relieve our acquisitions people of some of this record-keeping.
As soon as we get over the purchasing hurdle we are going to tie in our gift and exchange program. Then we are going on to our serials [like scholarly journals]. Then, we hope, perhaps, circulation. Because of programming difficulties, the last thing we are going to try and pull in on this will be our catalog card production.
We want to start card punching in the next six to eight weeks. We will be building up on punch cards information to go into the retrieval system and into the catalogs. Eventually we hope we will even produce book catalogs and do away with the maintenance of all these separate catalogs in various buildings, reading rooms, special subject collections, and so on.

The library trained its own staff to punch the cards that would be fed into the computer’s hopper to avoid to having to correct the work of unskilled punchers. In a surprisingly short time, the library could report significant improvement:

Late in June, 1965, an IBM-29 key punch was installed in the acquisitions section, and during fiscal 1966 all purchase orders were printed on the computer in the Smithsonian’s data processing unit. The ADP program now provides computer-printed purchase orders, bi-weekly reports on the status of various accounts, receiving cards, book labels, Library of Congress card order slips, and temporary catalog cards.

Retirement party for Mary A. Huffer, Assistant Director of Smithsonian Institution Libraries (SIL), with Russel Shank, SIL Director. Smithsonian Institution Archives, Image Number 74-2487. 

Mary A. Huffer was succeeded by Russell Shank in September 1967, as the first Director of the libraries. He connected the libraries to OCLC, which furnished cards formatted according to Library of Congress specifications. This saved the libraries not only time and money, but also errors in entering data. But the Smithsonian libraries had moved into the digital age well before library automation packages were available.

John Churchman, Computer History Project Volunteer

Smithsonian Institution Archives

Related Resources

• Record Unit 7222 - Leonard Peter Schultz Papers, circa 1915-1970, with related papers from 1899, Smithsonian Institution Archives
• Record Unit 9510 - Oral history interview with Leonard Peter Schultz 1976, Smithsonian Institution Archives
• Leonard Peter Schultz (1901-1986): Ichthyologist and Field Naturalist, National Museum of Natural History
• Shark Attack File, Smithsonian Encyclopedia

Flashback Friday: Smithsonian Hauntings

Joseph Henry, first Smithsonian Secretary
Smithsonian Institution Archives, image # MAH-10603. 

As Halloween approaches, the mind wanders to ghostly hauntings and where better than a museum to find a ghost? There are plenty of skeletons in Smithsonian closets and rumors of hauntings abound.

Though several people have claimed sightings of Joseph Henry, our first Secretary, haunting the Smithsonian Institution Building, or Castle, it’s unlikely he would walk those grounds. Henry was so deeply skeptical of spirits and hauntings that he once offered $1,000 if someone could levitate a table into the air. In addition, Henry never particularly liked the Smithsonian Institution Building, considering the maintenance of a building a hindrance to the work of furthering scientific research.  It’s highly unlikely that his spirit would take up residence in a building he though was “a fantastic and almost useless building.”

Fielding Meek's Cat, Smithsonian Institution Archives, image # 92-15019.

Another Smithsonian Scientist, Fielding Meek, happily called the Smithsonian Castle home. He lived with his cat in a tiny room under the stairs in the North Tower of the Smithsonian Institution Building from 1858 until his death. An extremely introverted and deaf paleontologist, he became increasingly isolated as he lost his hearing in his later years. His isolation can be felt in his caption for a sketch of his cat “This is all the family I have.” Perhaps he haunts his former home in search of company?

Spencer F. Baird,
Smithsonian Institution Archives, image # MAH-10735

Many rumors swirl about Smithsonian staff who loved their collections so much they could not bear to part with them, even in death. Perhaps none is as persistent as Spencer F. Baird, the Smithsonian’s second Secretary and founder of the U.S. National Museum. In 1900, The Washington Post reported that most of the night watchmen had reported seeing Secretary Baird supervising the collections to which he was so devoted.  Night watchmen, as you can imagine, have seen more than their fair share of strange sightings at the Smithsonian, but some are more otherworldly than others. Donald, one of the night watchmen, turned a corner in the museum and had a run-in with a fearsome Japanese warrior who towered above him, spear and all. After fleeing to higher ground on the second level of the building, in the morning he discovered that his warrior ghost was just a mannequin removed from his case so that it could be photographed. 

