By Heather Rockwood, Communications Manager

In part 2 of Journey to the South Pole, Jeremiah N. Reynolds (1799–1858), petitioned the US Congress to fund an expedition to the South Pole to prove a theory that there was an opening there that led to an inhabitable hollow inside the earth. He was successful in his petitions, until John Quincy Adams (JQA, 1767–1848) lost the 1829 election, and President Andrew Jackson removed the funding. The voyage still took place, with Reynolds on board the ship. His expedition reached Antarctica, but turned back, mutinied in Chile, and abandoned Reynolds there. He remained in Chile for two years until picked up by the US frigate Potomac and eventually brought home. Most would assume his adventure with the South Pole ended there, but as it turned out, Reynolds was not ready to give up!

When Reynolds returned to New York, he studied to become a lawyer and wrote a book about his years traveling the seas on the Potomac, Voyage of the United States frigate Potomac, under the command of Commodore John Downes, during the circumnavigation of the globe, in the years 1831, 1832, 1833, and 1834, and a tale about an elusive white whale hunted off the coast of Chile that Herman Melville (1819–1891) cited as one of the inspirations for his novel Moby Dick, Mocha Dick: Or The White Whale of the Pacific: A Leaf from a Manuscript Journal, published in 1839 in The Knickerbocker.

By 1836, Reynolds was back in Washington lecturing and petitioning Congress for another venture to the South Pole. On 2 April 1836, JQA, now a Massachusetts representative in Congress, attended a lecture and wrote about it: “In the Evening I went to the Capitol, and heard a Lecture two hours and a half long from Mr Reynolds in support of his old project of a scientific naval expedition to the South Pole and pacific Ocean.” On 10 May 1836, JQA wrote about a few resolutions in the House of Representatives, one of which approves the new South Pole expedition: “The Committee rose, and in the House an amendment by the Senate to the exploring expedition section of the Navy Appropriation Bill was sharply debated, by Graves of Kentucky—and me— The amendment was finally agreed to by yeas and nays 80 to 65—I met Reynolds and told him the result—He said he could now die content.” After this last, it seems JQA and Reynolds no longer met, or at least, JQA never mentioned him again in his diaries.

Ironically, Reynolds was excluded from the expedition, known as the US Exploring Expedition, or sometimes, the Wilkes Expedition, which left in 1838 and returned in 1842. In his fervor to create the expedition, he made himself unwelcome. He felt deeply insulted and mostly retreated from public life after that, although he continued to write and publish articles such as Mocha Dick. His influence in popular culture is another interesting corner of history to research. Information on the internet reveals a connection between Reynolds and Edgar Allan Poe (EAP, 1809–1849). It’s especially fascinating because EAP called out “Reynolds!” several times on his deathbed. There’s much speculation on the internet as to which Reynolds EAP meant. Reynolds fell ill and died while traveling in Canada in 1858.

On 10 December 1836, JQA noted in his diary: “Mr Pickering came again this morning; but I had not found Ira Hill’s Theory of the Earth—Mr Pickering thinks he has made very wonderful discoveries in Geography, and among the rest that the Poles of the Earth have changed their position, from East and West to North and South – He said that Ira Hill had made the same discoveries.” I couldn’t find much information on Ira Hill, the author of An Abstract of a New Theory of the Formation of the Earth, but likely this is the book to which JQA is referring. I was able to find more information on Charles Pickering (1805–1875). He was a naturalist, curator, author, and physician, as well as one of the scientists on Wilkes’ expedition toward the South Pole in 1838–1842. Charles Wilkes (1798–1877), the leader of the expedition, used Pickering’s journal as an influence for his Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition, which he published in 1845. From 1842–1843, Pickering was the curator of the collection brought back to the United States from the Wilkes expedition which became a part of the Smithsonian Institution’s collection. Although Pickering did not publish his theory of Pole changes, current scientific research, at least from 2020, shows that the last pole shift happened millions of years ago, which makes me wonder if Pickering was having the same findings, but could not prove it at the time.

Thank you for joining me on this expedition to the South Pole through the diaries of John Quincy Adams and Charles Francis Adams. Although our travels end here, I hope you will take time to read a few of the (free online) books linked throughout these three blog posts, and that you are inspired to look through the online Adams Family Papers for more interesting stories like these.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of the series.

By Samantha Couture, MHS Nora Saltonstall Conservator & Preservation Librarian, and Lauren Gray, Reference Librarian 

Welcome to part 1 of a blog series about the preservation and conservation of the MHS collections.

