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

Processing the Burpee Company Records, Part One

The first time encountering a new collection is exciting for an archivist. This is when we evaluate the physical condition of the collection, the predominant materials (papers, books, memorabilia, etc.), and, if possible, any potential series within the collection (business records, correspondence, newspapers, etc.) that aid in its final arrangement. It can be overwhelming to see a large number of disordered and dusty boxes in front of you, but knowing that within each box rests items that have not been touched for 5, 10, 30, even a hundred years is always exhilarating (in a bookish kind of way). This post will talk about my first week working on a new accretion to the W. Atlee Burpee Company Records.

The first step involves researching what exactly the collection is about. The W. Atlee Burpee Co. was founded by Washington Atlee Burpee in 1878. Burpee’s business grew over the next 15 years, and by 1893, Burpee had reached the top of the American seed scene when he was elected president of the American Seed Trade Association (ASTA). The Burpee Company rose to prominence under W. Atlee Burpee, but, of course, not without its good and bad years. When W. Atlee became ill around 1913, his eldest son David left his studies at Cornell to assist in operating the family business. In 1915, David was made CEO. Under David’s direction, the Burpee Co. continued to expand globally. In 1970, General Foods acquired the company.

David Burpee’s official resignation as president of W. Atlee Burpee Co., and the official “closing” of the deal with General Foods. The Burpee Co. merged with the Ball Seed Company in 1991 and is still an active business today.

The Burpee Co. was a well-run machine by the beginning of the twentieth century. W. Atlee Burpee was an astute businessman, a great organizer, and an innovator in seed marketing and advertising. He kept a close eye on all of his products as well. Constantly in correspondence with employees, contractors, retailers, and consumers, he stayed current with all aspects of his business. But it was marketing that separated Burpee from his competitors. Having the consumer interact with the company not only encouraged interest in Burpee seeds, but also helped the Burpee Co. connect with those who supported its business. Burpee’s approach to marketing ensured a personal and long-lasting relationship with its customers.

Looking at the business records of a company run by such a man is inspiring. Detailed notes scribbled all over scraps of paper capture his marketing skills. David Burpee had large shoes to fill when he took over the company, and he succeeded. In 1926, just a few years into radio broadcasting’s “golden age,” the Burpee Co. promoted a “largest zinnia” contest through a local radio station, WLIT in Philadelphia. Letters poured in to the radio station (which were all forwarded to the Burpee Co.) regarding the contest, with some seeking Burpee publications as well.

1926 letter submitted by Mrs. E. Shepherd of West Philadelphia to WLIT radio station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Listeners were invited to submit a letter requesting free Burpee seeds and publications. 

Between a company that crossed all oceans, and a business model that was as connected as ever to the customer, W. Atlee would have been proud of what his son accomplished. I am excited to be working on the W. Atlee Burpee Company Records. It is a great story of an American company, and deserves to be preserved. Processing collections requires patience, attention to detail, and great organization. Above all else, the archivist must acknowledge that they are presenting once hidden materials to the public.

Chris DeMairo, Intern

Archives of American Gardens

A Jazz Life, Interrupted

A recently acquired National Museum of American History Archives Center collection, the Maceo Jefferson Papers, 1898-1974, relates to a little-known but extremely interesting jazz musician and composer named Maceo Jefferson (1898-1974). Though possessing an impressive resume that included associations with such notables as Duke Ellington, W.C. Handy, Louis Armstrong, The Blackbirds, and others, he never attained fame for himself. He was a prolific composer and arranger, and lived an extremely interesting and eventful life. The rich archival collection donated by his great-nephew to the Archives Center gives us glimpses into the very earliest years of jazz and life for jazz musicians in the years between the world wars, and it opens up opportunities for researchers and scholars of this era. Only a few of our jazz collections document this formative era. Jefferson’s correspondence (he saved carbon copies of letters he sent--a luxury for a researcher) documents his efforts to have his music recorded and heard by the public. Reading Jefferson’s letters, one gets the sense of a likable, generous man with an ebullient personality and a wry wit, one who made the best of things when his career and life were derailed by circumstances beyond his control.

