Abraham Lincoln Was An "Aqua Velva" Man! (Well, Kind Of)

I am always interested in ways that Abraham Lincoln's visage has been used in advertisements, both old and new, especially for medicines and other household products.

In looking through the vintage medicine advertisements reproduced in the 1964 Barry Goldwater campaign pamphlet that I included in my last post (here), I found one that I hadn't seen before: an advertisement for J. B. Williams shaving soaps. The image from the pamphlet is included below as is an advertisement from a 1903 magazine that I found in a quick Google Books search.

Obviously the beard belongs to the 16th President! It reminds me so much of the terrific 1861 Bellingham's Onguent advertisment I have featured before (here) in which the proprietor claimed that the President-elect had used his hair medicine to grow his famous whiskers!

I say that Lincoln was an "Aqua Velva Man" because in addition to its Civil War era "Genuine Yankee Soap," the Williams Company did go on to market the famous after-shave and other familiar products! A great history on James B. Williams and his company can be found in the University of Connecticut's Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, which holds the Williams company records (finding aid here).

From the Dodd Center:

James Baker Williams was born in 1818 in Lebanon, Connecticut. He was educated in Manchester, Connecticut, and, in 1834, began employment with F. and H.C. Woodbridge, a general store located in Manchester. Williams was offered half-interest in the store in 1838, after which its name was changed to Keeny and Williams. Two years later, Williams sold his interest in the store, but retained his share in the drug department. He began experimenting with various soaps to determine which were best for shaving, and eventually developed Williams' Genuine Yankee Soap, the first manufactured soap for use in shaving mugs.

In 1847, Williams moved his enterprise to a rented gristmill on William Street in Glastonbury, Connecticut, where he continued to manufacture shaving soap and a few other products. His brother, William S. Williams, joined the firm around 1848, and it was at this time that the firm's name was changed to the James B. Williams and Company.

William's shaving soaps were sold throughout the United States and Canada, and as a result of rising demand, the facilities were expanded several times in the late 1800s. In 1885, a joint stock company under the name of J. B. Williams Company was formed under the laws of the state of Connecticut. James Williams supervised many aspects of the company until shortly before his death in 1907 at the age of eighty-eight. The Williams family continued to manage the company until it was sold in 1957.

By the early 1900s, the company was known throughout the world. In addition to its line of shaving creams, the firm produced talcum powder, toilet soaps, and other toilet preparations, eventually developing such as Aqua Velva, Lectric Shave, and Skol. In 1950, the company merged with Conti Products Corporation of Brooklyn, New York, and took over its entire line of products, including Conti Castile Soap. A 1952 merger with R.B. Selmer, Inc. added Kreml Hair Tonic and Kreml Shampoo to the company's list of products.

In 1957, a New York based conglomerate, Pharmaceuticals, Inc., acquired the J.B. Williams Company. The new owner, maker of Geritol, Serutan and Sominex, moved the Williams Company to Cranford, New Jersey in 1960, adopting the name J.B. Williams Company.

The J.B. Williams' plant in Connecticut was taken over by ten former Williams' employees who wanted to preserve the old soap-making process, and became Glastonbury Toiletries. The firm made shaving soaps, bathroom soaps, castile soap, aerosol shaving creams, body lotions, and shampoos. Its largest contract was with the J.B. Williams Company.

In 1971, the J.B. Williams Company was sold to Nabisco, and in 1977, Glastonbury Toiletries closed. The original 1847 factory is still standing, and, in 1979, was converted into a condominium complex. I In 1983 it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

AuH2O - "The Cure For What Ails America" (More on Politics and Quack Medicine Advertising)

[Note: The purpose of this post is only to show the interesting intersection of politics and patent medicines in the popular culture; not to comment on political candidates, parties, or platforms. No political comments will be published.]

I have posted before (here) on the intersection of patent/quack medicines and politics, especially in the snake oil heyday of the late 19th and early 20th century when candidates endorsed specific products or even sold it themselves.

William Helfand's excellent book, Quack, Quack, Quack: The Sellers of Nostrums in Prints, Posters, Ephemera, and Books, is an excellent source for seeing how editorial cartoonists (especially) employed patent medicine imagery to puff up or put down a candidate or party.