Part of our mission at the MHS is to preserve and protect rare and important historical materials and to make collections available for research, which requires us to have a robust preservation and conservation effort. Preservation refers to the environment, storage, and handling of items, and has a significant impact on the long-term safety of our collections. Conservation encompasses the cleaning, repair, and chemical treatment of items. Without the ability to improve the physical conditions of our books, manuscripts, photographs, and art on paper, many of these materials would become unusable by researchers and lost to the historic record. Diligent preservation and conservation measures ensure that the individual items that tell the story of Massachusetts and the early history of the United States will be available for generations.

Librarians and archivists have been concerned with the deterioration of books and paper for as long as there have been libraries and archives. Preservation techniques have evolved over time as technology changes. Over the following months, we will introduce you to the importance of sound preservation and conservation practices, the history of how items have been conserved, and how the MHS approaches conservation today. Along the way, we will discuss why paper-based collections deteriorate and how to care for your own collections at home. 

To begin our discussion on preservation, we will first look to the past. In 1881, bibliophile William Blades published the second edition of his book on preservation, titled The Enemies of Books, which we hold in the MHS collections. Blades lists many factors that affect the condition of books and paper: fire, water, dust & neglect, the bookworm, bookbinders, and book collectors (which is ironic, considering Blades was an avid collector of the printed word). Many of these dangers continue to threaten paper collections, like those at the MHS, but as our understanding of the medium has evolved, new threats to paper collections must be assessed.

While Blades’ text covers many well-known preservation concerns, there is a particularly pressing ‘Enemy’ that he does not mention: acid. Acid reacts in the presence of water in a process called acid hydrolysis. During hydrolysis, acid breaks the long, flexible cellulose fibers of paper, causing the paper to yellow and eventually become brittle. Brittleness cannot be reversed, and leaves books and documents in a very fragile state. If you’ve ever held an old book or newspaper and found it flaking apart in your hands, you may have experienced this first-hand. Acid can be introduced into paper in three ways.

Acids can migrate from one material to another, so documents stored in acidic containers will absorb some of those acids. Acids are often in the material used to make or process paper. Inks, especially writing ink called ‘iron gall ink’ contain a form of iron that will oxidize and break down paper fibers similarly to acid.

Why don’t acids and iron feature as dangers to books in Blades’ text? In 1881, acid hydrolysis as it relates to paper was not well understood. Before 1850, paper in the west was made from linen and cotton rags, which do not naturally contain acids. After 1850, wood pulp was discovered to be a plentiful and cheaper source of paper fibers. It took until about 1950 for the paper industry to produce stable papers using wood pulp for book and document production. It can take years or decades for this kind of ‘inherent vice’ to cause breakage and discoloration, so the paper in his own Enemies of Books would have been white and flexible long past his death in 1890. Ironically, Blades’ volume contains the acids which are slowly destroying it, as you can see below where the first page is breaking.

At the MHS, the majority of our manuscript collections contain iron gall ink, and many documents and books contain wood pulp paper. Luckily, there is a lot we can do to prolong the useful life of our unique and rare items. We’ll continue to talk about how we conserve our collections in part 2 of this series. Check back soon!

By Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist 

After a long hiatus, I’m happy to return to my sporadic series about manuscript mysteries! As I’ve written in previous posts, sometimes the work of an archivist is like that of a detective: we follow clues, narrow searches, evaluate sources, and make educated inferences that hopefully lead us to an answer. Sometimes we’re waylaid and have to backtrack, and sometimes we come up empty, but I for one always enjoy a chance to don my deerstalker cap.

This time, I was looking for the man who wrote a letter, recently acquired by the MHS, dated 5 August 1856 and sent from Buffalo, N.Y. to Leominster, Mass. The text of the letter is interesting, if somewhat verbose. Among other things, it discusses the 1856 presidential election, a three-way race between James Buchanan, John C. Frémont, and Millard Fillmore.

Actually, I started on first base with this one, because I did know the man’s name: William Newman. He signed the letter “Yr devoted Brother Wm” and addressed it to Miss Anna B. Newman.

I could have left it at that, but I was determined to find out which William Newman he was, who Anna was, anything specific to help researchers that may be interested in this letter. After all, the MHS already had three different William Newmans in our online catalog ABIGAIL. The Library of Congress lists over 50 of them.

My first step was to gather clues. The last paragraph of a letter is a good place to look for specific names. A correspondent will often use this space to ask after family members or mutual friends. Besides William and Anna, I found a Luke (cousin), Margaret (possibly sister), and Caroline (no idea). William also mentioned a wife, as well as a son named William Henry who was apparently home for school vacation.