Robert Kennicott in his Field Outfit,
Smithsonian Institution Archives, image # SIA2011-0145

Around the Smithsonian, it is not unusual for an old mystery to come back to haunt us. Here at the Smithsonian Institution Archives, Robert Kennicott, one of the Smithsonian’s earliest explorers, was the most recent to raise goosebumps.  Kennicott died mysteriously on an expedition in Alaska. Our colleagues over at the National Museum of Natural History have analyzed his bones to understand how he lived and died.  While many researchers have scoured his personal papers and Smithsonian records in search of an answer, our archivists made a serendipitous discovery that sheds a little more light on his death. This Halloween, the Smithsonian has taken Kennicott's skeleton out of our closet and you can visit him yourself in the Objects of Wonder exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History.





Lisa Fthenakis, Program Assistant
Smithsonian Institution Archives 

Throwback Thursday: October 19, 1923

Young Austin H. Clark, 1910. Smithsonian Institution Archives. Image Number SIA2007-0009. 

On October 19th, 1923 local Washington, DC radio station WRC, of the Radio Corporation of America, began broadcasting a series of talks on the Smithsonian. The talks were so successful that a regular series on scientific subjects was initiated on April 9, 1924, with Austin H. Clark who gives a talk on "The Giants of the Animal World."  The series runs for more than four years.

Austin Hobart Clark (1880-1954) came to the Smithsonian in 1908 as a Collaborator in the Division of Marine Invertebrates, United States National Museum, now known as the National Museum of Natural History, and in 1910 he became Assistant Curator of the Division. In 1920, the collection of Echinoderms was removed from Marine Invertebrates to form a new Division of Echinoderms, with Clark as its Curator, a position which he held until his retirement in 1950.

Click here to explore more about Austin H. Clark at the Smithsonian Institution Archives. 

Pamela Henson, Historian
Smithsonian Institution Archives

In the Heart of the Storm: The Resilience of Culture

This post originally appeared on September 19, 2017 in the Smithsonian Folklife Festival's blog. In honor of October being American Archives Month, we republish it here as an example of how the archival record can help us focus on the importance of cultural resilience in times of catastrophe. The photographs and audio used in this piece are all a part of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival Records .

Young people of the U.S. Virgin Islands march along in a carnival parade, amid the destruction of Hurricane Hugo in 1989. Photo by Mary Jane Soule, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

When news started coming in about the catastrophic damage Hurricane Irma brought to the Caribbean, I happened to be filing materials from the 1990 Smithsonian Folklife Festival’s program about the U.S. Virgin Islands. In my twenty-nine years at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, I’ve produced a healthy amount of research, but in going through those particular boxes, I felt odd reverberations.

On September 17, 1989, in the midst of ongoing research for the U.S. Virgin Islands program, Hurricane Hugo struck the islands, with the greatest damage occurring in St. Croix. As described in a Washington Post special report, “Not only was Christiansted strewn with uprooted trees, broken utility poles, shattered cars and tons of debris from buildings that looked bombed, but the verdant tropical island suddenly had turned brown. So strong were Hugo’s winds that most trees still standing were shorn of leaves.” While St. Croix suffered the brunt of the storm, St. Thomas and St. John were also significantly damaged.

We wondered if we should cancel or defer the Festival program to let the region recuperate, physically and financially. But our partners in the Virgin Islands responded with one voice: now, more than ever, the people of the Virgin Islands needed a cultural event to raise their spirits, remind them of their resilience, and tell the world they were recovering. It is particularly in times of disaster that people turn to culture not only for solace but for survival.

“The recent disaster of Hurricane Hugo made fieldwork a little more difficult than usual,” reported Mary Jane Soule, who was doing research on musicians in St. Croix. “I was unable to rent a car for the first five days I was there, which limited my mobility. Many phones were still not working, so getting in touch with informants was harder than usual. However, once I actually located the individuals I wanted to see, I found most of them willing to talk.”

Photo by Mary Jane Soule, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

Photo by Mary Jane Soule, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

A local press announced that, regardless of the circumstances, the Three Kings Day Parade would not be canceled: “Neither rain or hurricane nor winds nor controversy will stop the Crucian Christmas Fiesta.” In her field research tape log, Soule lists the role of Hugo in the fiesta, adding that calypso bands had recorded songs about it.