Below are images of a 1964 28-page pamphlet in my collection in which Republican Party candidate Barry Goldwater uses patent medicine imagery in his own campaign materials.

The cover shows Goldwater holding a demijohn/carboy of "AuH2O" (the chemical abbreviations for "Gold" and "Water") with other rhetoric associated with cures and the issues of the day.

The inside of the pamphlet includes several pages of Goldwater quotes cleverly paired with actual 19th- and 20th-century patent medicine advertisements, only a few of which are shown below. Other examples includes Goldwater's "blurb" indicating the present administrations policies were "cross-eyed," "wide-eyed," "wall-eyed," "glassy-eyed," or "blind" in regard to specific policies; the speech was paired with patent medicine advertisements for various quack remedies for vision problems.

It is an interesting example of campaign paraphernalia as well as the intersection of politics and quack medicine iconography in American popular culture.

The Year of Reading Recklessly! (For Me, Anyway!)

In looking over the past year, one of the things I am happiest about is that I really increased my volume of reading...it was without a doubt my best reading year ever...I know folks at work, on Facebook, and on GoodReads who read many more books than me, but I'm really happy with the 23 I completed, almost all of which were excellent! And I'm even happier that it was of many different kinds of literature...nonfiction, fiction, young adult, and classics! Also, my first full e-book reading experiences!


Even better, I got the chance to do one of my favorite things: interview authors! It is always inspiring!


Below is a list of the author interviews I've done, as well as the list of books I completed, with links to my reviews on amazon (they have also been posted to GoodReads).


What were some of your favorite books this year? What do you look forward to reading next year?

Happy Reading to you in 2012!

Author Interviews


Adele Griffin and Lisa Brown - Picture the Dead (here)
Matthew Pearl - The Last Dickens (here)
Caroline Rance - Kill-Grief (here)
Rusty Williams - My Old Confederate Home: A Respectable Place for Civil War Veterans (here)
Stephen R. Boyd - Patriotic Envelopes of the Civil War: The Iconography of Union and Confederate Covers (here)


Books Read (and links to amazon.com reviews)


Classics
Pride and Prejudice (Kindle e-book) - 5 stars - review here


Young Adult
Picture the Dead - 4 stars - review here


Other Fiction
The Professor's Assassin - 4 stars - review here
The Devil's Company (audiobook)- 4 stars - review here
The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane (audiobook) - 4 stars - review here
The Last Dickens - 4 stars - review here
Kill-Grief - 5 stars - review here
Irish Alibi - 4 stars - review here
The School of Night - 5 stars - review here
The Ghost Writer - 3 stars - review here
War in Heaven - 4 stars - review here


Nonfiction
The Four Loves - 5 stars
Shooting Soldiers: Civil War Medical Photography By R.B. Bontecou - 4 stars - review here
Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution - 4 stars - review here
Stan Musial: An American Life - 2 stars - review here
Quack, Quack, Quack: The Sellers of Nostrums in Prints, Posters, Ephemera, & Books - 5 stars - review here
My Old Confederate Home: A Respectable Place for Civil War Veterans - 4 stars - review here
Halls of Honor: College Men in the Old South - 5 stars - review here
The Whites of Their Eyes: Bunker Hill, the First American Army, and the Emergence of George Washington - 4 stars - review here
Tainted Breeze: The Great Hanging at Gainesville, Texas, 1862 - 5 stars - review here
Neptune's Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal - 5 stars -here
Patriotic Envelopes of the Civil War: The Iconography of Union and Confederate Covers - 4 stars - review here
Biotransformation and Metabolite Elucidation of Xenobiotics: Characterization and Identification - 4 stars - review here

Ghosts of Christmas Past: A New (Old) Book for My Shelf and an 1869 Inscription!

I just added an 1869 edition of The Gates Ajar (NovelGuide summary here) by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps to my personal library and it's just so cool on so many levels! How do I count the ways? Well,

1) Old books are cool by definition! Because they are, well...old...and they are books!

2) It's an influential book of the Civil War era and a part of the "canon" of the 19th-century Spiritualist movement, both of which are interests of mine.

