Posted in Filson Favorites on 09/01/2009 04:50 pm by Robin Wallace
From time to time, a Filson staff member will share some of his or her favorite things about the society’s collections. Today, Robin Wallace, Associate Curator of Special Collections, writes about one of her favorite images from The Filson’s photograph collection.
Miss Rings and Miss Reticules
The Daguerreotype is one of the earliest and most striking photographic processes; the Filson Historical Society’s photograph collection contains over fifty Daguerreotypes. While several persons of note are featured within our collection, such as Amos Kendall (a member of Andrew Jackson’s cabinet and Postmaster General in 1835), there are also many Daguerreotypes of persons of a less exalted nature. These images offer an interesting look into the lives of our ancestors, providing information about social standing, costume and family relationships.
- Martha Johnson and Eliza Woolfolk Johnson Johnston
An inscription on the back of a daguerreotype of Eliza Woolfolk Johnson Johnston (wife of Col. Josiah Stoddard Johnston: Civil War officer, politician and author of A Memorial History of Louisville), and her younger sister Martha Johnson, demonstrates the wit and charm so often concealed behind the stiff posture and solemn faces of early photographic subjects: “Miss Rings and Miss Reticules/ The latter the common puppet & source of ridicule for the family- particularly for J. Stoddard Johnston- July 3rd 1862.”
Perhaps “Miss Rings” and “Miss Reticules” (a reticule is a woman’s draw-string bag or purse, popular in the nineteenth century) are names that refer to the Johnson family women’s love of shopping!
Posted in Filson Favorites on 07/15/2009 03:36 pm by Jonathon Free
From time to time, a Filson staff member will share some of his or her favorite things about the society’s collections. Today, Special Collections Intern Jonathon Free writes about his favorite subject heading from the card catalog.
Sailors — Relations with women
When a collection is being processed in the Special Collections department, one of the last steps is to create cards for the card catalog. The ultimate goal is to use the Library of Congress’s guidelines for cataloging to create a number of subject cards that accurately represent the collection and that will help guide researchers to information they may find useful. Constructing a proper collection of catalog cards is often one of the most challenging and enjoyable parts of processing a collection.
S.I.M. Major (second from left) was extremely popular, especially with members of the fairer sex.
The S.I.M. Major papers presented an especially interesting challenge. The collection, which consists primarily of personal correspondence from Major’s time in the U.S. Navy, revealed a multifaceted and extremely interesting life. By surveying the collection, one comes to the conclusion that Major was a smart, brave, sophisticated, and especially talented man. He served his country during three wars (the Spanish-American War, Philippine-American War, and as the naval attache to the U.S. embassy in France at the outset of World War I), and held the important position of chief of railroad operations during the U.S. occupation of Nicaragua from 1912-1913.
A postcard from one of Major's many female admirers. The note on the other side reads, "If you were in this man's position, would you be fishing for the same thing as he is?"
Because of the nature of the correspondence, however, one aspect of Major’s personality that stands out is how popular he was with his peers. And naturally, as a tall, handsome, and successful naval officer, he was also quite popular with the opposite sex. The collection contains an extraordinarily high number of love letters to Major from women all over the world.
The sheer volume of the correspondence of this sort made it a subject that was impossible to ignore, but a suitable Library of Congress-approved heading proved hard to decide on. Romance seemed to be not quite right, and Promiscuity implied certain activity that could not be confirmed. Finally, after much discussion among the staff, we decided that Sailors — Relations with women carried the perfect connotation to describe this one aspect of a collection rich with interesting material regardingthe romantic life of this Kentucky Cassanova. Major did eventually settle down. He retired from the Navy in 1924 and married Agnes Willson in 1932. They lived in Versailles, Kentucky until his death in 1952.