Jefferson’s early jazz life was probably typical of many musicians in the 1920s and 1930s, as he went from band to band, nightclub to nightclub. Many of these bands and clubs are documented in photographs in the collection. Born in 1898 in Beaufort, South Carolina, Jefferson, who came from musical parents, showed early aptitude for both banjo and guitar. In a document, he described lying awake nights listening to music from a dance hall down the street. He attended the Avery Institute in Charleston for two years, but the deaths of his parents ended his chance for further education. He served with the Coast Guard on a cutter, and with the Navy in World War I, and in a letter he stated that he “saw death staring me in the face dozens of times.” After his military service, he went back to music. He played in a nightclub in Norfolk, Virginia, for two years. He then spent another two years in a nightclub in Washington, where he met Duke Ellington and was one of the original members of his band, the Washingtonians. According to Jefferson’s nephew, he was the original arranger for this act, but Jefferson and Ellington had a falling out. He moved on to New York and worked in a succession of clubs there. He described the transformative experience of seeing and hearing Fats Waller play the piano in the Gaiety Theater. He joined Lew Leslie’s Blackbirds orchestra in 1926 and went on a European tour with them throughout 1927, and another with Leon Abbey’s band in 1928, eventually relocating to Paris. He lived in France for several years, married a Parisian costume designer, Yvonne Runtz, in 1937, and worked with several jazz bands and musicians including Louis Armstrong’s Plantation Orchestra, and then returned to New York. He played in Willie “The Lion” Smith’s band and later toured with blues composer W.C. Handy.

 Photographer unidentified. Jefferson (front row, wearing arm band) with Louis Armstrong (top row, far left) and his orchestra. Maceo Jefferson Papers, No. 1370-0000005.

Photographer unidentified. Jefferson (at left, seated, having his shoes shined) with the Leon Abbey Band. Maceo Jefferson Papers, No. 1370-0000004.

Photographer unidentified. Jefferson (holding banjo) with the Four Harmony Kings.
Maceo Jefferson Papers, No. 1370-0000006.

The late 1930s found him back in Paris. Soon afterward, Jefferson’s life took a radical detour. The Germans invaded Paris in 1940. After the closing of the Moulin Rouge left Jefferson without work, he worked with the Red Cross delivering U.S.-donated food and medicine to civilians and prison camps. In a 1967 letter, he said that “the Germans considered most of us working with the American Red Cross a bunch of spies.”

Photographer unidentified. Photographs taken of Jefferson while he was working for the Red Cross. Maceo Jefferson Papers. Top, No. 1370-0000008. Bottom, No. 1370-0000010.

The Nazis arrested Jefferson three days after Germany’s declaration of war on the U.S. (December 11, 1941), and he spent the next 27 months in an internment camp in Compiegne, France. Compiegne held political prisoners, French Jews, employees of the French government, and resistance fighters to the Vichy government. While imprisoned, Jefferson led an orchestra in the camp. According to his nephew, this may have saved his life. A concert program, hand-made, survives in the collection. The musical pieces played at this concert are an eclectic mix of fox trots, waltzes, hymns, solos, and just one composition by Jefferson.

 Program from a February, 1942 concert held inside the Frontstalag 122, Compiegne, France, led by Maceo Jefferson. Maceo Jefferson Papers.  Top: Cover, No. 1370-0000001-01.
Bottom: Inside text, No. 1370-0000001-02.

Jefferson’s wife Yvonne came regularly to see him in the camp, and bring him food. In a letter he wrote late in life, at a time when he had to make many sacrifices to take care of his wife, he said “she came 72 times to see me…walking from home to the station and after arriving at Compiegne she had three miles to walk to the camp, and that back… she has shown me her courage now it’s my time.”

In a 1967 letter, Jefferson describes his wife Yvonne’s heroic efforts to sustain him during his imprisonment by the Nazis. Maceo Jefferson Papers, No. 1370-0000002.

He was released in 1944 in a prisoner exchange, and returned to the United States in diminished health. At this point he resumed club work and songwriting, and in fact, in his later years he concentrated on composing, on developing new arrangements for old songs, and on getting his music performed and recorded. Letters in the collection document Jefferson’s contacts with performers such as Liberace, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Peggy Lee, and others, offering his compositions for their use. Guitarist Ray Rivera and blues singer Alberta Hunter did accept his offers.

A letter from Tennessee Ernie Ford declining Jefferson’s offer of musical compositions, 1956.
Maceo Jefferson Papers, No. 1370-0000003.