3) It was published by the publishing house of Fields & Osgood, the firm featured in one of my favorite books, The Last Dickens (see my recent interview with author Matthew Pearl here)

4) And finally, unbeknownst to me until I received it, it has a wonderful Christmas 1869 inscription! Apparently it was a gift from a pupil "Johnny" to his teacher, "Miss Beach." Tantalizing! I love it!

Ghostly Developments! Interview with "Picture the Dead" Authors/Illustrator Adele Griffin and Lisa Brown!

"For if memory is the wave that buoys our grief, haunting is the undertow that drags us to its troubled source." - Heinrich Geist - Picture the Dead

As I mentioned in my interview with New York Times bestselling author Matthew Pearl a few weeks ago (here), I've been trying to read more fiction in the past year (and I have!). Still, though, as guy in his 40s (early? middle? late? None of your beeswax!), I haven't read "young adult" or "middle grade" fiction since I tore through the Lemony Snicket series a few years back (and loved it!).

And yet, two such books: Picture the Dead and The Woman in Black, kept popping up as recommended reading on amazon under some of my favorite novelists, such as Louis Bayard, Matthew Pearl, and others.

Perhaps I was caught by the "spiritual undertow" that the character, Heinrich Geist, described above, but I decided to give Picture the Dead a try...and I'm SO GLAD I did! The book combines two subjects that interest me immensely: the Civil War and 19th-century Spiritualism, and does it so well.

It is my great pleasure and privilege, then, to introduce Picture the Dead, the authors and illustrator (Adele Griffin and Lisa Brown), offer my own brief review of the book, and - especially - feature Adele and Lisa's thoughtful and delightful answers to my questions!

Readers and writers will be impressed and inspired by their research and creativity and their answers to how/why they became interested in the Civil War, their choice of the soldiers portrayed in the book, the inspiration for the illustrations, the role of the Spiritualist movement during the war, how to treat physical intimacy in a book for young people, why young adult novels appeal to "regular" adults, and how to avoid boring readers with all the research you did for the book (and still find a place for it)!

First, the publisher's description of Picture the Dead:

A ghost will find his way home. Jennie Lovell's life is the very picture of love and loss. First she is orphaned and forced to live at the mercy of her stingy, indifferent relatives. Then her fiancé falls on the battlefield, leaving her heartbroken and alone. Jennie struggles to pick up the pieces of her shattered life, but is haunted by a mysterious figure that refuses to let her bury the past. When Jennie forms an unlikely alliance with a spirit photographer, she begins to uncover secrets about the man she thought she loved. With her sanity on edge and her life in the balance, can Jennie expose the chilling truth before someone-or something-stops her? Against the brutal, vivid backdrop of the American Civil War, Adele Griffin and Lisa Brown have created a spellbinding mystery where the living cannot always be trusted and death is not always the end.

About Adele and Lisa:

Adele Griffin is the critically acclaimed author of numerous novels for young adults, including the Vampire Island and Witch Twins series. Her novels Sons of Liberty and Where I Want to Be were both National Book Award Finalists. (Adele has a terrific website here).

Lisa Brown is the illustrator and/or author of nine books, including Picture the Dead, How To Be, The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming, and Baby, Mix Me A Drink. She draws the Three Panel Book Review cartoon for the book section of the San Francisco Chronicle. She graduated with a BA from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut in 1993, and an MS in Communications Design from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York in 1998. She lives in San Francisco with her son and her husband, Daniel Handler (you might know him as Lemony Snicket!).
You can "meet" Lisa and Adele in this delightful documentary in which they discuss their inspirations for Picture the Dead:



And my review of Picture the Dead:

Adele Griffin and Lisa Brown treated the two subjects of the Civil War and Spiritualism with great respect and sympathy and I was so impressed by their commitment to keeping the history straight...the use of the 28th Massachusetts infantry was very interesting and was used well...the fact that some of the principals in the book die from disease or in prison is also keeping with the history of the Civil War (remember, not everyone died on the battlefield: only 1 out of 3) and deaths on a hospital bed or in prison required no less bravery or were any less grim.