“Eve’s Garden troop is depicting Hugo,” she wrote. “The No Nonsense (music and dance) troop is doing ‘The Hugo Family’ depicting the looting and tourists on the run. Mighty Pat’s song ‘Hurricane Hugo’ played from speakers on one of the numerous trucks. Sound Effex (band) can be heard playing ‘Hugo Gi Yo’ (Hugo Gives You).”

Several months later when staff returned to the islands, “Hugo Gi Yo” was still very popular, as were the black, monographed sailors’ caps that proclaimed “Stress Free Recovery for 1990, St. Thomas, V.I.” 

Songs about Hugo relieved anxiety. Many people had lost everything. But like all good calypso tunes, they comically contributed to the oral history of the islands. Look at the verses of “Hugo Gi Yo”:

It was the seventeenth of September 1989 Hugo take over.
Hey, that hurricane was a big surprise,
When it hit St. Croix from the southeast side.
Hey rantanantantan man the roof fall down.
Rantanantantan galvanize around…
No water, no power, no telephone a ring.
We people we dead; there’s nothing to drink….

The band Sound Effex plays for bystanders in a carnival parade in St. Croix, Virgin Islands. Photo by Mary Jane Soule, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

Listen to "Hugo Gi Yo", played by Sound Effex at Children’s Parade in Christiansted, St. Croix, January 5, 1990:

Calypso songs are noted for their social commentary on events as well as on responses from mainstream society. The Washington Post reported on St. Croix following the hurricane: “The plunder started on the day after the Sunday night storm, as panicky islanders sought to stock up on food. It quickly degenerated into a free-for-all grab of all sorts of consumer goods that some witnesses likened to a ‘feeding frenzy.’ Three days of near-anarchy followed Hugo’s terrible passage during the night of Sept. 17-18 and prompted President Bush to dispatch about 1,100 Army military police and 170 federal law-enforcement officers, including 75 FBI and a ‘special operations group’ of U.S. Marshalls Service.”

In turn, “Hugo Gi Yo” responds:

You no broke nothing.
You no thief nothing.
You no take nothing.
Hugo give you. 

As program research advisor Gilbert Sprauve explained, calypsonians “lend themselves heartily to expressing the underclass’s frustrations and cynicism. They make their mark with lyrics that strike at the heart of the system’s dual standards.”

A parade goer prepares her sign, jokingly addressing the post-hurricane looting that plagued the island of St. Croix. Photo by Mary Jane Soule, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

Another resident readies her sarcastic sign for the parade. Photo by Mary Jane Soule, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

Mighty Pat’s parade float encourages fellow residents to “stay positive.” Photo by Mary Jane Soule, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

Soule transcribed existing racial and economic tensions in St. Croix expressed in Mighty Pat’s “Hurricane Hugo”:

After the hurricane pass, people telling me to sing a song quickly.
Sing about the looting, sing about the thiefing, black and white people doing.
Sing about them Arabs, up on the Plaza rooftop
With grenade and gun, threaten to shoot the old and the young.
Curfew a big problem, impose on only a few, poor people like me and you.
Rich man roaming nightly, poor man stop by army, getting bust__________
Brutality by marshal, send some to hospital,
Some break down you door, shoot down and plenty more.
When I looked around and saw the condition
of our Virgin Island.
I tell myself advantage can’t done.
One day you rich. Next day you poor.
One day you up the ladder. Next day you
crawling on the floor.
Beauty is skin deep; material things is for a time.
A corrupted soul will find no peace of mind
I think that is all our gale Hugo was trying to say
to all mankind.
Don’t blame me. Hugo did that.

The ubiquitous coal pot depicted on the side of a snack shack in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. Photo by Mary Jane Soule, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

Hurricane Hugo also came up in conversations about craft. Knowing the importance of charcoal making, especially in St. Croix, researcher Cassandra Dunn interviewed Gabriel Whitney St. Jules who had been making coal for at least forty years and was teaching his son the tradition. In Dunn’s summary report, thoughts of the hurricane are not far away.

“Cooking food by burning charcoal in a coal pot is a technique utilized in the West Indies and Caribbean from the mid-1800s,” she wrote. “Charcoal makers learned the techniques of using a wide variety of woods including that from mango, tibet, mahogany, and saman trees. After Hurricane Hugo, those in St. Croix who had lost access to gas or electricity reverted to charcoal and the coal pot.”

