Reading Response: African American Material Culture

As this weeks readings attest to, figuring out how to study African American material culture first involves deciding what it means to label a person African American and what forms of material culture historians are studying. Traditional questions in the field revolve around whether or to what extent African American material culture is derived from Africa, the effects of slavery on African American material culture, and the development of folk crafts outside of Westernized markets.

Theodore Landsmark’s historiographical essay "Comments on African American Contributions to American Material Life" provides a decent summary of the scholarship of African American material culture. A point that Landsmark drives home when discussing future trends is the complexity of African American culture. Different circumstances and cultures in the north and south influenced the development of diverse material cultures that can all be called African American.

Jonathan Prown adapts this nuanced conception of what it means to be African American and how the influences material culture. In “The Furniture of Thomas Day” Prown investigate African American furniture maker Thomas Day. Day’s furniture has much in common with contemporary urban furniture making traditions, and it is tough for Prown to distinguish a distinct African American touch. Only with documentary sources Prown is able to string together a story that involves Day’s African American identity. 

In “Suckey’s Looking Glass: African Americans as Consumers,” Ann Martin analyzed store logs recording African American purchases, particularly the purchase of ribbon and a mirror by a slave named Suckey. Martin looks at how slaves interacted with the market, how they paid for their goods, and the types of things they bought. For Martin, the store is a particularly important place because it a metaphorical mirror of society. The things that slaves bought with what little money they had shows how they worked to foster an identity outside of slavery.

Both Martin and Prown partially based their search for African American meanings in material culture on the material in question having some connection with African traditions. For Prown it was if the form of the furniture had an African source. For Martin it was if the meaning of Suckey’s mirror had anything to do with African spiritualism. With limited success, both authors downplay this traditional perspective, instead highlighting how the material complicates what we think we know about African American culture.

For my forth article, I chose Debra Reid’s "Furniture Exempt from Seizure: African-American Farm Families and Their Property in Texas, 1880s-1930s." This article focuses on the material life of African American farmers. One aspect of this article that sets it apart is that it is from the perspective of agricultural history and considers material culture in a more expansive light than is typical. The material acquisitions of farm families included land and livestock in addition to furniture, equipment, and houses. Reid looks at how the laws and treatment of land-holding African American farmers affected the way that they acquired property, mostly in areas with poor soil far from rail lines, and how their material circumstances changed, such as transitioning from a hearth to cook stoves.

Reid’s article in not as nuanced as Martin’s or Prown’s, but she does get at an aspect of African American material culture history that I believe is part of the reason why these studies are so rare outside slavery studies. Reid discusses how in the 1920s and 1930s, especially with New Deal photography, the farms in question became symbols of poverty and an absence of material goods. Additionally, a farmer’s understanding of their property and material surrounding is specific to their circumstances. Perhaps, when Prown lamented not having analogous research to cite, what he really needed was analogous research that considers class and circumstances over ethnicity.

Readings

Landsmark, Theodore C. "Comments on African American Contributions to American Material Life." Winterthur Portfolio 33, no. 4 (1998): 261-282.

Martin, Ann Smart. “Suckey’s Looking Glass: African Americans as Consumers,” in Buying into the World of Goods: Early Consumers in Backcountry Virginia, 173-193. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2008.

Prown, Jonathan. "The Furniture of Thomas Day: A Reevaluation." Winterthur Portfolio 33, no. 4 (1998): 215-229.

Reid, Debra A. "Furniture Exempt from Seizure: African-American Farm Families and Their Property in Texas, 1880s-1930s." Agricultural History 80, no. 3 (2006): 336-357.

I was between a few articles for African American material culture. Ultimately I chose the one about agricultural history because it offers a different perspective of material culture than what we typically see. The other articles were:

Klassen, Pamela E. "The Robes of Womanhood: Dress and Authenticity among African American Methodist Women in the Nineteenth Century." Religion and American Culture 14, no. 1 (2004): 39-82.