The story itself is so well written that I could hardly put it down. The heroine, Jennie, is a strong and passionate young woman, kept in an unwelcome home...the most interesting character, Quinn, is full of surprises...apart from the aunt and uncle, the adults in the book interact with Jennie on nearly equal terms...the few scenes of physical intimacy are done quite well...the subject of Spiritualism is done realistically and with humor in the case of the spirit photographer but also with some just sympathy for what was a significant social movement in the 19th-century, all without slipping into the danger or absurdity of the occult.

The illustrations were well done! The theme of a "scrapbook" in the narrative and supported by the illustrations was interesting. I do give Lisa a LOT of credit for basing her work on archival material. The inclusion of patriotic stationery and envelopes was a very nice touch! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for readers young and old alike!

Adele and Lisa were so kind, generous, and clever in their answers to my interview questions, so let's get to my favorite part!

Jim: Did you have an interest in the Civil War already, before you wrote the book? If so, Why? If not, what was the most important thing you learned?

Adele: My stepfather loves biographies of Lincoln. But he is not much of a Young Adult reader. And I'd always hoped to find a YA topic that interested him. But it wasn't until Lisa Brown-- with whom I'd collaborated on a Before-Its-Time graphic novel hybrid-- mentioned her own passion for Civil War history, that I started to get excited thinking about this "Civil War ghost book" -- which is my original file folder name. So for me the interest was twice personal, not academic. But I'd been writing contemporary young adult fiction a number of years, and it was great fun to participate in reading and research. My most intriguing research was learning about William H. Mumler -- who is a fascinating historical character. I got a chance to see his original "ghost" daguerreotypes when the Met featured his work as part of a show about Spiritualism, about six years ago.

Lisa: Adele’s right, I’m a bit of a history nerd. And the American Civil War has always fascinated me, both for its brutality and for its enormous scale. But what really gets me about it is the fact that it was pretty much the first war to be photographically documented. Though it occurred almost exactly 150 years ago, we can look deep into the eyes of its participants. It enables us to perform a sort of time travel.

[Note: Readers can learn more about William Mumler in one of my previous blog posts, here!]

Jim: I was so impressed that you had Toby die in the hospital rather than on the battlefield (as you know, 2 out of 3 soldiers died of disease rather than in battle)...was that deliberate on your part?

Adele: Yes-- though maybe Lisa has more clarity on that moment. I think that was her decision. And it fit with the character of Toby as a gentle soul-- someone who was never prepared, emotionally or physically, for the brutality of war.

Lisa: Quite deliberate. I am a doctor’s daughter, and talk of medicine and disease has always been a part of my day-to-day life. (Lots of inappropriate dinner table conversations, for instance.) I was definitely struck by the fact that the majority of Civil War soldiers died of disease, not in battle. It seemed such a tragic thing.

Jim: The choice of the 28th Massachusetts Infantry as the unit in which all the young men in the book were soldiers was interesting! Is there a particular reason why?

Adele: Historian Lisa Brown has the confirmation and more on that, I am sure. She showed me the list, yes, LB?

Lisa: Here’s my history nerd-dom surfacing once again. I tend to get a little, um, obsessive with my pursuit of historical accuracy. In a blog entry (here) on our Picture the Dead website, I go through all my reasons for choosing the 28th Massachusetts and the Irish Brigade. In a nutshell, I wanted to find a regiment in which the following conditions could be satisfied:

1) The regiment should be based in Massachusetts, with recruitment out of Boston.
2) It had to have recruitment in the Boston area as late in the game as 1864.
3) Its soldiers had to have fought in battles that might cause them to be captured and become prisoners of war.
4) When these soldiers were captured, there had to be the possibility that they would be incarcerated at the prison camp in Andersonville.

The 28th Massachusetts fit the bill.

In that same entry, I write about my complete and total love for the National Park Service’s Civil War Soldier and Sailors System website (here), where I found loads of information about men who served in both the Union and Confederate armies of the Civil War. Through that database, I was able to see the names of servicemen who actually fought with the 28th, were captured on the battlefield, and served time in Andersonville prison. Along with their names, the archive listed their professions, their hometowns, their ages, dates of death, and the location of their graves. Fascinating stuff. At least to a history nerd like me.