With similar stories from St. Thomas, it became clear that this quotidian cultural artifact that reconnected islanders with their heritage served as an essential item for survival with dignity. The image of the coal pot became central to the themes of the Festival program, both as a useful utensil and a symbol of resilience. To our surprise, the coal pot, which looks much like a cast iron Dutch oven, was identical to that used by participants in the Senegal program featured that same year and led to increased cultural interaction between the two groups. This prompted a re-staging of both programs in St. Croix a year later.

From St. Croix to Washington, D.C., Virgin Islanders bring their parade to the National Mall for the 1990 Folklife Festival. Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

The cultural responses to Hurricane Hugo and those I suspect we’ll see following the calamitous hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria remind us that when disaster strikes, whether natural, social, political, or economic, communities often turn to shared cultural resources. Stories, experiences, and traditional skills prove useful, inspiring us to overcome obstacles and help our communities regain their footing.

Olivia Cadaval was the program curator for the U.S. Virgin Islands program at the 1990 Folklife Festival and is currently a curator and chair of cultural research and education at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.

View the original post here.

Reference
Sprauve, Gilbert. “About Man Betta Man, fission and Fusion, and Creole, Calypso and Cultural Survival in the Virgin Islands, 1990 Festival of American Folklife, edited by Peter Seitel, Smithsonian, 1990.

Donald J. Ortner: Physical Anthropologist, Museum Curator, Paleopathologist

How does tuberculosis leave its mark on a human skeleton? What is the significance of changing ankle stability in an ancient culture? What do skeletons tell us? Donald J. Ortner (1938-2012), a biological anthropologist in the National Museum of Natural History, explored questions such as these. Many of his projects focused on paleopathological studies of human skeletons; essentially Ortner researched the visible effects of ancient diseases on bone.

Donald J. Ortner at the base of a shaft tomb at the Bâb edh-Dhrâ cemetery site in Jordan, circa 1977, Box 64, Donald J. Ortner Papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

The photograph above portrays Ortner in the midst of one of the larger paleopathological projects of his career: Bâb edh-Dhrâ. East of the Dead Sea in Jordan, the site of Bâb edh-Dhrâ includes an Early Bronze Age town and cemetery. From 1975 to 1983, the archaeological team of the Expedition to the Dead Sea Plain (EDSP), co-directed by Walter Rast and R. Thomas Schaub and comprised of people from an array of different disciplines, carried out excavations of the site. While an extraordinary 373 individual skeletons have been uncovered, it is estimated that the cemetery consists of 37,699 bodies buried in over 2,500 shaft tombs. In general, these shafts are about 4 feet across and 6 feet deep; you can see Ortner standing at the base of one of them in this photograph. At the bottom, hemispherical burial chambers were dug out to the side of the shaft, 3 feet high in the center and 6 feet in diameter. Women, men, young, and old were buried together in these chambers with an average of about 5 people per chamber.

During Ortner’s first field season at the Bâb edh-Dhrâ site in 1977, he was given the honor of opening the first excavated burial chamber, A78. The following excerpt from Ortner’s article “Cultural Change in Bronze Age” (Smithsonian Magazine, 1978) describes Ortner’s reaction to opening the chamber:

“I shall never forget the exhilaration. Covered with dust, perspiration rolling off me in the 100-degree-plus heat, I pulled away the stone blocking the north chamber and saw revealed for the first time in 5,000 years the human skeletons and exquisite pottery inside.” 

Ortner and his team used analyses of the specimens and tombs to examine how the transition from a nomadic way of life to an urban one affected burial practices. He also discovered information about the health of these Early Bronze Age people, finding indications of arthritis, brucellosis, and tuberculosis on the bones. Ortner continued his study of specimens over a period 30 years, fascinated by and perhaps even admiring of a group of people so troubled by infectious diseases, yet “surviving and even thriving” (Ortner and Frohlich: 368).

