Over There, Over Everywhere: The Aero Service Collection at the Library Company of Philadelphia

Street of Blondefontaine- Dec. 26-1918. Gelatin silver photograph. Library Company of Philadelphia

The following post is by guest blogger Carl H. Winnefeld, Jr. who is mining our Aero Service Collection looking for photographs of company personnel and aircraft.  A former Aero Service employee, Winnefeld and colleagues are compiling this information for a website and potential future publication. Winnefeld stumbled upon the above photograph inspiring him to write the blog post below. The blog post was originally written for the World War One blog, Home Before the Leaves Fall. The Home Before the Leaves Fall website is an initiative of multiple cultural institutions in the Delaware Valley to digitize and make available their holdings related to World War One.  The Library Company’s World War One collection can be found on ImPAC, the Library Company’s digital collections catalog, with the collection broken down into two sub-categories: World War One Posters and Photographs and Ephemera.  In addition, a selection of World War One posters appear on Flickr.

The Aero Service Collection of the Library Company of Philadelphia contains material (primarily photographic images) acquired by the Aero Service Corporation and its president, Virgil Kauffman over a 40 year time frame. Aero Service was founded in Philadelphia in 1919 as Pennsylvania Aero Service and remained based in Philadelphia until 1973 when it relocated to Houston, Texas. The company operated on a worldwide basis.  Its primary business was aerial photography, photogrammetry (the use of photography in surveying and mapping to measure distances between objects), and remote sensing using an airborne magnetometer. In 1934 Aero Service worked with the Tennessee Valley Authority to map areas where the TVA was responsible for developing watershed resources. In 1947 Aero Service flew one of the first large airborne magnetometer surveys using Shoran navigation control over the Bahamas.

Jules Schick Photography, Virgil Kauffman, gelatin silver photograph, March 18, 1958. Library Company of Philadelphia

The Aero Service Corporation’s longtime president Virgil Kauffman (portrait above) was born in Yardley Pennsylvania in 1898. With the onset of World War I, Kauffman was assigned to the Corps of Engineers Photography School. The Army Air Corps utilized aerial photography for intelligence during the war and Kauffman was assigned to participate in the aerial reconnaissance missions, making this his introduction to aerial photography. After the war, he joined Aero Service in 1924 and directed the company from 1927 to 1961. His contributions to the scientific and technical world were wide ranging and significant. In 1966 he funded the Virgil Kauffman Gold Medal to be awarded by the Society of Exploration Geophysicists for outstanding contribution in geophysical exploration.  Kauffman was associated with the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford University from 1961 to 1985. Virgil Kauffman passed away in 1985.

The first image above shows the village of Blondefontaine, France in the winter of 1918 immediately after the war. Blondefontaine is located 285 kilometers. southeast of Paris. The village today looks very much as it did in 1918. The image below is a description of the scene written by Virgil Kauffman. The photograph provides a view of just how grim it must have been during the war years in France.

Verso of Street of Blondefontaine- Dec. 26-1918. Library Company of Philadelphia

Carl H. Winnefeld, Jr.

Guest Blogger for the Library Company of Philadelphia

Word Pictures

The Morris Collection keeps on growing!  David Marriott Morris, Eleanor Rhoads Morris Cox and William Perot Morris recently added to the Library Company’s holdings of over 1600 of their grandfather’s photographs with a gift of travel journals by Marriott C. Morris and his daughter Jane as well as copies of letters written by Morris while attending Haverford College.

The letters, written by Morris between 1881 and 1885 to his mother Martha Canby Morris, reveal a bit of the young photographer’s personality.  Even from this relatively small sampling, the frequency with which the letters were sent and the affection they contained show a son devoted to his mother.  Morris’ familial dedication also extended to his sister Bess, for whom he often expressed concern and inquired after.  The letters also reveal a scholar who was serious about his studies – but not too serious.  Morris described his classes and lectures in a generally positive way, except for the subject of Trigonometry, which seems to have been a thorn in his side.  He expressed his distaste for the subject with a dash of dry humor in a letter written on November 9, 1883.  He wrote to his mother, “You little thought when you were comfortably seated at dinner yesterday that I was undergoing the horrors of that Trigonometry examination.  Yet it was even so.”  When he wasn't suffering through Trigonometry, Morris engaged in a variety of social activities with a large group of friends, including George Vaux, another member of a prominent Philadelphia Quaker family.  Morris’ letters described football games, dinner parties, sledding, and an intricate telegraph project conducted with Vaux.