Maceo Jefferson died in 1974, leaving behind a sizable but largely unknown musical legacy. The above-described archival materials comprise just 1/8 of the collection. The other 7/8 contains a couple of recordings, one of which is a very early wire recording, and hundreds of Jefferson’s compositions.


By Cathy Keen, Archivist
Archives Center, National Museum of American History

Public anthropology and the Millennium film project: Cinema of Advocacy or Contradiction?

During my summer internship at the National Anthropological Film Collection (formerly the Human Studies Film Archive) in the National Anthropological Archives. I worked on rehousing and processing the Millennium trims and outs collection. This collection consists of the film edited into a 1992 television series hosted by Harvard anthropologist David Maybury-Lewis.

Small index cards representing footage removed for inclusion in final cuts of episode.
This is typically one of the final steps in production.

 To process the materials, the film rolls were rehoused in archival film cans, which were placed in the National Anthropological Film Collection (NAFC)’s state-of-the-art environmentally controlled sub-zero vault, located at the Museum Support Center in Suitland, MD. In total, the collection comprises 1336 rolls of double-perf camera original rolls that have been rehoused into 399 cans. In addition to preserving the film rolls, the other major goal when processing the collection was to keep valuable contextual and technical information associated with each film roll. Happily, the Millennium trims and outs collection is now safeguarded for future researchers, preserving high quality ethnographic film that portrays a diverse collection of subjects.

Millennium outs and trims collection in sub-zero storage vault.

In addition to handling the collection, I also had the opportunity to learn something about the Millennium film series. What I discovered is that the film collection is particularly fascinating because it reflects some of the methodological and humanistic transformations that were occurring in anthropology during the end of the 20th century. These transformations, I think, display some of the contradictions between ethnographic film and the burgeoning discipline of public anthropology.

In the last few decades of the 20th century, anthropology underwent a transformation as applied anthropologists and academic researchers began to converge on a form of anthropology today known as engaged, or public anthropology (Lamphere 1053). As a result, the discipline became more self-reflexive about its ethics and the politics of its work (Hart 7). This new branch of anthropology called for an increase in collaboration and partnership with the particular communities in which anthropologists worked, as well as increased engagement by anthropologists in the public and political spheres in an attempt to influence policy (Lamphere 1053).

At the forefront of the changes to the discipline was David Maybury-Lewis (Borofsky; Lamphere 1052). Maybury-Lewis strived to counteract negative feelings and popular disdain for indigenous groups, or the so-called “Other,” and to advocate for the interests of these small-scale societies (Hart 1041). Perhaps the largest contribution to his legacy was his creation of the organization Cultural Survival, an NGO dedicated to collaboration that would strengthen the ability of indigenous people to operate their own organizations and advocate for their own rights, including land rights, health care, education, and political power (Lamphere 1051). The 16mm films from his Emmy award-winning 1992 ethnographic film project, Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World, which are now processed and housed in the Millennium trims and outs collection at the NAFC is another key piece of Maybury-Lewis’ legacy.

The Millennium documentary film project aired on television in ten 60-minute episodes before being released on VHS in 1992. Holistically, the project challenged the morality of the state (in their various particulars) and attempted to generate broader appreciation for forms of indigenous knowledge that had been amassed over millennium. In short, the series sought to illuminate “tribal” values and knowledge that could “contribute to the transformation of public ethics” in the coming millennium (Hart 1037). The series examined large universal topics, such as love, marriage, politics, wealth, spirituality, power, identity, and art, while looking at specific ethnographic examples from at least 15 distinct countries. Among the indigenous societies filmed by Maybury-Lewis and his crew were the Xavante of western Brazil (the society where he did his original fieldwork), the Mashco-Piro of Peru, the Wodaabe of Niger, the Nyimba of Nepal, the Gabra of Kenya, the Makuna of Colombia, the Dogon of Mali, the Weyewa of Sumba (Indonesia), the Huichol of Mexico, and the Navajo of the southwestern United States. As a way to drive home the universality of themes that it considered, the series contrasted this footage of “tribal” communities with the challenges faced by individuals in Western societies. Examples included an artist dying of AIDS, a teenage suicide-attempt survivor, and a New York City garbage man. Interwoven among these stories is a reflection on the positive and negative impact anthropological pursuits can bring to indigenous societies, as well as an attempt to advocate on the behalf of such communities.

