The King's Trees

In the 1720s, the newly-formed Kingdom of Great Britain was in a bit of a fix. Although the Royal Navy was the largest in the world, the British Empire kept embroiling itself in wars with either France, Spain, or an alliance of both. This meant that the British fleet had to be continually repaired and replaced as damage accumulated. As a result, ship timber was at a premium during the early 18th century for England, who had nearly exhausted its native supply. Luckily, its North American colony of New Hampshire was a veritable treasure trove of white pine trees, the preferred wood for warship masts and spars.

The challenge was that New Hampshire was also in a period of expansion into and settlement of the "wilderness" beyond Portsmouth, which included areas technically belonging to the king. As the colonists expanded, they cleared a path through the forest, often felling white pines that belonged to the crown. In response, the British government appointed a Surveyor General of the His Majesty's Woods, who was tasked with the thankless and sometimes dangerous duty of hunting down colonial poachers and bringing them to justice.

Here at Rauner, we have a small slice of this interesting story represented in three original manuscripts from the era. The first is a copy of an act, passed in 1735, that allowed the Surveyor General and his deputies exceptional leeway in accusing people of stealing white pines: only circumstantial evidence was necessary to bring individuals before the court.

Despite these expanded powers, the British Admiralty remained concerned enough about their mast supply to send a brief but portentous inquiry on April 28, 1742, to David Dunbar, the Surveyor General of the King's Wood. They wanted to know what he had been doing since his 1728 appointment and how he had been of benefit to the navy during that time. Dated April 30, 1742, only two day's after the Admiralty's letter, Dunbar's hasty response is telling. His six-page report chronicles fourteen years of forest-related activity in New England, including his clear frustration with Jonathan Belcher, the governor of New Hampshire at the time. According to Dunbar, Belcher did everything within his power to restrict or impede the Surveyor General and his deputies from executing their duties while encouraging the colonists to use the forest for their own ends. Dunbar emphasizes that his enforcement of the law "made all
the Country our Enemys" and meant that "many Insults were offered to us, and even some Attempts upon our Lives." This account of a beleaguered British government official highlights the discontent that was already growing among the colonies towards Great Britain thirty years before the Revolutionary War. In particular, it serves as a harbinger of the New Hampshire Pine Tree Riot of 1772, one of the many immediate precursors to the colonial rebellion.

To see these handwritten documents, come to Rauner and ask for MSS 738327 and MSS 735103.

Dartmouth, the Emerald City

Green goggles and their box

When Dorothy and her friends reach the Emerald City of Oz, they're each given a set of green spectacles. From behind these lenses, the entire metropolis shines with a verdant glow. We recently found some Oz-like glasses at Rauner!

These green spectacles belonged to Reverend Bennet Tyler (1783-1858), who served as the President of Dartmouth College between 1822 and 1828. Under his tenure as president, an official scholarship for indigent youth was established and Edward Mitchell, Dartmouth's first black student, was admitted. Tyler left after six years to return to the ministry.

So why did President Tyler need green glasses? Contemporary sources indicate that green glasses were often used for preserving sight or shading eyes from light (1, 2). Perhaps he was reading too much by candlelight? Perhaps he had suffered from snow blindness in a harsh Hanover winter?

Goggles from behind

The green goggles come in a box from Pinkham & Smith Company (Prescription Opticians) from Boston, Massachusetts, perhaps indicating that these were a medical precaution. Like many contemporary spectacles, they don't have metal temples. Instead, President Tyler tied them around his head with a ribbon.

By the 1830s and 1840s, green glass had fallen out of favor, with author Francis West declaring that "while [green] is an agreeable color to look at, is it a bad one to look through," (3) and John Thomas Hudson writing that "through a green glass the countenance has a cadaverous hue" (4).

We'd prefer to think that President Tyler just wanted to view Dartmouth through green glasses (we do, of course, realize that these glasses pre-date Dartmouth's official adoption of the color green in the 1860s.) You can too, with Realia 277.

Notes:
1. Thomas Green Fessenden wrote that opticians recommended green glasses to "preserve sight in the case of very weak eyes," but that they were really better for providing shade to the eyes or used when the eye feels "uneasy." Thomas Green Fessenden, The Husbandman and Housewife: A Collection of Valuable Recipes and Directions, Relating to Agriculture and Domestic Economy,  Bill Blake & Company, 1820, p. 182.
2. We also found an advertisement for green spectacles not only "for very weak and inflamed eyes," but also for "green light shades for the eyes," in the back of John Lorimer, A Concise Essay on Magnetism, with an account of the Declination and Inclination of the Magnetic Needle, and an attempt to ascertain the cause of the variation thereof, 1800 [no page number].
3. Francis West, A Familiar Treatise on the Human Eye, 1841, p. 33. 
4. John Thomas Hudson, Spectaclænia; or the sight restored ... and preserved by the use of spectacles, etc. Simpkin and Marshall, 1834, p. 13.

In the Eye of the Beholder

You see what you are looking for. Last week we wrote about William Bradford's Arctic Regions. On the same trip Bradford enjoyed on board the Panther was the experienced arctic explorer Isaac Hayes (no, not South Park's "Chef," an earlier Isaac Hayes) who also wrote a book about the trip. Bradford saw beauty and his text oozes with awe and wonder, but Hayes appears to have seen something very different in his popular account of the north aptly titled, Land of Desolation.

Having been north several times, Hayes found the journey "devoted to the study of the picturesque" a novelty, and he particularly enjoyed the lack of responsibility:

There can be no more comfortable situation on board a ship than that of a passenger. You are not expected to know any thing. You are content to trust to the captain, who is presumed to be quite competent to look to the safety of his ship, and therefore to your own.