Marriott C. Morris, Friend’s Library from girls door of school house, 1883

Even in these letters from his early Haverford days, Morris’ passion for photography is clear.  Morris frequently mentioned both finished prints and his photographic process when writing to his mother.  In a letter from October 25, 1883 Morris asked his mother to bring him two photographs he had mounted earlier that fall to decorate his room.  He remembered that one of the photographs depicted the library, but could not remember the subject of the other photograph, which was taken at the same time.

By matching the date of the letter with photographs in the Morris Collection, it is possible that the unknown second photograph could have been of the Morris family’s old house, Soldier’s Monument or the Quaker meeting house, all located in Germantown. 

A few months later, Morris wrote to his mother about some photographs he had taken with his friend George Vaux.  He called these photographs of the “fellows” and the class of ’87 “the best groups I have ever tried.”  Morris was proud of these photographs but also profited from them.  He told his mother that he planned to charge 20 cents per print and already had some orders. 

However, in this same letter Morris expressed frustration with his more recent photographs.  He wrote that he was trying out some new plates and had not yet perfected their use.  Similarly, in a letter from March 14, 1884 Morris wrote a long entry about his recent experimentation with a new wide angle lens.  Regardless of Martha Canby Morris’ comprehension or interest in the minute details of her son’s photographic practice, these surprisingly technical missives reveal Morris in the act of finding his way as a photographer and the genesis of his project to document his experiences and environment. 

Marriott C. Morris, “German Class” T.W.R., C.W.B., J.J.B., & L.L.S., 1883

The knowledge gained from these letters and journals enhances our understanding of Morris’ life and adds yet another layer of depth and complexity to the Marriott C. Morris Photograph Collection.

Alison Van Denend

Assistant Project Manager

The Marriott C. Morris Photograph Collection

Ethiopian Bookbinding at the Library Company

Over the weekend of October 25^th and 26^th, the Library Company was the host site for a workshop on Ethiopian Bookbinding that was sponsored by the Delaware Valley Chapter of the Guild of Book Workers.  The Library Company conservators are all members or officers of the chapter and have organized a number of guild events over the years.  Ten students attended the workshop, which was taught by Bill Hanscom, a conservation technician for special collections at Harvard Library.  Bill has been researching Ethiopian bookbinding for a while and is currently writing an essay to be published in the next volume of Suave Mechanicals: Essays on the History of Bookbinding. 

At the beginning of the workshop, Bill showed images of Ethiopian bindings and explained the typical features.  Amazingly, many of the features have not changed for more than 1400 years.  He showed some videos of the books being made in a marketplace in Ethiopia. In one video, a man was squatting and working on the ground, applying paste to the covering leather with his hand.  Next, our group examined two Ethiopian bindings owned by the Library Company, one rather large and grand and the other very modest, almost primitive.  In the past, I always thought they were interesting bindings. But now that I knew more about how they were made and could identify the various features, I looked at them with new eyes!  It was very helpful for everyone to be able to examine authentic examples. 

Then we started working on our own historically accurate models. We shaped and pierced wooden boards.  We made sewing “thread” buy cutting a thin spiral out of a circle of parchment, and then moistening and twisting it into one long strand.  Most of us made three books, one covered in leather, one with a cloth wrapper called a “lebas,” and one with a parchment spine. 

Today, Ethiopian bindings are still made with only a few tools.  Unlike the man in the video, we worked sitting at tables, but tried to follow his technique otherwise.  For me, it is always inspirational to make a historical model. I try to imagine how various binding features evolved over time and to consider their purpose.  Was it structure, decoration, or tradition?  In many cases it could be all three.  But the most important thing is that it helps me know what I am looking at and what is important when I approach a binding in my work as a conservator.

Jennifer Rosner

Chief of Conservation

Two “van”-Tastic Persons

LCP’s Print Department boasts a collection of some 4000 printed portraits, stored within 52 archival boxes, ranging from Augustus H. Abbott to Ulrich Zwingli. Needless to say, entering all of these priceless items into the LCP database presents a daunting challenge, and encompasses an enormous number of man- (and woman-) hours!

The following are very brief biographies of several of the interesting individuals who reside within the portrait collection.