Maybury-Lewis’ goal for the Millennium project was to shed a light on the importance of cultural diversity and to advocate for the rights of indigenous peoples. The project, however, still received critique from his fellow anthropologists. Although self-reflexive about anthropology, Millennium represented indigenous people similarly to earlier ethnographic cinema and revealed in visuals of the exotic “otherness” of indigenous people (Rony 220). Television’s entertainment model did not allow such a project to fully break free of ethnographic cinema’s traditional conventions because it called for dramatic storylines and mystery, clashing with anthropology’s late 20th century critique of exoticism, essentialism, and objectification (Hart 9). While the Millennium series often focused on important socio-political issues, such as the Canada’s Oka Crisis of 1990, it also employed dramatic English voices-overs imagining deeply personal stories of indigenous individuals from a Western perspective.

Regardless of the contradictions of the series, the project is rich in documentary value because of the exceptional footage captured by Maybury-Lewis and his crew, as well as its demonstration of the philosophical tensions in anthropology during the late 20th century. In the National Anthropological Film Collection in the National Anthropological Archives you can now find the original outtakes and trims from the Millennium project.

Caroline Waller, Intern
National Anthropological Film Collection 
National Museum of Natural History


Works Cited
Borofsky, R. (2000), COMMENTARY: Public Anthropology. Where To? What Next?. Anthropology News, 41: 9–10. doi:10.1111/an.2000.41.5.9

Hart, Laurie Kain. "Popular Anthropology and the State: David Maybury-Lewis and Pluralism." Anthropological Quarterly 82, no. 4 (2009): 1033-042. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20638679.

 Lamphere, Louise. "David Maybury-Lewis and Cultural Survival: Providing a Model for Public Anthropology, Advocacy, and Collaboration." Anthropological Quarterly 82, no. 4 (2009): 1049-054. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20638681.

Rony, Fatimah Tobing. The Third Eye : Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spectacle. N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996.

Cleaning Up Freer’s Attic

Collections change over time. Collections often come from chaos. Archival collections are often a rushed boxing up after someone passes. The collector is no longer there to ask questions of. This inherently leads to questions. What was this ledger for? Who were these letters to? How did they want their art displayed?

Archivists, museum staff, and researchers grapple with these questions every day. It is often where interesting exhibits come from.

Head Archivist, David Hogge, puzzling out how to organize various photographs.

The Freer | Sackler Archives made the decision a year ago to overhaul the Charles Lang Freer Papers. Please click here for a link to his new and improved finding aid! Freer was the founder of our museum. Opened in 1923, it was the first topic-focused museum at the Smithsonian and its first art museum. Freer did not live to see his museum completed, but the museum did receive, on top of all of his art collection, his vast collection of papers.

Freer was a meticulous man when it came to his correspondence, his purchasing, and, well, everything. This has left a rich collection of papers for museum staff and researchers to use when studying a Freer art object or the man himself.

Not all paper is of equal size.

The finding aid (guide to any collection) for Freer’s papers, like so many other “legacy” archival collections, was created before modern archival standards were established. F|S Archives staff made the decision to overhaul the Freer papers after having many problems in recent years, both finding items for researchers and dealing with how to organize their digital surrogates. You must have a firm handle on the physical side of any archival collection before you can even contemplate digitizing it.



Working in an archives means using your hands and handling physical objects from paper to film canisters.

Physical collection? What is that you ask? It must be hard to imagine in this age of digital smorgasbord that there are still items in the world that are only available in the physical format. Well, a large part of what archivists do is make available in a digital environment what was once only sitting on a shelf in a box and only a few passionate researchers even tried to look for. Everything in an archives is unique, one a kind, the only one in the world.

Archivists are working hard around the world to make unique pieces of human history available and accessible to all, please see this great blog post about putting more of human history online. So
digitizing archival materials is crucial to both outreach (anyone in the world can look at the digital surrogates from the various Smithsonian Archives) and to the long term life of the materials. Paper lasts a long time, but it does not exist forever.

How does one organize a physical collection? How does one re-think it? A collection is always organized to preserve any original organization of the creator, in this case Freer. There are times where it becomes obvious there was no organization to begin with. This is often the main mystery that archivists struggle with on a daily basis: did so and so want these papers this way? Were these postcards meant to go together? Was this part of their research patterns? Their collecting patterns?

Organizing ones thoughts the old fashioned way, on paper.