[Note: That, ladies and gentleman, is how it is done! There is more on their amazing website below!]

Jim: The illustrations are terrific! As someone who collects them, I loved the inclusion of patriotic covers and stationery (see some of mine here and here)! What were some of your other inspirations for the illustrations, especially the photographs?

Adele: They are the coolest. And this one is all Lisa's too. With my hurrah I remember when she sent those envelopes to me and I loved them so much.

Lisa: Aw, you guys. The photographs were, for the most part, based on actual 19th century portrait photography that I found in the archives of the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress, here. I was also able to find, not only in the Library of Congress, but also at the New York Public Library’s online digital image gallery and through other, mostly online, archival sources, a virtual grab bag of visual inspiration. These included: old newspapers, song sheets, dance cards, calling cards, menus, invitations, poetry, letters, diaries, and pages from ladies’ fashion magazines.

Jim: I appreciated the seriousness you gave to Spiritualism in the narrative and in the Notes at the end of the book (especially mentioning how it was also associated with other social movements such as abolition, women's suffrage, etc.). Was it important to you to maintain the sense of Spiritualism without delving into the occult (two very different things)?

Adele: We hadn't thought much about that connection. We probably adopted in Heinrich Geist, our ghost photographer, a bit of Mumler’s psychology—Mumler was more of a trickster who was under-prepared for the astonishing consequences of his work. The Spiritualist Nettie Maynard, who'd been the in-house White House Spiritualist advisor to Mary Todd Lincoln, was a bit more unhinged. And we never wanted anybody in Geist's world to be that far off-center. It was a scam for Geist. And Geist took his art as a photographer seriously. For him, coaxing the double negative was more about the aesthetic.

Lisa: We were working off the idea that it would be interesting to have an object created for the purposes of defrauding someone (a spirit photo) turn out to have real supernatural heft, purely by accident. As in: what if someone had been trying to fake a picture of a “ghost” but ended up taking a picture of a real ghost? I also found the history of the Spiritualist movement endlessly absorbing. Here was a philosophy that we look back on now (or, at least, most of us do) and see it as supernatural hocus-pocus, but, as you mentioned, the proponents of that movement also believed in precepts that we take for granted as truisms today: the immorality of slavery, the equality of women, and many ideas about labor reform. One last thing about Spiritualism: it flourished during the Civil War because it offered people a grain of hope in an era that was filled with an unspeakable amount of death. As you well know, more people died during the Civil War than the total amount of American deaths from the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Mexican War, Spanish-American War, WWI, WWI and Korean War combined. That was a lot of loss for people to deal with. The Spiritualist movement helped people to deal with that loss.

[Note: There will be more about Nettie Maynard in a future post...I recently added a vintage copy of her classic Was Abraham Lincoln a Spiritualist? to my personal library]

Jim: Jennie is a strong-willed young woman...and passionate...she reveals some rather intense emotions when she is kissed by or close to Quinn, for example...is it important - as writers for young adults - not to underestimate their maturity but still maintain their innocence? That must be a thin line to walk!

Adele: We always talk about this. "Jennie the Chaste," we call her. We really didn't want a bodice ripper, for all the gothic stylization of the book. And it's been easier to get the book into younger readers' hands because we prudently, prudishly restrained the bodice.

Lisa: What she said.

Jim: Are you surprised when your books for young adults also appeal to "old" adults like myself?

Adele: Not at all. Though delighted. That's the new community. Ten years ago, Young Adult novels were shelved next to books about parenting and childhood development. And today online the juxtaposition is not nearly as awkward. At age 41, I'm happy to trade opinions on The Hunger Games via Goodreads or twitter with a 15 or a 50 year old. The virtual library holds everyone, and we are all talking to one another, and the results are a big wide net of readers picking up or downloading something new based on the conversation.

Lisa: I am an adult who still reads books for young people, so it doesn’t surprise me at all!

8) The website (here) associated with Picture the Dead is as delightful as the book, with lots to explore! Was that important to you?

Adele: The website is Lisa's baby. It's unbelievable—and I am handing the question to her.