Unfortunately these names were too common for me to find a family genealogy at any of my go-to online sources: Internet Archive, Google Books, Ancestry.com, and Findagrave.com. Anna may have married and changed her surname. And the connection to Leominster was too tenuous; I couldn’t be sure if the Newman family hailed from there. Better to stick with what I knew.

I got my first break from a series of strategic online searches using Newman’s name, Buffalo, and 1856. And not for the first time, it was other archivists that came to my rescue. I found the Henry Newman family papers at the University of Michigan Library. Henry, originally from Boston, had a son named William who settled in Buffalo in the 1820s and established a business there. In our letter, William mentions buying some real estate.

I couldn’t be 100% sure yet, but the Michigan collection gave me a few crucial details. Their William married Lydia Scrafford (a much more distinctive name) and died in 1860. So I tried another search for confirmation. By adding his wife’s name to my keywords, I finally uncovered published records of a very messy court case related to the settlement of William’s will.

This was definitely my guy: died 4 April 1860, wife Lydia Scrafford, son William Henry Harrison Newman born in 1846. The records also included the names of siblings Henry, Jr., Margaret, Caroline, Anna, and Susan. (Interestingly, William was the only one to marry and have children.) The clincher was a passage referring to property on Clinton Street in Buffalo—property William mentioned in his letter.

William was apparently born in 1799 or 1800, assuming his tombstone is correct and he was sixty when he died. I identified his parents, Henry and Deborah (Cushing) Newman, and his wife Sarah Elizabeth née Cole, but found very little about his siblings. Henry, Jr. died in 1861, Susan in 1862, Margaret in 1866, and Anna in 1883.

These are just the dates of which I’m relatively confident. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much conflicting information about a family I was researching! It goes to show how fallible the historical record can be and how important it is to find trustworthy sources.

By Heather Rockwood, Communications Manager

Part 1 of Journey to the South Pole includes an incomplete timeline of pole travel and looks at the diaries of Charles Francis Adams (CFA, 1807–1886), who was reading a book in 1831 about the southern-most expedition toward the South Pole at that time. It also covers John Quincy Adams’ (JQA, 1767–1848) diary mention of James Byers’ application to Congress for funding of an expedition to settle the South Shetland Islands. These are two typical stories of South Pole expeditions. This next story is unusual.

In 1820, a book was published called Symzonia: Voyage of Discovery, by Captain Adam Seaborn, probably a pseudonym. This sci-fi story is about a journey to the poles, and the discovery that they are an opening into the Earth, which is hollow, and inhabitable. Explorer Jeremiah N. Reynolds (1799–1858) heard about the book’s theory from John Cleves Symmes (1780–1829), who is considered to be the real author of the book. Reynolds then made numerous petitions to Congress for funding an expedition to the South Pole, according to The Maritime Studies Program of Williams College & Mystic Seaport, although he and Symmes parted ways soon after his petitions began.  

CFA notes that he met with Reynolds on 21 April 1827, while Reynolds was in Washington lecturing and lobbying for the expedition to the South Pole: “In the evening, Reynolds, the expedition man, called to see me and drew me out of myself for an hour.” CFA wrote about him again a few days later on 29 April 1827: “Particularly in reading some papers of Mr. Reynolds upon the subject of his expedition. I think him very clever, but without polish to make it tell as it ought.” He did not have faith in Reynolds abilities to convince Congress.

On 22 February 1828, President JQA wrote a note about a ball he attended that evening, at which he met Reynolds: “I met at the Ball, besides other Strangers, Mr Reynolds the projector of an expedition to the South-Pole.” On 13 June 1828, JQA notes that “Mr Reynolds the projector of an Expedition to the South Pole was here— A Bill for that purpose was reported by the Naval Committee to the House of Representatives at their last Session, but the House could not reach it in Season—A Resolution of the House did pass however recommending that one of the Public Vessels should be employed on an exploring Expedition to the South-Sea— Reynolds says that a Merchant brig, will be sent with her upon Speculation.” Following up on this, in JQA’s diary on 17 November 1828, he wrote: “Southard Saml. L. The South Pole Expedition— Jones to command—Instruments to be purchased.” Reynolds’ petition was successful; however, the funding disappeared when JQA lost the presidential election to Andrew Jackson in 1829.

Reynolds then succeeded in gaining private funding for the expedition which started in 1829, with Reynolds aboard the ship. The voyage reached the Palmer Peninsula of Antarctica, but then turned back. When the ship reached Chile, the crew mutinied and left Reynolds behind. He spent two years in Chile until the US frigate Potomac brought him back to the United States.