Mullins, Paul R. "Race and the Genteel Consumer: Class and African-American Consumption, 1850-1930." Historical Archaeology 33, no. 1 (1999): 22-38.

Archives: Born Digital Sources

After doing this week’s readings and spending some time on Archive-It, I have been thinking about the complications of archiving born-digital content. Reacting to the popular view among historians that this type of preservation is the responsibility of archivists, in “Scarcity or Abundance?” Roy Rosenzweig advocates that historians become more aware of and involved in preserving digital content.

Rosenzweig has a point: historians will one day need to be using this content and it would benefit us to prepare. Thinking about what historical research of born digital content means is a more mind-bending reflection. Catherine O’Sullivan muses over the implications of blogs for the historical record. The public nature of blogs versus the private nature of their content creates an ethical question for archivists, namely, who can digitize these materials? Does the creator need to give permission to the archives or can the archives just preserve it? If the creator decided to delete their website forever, is that their right?

Both Rosenzweig and O’Sullivan agree that however digital content is preserved, it will likely not be a perfect record. Historians acknowledge that the record of the past is full of holes. Personally, I think the holes make history fun. Not knowing every detail about the past is what enables historians to interpret it.

My first impression of Archive-It is that much of the content is analogous to the type of content found in a paper archives, replete with holes. The websites captured do not include all links and only provide a glance at what the actual experience of being on the website was like. The grouping of collections reminds me of series in an archives. Learning how to deal with digital content involves an expansion of the skill sets that historians usually come with, but maybe if we found a way to teach historians that their larger methodologies are not so different when using digital materials they would be more willing to accept them.

Readings

O'Sullivan, Catherine. "Diaries, Online Diaries and the Future Loss to Archives; or, Blogs and the Blogging Bloggers Who Blog Them." American Archivist 68, no. 1 (2005).

Rosenzweig, Roy. “Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era,”

American Historical Review, Vol. 108, No. 3 (June 2003), pp. 735-762.

Exhibit Captions

Caption 1

This horn supposedly belonged to Edward Braddock, British General during the French and Indian War. Braddock died in battle after disregarding his colonial compatriots’ advice. Acquiring the horn, the Tempest family added the metal fixtures and their own names. In doing so this Philadelphia family connected themselves to the colonial period when Americans began developing an independent identity.

Caption 1 – Thoughts

For this caption, I wanted to get a sense of the larger, national narrative in which the Tempest Powder Horn fits. This caption relays the traditional interpretation of Braddock and the French and Indian War. The horn serves as a link between the family and the larger narrative. For visitors this mediation could be a way to think about the relationships between people and famous historical figures and begin a conversation about why these relationships exist. If the overall exhibit focuses on commemorating the founding of the new nation and we were organizing it by chronology of the event remembered, than this would be a potential label. The chronology in this case would go from the French and Indian War to the War of 1812.

Caption 2

In 1834, Robert Tempest added his name to a new silver band on this recently inherited powder horn. According to family legend, the horn belonged to British General Edward Braddock who died in the French and Indian War. By altering the horn Tempest family members claimed their place in the story of America’s colonial foundations.

Caption 2 – Thoughts

With this caption I wanted get a little more personal and use the experience of one Robert Tempest as a way to relate to the visitors. Often, families will have stories of objects that are meaningful, regardless of whether or not they are true. The feeling of inheriting one of these objects can be like owning a little bit of history. In this way visitors can access the object through an individual and understand commemoration by feeling what is like to think about family and personal histories. This caption leaves the horn’s history before the Tempests acquired it and its elaborate decorations as mysteries that the visitor can ponder if they wish. I imagine that this would be an appropriate label if we did the exhibit about how commemorating the founding of America comes from different sources. The powder horn, in this scenario, would be about families and individuals remembering personal histories in ways that thy feel are significant to the nation as a whole. Other object come from companies, clubs, and official organizations.