Lisa: The problem with doing so much historical research is that it makes you want to put every little thing that you’ve learned into your book. You have to restrain yourself. If you put everything in there, the book gets tedious. Luckily, we have the web: a place to dump all those exciting tidbits that would bog the story down but that were too interesting (to us, at least) to shelve. The site came together with the help of our brilliant designer, Jennifer Armbrust of Motel Projects (here). She was able to translate the look and atmosphere of the book seamlessly from page to computer screen. Though I fear we’ve been neglectful of the blog, of late. We will be ramping up with more goodies on our Tumblr (here), when the paperback of the book comes out, in February 2012.

Jim: Finally - Jennie is a bit of a "pincher" and isn’t afraid to take something to put in her scrapbook (which is a central vehicle of the book)...if she visited her house today, what do you think she would take without you looking?!

Adele: She'd take my great-grandmother's tiny silver toothbrush holder, with my blessing. today's toothbrushes can't fit in it.

Lisa: Oh, this is my favorite question! She probably wouldn’t want my authentic lace-up corset, that’s a damn uncomfortable thing to wear. She’d most likely choose my Victorian necklace made of human hair. Though, come to think of it, that’s pretty itchy.

THANKS SO MUCH ADELE AND LISA AND BEST WISHES FOR MORE SUCCESS AND INSPIRATION!

"Union Bitters" and "Dr. Scott's Pills" (MORE Medicine-Related Civil War Patriotic Covers!)

About a year ago, I wrote a blog post (here) about some medicine-related Civil War patriotic covers (aka envelopes) in my collection.

In the past year I have added a few more which I happily share below. Enjoy!

First up is: "To Cure Rebellion" (graphic of a cannon shell with lit fuse) "This is the pull that will cure or kill." This cover uses medical terminology - pills, cures, remedies, "taking your medicine," and other rhetorical devices - that fits well with both war and (especially) political disagreements, as do many of the medical-related Civil War patriotic covers.

Second - A "Paris Rat" and a "Manchester Rat" eating cotton labeled as "Secession Powder for Rats." At first glance, this might not seem medical-related, but in fact it refers to "rat powders," "insect powders," and other rodent powders that were popular as poisons "back in the day." Collecting vintage poison bottles is an important part of the antique bottle and glass collecting hobby. My good friend, Ferdinand Meyer V at Peachridge Glass, is an expert and avid poison collector. The Paris and Manchester rats would seem to refer to the French and British merchants more interested in maintaining their "hunger" for cotton than in the merits (or lack thereof) of secession and the American Civil War.


Third - The "Black Drop" cover features a caricature of an enslaved African-American "bottled up" with the text: "A popular medicine used by the C.S.A. aristocracy, that cannot be obtained in any Northern apothecary shop, being com-pound-ed exclusively on the sacred soil." The cover features a message sympathetic to abolition while still using unfortunate cartoonish imagery of African-Americans. Stephen Boyd devotes an entire chapter to this subject in his excellent book, Patriotic Envelopes of the Civil War: The Iconography of Union an Confederate Covers (see my review and interview with Dr. Boyd here). As for "Black Drop": this is a reference to an actual medicine! It was composed of opium, vinegar, spices, often with sugar, and went by several proprietary names.

And, finally, my FAVORITE: A clever graphic featuring an envelope of headache powder, a bottle of "Union Bitters," and a package of Dr. Scott's Pills," with the supremely clever poem:

SECESSION PHYSIC CURE
To cure secession and its ills
Take Dr. Scott's Cast Iron Pills
Well mixed with powder of saltpetre
Apply it to each "Fire Eater"
With Union Bitters, mix it clever,
And treason is warned off forever

I know there are more medicine-related covers out there...if you have ideas of what I should be looking for, let me know!

Guest Book Review - Anne Currin and "Cold Glory"!

In a post a few weeks ago (here) I alerted readers to a new book, Cold Glory, by B. Kent Anderson (author website here) and offered a free copy, kindly provided by Mr. Anderson's publicist, to someone willing to read the book and write a guest review for the blog.