When archivists make decisions about organization, we are not copy-pasting some files to a new folder in a computer drive. We are weeding through boxes and boxes of materials and attempting to form them into a unit of thought or creator's process. Think of it this way, what if you had to organize Bob Dylan’s writing process. There would be tons of paper or scraps of papers and you have to figure out if he had an order to begin with or was it all chaos? Is imposing some sort of order, potentially where none exists, harming the integrity of Dylan’s creative process or are you creating just enough access points so that a researcher writing the next bestselling Dylan biography can find what he/she needs to do their job?

Basically, does taking a mountain of paper and creating an access pathway (e.g. putting the materials in folders and boxes with labels), a way of thinking about them, looking at them, destroy intrinsically what they are?

The slow task of properly identifying and labeling boxes.  Lots of glue gets on your fingers.

There were many sections of Freer’s papers like this; piles of paper all next to one another and yet had nothing in common. F|S Archives Staff had to separate out these papers into neat pathways that would lead researchers to access points of useful information. For example, what now constitutes Series One in the Freer Papers, was once a few boxes that were just near one another. If you look at the finding aid now, you can see clear pathways/access points (e.g. Memberships and Honorary Awards, Freer Residences, Genealogical Materials, etc.). These pathways are called Series and Subseries in the archival world. Neat piles of paper that all have their own theme and purpose. This makes it much easier for researchers to find what they need; whether that is physically handling the materials or doing a Google word search. We have made these important documents that much more accessible to the citizens of the world.

This aspect of creating finding aids is the complex intellectual part. There are other aspects to cleaning up a collection that are much more hands on.

One of the biggest decisions the F|S Archives made was to completely re-number the boxes and materials in the Freer papers. This may seem like a small thing. Well, the Freer papers hold over 300 boxes and this would not just be re-numbering the boxes in a digital document (the Freer finding aid), it would entail physically pasting new labels on all of the over 300 boxes. You are probably thinking, why would you do that?!

A wall of a job of well done.

Well, most of the Freer papers are not digitized. The only way to track and monitor the small physical components of the collection is to have solid and accurate box numbers. In addition, the archives has to have strong control of the physical space our materials reside in. We have a space matrix documenting where the materials of all of our, over 100, collections are shelved.

So, yes, having accurate labels on the physical materials in an archive is essential. The long term goal – archives often have to think in the long term, collections are too large to allow for instantaneous work – is to enable much of Freer's papers to be digitized, so that more scholars around the world can examine his materials and learn more about Charles Lang Freer, his art collecting, and the art pieces themselves.

Lara Amrod, Archivist

F|S Archives

Three German Ships, Puerto Rico, and the Great War: the First Shots Fired by the U.S. in WWI

Theodoor de Booy in the Dominican Republic in 1916 (N04834).

In 1915, Theodoor de Booy, an archaeologist of the Museum of the American Indian, predecessor of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), took photos of Old San Juan in Puerto Rico, which are now part of the Theodoor de Booy negatives and photographs collection. Included among this collection are photographs of three ships named S.S. Odenwald, S.S. KD-III, and S.S. Präsident. Considering this an oddity, I investigated further and what I discovered was a story that involved World War I, the Fortress of el Morro in San Juan harbor, a German scheme, and what many consider to be the first shots fired by the U.S. in the Great War.

The Fortress of El Morro guarding in the entrance of San Juan Harbor, 1915.
Photo by Theodoor de Booy (N04073).

Three Ships and a War

The story takes place in the harbor of San Juan between August 1914 and March 1915 when the U.S. was still a Neutral Power and Puerto Rico was already an American colony. The three ships were:

The S.S. Odenwald in San Juan Harbor, 1915.
 Photo by Theodoor de Booy (N04078).

The Odenwald, a German merchant freighter (a coal collier) that began to service the German Navy days after the beginning of the war. Her duty was to serve as support freighter for the cruiser SMS Karlsruhe whose mission was to patrol the eastern Atlantic in search of, raid, and sink enemy merchant vessels. She sailed into San Juan harbor around August 6 or 7, 1914, possibly seeking refuge against a British squadron of warships. Since the U.S. was a neutral state, it is possible that her crew claimed to be a merchant ship. But, the U.S. authorities seem to have been suspicious of these claims.

The S.S. Präsident in San Juan Harbor, 1915.
Photo by Theodoor de Booy (N04077).