Caption 3

Robert Tempest acquired this powder horn in the 1750s and passed it to his son. Five generations of Tempests owned this horn, among them weavers, soldiers, and silversmiths. Reportedly belonging to notorious British General Edward Braddock in the French and Indian War, this horn became a canvas for one Philadelphia family to create their own legacy in the new American nation.

Caption 3 – Thoughts

This caption focuses on the Tempest family as a whole and the question of what it means that they continuously used and altered the powder horn. Like Caption 2, this caption relies on the visitor’s sense of family as an entry point for relating to the powder horn. The idea that the family tried to write out Braddock, commonly made out to be a fool in the historical record, and insert themselves could be a good conversation point for thinking about how different people can relate to past figures and events when they do not feel any connections. If the exhibit focused on how people use commemoration as a way to construct their histories than this caption would fit in.

Final Thoughts

A challenge I had with beginning to write these exhibit captions was deciding on a main subject and action. The horn has so many names on it and potentially all of these names tell a story. How to roll commemoration in with it and make sure that the writing is relevant to the mission of Independence Hall and the theme of building a new nation added more challenges. Doing this in fifty words is definitely more difficult, and took way more time, than I originally assumed.

To fit in with the mission of Independence Hall and the other artifacts I tried to use Braddock as a way to link the colonial period and the French and Indian War to the colonists beginning to view themselves as somehow independent from Britain. This connection in combination with the ways the Tempest’s engraved their own names on the horn provides a good platform to think about how people commemorate the founding of the nation. One thing that sets this particular artifact apart from the others is that specific individuals initiated the commemorating on the Tempest Powder Horn. Most of the artifacts were either mass produced, manufactured, purchased, or created for profit.

Each caption places the Tempests, Braddock, and commemoration in a particular relationship with slightly different connotations. Right now I like Caption 3 because it give a sense of the family and the generations that the horn lived through. Additionally, Caption 3 focuses on how, in addition to commemorating the colonial era, the alterations allowed the family to create a legacy. For thinking about commemoration, this type of active history making would be a useful conversation point.

Reading Response: Theory and Material Culture

This week’s readings tackled theory and material culture. While the writers use different aspects of material culture to link to theory, they all highlight the difficulty of theorizing things. Most theory focuses on abstract ideas whereas things are tangible. The benefit of these writings is that they can bring material culture studies to a wider academic audience.

Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” traces changes in art that resulted from technological innovations. As material culture studies, this piece is a great example of how different types of material culture affect one another and how society as a whole uses, reacts to, and develops alongside these changes. I admire Benjamin’s writing, in particular the way that he places his subject clearly within the present in which he wrote. Reproduction and questions of new technologies are as relevant today as they were in 1936. The themes of presenting and disseminating information and the blurry line between authorship and readership have particular importance for current cultural studies of the Internet.

Jean Baudrillard analyses the whole atmosphere of domestic spaces and interprets the symbolic meaning of the stuff within. This reading is more difficult to grasp than the others. Unlike Benjamin, who pinpointed the historic moment in which he wrote, Baudrillard is abstract and does not place himself in historical context. His theory of material culture ultimately highlights a constructivist perspective and looks for the ways people manipulate their surroundings to appear natural. This theory involves the scholar taking a more detached view a material than the other writings, which focus on material that is living.

Daniel Miller’s “Theories of Things” directly confronts the difficulties to theorizing about material culture and how humans relate to stuff. I am attracted to the framing theory. This theory acknowledges the stuff that humans interact with as being integral parts of daily life but also explains how these things become so normalized as to be invisible. This explanation of why stuff is sometimes invisible helps me understand why lots of theorists tend to disregard the material world. Miller’s idea that objects make people is also thought provoking and could relate to the Tempest Powder Horn because the horn’s owners (after the first) all grew up with the thing before it became theirs. In a sense, this approach gives agency to objects and takes it away from people.

Glenn Adamson’s “The Case of the Missing Footstool” focuses on how historians can use the gaps in the material record as ways to deepen historical interpretations. Adamson studied the footstool, common from the eighteenth century, but absent before. Adamson offers a few hypotheses, but the most effective is his nuanced interpretation of how the adoption of the footstool could represent a normalizing of exotic cultures.