I couldn't have been happier that Civil War enthusiasts and voracious reader (what a combo!) Anne Currin accepted the challenge. Anne is a kind supporter of this blog and a friend on Facebook (she's here!) and GoodReads (she's here!) also, so look her up!

Here's something about Anne from Anne(!):

I live on the coast of Virgina. Currently employed in the medical field. I love reading anything about American history and British history. Also enjoy all other genres except sci-fi. Spent the last two years redecorating my home; including the removal of a closet - love demolition! Would love to become a semi-professional book reviewer and put my newly redecorated study/library to good use! Please do find me on Facebook or GoodReads - I love talking to others about books, etc.!

And without further ado, here's Anne and her review of Cold Glory(!):

I do not usually read novels about overthrowing the American Government. But, I do have a passion for all things Civil War related, and in reading the synopsis for this book, I was immediately intrigued. Most Americans know the surrender of the Confederate Army to the Union Army took place at the McLean home in Appomattox Court House, VA. And it is common knowledge Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant were alone for a few minutes before allowing their staff to come inside and witness the signing of the papers which would formally end the four year war. How many of us have wondered what was said between those two men? B. Kent Anderson wondered the same thing, and the idea for his novel was born.

The book opens with the scene inside the McLean home. Grant, Lee and a third man, Edward Hiram are alone in the quiet of Palm Sunday. A quick discussion, signatures on a document, the touch of a gold lapel pin with the initials "G.W", and Hiram rides off to Oklahoma to deliver the document and await the coming days of Reconstruction.

Flash forward to present day....Nick Journey, a historian and professor at South Central College of Oklahoma, is called to the scene of Fort Washita Historical Site when a large cache of CW era rifles is uncovered during the ground breaking for a new museum. He is given a document and a gold label pin which is found in a metal box among the weapons. Little does Professor Journey know this could be the "find" of a lifetime. Or the end of his life.

Within a short time, Professor Journey discovers others are very interested in the pieces of the document he has in his possession. Journey learns they call themselves the "Glory Warriors" and they will commit murder to get what they want. Little does he know, this is a large group of Glory Warriors who have been groomed for generations to "take back" America when this lost document is finally found. He finds himself running from these people with a female agent, Meg Tolman, of the Federal Research and Investigations Office. They have a very short time to put together the mystery of this document, what it could mean to the American people living in the 21st century, all the while only being able to trust each other.

I don't want to spoil this book for others. But let me say this, it's a fast paced, edge of your seat, "who are the bad guys and who are the good guys?" plot twisting book that will have you truly wondering about those few minutes Grant and Lee spent alone in the Appomattox Courthouse on a Palm Sunday nearly 150 years ago.

Thanks, Anne!
Best Wishes for More Great Reading in Your Future!

"Michigan Historical Review" Reviews "Notre Dame and the Civil War"!

I want to thank the Historical Society of Michigan for publishing a very kind review of my book, Notre Dame and the Civil War: Marching Onward to Victory (The History Press, 2010), in the most recent issue (Fall 2011) of their publication, Michigan Historical Review. Excerpts are below.

The review was written by Rev. Anthony J. Kuzniewski, S.J., Professor of History, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts.

Fr. Kuzniewski is the author of several publications, including Faith and Fatherland: The Polish Church War in Wisconsin, 1896-1918 (winner of the 1973 Kosciuszko Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Award), Thy Honored Name: A History of the College of the Holy Cross, 1843-1994, assistant editor of Waclaw Kruszka: A History of the Poles in America to 1908 (multivolume annotated translation of original work), articles in The Catholic Historical Review, Milwaukee History, Polish American Studies, American National Biography, Eerdmans' Handbook to Christianity in America, The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, and in separate anthologies edited by Robert Trisco, Frank Mocha, Frank Renkiewicz, and Sally M. Miller. In 2002, Fr. Kusniewski received the Holy Cross Distinguished Teaching Award.

As you can imagine, it's an honor to receive such a kind review from a distinguished professor, historian, author, and man-of-the cloth.

Excerpts:

"In telling the story of Notre Dame and its role in that conflict, Schmidt makes abundant use of archival materials belonging to the university, and of those deposited with the men’s and women’s branches of the Congregation of the Holy Cross...