G. Parker, engraver after a miniature by C. Fraser, Stephen Van Rensselaer, engraving, ca. 1836.

This handsome gentleman, Stephen van Rensselaer (1764-1839), was born with multiple silver spoons in his mouth. The Dutch had awarded his ancestors a huge land grant in upstate New York, and Stephen had thrived within his vast rich family environment. He graduated from Harvard College in 1782. The following year, on his twenty-first birthday, he became lord of his family’s estate, which comprised almost 1200 square miles. As heir to this enormous estate, he was deemed the tenth richest American of all time, having amassed a fortune of $10 million (which was equivalent to 1/194 of the entire nation’s gross domestic product!). As a politician, he was elected Lieutenant Governor of New York from 1795 until 1801. He served in the House of Representatives from 1822 to 1829. As a less-than-stellar military figure, he was a commander during the War of 1812.

His outstanding contribution, however, was the establishment of the Rensselaer School, now known as the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute “for the purpose of instructing persons, who may choose to apply themselves, in the application of science to the common purposes of life”.

I. A. Van Amburgh, woodcut, ca. 1850.

Isaac A. Van Amburgh (1811-1865) was another New Yorker, but one not initially privy to such great wealth. At age nineteen, he was employed as a cage cleaner at North Salem’s Zoological Institute of New York. His boss noted that Isaac showed great aptitude in handling the wild animals while performing his menial cage duties. After spending a winter training his ferocious felines, Isaac –a true showman- made his New York debut in the Van Amburgh Menagerie, dazzlingly wrapped in a Roman toga. The crowd was amazed at his ability to make his cats sit still and then come to him on command. They were even more flabbergasted when he stuck his arm, and then his head, inside a lion’s mouth.

In truth, van Amburgh utilized one of the oldest training methods to “tame” his animals: cruelty, beatings and starvation, inhumane even by nineteenth century standards.  Suffering a fatal heart attack in 1865, van Amburgh died a wealthy man, not between the jaws of one of his lions, but within the confines of his own bed.

Gus Spector

LCP Volunteer

Reconstructing Fragments of African American Life

The Library Company’s next major exhibition, The Genius of Freedom: Northern Black Activism and Uplift after the Civil War, will be on display from November 11, 2014, through June 26, 2015. One of the more unusual items in the exhibition is a mailer tube which held a Children’s Day lithograph published by the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Sunday School Union in Nashville. Copyrighted in 1891, the print commemorates the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the Sunday School Union, the publishing arm of the A.M.E. Church. Depicted are portraits of Charles S. Smith, the Union’s founder, and four regional queens of Children’s Day, an annual fundraiser when small donations were collected from Sunday school students. 

A rare piece of historical ephemera, the mailer tube’s label records the name and address of the lithograph’s purchaser, Absalom Arter of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, providing a glimpse into the A.M.E. Sunday School Union’s customer base in the North. 

Little is known about Absalom Arter’s early life. The records that document that he was born in Charles Town, Virginia (later West Virginia), on December 25, 1839, do not indicate whether he was enslaved or free. By 1863, he was in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, where he enlisted as a private in Company H of the 22nd Regiment of the U.S. Colored Infantry. He served for the duration of the Civil War, mustering out on October 16, 1865.

After the war, Absalom made a living as a day laborer and gardener. He and his family moved often from city to city in central and western Pennsylvania, perhaps in search of steady work. It is notable that, despite their frequent moves, the Arters usually settled in a town or city close to an A.M.E. or an A.M.E. Zion church. In 1880, he and his wife Henrietta (in either his first or second marriage) lived with their four children, Harriet, Laton, Charles, and Anna in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. A November 22, 1884, article in the African American newspaper The State Journal noted that a Miss Hetty Arter (possibly Absalom’s fourteen-year-old daughter Harriet) had won a gold necklace as a prize for her performance in a fundraising concert at Shippensburg’s Wesley A.M.E. Zion Church.

By 1887, Absalom was living in Carlisle, where he married his third wife, Nancy Ellen Plecker, around 1892. Like Absalom’s previous wife Henrietta, Nancy did not work outside of the home. Between 1892 and 1909, Absalom and Nancy had ten children, three of whom died at an early age. Charles and Anna, the two youngest children from his previous marriage, may also have lived in the household until they reached adulthood. It was here in Carlisle that the A.M.E. Sunday School Union lithograph was sent. Solely dependent upon Absalom’s wages, the growing family was not wealthy and probably lived in tight quarters at 59 West Chapel Street. Regardless of a family’s income, a print such as this typically would be displayed in the main living room as a religious and social symbol of racial progress.