The S.S. Präsident was a German vessel that served as a combination of passenger and cargo ship before the war. When the war broke out, she, too, began to serve in the German Navy as a support vessel to the cruiser Karlsruhe by providing radio communication and supplies. She arrived in Puerto Rico on December 1914 to take refuge from British and French cruisers that were hunting her and eventually was interned (to impound or confine until the end of the war) by the U.S. government.



The S.S. K.D.-III (Farn) in San Juan Harbor, 1915. P
hoto by Theodoor de Booy (N04079).

S.S. K.D.-III, a German tender ship that was actually the captured British coal collier Farn. While not at the service of the British Navy, she was carrying 3,000 tons of coal when captured by the Karlsruhe on October 1914 off the coast of South America. It was renamed K.D.-III (K.D. standing for Kohlendampfer or coal carrier). She sailed into San Juan on the 11th or 12th of January, 1915 to obtain supplies. Declared a tender boat of the German Navy on January 15, it was interned by the U.S. authorities.

Days Before the Incident

The story begins on March 18, 1915 when the captain of the S.S. Odenwald, C. S. Segebarth, requested (1) clearance to sail back to Hamburg the next day and (2) 5000 tons of coal for such trip. Suspicious of the request the local authorities decided to consult with Washington, D.C. and, afraid that the vessel may leave without clearance, alerted the commanding officer of the Porto Rico Regiment of Infantry (PRPI) at the fortress of El Morro. Washington approved the use of force if necessary and the German captain of the Odenwald was warned several times. Despite the Germans assurances that they did not intend to leave without clearance, the local authorities made preparations in case a situation developed. A machine gun platoon was placed on the Bastión de San Agustín, 500 feet from the Morro Castle (see plan of the Bay) commanded by Captain Wood and the heavy guns of El Morro were readied under the command of Lt. Teófilo Marxuach.



The Incident
On the afternoon of March 21, the customs inspector returned to the Odenwald, but his visit was cut short when the Odenwald started her engines around 3:00 pm and began moving on the main channel towards the mouth of the harbor without clearance. The custom collector was asked to leave in a small boat. As the Odenwald passed the Bastión de San Agustín, Captain Wood, standing on the parapet of the sea wall, hailed the vessel several times without success; the Odenwald stayed on course. Captain Woods ordered Puerto Rican Sgt. Encarnación Correa, to fire warning-shots with his machine-gun without any success. Failing to stop the vessel, Lt. Marxuach was ordered to fire a warning shot 300 yards across the bow of the Odenwald from El Morro’s 4.7 inch gun. This was the convincing shot and the Odenwald stopped and dropped anchor at the mouth of the harbor under the fortress. She was eventually moved that same day to the upper harbor with a local pilot.



Map of San Juan Harbor with annotations and calculations by Lt. Teófilo Marxuach for his report of the incident (National Archives).

Despite the fact that the U.S would not declare war to Germany for two more years, these shots have been considered by some American and Puerto Rican historians as the first ones fired by the U.S. in World War I. Perhaps, the main reason for this conclusion is that the whole incident took place within the context of the war. While not involved in the fighting, even the status of neutrality of the U.S. and other countries was the result of and defined by the conflict. Interestingly, these shots were fired by Puerto Ricans who did not become American citizens until Congress passed the Jones-Shafroth Act two years later in March of 1917.

L. Antonio Curet, Curator

National Museum of the American Indian

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.

More on the Photographic Adventures of Katherine Joseph

President Franklin D. Roosevelt and International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) president David Dubinsky with cast members of the ILGWU revue "Pins and Needles." Left to right: Ruth Rubenstein, Rose Newmark, Lynn Jaffe, Millie Weitz, Ann Brown, and Nettie Harari at the White House, March 3, 1938. Photograph by Katherine Joseph, © Richard Hertzberg and Suzanne Hertzberg. Katherine Joseph Papers, Archives Center, NMAH.

This is an update to the September blog by Richard Hertzberg and myself, “Every Minute Counts,” about documentary photographer Katherine Joseph. The biographical information in that blog, as well as in the Archives Center’s finding aid and catalog entry, was derived from Katherine Joseph’s daughter Suzanne Hertzberg's 2002 master’s thesis for the University of Southern California, “Photo by Katherine Joseph.”