I am not sure which approach best aides my interpretation of the Tempest Powder Horn. Despite its functional form, the horn is primarily decorative. I like Adamson’s method for looking at a classification of objects, but do not think it applies to the horn. Miller and Benjamin offer me the most. In terms of changing technologies, the horn’s meaning likely changed when guns were manufactured without the need for separate powder horns. This point in time may have helped determine why the horn was altered and revered in the later generations of the family.

Readings: 

Adamson, Glenn. “The Case of the Missing Footstool: Reading the Absent Object” in Karen Harvey, ed., History and Material Culture: A Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources. London and New York: Routledge, 2009.

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Hannah Arendt, ed., Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. New York: Schocken Books, 1969.

Baudrillard, Jean. “The Functional System, or Object Discourse,” in The System of Objects. London: Verso, 2005: 11-69.

Miller, Daniel. “Theories of Things,” in Stuff. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010: 54-78.

Archives: Archives and Education part 2

In response to this week’s readings about outreach, and the prompt on the syllabus, I took a look at the lesson plans from NARA’s Teachingwith Documents. The homepage is written for teachers and the material is separated into sections that easily align with chronological American history teaching sections. I clicked on ‘Expansionand Reform (1801-1868)’ and because I have recently spent time at APS, was drawn into 'The Lewis and Clark Expedition' lesson plan.

The main page of the lesson plan includes a short narrative of the Lewis and Clark Expedition followed by links to documents from the archives. On a sidebar are links to more resources, including the National History Standards that the lesson correlates to and more distinct teaching activities. The lesson plan emphasizes the Louisiana Purchase and Manifest Destiny. The website does not specify target ages, but this one seems to be most appropriate for high schools.

That the documents only include items from the National Archives highlights one of the limitations of this type of lesson plan. The Lewis and Clark journals, along with much of the expedition’s documentation are at the APS. This absence has little affect on the lesson plan, and to its credit it does list the printed copy of the journals as an additional resource. In terms of teaching students how to do research, it could be beneficial that the National Archives only has a limited selection of relevant documents because students can learn that finding an answer to a question involves looking in multiple places.

In terms of outreach, the lesson plans are effective. Making the lesson plans involve consulting with high school teachers, who wrote the narratives introducing the topics. Linking the plans with school standards also follow Rettig’s suggestion of capitalizing on what the target public already uses and needs. Now having looked at two different education sites, and visited a few more (DocsTeach from the National Archives may be a later post), I am only beginning to understand the scale and possibilities of this type of outreach.

Local History and the Tempest Powder Horn

The Tempest Powder Horn is engraved with the names of five Tempests: Robert Tempest, Robert Tempest II, Robert Tempest III, James R. Tempest, and Robert Tempest IV. In terms of physical location there are two places that stand out as being important to the Tempest’s story. The first is the land on the northwest corner of Fifth and Walnut. Currently this land is the park ground behind Independence Hall, formerly, the State House Yard. Before then it was the residence of Robert Tempest and family. The second important location is the Slate Roof House, or William Penn’s Mansion. When Robert Tempest IV donated the Tempest Powder Horn to the city he donated it along with the wainscoting from the Slate Roof House. The Slate Roof House was Robert Tempest III’s workplace for over fifty years. Both of these locations were demolished within the Tempest family's lifetime.

I went to both of these locations, initially to sketch them there, but being rained out, I ended up taking pictures. The pictures I printed on plain copy paper and transferred to velum drawing paper. I then drew ghost images of the buildings that have since disappeared. 

The first location I visited was the corner of Fifth and Walnut. 

