Magician of the Week #24: Bruce

Probably should have saved this for Hannukah.

 

 

 

More Transcription

If the George Turner letters mentioned yesterday aren’t enough for you, you can now also read the text of a 19th-century whaler who abandoned his ship.

Back in February we had a visit from some Fulbright scholars who began the process of transcribing the Daniel Mowry letters in our Nicholson Whaling Manuscripts Collection. We haven’t yet had a chance to digitize the letters, but we wanted to make the transcriptions available, and you can now find the text of all of them on one page. These are some pretty illuminating letters telling a great story.

Civil Warrior of the Week #15 (Special Edition): George Turner

The image above is a sketch from a letter written by George Turner, a Rhode Island Civil War soldier whose correspondence has recently been scanned and transcribed by URI student Michaela Keating. The online collection (available here) includes nearly 200 letters, mostly sent by Turner to his parents at home in Rhode Island, dating from 1861 to 1864. Taken together they offer an evolving portrait of one soldier’s daily life over the years of the war and his developing attitudes toward race, the South and the purpose of the war.

Turner wrote the letter from which the image above was taken in December of 1861, not long after the Union capture of Fort Wells in Hilton Head, South Carolina, where Turner spent the majority of his time during the war. In the letter, Turner describes his entry into the fort and the circumstances of his drawing:

Soon after entering the Fort we were allowed to stroll around and look about. And during my stroll I cam across a gun carriage that was completely smashed up and while I was looking at it I picked up picked up part of a man’s ear and some teeth and while looking at it come to conclusion that this man had changed his southern views and gone to another land. And now that I think of it of will give you another drawing [sketch of two figures in a tent with "Traveller's Rest" written on the side of the tent] The picture which I bring before your view this time represents your humble servant writing a letter to his Rhode Island friends while one of his mess mates lays on the ground smoking. The name which you see marked on the tent is marked with a led pencil. But I pity the poor fellow who comes there for rest if he does not belong there. Now I have lived in just such a house as you see just four months on the 20th this month, and during that that time I have not taken off my pants olny when I change my under clothes or to wash all over. And I am just as tuff as a birch I am fat rugged and saucy. I can swallow a roast turkey at one gullup. Yesterday we had the first white bread we have had since the 23 day of Oct and when we got our loaf we went about looking at it like so many boys with a new year’s present. But after a while we came to the conclusion to eat it and the way it went down my illustrious gullet was a caution to lookers on.

The letter is typical in its attention to the daily details of camp life. Also typical is the discussion that takes place just prior to this excerpt in which Turner displays antagonism toward the “contraband” freed slaves present at the fort. It’s a theme that develops throughout the course of Turner’s letters, as he grows to despise the former slaves he feels are being better treated than the soldiers.

For more information about the George Turner correspondence, visit our online exhibition, which provides background information about Turner and some of the major themes of his letters. And visit the digital collection to read the letters yourself. As of now over 100 letters have been transcribed, with more to come. And if you’d like to take part and try transcribing some of the letters yourself, just click the “Transcribe this item” link at the bottom of an item and then click the “edit” button.

(If you’re interested in Turner you might also want to check out the Summer/Fall 2012 issue of Rhode Island History (vol. 70.2), which features an article by Kirsten Hammerstrom on Turner titled “Souvenirs of War” (pp. 74-86).

Historic Book Person of the Week #20: Abel Roper and Edward King

This is a very strange portrait. It depicts two individuals (off-center and not filling the frame): Abel Roper (who published a newspaper called the Post Boy starting in 1695) and his nephew and assistant Edward King. Roper’s publications tended to make people angry (apparently angry enough to pull off his wig and beat him).

The curious emblem at the bottom of the print depicts a pillory and what appears to be another form of punishment device (leave a note in the comments if you know its proper name) with pages nailed to the bars. And the motto (“Nec lex est justior ulla”) is an abbreviated and modified form of a passage by Ovid that translates as “There is no law more just than that the plotters of death should perish by their own designs.” Often connected in biblical commentaries with Haman’s execution on the gallows he had originally built for his enemies, the lines point to the irony of being destroyed by your own schemes. Used here, beneath the portrait of a man well-known for using print as a political weapon, is it an indication that this was a hostile depiction?

 

Meteorological Innovation that Matters

Congratulations to OldWeather.org for winning the 2012 IBM Award for Meteorological Innovation that Matters. Stay tuned for more information soon about PPL logbooks on the site.

Magician of the Week #24: J. Elder Blackledge

Demonstrating the magic of the soft focus photograph.

From the cover of Genii magazine, August 1940:

Collecting RI Broadsides Lecture

If you’re looking for bibliophilic events this week, Thursday is all set. Russell DeSimone will be offering a talk on his years of collecting broadsides, with lots of illustrations from his own extensive collection.

The event will take place at the John Carter Brown Library, starting at 5:30 PM. Refreshments will be provided.

Visit www.facebook.com/bartlettsociety/events for more information.

 

Digitization Challenges

If you think digitization is an easy process, check out the latest post at Brown University’s Curio blog, which discusses the procedure they undertook to digitize our very unusual medieval hieroglyphic bible.

Historic Book Person of the Week #19: Georg Sigmund or Johann Gottlieb Facius

Cue the pipe organ.

The brothers Georg and Johann were engravers working in London in the late 18th and early 19 centuries. A little research could probably determine which of the two is depicted here, so if you have any guesses, please leave them in the comments.

 

Not Really A Portrait, But Close Enough #2: St. Patty’s Day Edition

In honor of the upcoming holiday, here’s the cover of a piece of sheet music intended for use in a St. Patrick’s Day parade:

I have a feeling a few people might look a bit like these two on the day after the parade.

(This item can be found in our Williams & Potter Collection on Irish Culture, in case you’d like to celebrate the holiday in a primary-source kind of way.)