Hayes had led his own expedition, and he was certainly content to let someone else run this one and spend his time in observation.

The contrast suggested by the title is pretty stark until you dive into the text. Then you realize that Hayes had a deep appreciation for Northern waters and peoples:

The morning came fresh and sparkling as the eyes of our fair oarswomen, who, singing to the music of their splashing oars, came stealing over the still waters, bearing the good pastor in his arctic gondola, while we were yet at breakfast.

 To read more about what he saw, ask for Stef G742.H41.

Arctic Regions

One of the most glorious books in our collections is William Bradford's Arctic Regions (London: Low, Marston, Low and Seale, 1873). It is a photographic tour de force assembled by an artist better known for his landscape paintings. Bradford traveled up into Baffin Bay and toured Greenland with two photographers in tow. Rather than seeing the north as a forbidding landscape, Bradford saw, and his photographers captured, a scenic land. In their hands ice formations were not obstacles to shipping and navigation, but wondrous works of nature--at times beautiful, and other times sublime. It is a unique view of the north for its time: when explorers from around the world were trying to conquer the north and find a Northwest Passage for commerce, it pauses to ponder the beauty of a foreign world.

As Bradford put it, "This volume is a result of an expedition to the Arctic Regions, made solely for the purposes of art." His text both waxes poetic and weighs down the images with the kinds of copious detail only a landscape painter would see. 

The book is also a technical wonder. All of the images (over 140) are actual photographic prints pasted into the book. There were around 300 copies printed, so you can imagine the darkroom work involved in producing the edition.

You can see it in all of its glory by asking for Stef G610.B79.

18th Century Justice

MS-1310, 747217

Sarah Woodworth, wife of Ichabod Woodworth of Lebanon, North Parish, was called to the meeting house for a public admonition on March 17, 1747. She was accused of stealing wool from Esther [Villanee? Wallace?] -- which Esther might have unlawfully taken from her own father -- but Sarah was also accused of "Profane & Sinfull Language" and "impertinence" in the face of the community's "Long Patience" with her. For this, Sarah faced a public admonition. This sentence was given by Eleazar Wheelock, founder of Dartmouth College, during his days as a pastor in Lebanon, Connecticut. This incident reveals a few things about 18th century justice.

MS-1310, 746368

The saga of Sarah Woodworth began the year before, in June 1746, with a meeting of the Pastor (i.e, Wheelock) and the Council. After a Mrs. Stephen Tilldin plead on Sarah's behalf, "Mrs. Woodworth Comes in and Says She Chuse to have a hearing." The Council decided to see if Mrs. Woodworth had "any new Light to offer." This seems fair enough.

Then comes the public admonition -- not a verdict handed down by the current US judicial system. We don't have any surviving documentation, but we can presume that the accusations in MS-1310, 747217 were read out in the meeting house. (We imagine a deep, ringing voice, with something like thunder in it.)

However, in 1750, Wheelock wrote a letter noting that Sarah had "many Symptoms of a Delirium," she was admonished and the case against her dismissed (MS-1310, 750330). But this admonition should not be so great, Wheelock writes, that it would be "her Ruin."

So, what is this a case of? Was she truly ill (and delirious) in 1747, or in 1750? Was she aging poorly? Was she an outspoken woman in a society that did not approve of such "impertinence"? From these documents, we may never know. Research paper, Dartmouth students?

A Salty Cookbook

Our Kenneth Roberts Library collection consists of Roberts' personal library, including a well-thumbed and annotated cookbook. After Robert's article about New England food in the Saturday Evening Post went viral (or whatever the pre-digital phrase would be), he worked with Majorie Mosser to write a book on Good Maine Food. 

This copy is Roberts' personal copy, presented to him by Mosser in 1947. It contains his notes for the 1959 update (Foods of Old New England), but it seems to have served as a repository for any kind of recipe from couscous to avocado salad -- neither of which are from Maine or New England.

Today, some of the recipes seem quite dated. Who wants to eat corn and deviled ham salad? It also shows Roberts' more ... acidic side. "Fanny Farmer, the dope, says to cook the bones about an hour ...."

Roberts must have used the book often, as he re-backed the paper dust jacket with what looks like a napkin or handkerchief.

To see these salty annotations and retro recipes, Ask for Roberts Library TX715 .M915 1947.

Shivering Shakers: July 12, 1841

1816 is famous for being the year without summer. A volcano in the Dutch East Indies spread so much ash into the atmosphere that crops failed across the world. New England was particularly hard hit with frosts in each month of the summer and snow in August. A 1817 almanac in our collections reflected on 1816 philosophically: "Frost destroys the seeds of disease'--Perhaps if the frost had not prevented, a destructive pestilence might have depopulated North America."

Apparently 1841 wasn't much better in New Hampshire. We have the daily diary of Seth Bradford from June 1834 to March of 1849. A farmer and member of the Shaker community in Enfield, New Hampshire, Bradford recorded the mundane but essential facts of each day that pertained to his crops. Mixed into entries like "Washed Sheep," and "The Peas Bloomed" are moments of historical importance such as "Began to raise the Stone Dwelling House" on July 1, 1837. But what caught our eye was the sobering entry (and sobering is a strong word for Shakers) on July 12, 1841. Underlined and written larger than any other day is, "A Frost in the morning." The weather was important. The next year, he records over nine inches of rain in a two-week period causing a dam to break, after which he reported, "Reuben Dickey becomes deranged and put into close confinement."

Luckily, we have been having a lovely July so far this year.

To see the diary ask for Codex MS 000585, Leavitt's Farmer's Amanac is at NH Imprints Gilmanton 1804 (ask for the 1815-1829 volume).