Tempest House Ghost, northwest corner of Fifth and Walnut, park behind Independence Hall, mixed media

In April of 1743 Robert Tempest was a plush-weaver in Philadelphia who had recently moved his business to Strawberry Alley. A few months after moving shop, Robert Tempest married Rachel Hinds at Christ Church. Rachel’s father, Robert Hinds, worked as a bricklayer on the State House and later acquired two lots on the corner of Fifth and Walnut that backed up to the State House Wall. In 1746 Robert Hinds gifted these two lots, and the three houses he built on them, to his daughter and her husband. Rachel gave birth to their son, Robert Tempest II on Christmas day that year.[1]

In 1760 the Pennsylvania Assembly began the process of acquiring the lots that extended to Walnut Street and on the 10^th of September 1762, the Assembly trustees purchased the Tempest’s land for £1400. The Tempests continued to live at Fifth and Walnut, paying rent to the Assembly through 1764, the first date that appears on the horn and the year the year I suspect Robert Tempest passed away. By the 1770s the Pennsylvania assembly cleared the square around the State House, leaving no trace of the Tempest’s home.[2]

Close up view of the square around the State House (later Independence Square). The map on the left is from 1762. This map depicts buildings in the shaded regions. L is the State House, the thin line to the below of L is the State House Wall and the building on the corner of Fifth and Walnut (lower right of the square) is the Tempest’s home. Map created by Nicholas Scull. Source:  Philadelphia GeoHistory Network, http://www.philageohistory.org/rdic-images/view-image.cfm/FF-Maps_1762. The map on the right is from 1796 and depicts the square around the State House clear. Map created by John Hills. Source: Philadelphia GeoHistory Network, http://www.philageohistory.org/rdic-images/view-image.cfm/237-MP-019

Visiting this location today, the square looks as if it has always been an open park space. For the building that I drew I looked at a variety of colonial prints of Philadelphia. I chose simple, standard architectural features. I am guessing that the house is a double by deduction, but really I do not know what the building looked like. I do know that this location was the first home of the powder horn.

The second location I visited is the Welcome Park, formerly the site of the Slate Roof House.

Slate Roof House Ghost, currently Welcome Park, corner of 2nd and Sansom (formerly Norris Alley), mixed media

Robert Tempest III was the grandson of Robert Tempest. At 25 Robert Tempest III went into business as a jeweler and silversmith with Joseph Marshall. Marshal and Tempest set up shop in the Norris Alley wing of the Slate Roof House in 1813. They remained there until approximately 1865, when the house was no longer usable. It was demolished in 1867.[3]

Steroeview titled Slate roof house, 2nd &Sansom, photographed by John Moran in 1864. The bottom is a close up of the stereoview that shows a very faint sign for “Marshall and Tempest” above the doorway on the left wing of the building.Source: Free Library of Philadelphia Historic Images of Philadelphia Collection, libwww.freelibrary.org/hip/ecw.cfm?ItemID=pdc100025

In addition to being a craftsman Robert Tempest III was an active volunteer with the Hibernia Fire Engine Company, eventually becoming President of that organization in 1851, and was a Director of the Union Burial Ground Society in Southwark. Both Robert Tempest III and the first Robert Tempest were craftsmen who also dedicated their time to the city, one as a constable, and the other as a fireman. For Robert Tempest III, the powder horn that his family owned since colonial times was an important link to the past and to his grandfather. I believe that Robert Tempest III was responsible for engraving the names of his father and grandfather along with their death dates, the newer silver and brass modifications to the horn, and for continuing the tradition by engraving it for his son, James. The yearning to hold tightly to a vision of Philadelphia that was quickly fading could have been the catalyst for Robert Tempest III to modify the horn and directly connect himself to a colonial past. That Robert Tempest III’s business occupied the former residence of William Penn further displays the desire to connect with the past.[4]

The Welcome Park today is a quiet, lonely feeling open square. There is a historical narrative along the south wall of the park relaying William Penn's story, but very little afterward. For my ghost house I used later images of the house after different additions had been made in the nineteenth century instead of the model version in the middle of the park. My main reference image was from 1854, courtesy of the Library Company found here.