Ms. Hertzberg then transformed her thesis into a book for publication--a handsome biography of this little-known, talented photographer, entitled Katherine Joseph: Photographing an Era of Social Significance (Bergamot Books, 2016). Illustrated with many of her mother’s photographs, it places Katherine Joseph’s career firmly in the tradition of 1930s-1940s documentary photography, as well as in the context of American women’s history. As such, it is far more than an affectionate memoir. Since Katherine Joseph told her children so little about her photographic career, Suzanne Hertzberg had few specific personal memories to relate, and had to pursue extensive research on her elusive subject.

The collection was donated to the Archives Center in 2007 by Suzanne and Richard Hertzberg.

David Haberstich,
Archives Center, National Museum of American History

In the Pink with the Peony

The herbaceous peony dies back to the ground in the winter.

The Smithsonian’s Material Culture Forum this past May had an intriguing and wide-ranging theme: “Home Grown Healing: Smithsonian Collections Relating to Plants and Healing, Wellness, Ceremony, and Ritual.” As a prelude, attendees were invited to the Cullman Library in the National Museum of Natural History to peruse herbals, medicinal botanies, travel narratives, and other natural history books assembled by curator Leslie Overstreet.

As we viewed the illustrated volumes there was talk of how some plants, once known almost exclusively for medicinal uses, are now predominantly thought of as culinary or ornamental, such as rhubarb, rosemary, rose, dogwood, foxglove, Solomon’s seal, carrot, parsley. Then there is king basil, Ocimum basilicum, long prized for its healing properties, used in religious rituals, considered a source of erotic powers, and valued in the kitchen. Pier Andrea Mattioli (1501-1577), a medical doctor and botanist, born in Siena, provides the delightful contemporary observation that basil was found to be growing in every Italian household, often in a pot placed by a window. Today, it still rules as a favorite herb.

A pot in every kitchen: basil for the windowsill. Woodcut from Johann Prüss’ Ortus sanitatis (Strasbourg, not after 21 October 1497).

It was a cool, long spring in the Washington area this year. The peonies were spectacular and lasted a good while in their typically short season, blooming at the time of this Forum in May. The woodcut of this plant in the Cullman Library’s copy of Mattioli’s great herbal, Commentarii in Sex Libros Pedacii Dioscoridis (1565), got me wondering how this popular bloom, beloved for its beauty and fragrance and the go-to flower of the wedding industry (symbol of good fortune and a happy marriage), was once used. A little research and a scan of a selection of the early herbals in the Smithsonian Libraries found that the Paeonia once reigned as the medicinal plant, a cure-all from antiquity. Indeed, the genus name originates in Greek mythology: Paeon was physician to the Olympian gods.

The Cullman Library’s uncolored copy of the commentaries by Mattioli on the ancient Greek herbal of Dioscorides has been digitized by the Biodiversity Heritage Library (link here). The first illustrated edition appeared in 1554, with small woodcuts. It was soon reprinted many times in a variety of languages; there are several of these editions in the Smithsonian Libraries. This massive folio has large images where the artist filled the entire woodblock.

Antiquity is full of legends about gathering medicinal plants. The mandrake while being pulled out of the ground was said to give a piercing scream that caused death to the harvester so an animal was needed for the task. The sacred basil had to be cut by a person who had undergone purification rites. Peonies, too, presented risks. Theophrastus, in the 9^th century BC in Enquiry into Plants (Greek: Περὶ φυτῶν ἱστορία, Peri phyton historia) notes: “We learn that he who would obtain peony root was advised to dig it up at night, because, if he did the deed in the day-time, and was observed by a woodpecker, he risked the loss of his eye-sight.” The author, however, ridiculed this belief. The perennially grumpy Mattioli was similarly dismissive of most folklore and superstitions.

I will venture to say that this hand-colored woodcut is the earliest representation of the peony in the Smithsonian Libraries (but may well be proven wrong). Gart der Gesundheit (Garden of Health) [Ulm?, 1487?]. This copy lacks several leaves, including any title and colophon. To identify it further research is needed but the text is certainly based on the 1484 Mainz herbal, printed by Peter Schöffer the Elder. Another version, this one in Latin, is below. The copying of illustrations and the re-use of woodblocks was common practice at this time.

The peony in Ortus sanitatis (Garden of Health), printed in Strasbourg in 1497. The Smithsonian Libraries’ copy has been digitized by the Biodiversity Heritage Library. The all-important roots of the peony are emphasized in this woodcut.  