The Arters lived on West Chapel Street, between Pitt and Hanover Streets. As pictured on this map, a Bethel A.M.E. church is only a block and a half away at the corner of West Chapel and West Streets. Map of Carlisle from Atlas of Cumberland Co., Pennsylvania (New York: P.W. Beers, 1872).

According to city directories and federal censuses, Absalom probably continued working well into his seventies. Although all of the Arters’ children were literate and had attended school, when they reached adulthood, they too found work in domestic service or manual labor occupations, ranging from maids and laborers to porters and molders. The reasons for their employment choices are likely complex but may have been due to a combination of racial prejudice, economic pressures to earn money rather pursue advanced education, limited employment options, and lack of access to professional training. A December 3, 1891, article in The Christian Recorder observed that African Americans were completely shut out of employment opportunities in the thriving manufacturing sector of central Pennsylvania.

In 1922, for the first time, the Arters settled in a town without an A.M.E. church or a substantial African American population when they moved to Cambridge Springs, a resort town in Crawford County, Pennsylvania. A decade earlier, the Pennsylvania Negro Business Directory, 1910 had noted that the town’s only African American residents were a restaurant proprietor and his wife. In 1920, the entire county of Crawford contained approximately 700 African Americans out of 60,000 residents, suggesting that blacks were still a tiny minority in Cambridge Springs when the Arters arrived. A year following the move Absalom died. Nancy lived with her daughter Mary in Cambridge Springs until her death in 1962, likely supported by Mary’s wages from domestic service and Absalom’s veteran’s pension.

Many gaps remain about the Arters’ aspirations, motivations, and struggles. Nevertheless, as a material artifact of their existence, this print and its mailer tube help to flesh out the lives of a working-class Northern black family in the late 19th century.

Krystal Appiah

Exhibition Curator and

Curator of African American History

Negative/Positive

The way we experience photographs today is very different from the way people experienced them 120 years ago.  We press the shutter on our digital cameras without concern; if the photograph doesn’t turn out it can easily be deleted.  We load photographs onto our computers, edit them on a screen, and share them online.  Our photographs stay in a digital world, existing as pixels rather than prints or plates. 

It is easy to forget that the photograph can also be an object rather than just an image.  The photographs in the Marriott C. Morris Collection serve as a reminder of the simultaneous fragility and durability, tactility and “thing-ness” that photographs can have.

         

Marriott C. Morris, Old Swede’s Church Wilmington. From 6^th St. Snow on Ground. 1883.

Many of the photographs in the Marriott C. Morris Collection come in the form of glass negatives.  The thin glass plates are all stored individually in acid-free sleeves and organized into boxes.  They must be handled with gloves so that fingerprints and oils from the skin do not damage the plates.  Unless they are held up to the light, the image on the plate is often difficult to discern in the hazy film of emulsion.  With the use of a lightbox, the image appears in negative form.  What we think should be dark is light and vice versa.  For example, in this image of Old Swede’s Church the snow on the roof and cemetery grounds appears black in the negative.  Similarly, the ghostly white tendrils in the negative become bare, black tree branches in the positive image.

                             

Marriott C. Morris, Elliston P. Morris, ca. 1890.

The negatives of people are especially arresting, their faces emerging like ghosts from the lightbox.  While haunting, these negatives hide details about the sitter that only emerge when the positive image is created.  Marriott C. Morris’ father Elliston P. Morris’ kind eyes are obscured in the negative version of his portrait but gaze out warmly from the positive image.

Marriott C. Morris, detail on negative of Elliston P. Morris, ca. 1890.

Negatives hide things but also reveal them.  For example, in the negative view of Morris’ portrait the emulsion has been burnished around the face and small scratches made to emphasize areas of light and create shadow.  This shows Marriott C. Morris’ hand not only in taking the photograph, but also the refinement of the negative, the physical act of dragging metal across glass.  The process of digitizing the Marriott C. Morris Collection is a very important one.  However, we must not forget the original form of these photographs as glass negatives, both mystery and revelation, both object and image.

Alison Van Denend

Assistant Project Manager

The Marriott C. Morris Photograph Collection

“Ghosts Everywhere, and of Every Color”: Spectral Visions at the Library Company

The catalog entry for Spectropia; or, Surprising Spectral Illusions (New York, 1864) piqued the interest of Library Company Fellow Jessica Linker, who is researching women science practitioners in early America. Upon examination, she discovered it to be a peculiar mix of scientific didacticism and spooky entertainment.