Reynold’s tale does not end here. Watch for Journey to the South Pole, Part 3, where Reynolds tale will end and JQA meets a man with a scientific theory about the pole’s magnetism. Further reading: Tales of a Hollow Earth: Tracing the Legacy of John Cleves Symmes in Antarctic Exploration and Fiction, by L. I. Chaplow, 2011, a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Degree of Masters of Antarctic Studies at the University of Canterbury.

By Heather Rockwood, Communications Manager

John Quincy Adams (JQA, 1767–1848), world traveler that he was, never visited either of the Earth’s poles, nor did his son, Charles Francis Adams (CFA, 1807–1886). In their diaries, they noted reading books about such travels, meeting people who journeyed there, and speaking to others who had scientific theories about the poles. Come with me on an expedition through JQA’s and CFA’s diaries to find out what the poles meant to early 19th century thinkers.

First, an incomplete timeline of US pole expeditions:

• 1819–1823: Several voyages by seal hunters
• 1829–1831: James Eights and the Palmer-Pendleton Expedition
• 1838–1842: US Exploring Expedition (also known as Wilke’s Expedition)
• 1928: Admiral Richard Byrd’s Expedition

From 1822 to 1824, James Weddell (1787–1834) was on his third seal hunting voyage in the South Orkneys and South Shetland Islands. Because hunting had been disappointing, Weddell turned his ship south toward the South Pole. The season was unusually mild, and on 20 February 1823, his ship reached 532 miles farther south than any other ship previously. Although a few icebergs could be seen, no land was in sight. He turned the ship around and sheltered at South Georgia. Because he had gone slightly farther south than James Cook in 1773–1774, Weddell wrote a book about the journey. The first edition of A voyage towards the South Pole: performed in the years 1822–24, containing an examination of the Antarctic Sea… was published in 1825, but was enlarged in 1827 with new information from the companion ship on the voyage. On 1 April 1831, CFA was reading this book, “began Weddel’s Voyage to the South Pole. He went farther than any body and says he saw a clear Sea, which is extraordinary enough.” He finished it that weekend on Sunday, 3 April 1831, “Finished Weddell’s Voyage. It is the Account of a Man not much versed in Science who made a daring Voyage in pursuit of Commercial Speculation. He gives An Account of the South Seas somewhat varying from that of his predecessor Cook. And he says he penetrated to 74 degrees South with a clear Sea. I see no reason to disbelieve him. If so however, the question of land might easily be settled.”

On 20 September 1820, General Daniel Parker (1782–1846), then the Inspector General of the US Army, spoke with JQA about a seal expedition application he had received when serving as Secretary of State to President James Monroe. The application was from the New York ship owner James Byers. JQA wrote in his diary: “General Parker came with a new application from Mr Byers of New-York, for a public vessel to protect their Sealing Settlement expedition to the South-Pole—I told him of Homans’s objections but promised to mention the affair again to the President.” Byers wanted the US government to fund a settlement in the South Shetland Islands, off the coast of Antarctica, and for the US to send a warship with the settlers to take possession of the area. His application was denied, but the trip and settlement still happened. The settlers built dwellings and were visited mainly by seal hunters from Britain, New England, and New York. The settlement’s peninsula was named Byers Peninsula in 1958.

In Journey to the South Pole, Part 2, we will look at JQA’s and CFA’s interactions with a man obsessed with reaching the South Pole to prove a theory that the Earth is hollow.

By Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist 

On this first day of Women’s History Month, I’d like to tell you about a remarkable woman who makes a brief appearance in one of our collections: Florence Bascom.

One of the things I enjoy about working as an archivist—and writing for the Beehive—is the opportunity to research a wide variety of interesting people from all eras of American history. Bascom’s name was familiar to me, but I didn’t know much about her.

The collection in question is the Benjamin-Owen family papers, which consists primarily of letters to Mary Curtiss (Benjamin) Owen and her son from family members and friends. Included are four letters from Bascom to Owen, written between 1912 and 1929. The two women were distant cousins; their great-grandfathers were brothers.

Mary Curtiss Benjamin, who went by the nickname May, was born in 1860 in Egremont, a small town at the southwestern edge of Massachusetts. In 1889, she married George F. Owen and moved with him to Colorado Springs. May Owen was an active suffragist there, and just four year later, Colorado became the first U.S. state to pass women’s suffrage by popular referendum.

Florence Bascom, two years younger than Owen, was herself the daughter of a suffragist. She was born in Williamstown, Mass., and distinguished herself early by earning a Bachelor of Arts, a Bachelor of Science, and a Master’s degree in geology from the University of Wisconsin. In 1893, she became the first woman to earn a Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University. (She was required to sit behind a screen in classrooms to separate her from the male students.)