The genus Paeonia has thirty-three species; with the exception of two from North America, all are native to Eurasia (Japan, China, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Turkey, Asia Minor, and Europe) except for two from the west coast of North America. One, Paeonia officinalis, has a long history in both Eastern and Western medicine, used for infantile epileptic seizure, jaundice, stomach-aches, and kidney and bladder problems. There are records of Paeonia officinalis in medieval monastic gardens, the supply precious and carefully preserved in monastery storerooms called “officina,” hence the name.

Inicipit Tractatus devirtutibus herbarum (Venice, 1499). This herbal is a practical, lively little medical book. Unlike the folios of Gerard’s Herbal and the various editions of Mattioli, it fits easily in one’s hands and, despite having been produced in the infancy of printing when books were expensive, appears to have been intended for ready reference. It shows evidence of this by manuscript markings, including a manicula or “little hand” to emphasize portions of the text. The names of the plants, of those commonly found in apothecaries or obtainable from merchants, are in a larger font. They provide the captions for the illustrations, for easy identification. Although the woodcuts are somewhat stylized, typical of early printed books, there is an attempt at naturalism with the depiction of the peony’s roots, represented in black. 

The red peony, native to southern Europe, arrived in England during the 16^th century where it became known as the apothecaries’ peony. John Gerard’s Herball or the Generall Historie of Plants (1597) instructs “the blacke graines (that is the seede) to the number of 15. taken in wine or meade, helpeth the strangling and paines of the matrix or mother, and is a speciall remedie for those that are troubled in the night with the disease called Ephialtes, or the night Mare.” Further, “Syrupe made of the flowers of Peionie helpeth greatly the falling sicknes, likewise the extraction of the rootes doth the same.”

 Many of the woodblocks from a 1590 herbal, published in Frankfurt, were reused for Gerard's Herball. That publication, by Jacobus Theodorus Tabernaemontanus, relied itself on earlier illustrations, including those of Mattioli's. Link here for the Biodiversity Heritage's scan of entire volume in the Peter H. Raven Library of the Missouri Botanical Garden.

John Hill, in his The British herbal (1756), declared that for medicinal purposes the male peony roots were best and warned against fraud (substituting female roots) in the markets. “The best way of giving it is in the powder of the root, fresh dried: twelve grains is a dose, and will do great service in all nervous complaints, headaches, and convulsions.” Along with a range of other skills, Hill was trained as an apothecary and was head of the royal gardens at Kensington Palace.
 

The plates of Hill's volume are dense with illustrations of plants. The Biodiversity Heritage Library has digitized the Peter H. Raven Library of the Missouri Botanical Garden’s copy.

The allegorical frontispiece of Hill’s British herbal shows the Genius of Health receiving tributes. 

In modern medicine, there are at least 120 drugs derived from plants. Given this history of medicinal uses of the peony, I should not have been surprised that the roots and sometimes the seeds and petals of the herbaceous plant are still used in a long list of treatments, some proven, others unsupported. The peony as a supplement even warrants an entry in WebMD. Properties range from sedative, anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, anticoagulant, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory. It is used for hypertension, muscle cramps, fevers, female reproductive conditions, liver diseases, and skin care, much as it used to be.

It is fascinating to find what is old is new again and to glean recipes for sustenance and health from rare books. Natural remedies are of course desirable. I like ginger tea or cherry juice myself as a sleep aid and basil pesto is the elixir of life. And it’s fun to think of the peony as a drug along with the flower’s overwhelming popularity in the floral industry, the subject of countless Pinterest and Instagram posts and romantic association with ancient cottages and farmhouses. However, there may be considerable risks and side effects from using peonies for medical purposes, including seizures, hazardous interactions with other medications and the herb may be unsafe if taken during pregnancy. As some of the authors of the early herbals knew, great caution was needed in ascribing medicinal virtues to plants. Their power also includes poisonous qualities, threatening life.

To stay in very good health and spirits ˗ in the pink ˗ consult your health care provider before employing the peony in something other than a bouquet.

The author's gardens and photos

By Julia Blakely, Special Collections Cataloger, Smithsonian Libraries 
Leslie Overstreet and Diane Shaw helped with this post.

The tree peony arrived from China to Europe in 1787. The deciduous shrub, imported by Sir Joseph Banks, botanist and president of the Royal Society, was planted in Kew Gardens.