Though the destruction of both of these places destroyed important pieces of the Tempest's family history, neither was premature. The first Robert Tempest had passed away before the assembly cleared his home. Robert Tempest III was 78 and no longer working at the time the Slate Roof House was demolished. Once Robert Tempest III modified the horn, he established a precedent for succeeding generation to do the same. Robert Tempest IV inherited the horn after his father James Tempest passed away suddenly.  In 1899, Robert Tempest IV broke the precedent and gifted the horn to the city. By 1907 he had left Philadelphia altogether. Why Robert Tempest IV left the city, breaking the family’s connection to local history is another chapter in the story of the Tempest Powder Horn.

Notes:

[1] For Robert Tempest's occupation and location see The Pennsylvania Gazette, April 21, 1743, page 4; For marriage documents see Pennsylvania Archives, Series 2, Volume VIII, Marriage Record of Christ Church, Philadelphia.1709-1806, 133; for information about their home at Fifth and Walnut see Charles H. Browning, “The State House Yard, and Who Owned it First after William Penn,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 40, no. 1 (1916): 85-103.

[2] For purchase of land see Browning, 101; For rent documents see Pennsylvania Archives, Series 8, Volume VII, Votes of Assembly 1767, 6047; also see Charlene Mires, Independence Hall in American Memory (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 10.

[3] Westcott, Thompson, The Historic Mansions and Buildings of Philadelphia: With Some Notice of Their Owners and Occupants (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1877) for Slate Roof House see 37-55, for Tempest see 55. http://books.google.com/books?id=PTUWAAAAYAAJ&pg

[4] For involvement in Union Burial Ground Society see Public Ledger, December 8, 1842, page 2. For involvement with Hibernia Fire Engine Company see “City Items,” North American, February 24, 1851, page 1.

Reading Response: Independence Hall

Charlene Mires’ Independence Hall in American Memory tells a holistic history of Independence Hall. Mires stated, “If we organize history around buildings, the past we perceive may be limited by the boundaries that we establish.” (Mires, 55) The current historical interpretation of Independence Hall is specific to the American Revolution and Revolutionary ideology represented in documents such as the Declaration of Independence. Mires argues that Independence Hall’s whole history has shaped out memory of it and determined the things that we have forgotten.

The first third of the book was a little slow for me. Mires uses a lot of space pointing out ironies and contradictions between the popular vision of American Revolutionary ideals and the history. As a reader, I do not react well to an author telling me that something is surprising when the surprise is based on an assumption that I only believe in the most simplified, glorious version of the American Revolution. I would rather the author just tell me the history and let my surprise come naturally. Thankfully, Mires did this once she got beyond the revolution and delved more into the memory and interpretation of Independence Hall. Mires told this part of the story in such a way as to place the current popular interpretation of Independence Hall within context. Studying memory, it may have been easier and more natural for Mires to write the story after the Revolution, the prime focus of memory around the site, than to write about the earlier history.

One of the most effective aspects Mires’ story begins with Chapter 4, “Shrine: Slavery, Nativism, and the Forgotten History of the Nineteenth Century.” In this chapter, Mires begins the story of how Philadelphians used Independence Hall (and later mostly the liberty bell) as a place to support their personal view of freedom and liberty. The people that used Independence Hall included nationalists, labor workers, European immigrants, and African Americans. Late in the nineteenth century, after the centennial, the vision of Independence Hall became dominated by idealist interpretations of the Revolution and nation’s founding. This transition, that shows active changes in interpretations, adds the depth to the story that Mires set about to tell.

The other part of the book that caught my interest, and is relevant to our class project, is Mires’ account of the development of the museum at Independence Hall. Robert Tempest IV gave the Tempest Powder Horn to Independence Hall at this time. The background to the collection the Mires gives is very useful for putting Tempest IV’s gift in context.  

All in all, despite the rocky beginning, this book contains a lot of thought provoking history. For our upcoming visit to Independence Hall, the variety of activity that has gone into thinking about the meaning of this building since Lafayette’s visit in 1826 will put the current interpretation into a wider perspective.

Reading

Mires, Charlene. Independence Hall in American Memory. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.