Bascom taught at the college level both before and after her doctoral studies and, in 1895, was asked to found and head the geology department at Bryn Mawr College, where she would go on to teach for over three decades. Bascom also published dozens of papers on geology, worked for the U.S. Geological Survey, and belonged to many professional geological and scientific organizations.

When I came across Bascom’s letters, the first thing I noticed was how hard it is to read her handwriting. See for yourself!

The substance of the letters is fairly mundane. Bascom primarily discusses news of mutual family members and asks after Owen’s son. As for her scientific work, she occasionally mentions fieldwork and conferences, but only in passing. She also references her love of horseback riding.

The spiciest passage relates to her opinion on smoking, apparently in response to a question from Owen about women’s use of tobacco: “I am for women’s right to use it every time but I hate to see it used in excess by man or woman. It is after all a self-indulgent, somewhat inconsiderate-of-others, doubtfully hygienic and expensive habit.”

Slight though their content is, these letters are enough to give us a sense of Bascom’s thoughtfulness. I particularly like the way she asks Owen, “Are you fairly comfortable in your surroundings, May, and happy in your daily life? Please let me know frankly if you need what I could give you…”

Even though I wasn’t very familiar with her, Bascom’s accomplishments did not go unnoticed by her contemporaries. I found a number of notices about her published during her lifetime. The American Geologist reported on her in 1893 when she earned her Ph.D., remarking that her work had “attracted much attention,” and again in 1895 when she accepted the position at Bryn Mawr.

In 1898, The Chautauquan was already listing the 36-year-old geologist in an article on “Some American Women in Science,” alongside other illustrious names. She was also profiled in The Key (1916), a publication of Kappa Kappa Gamma, and later included in a book called Famous Women (1926), which ranks her with the likes of Marie Curie and Maria Mitchell.

Bascom died in 1945. Her namesakes have included a glacial lake in Massachusetts, a building at Johns Hopkins, a Venusian crater, and an S-type asteroid.

As far as I can tell, these letters are the first Florence Bascom manuscripts acquired by the MHS, but both Bryn Mawr and Smith College have significant collections of her papers.

By Meg Szydlik, Visitor Services Coordinator

February is the part of winter that always feels drearier than any other time of year, at least for me. With that in mind, I wanted to do research on something lighter to counter the snowy days and bitter cold. So I decided to pull out the Fenway Victory Gardens’ collection to explore. The history of the organization and the gardens, founded in 1942 and located in the beautiful Emerald Necklace, can be gleaned from both official statistics and tantalizing pieces of decades-old drama, which peak through the information about plots and plant growth. It tells a small piece of the story of the Fenway area–an area that’s been home to the MHS for more than a century.

The Fenway Gardens’ website explains their origins as a victory garden, which was a WWII movement to increase access to fresh food grown by citizens, with the goal of stretching ration coupons and increasing food sent overseas to troops. There were victory gardens all across America, but the Fenway Gardens of Boston are one of the few that are still around. The records held at the MHS span from 1944 to 2011 and include details of the gardens themselves as well as memberships, board communications, and gardening paraphernalia. The maps of the gardens demonstrate that in many ways, the more things change, the more they stay the same. While many new gardeners appear each year, I noticed over the decades people maintained their gardens year after year, contributing to green space in the city, many assisting other gardeners with their plots as well. The records are a charming peek into the kind of neighborly relationships that sustained the Fenway Gardens for more than 80 years.

The Fenway Victory Gardens were not always assured of success, however. Many documents describe the vandalism that took place in the area and requests for police protection of the Gardens. The safety of the site was frequently called into question by gardeners. Despite these concerns, there was an emphasis on inclusivity, with the 1981 anti-discrimination policy reading “this society shall not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnic origin, religion, or sexual preference” and the 1975 release of a booklet offering community resources for all types of groups, including the elderly, students, and “gay individuals.” The focus on accessibility for all also extended to disabled people, according to an undated report on improving the space for access, which included feedback from real disabled individuals. The Gardens were under constant threat however, and one of the letters by a long-term gardener recalls that in the late 70s, the nearby Red Sox wanted to buy out the space for a parking lot. The community rallied and saved the Gardens instead. If you’ve had trouble parking for a game, I suppose you can blame Fenway Gardens! I think it was worth it though. They are a wonderful piece of community history!

In 2020, the MHS received a plot of our very own after a couple of years of being on the waiting list! Led by the intrepid Laura Wulf, our Photographic & Digital Imaging Specialist, MHS staff members cleaned up the overgrown weeds and built a beautiful respite. The Fenway Victory Gardens are free and open to the public to stroll through. It is such a beautiful site that I highly recommend doing so!