Aside from his work at Bâb edh-Dhrâ, Ortner pursued several other projects related to the history and evolution of human infectious diseases. Throughout his 49 years (1963-2012) in the Department of Anthropology in the NMNH, Ortner was a well-respected colleague and mentor; he filled many positions from Museum Technician to Curator to Acting Director of the Museum.
The Donald J. Ortner Papers are now open for research at the National Anthropological Archives. The National Anthropological Film Collection, formerly the Human Studies Film Archives (HSFA), holds films that document Ortner’s work in Bâb edh-Dhrâ. An appointment is required to view the materials.

Alice Griffin, Contract Processing Archivist
National Anthropological Archives


Sources consulted: 
Ortner, Donald J. “Cultural Change in Bronze Age.” Smithsonian Magazine (1978): 82-87.

Ortner, D. J., and Bruno Frohlich. “The EB IA Tombs and Burials of Bâb edh-Dhrâ, Jordan: A Bioarchaeological Perspective on the People.” International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 17 (2007): 358-368.

"Lots of love…" Letters from Antarctica, December 1962

Below are letters written by Invertebrate Zoologist Waldo Schmitt to his wife, nicknamed "Stummy", while he was completing field work in Antarctica during 1962-1963.  Schmitt wrote these letters during his last major trip into the field.  Schmitt had been going into the field since 1911 when he served aboard the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries Albatross as an Assistant Naturalist during its cruises along the west coast of America and Alaska.  He married his wife Alvina in 1914.

The letters below were taken from crowdsourced transcriptions from the Smithsonian Transcription Center.  Photographs were taken by Waldo during his time in Antarctica.

Participant sitting with a penguin on the Palmer Peninsula, Antarctica c.1962,
SIA RU007231 - Waldo L. Schmitt Papers, 1907-1978, Smithsonian Institution Archives, SIA2012-0662. 

December 15, 1962

Dear Stummy, 

Here we are in Antarctica at McMurdo. A bright and sunny day; there are puddles of water, ice-edged to be sure in the streets (such as they are of volcanic ash largely; and no colder than a

crisp winter day at home; maybe a little more crisp about 15° this early a.m and now at 8 p.m it is 18°, the same as at noon. We are in the "land of the mid-night sun. The sun is high in the heavens, and as bright as the clearest day at home at mid-day.

Oh! yes from the shore as far out as you can see a sheet of snow covered ice over which the tractors plough back and forth hauling supplies from the ice - airfield where the planes land about 3 miles from the Station proper. 

Quite a place and honestly it doesn't feel as cold as the thermometer has it. We sleep two In about an 8x8 room, one cot above the other bunk bed style with a fair sided [[bedsi?]] locker, one ceiling lamp, & one chair. The sleeping accommodations are quite primative - the meals on the other hand quite lavish - meat twice a day, and a hot plate of beans on the side at lunch

and dinner to day. Dessert at lunch today was bread pudding with raisins; at dinner a square of chocholate cake with white icing. The coffee seems quite good. Canned milk does not stand up well, tends to separate they say, and so Proam is used instead. We have to walk about half a block, or is it a block to the toilet facilities. There are no showers - "sponge baths" are what serves here. I got about 4 hrs sleep on the plane and am beginning to feel sort of dopy. Tomorrow the mail goes out so I shall try to send this and a few cards. A pretty one to each

of you in Coronado.

Gee Stummy, I should have sent you out to Barb's before I left. Please don't feel apprehensive about money matters or Barb, or me either things will work out alright. I believe I get $12 a day per d for the days we are not either on a ship or at this station. Of course I [[Had?]] pay the

hotel, but I shall get the per diem which will more than offset it. Then I should get the $1,800 on top of that. It will more than cover all the bills and some besides, and that is not taking the "pay" checks into account.

Stop worrying. It looks as though I shall come through alive to plague you the rest of our days. And don't worry about Barb until you see for yourself this time out there. Too bad about Ruth. To think after all these busy years that she had to run into this trouble whatever it is. ||| The Seiglers sent me an Xmas card! 

Be good Stummy we aren't going to be so badly off. I'll check over those taxes when I get back

Lots of love girl and then some 

Waldo

View of vessel during specimen collecting near Peterman Island, Antarctica, 1962-1963,
SIA RU007231 - Waldo L. Schmitt Papers, 1907-1978, Smithsonian Institution Archives, SIA2012-0666.