"The story Schmidt relates is a dramatic one. More than one hundred students and alumni eventually participated in the Civil War...Notre Dame men were a part of virtually all of the major battles that involved the Army of the Potomac and Grant’s Army of the Tennessee...Father Edward Sorin, Notre Dame’s founder and president during the Civil War, was concerned about the large number of Irishmen and other Catholics in the Union armies and eventually supplied seven priest-chaplains...Finally, the CSC sisters, under the leadership of Mother Angela Gillespie, were staffing ten Union hospitals by the war’s end, serving heroically in challenging and often disheartening and dangerous conditions.

"Notre Dame and the Civil War is lavishly illustrated with fine portraits of participants in the war and of the monuments constructed to honor them after the conflict ended. The text abounds in quotes from primary documents, which are cited in the endnotes. They add color and life to Schmidt’s account...This useful account of Notre Dame’s participation in the Civil War will be of particular interest to alumni and supporters of the school. It will also be helpful to some future historian who may attempt to write a general account of the war’s impact on institutions of higher education."

Thank You Michigan Historical Review and Fr. Kusniewski!

Read other reviews of Notre Dame and the Civil War here:

America's Civil War Magazine (here)
Patrick McNamara's Blog (here)
Civil War News (here)
Civil War Librarian (Rea Andrew Redd) (here)
Almost Chosen People/The American Catholic (Don McClarey) (here)
Confederate Book Review (Robert Redd)(review and interview!) (here)
Irish in the American Civil War (Damian Shiels) (here)
South Bend Tribune Feature (here)

1862 Letter Between Patent/Homeopathic Medicine Dealers

In today's post I share a July 13, 1862 letter (from my collection) written from a "Mrs. E. R. Benton" - a patent/homeopathic medicine dealer in Cleveland, Ohio - and a "H. Bardin, M.D." - a patent medicine supplier in Penn Yan, NY.

I have been able to find some biographical details on a "Mr. E. R. Benton" in Cleveland in the 1860s...but nothing yet on a Dr. Bardin in NY...if anyone can help, that would be GREAT!

Although the penmanship is pretty nice, the handwriting is somewhat light from aging and it's a bit hard yet for me to provide a complete transcription; still, there is some really interesting content!

First off, note that she received a letter from Bardin dated 30 June 1862 that was delivered by 03 July 1862...that's pretty quick delivery between OH and NY in the 1860s, during a war no less!

Next it looks like she supplies an inventory of Bardin's medicines she has on hand...it's possible that she has some "army cases" and also some "farm cases." It's especially interesting to note the inventory of "The Hill Med" which almost certainly refers to "Dr. Hill's Medicines." Hill's was a British brand from the early- to mid-1700s that made its way to America. The brand last through the 19th century as well, I believe.

Mrs. Benton mentions that she hasn't been able to devote much time to selling medicines due to her husband's absence, but adds "I think I shall sell two whole cases soon as I have told my friends of the superiority over all other Med that I have ever saw..." and "I have broken up several fevers for my friends with its use."

The bulk of the letter refers to the case of young man next door taken with a terrible fever. The family sought help from a physician ("Alopathic" as she refers to him...by this she means an "allopathic" or "conventional" physician...allopath was a term of derision coined by competing homeopath sect, to which she and Dr. Bardin likely belonged); evidently she advised them that they should have called her sooner and she might have been able to help...it's especially interesting that she asks Dr. Bardin for advice on what she should give in such a case when the "No. 1" pills do not work.

She closes with a note about her husband being detained on patent business (indeed, some of the biographical information I'v been able to get about Mr. Benton does have to do with his inventions).

The cover is nice condition, with a nice Cleveland postmark and has some interesting notations, apparently made by Dr. Bardin to help him in filing the letter in his correspondence.

I'm in the middle of some other writing projects right now and don;t have time to do a proper transcription just yet, but did want to share this peek into medical life of the 1860s and the close connection between postal history and medical history. I hope you enjoyed it!

If anyone is interested in trying a transcription, drop me a line and we can talk about your collecting or historical interests and perhaps sharing digitized images of the letter and cover.