“It is a curious fact that, in this age of scientific research, the absurd follies of spiritualism should find an increase of supporters…” lamented J. H. Brown, writing in 1864. Decrying popular belief in spirit-rapping, table-turning, and witchcraft, Brown warned his readers to be wary of practitioners of the supernatural, insisting the “modern professor of these impostures, like his predecessors in all such disreputable arts, is bent only on raising the contents of pockets of the most gullible portion of humanity…” Surely this was sound advice, but perhaps not what one expected of a book that promised to show “ghosts everywhere, and of every color.”

Spectropia; or, Surprising Spectral Illusions was in fact an amusing series of optical illusions that depended upon afterimage, a phenomenon where an image lingers in one’s field of vision. You have likely experienced afterimage before; perhaps, despite your parents’ admonitions, you have glanced at the sun long enough to see blue or purple spots floating through the air upon looking away. Spectropia operates on a similar principle. The book contains sixteen color plates of various ghosts and spectres that, if stared at, would seemingly dance before the reader’s eyes in colors complementary to the original image.

The plates are accompanied by a detailed explanation of both afterimage and color inversion. Brown guides his readers through the function and structure of the human eye, as well as color theory, making what would otherwise be a novelty into something didactic. Why? The author’s ultimate aim was to combat superstition by demonstrating that so-called apparitions had logical explanations, all the while entertaining his audience. In this context, the act of seeing spectres was transformed into a scientific demonstration that robbed would-be charlatans of their power to beguile innocent minds.

If you would like to view the illusion yourself, simply follow these instructions.

1. In each image, locate the asterisk (*).
2. In a well-lit room, focus your eyes on the asterisk while counting to 20. Be careful not to blink or look away. The closer you are to your image, the larger the illusion will appear.
3. Stare at a white piece of paper or wall. You should see the shape of the spectre floating before your eyes. Red spectres on paper will appear green in the air, blue will appear orange, and so on, according to the original color and its complement.

Jessica Linker

Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of Connecticut

Albert M. Greenfield Foundation Dissertation Fellow at the Library Company

The Marriott C. Morris Photograph Collection

Marriott C. Morris, J.R.M. [Jane Rhoads Morris] & baby, ca. 1900.

A young woman leans against a painted brick wall, her back straight and her hair dark hair pulled into a knot at the top of her head.  She holds a baby in her arms wrapped snugly in a knitted blanket. The baby’s left hand is a blur of motion; despite his calm expression he was unable to keep still for the photograph. Who was this woman with the timid smile?  And who was this chubby cheeked child?

We know who this woman was partly because her husband, Marriott C. Morris, decided to take her photograph.  Her name was Jane Rhoads Morris and the baby is probably one of her sons, Elliston Perot Morris or Marriott C. Morris Jr.  She married Morris in 1897, but her husband had been taking photographs long before then.  

Marriott C. Morris, Family group at back porch of 4782 Main St. Father, Bess, Hannah, Mother, Aunt Lydia, Uncle Charles Rhoads, Auntie Beulah. Geo. S. Morris & Catherine Harman, 1889.

Marriott C. Morris was a member of a prominent Philadelphia Quaker family who took his first photographs during his freshman year at Haverford College.  Morris continued to document his life through photographs of his large extended family and network of friends, his Germantown neighborhood and his many travels across the East Coast and even Bermuda.  One of his favorite subjects was the Morris family home Avocado, located in Sea Girt, New Jersey. 

Marriott C. Morris, [Front view of Avocado with two women sitting on the porch, Sea Girt, NJ], ca. 1900.

Marriott C. Morris, [View of Victorian decorated parlor, possibly Avocado at Sea Girt], ca. 1900.

  

Thanks to a generous donation made by Marriott C. Morris’s grandchildren David Marriott Morris, Eleanor Rhoads Morris Cox and William Perot Morris in memory of Marriott Canby Morris, the Library Company will be able to share these photographs with a wide audience.  Through a process of research, digitization and publication, people will be able to experience these photographs through the Library Company’s blog, twitter feed and an upcoming online exhibition.  As the Assistant Project Manager for this collection it is my hope that these photographs will not be seen simply as images of nameless faces but as a record of lives well lived, as a capsule of what Morris loved and wanted to remember.  Even more, these photographs provide  a window into the past, a snapshot of a time and a place, that give us a glimpse of everyday life in late 19th century Philadelphia.  There is a lot to learn from these photographs and I’m excited to share the Marriott C. Morris Photograph Collection with you.

Alison Van Denend

Assistant Project Manager

Marriott C. Morris Photograph Collection