Dec. 16, 1962

Dear Stummy,

Here we still are, I hardly know what to write. In the hotel they moved me to a single room on the second floor a bother because I'll only be here another day or two. Tomorrow or the next day I move in with Jack Crowell at Eddie Goodall's place. I did not go out Sunday with Jack
because I wanted to see the Museum director G.A. Turbot, and a Dr Stonehouse who has been up on the Palmer Peninsula where we are going or expect to go. Stonehouse was due last night at 5 oclock but did not return on the plane. I had thought he was on vacation but he's down at McMurdo.

The weather is/as I wrote before. The present is the more rainy season and though its summer we get temperatures in the low 40's at night, and in the low 60's (63) at midday if the sky clears by then and the sun comes out.

There is no heat in these rooms or this hotel except the hot water tap and a fireplace in some of the rooms. There was one in the double room we had but none in the cubicle I am in now.

I am sitting here writing on my lap because there is no table and bureau top is too high, wearing my heavy blue shirt. On bed I have besides sheet, two thin blankets and 2 spreads white, and red one. Yes, I am plenty warm, but at that the room is colder than out of doors, at least when I go out after breakfast. The other reason I have not yet moved out of hotel is that Eddie
Goodalls place is way out by the airport and the busses that go by his place run 45 mins apart in busy - rush hours - and 1.10 mins apart during day. Most of yesterday I spent in the public Library here checking up on Antarctic animal & biology literature. I want to go back at
least another day to check over some of the reports of earlier expeditions.I had intended doing this at home and would have done so except for that darn moving. I hate to think of what I have awaiting me back at Museum.

Too bad that mail is going to be so little and far between. Now take this one. If I send it home Thelma will have to forward it, but at that it will just about reach you when you get to California.

There is nothing much else to write a-bout. Here at this hotel the meat is mutton most all the time but they do have a fish course and now and then pork and chicken, of course eggs for breakfast almost smothered in bacon strips, not crisp fried either. I try to have them bring me only one strip, but they seem incapable of doing it, or just won't from force of habit. The hot tea at 7 a.m served in room is not so bad - in a fairly cold room. However the
water runs hot and that's a comfort.

Maybe at Eddie's place over the week end I'l have a table to write on. Next week if we still are here I shall try to get in a little collecting. I'd hate to be here a couple of weeks and not have a New Zealand crab for the Museum collection, but nothing is handy, and the few "tools" I brought are so tied up in warehouse at airport that I can't well get at them. They are also too well packed to undo for fooling around here.
Also I am afraid I'll have to let Christmas buying go over. the sending is the chief problem after trying to think of what to buy. I do hope you are keeping "weller," getting over that too worried spell. It will be nice to see Barb and the kids again. Lots of love girl first to you and then the rest

- from the old man - Waldo

Helicopter fire on McMurdo Base, Antarctica, prior to arrival of emergency response team,
SIA RU007231 - Waldo L. Schmitt Papers, 1907-1978, Smithsonian Institution Archives, SIA2012-0665.

Penguins on the Palmer Peninsula, 10-11am January 28, 1963,
SIA RU007231 - Waldo L. Schmitt Papers, 1907-1978, Smithsonian Institution Archives, SIA2012-0665.

Dec. 16, 1962

Dear Stummy,

Today we had snow - a brief flurry this a.m. a bit of a let up and then with lunch more through the rest of the afternoon and supper perhaps till 7 or 8 // I got off a number of Xmas cards including one to Dick.

This was an earlier letter, Before the unfinished one above. The part that got carboned read as follows "You may not think that I know what I am doing, but we are utterly dependent on the Navy. Today I want to get Xmas cards; its finally come to the point where I get them, or not. The
question is to whom to send them and how many. If as the bunch here is doing I would get U.S. stamps on them which we can do from here out, but there is the thought that folks would expect N.Z.stamps. - That decision I wont make till I get cards written /// As ^ [[insertion]] is
[[/insertion]] always the case, we are having unusual weather, the summer has suddenly descended upon us - after all the cool weather I have been complaining about in the 40s and 50's - day before yesterday was in mid 80°s and yesterday it was over 90°! Believe it or not, today, the temperature is back more to normal summer temperature. When its cool here its delightful, when its chilly, not so good! [When its hot, it is pretty hot & uncomfortable, you want to move along.

Lesley Parilla, Cataloging Coordinator

Field Book Project, Smithsonian Institution Libraries