Before we went to the museum yesterday, I had a look at the gift shop online, and I knew I wanted one of these, so I picked up one as a little gift for myself. I couldn’t tell you the last time I bought something at a gift shop, and I almost talked myself out of it, but, in the end, I’m glad I got one. This is a lapel pin version of the flag which, according to tradition, George Washington used to denote his headquarters during the war.
Looks fantastic on my lapel.
And then, as we were leaving the gift shop, pleased with my purchase spending four hours in the past, I saw this flag on the opposite wall. This is a reproduction of Washington’s standard.
But wait! While the original is preserved by the museum, and was not on display, this one has a story that would have been unbelievable to the first president.
This reproduction went to space with Sen. John Glenn in 1998, orbiting the earth 134 times, covering 3.6 million miles on the Space Shuttle Discovery, 199 years after Washington died.
Also, I took a quick photos inside the gift shop, so I could see more closely consider the books I want to one day read. I made a list on Amazon, and if you want to see 25 of the best books on display (there were probably 40 or so, total), you can see what I’ll be reading in the future.
For a grading break, and before an afternoon and early evening meeting, we went to the Museum of the American Revolution. It’s one of those things you wonder why I waited so long to do. And it’s one of those days where my lovely bride braced herself when she said, “What time should we go?” There was that meeting we had to attend, so we were backtiming the day.
I said I’d found that if you want to read things you could spend a three hours there.
And this is where it pays off to do things with a person who knows what’s in your heart, but are afraid to say out loud. This incredible woman bought tickets for 10 a.m., which would give us more than four hours at the museum.
Worth it. And we didn’t even get to see one of the rooms. But here’s a quick look at some of what we saw.
Outside, because of course you must start outside, there are modern brick walls, nondescript, but for this sculpture.
(This is the first of three panoramas in this post. And it’s beautiful. Click to embiggen.)
This is a really, really fine museum. But there are a few silly things. For tactile people, like me, there are a few things you can touch. You remember reading about the Stamp Act. Here’s an oversized stamp you can touch. It is made of plastic.
There are a few areas where they’re trying to create an immersive experience. You walk under a recreation of a Liberty Tree, where you can touch a bit of wood salvaged (and preserved) from an actual Liberty Tree, the last surviving Liberty Tree, which was felled by a hurricane in 1999 in Maryland.
Pasted up in some of those areas are reproductions of handbills that the revolutionary-era people might have seen. This one was printed by E. Russell, who notes his shop is set up “next the Cornfield, Union-street.”
E. Russell was Ezekiel Russell, a printer of minor importance. He apprenticed under his brother, and then bounced around New England trying to make his business work. For a time he dabbled in auctioneering, but he returned to slinging the lead. He wrote a royalist publication for a time, but history seems to think that he just needed the money. Most of his work is remembered as small pamphlets. His wife, Sarah Russell worked in the print shop, and took over the business after he died in 1796. She’s remembered as a pioneer of female publishing.
And before we get too far into this, let me direct you to Museum’s site, for a look at what they consider the crown jewel of the collection, which they don’t let allow you to photograph, George Washington’s war tent. It’s a living piece of history, lived in during war and well documented in peace, it is a piece of linen that’s 250 years old, so there’s no flashes or bright lights allowed.
You’ll see a few glimpses of it, and the mini-doc that visitors watch before seeing the tent, in this video.
Washington didn’t sleep in it every night during the war, but that tent got it’s share of use. It makes sense that this is well protected, but you still want to walk under those flaps when you see it. You want to stand there, and try to understand the sense of the size of the space, and the great men — scared, cold, hungry, determined — that stood there.
This is the second panorama in the post, and this is thought to be George Washington’s sword. And, remarkably, it’s just … sitting there.
(Click to embiggen.)
When they read the Declaration of Independence in New York City on July 9, 1776, some of the soldiers and sailors tore down symbols of the king. British flags, tavern signs, the royal insignia, were all removed. Including a statue of George III, that had been sculpted in London. Much of the statue — he’d been riding a horse, wearing a Roman-style toga — was carried off to Connecticut and melted into musket balls, some 42,000 in all. A few fragments of the statue survived.
They’ve dug some musket balls out of a few battlefields that matched the composition of lead and tin here, so historians think some of this statue was sent back to the British in anger.
The Declaration of Independence was distributed, by design and format, as a fragile thing. John Dunlap was the original printer, in Philadelphia. It is thought that he printed about 200, some of them in great haste. Just 26 copies of the Dunlap broadsides are known to survive. (Including one that was found behind a painting picked up for $4 at a flea market in 1989!) The Library of Congress has two of the Dunlap originals, and only one of those is complete.
I got to see one of the Dunlap broadsides in a museum exhibit in 2003. No photographs allowed.
This is not a Dunlap broadside.
John Gill, Edward E. Powars, and Nathaniel Willis printed the first copies of the Declaration in Boston, both in newspapers and in this broadside. This is a second printing of the Gill and Powars broadside. (The bottom line is the differentiating clue.)
Historians don’t know how many of their broadsides were made or survive. But you can still go to the print shop when you’re in Boston. (I’m going there.) A master printer, Gary Gregory, does historical reproductions in the traditional style. (I’m going to talk him into letting me print a copy.)
Ssshhhhh … I think this one is a reproduction, but it is historically faithful version of that second printing. It even has the Gill and Powars errors off the Dunlap original. I wonder how much thought the museum or other experts give to the amount of creases and wear should be worked into reproductions.
General Hugh Mercer fought and was killed at the Battle of Princeton. Born in Scotland, Mercer was a surgeon during the Jacobin uprising in his homeland. He fled to Pennsylvania, in 1747, after the Jacobites were put down. He worked as an apothecary, and then served in the French and Indian War in the 1750s. He was wounded twice, once badly, and he became George Washington’s lifelong friend, moving to Virginia to dispense medicine there, and then came the American Revolution, where he quickly was appointed as a general in the Pennsylvania militia.
He and his men, a vanguard of some 350 soldiers, ran across two British regiments and some attached cavalry. Mercer’s horse was shot from under him. The British thought he was Washington, and so they moved in and demanded he surrender. Mercer, instead, drew his sword. He was bayoneted seven times and left for dead.
You’ve seen the painting that commemorates his death. And maybe history is like that sometimes. A high profile person was killed, and he was well-liked enough to become the centerpiece of John Turnbull’s first war painting. (When you look at the painting, you see Washington arriving on horseback. In the foreground Mercer was wounded. But you don’t see Hugh’s face. Turnbull used Mercer’s son, Hugh Jr., as a model.)
Mercer survived the battlefield. He lived, in agony, for a little more than a week. He gave this sword to his friend and adjutant, a Welshman named Jacob Morgan, and it stayed in their family for two generations. The photo above, the sword is paired with a bayonet that belonged to one of the units that Mercer ran across on that fateful day.
This is the hilt of his sword, posthumously engraved.
“Sword of General Hugh Mercer of the Revolutionary Army born in Aberdeen Scotland 1725 He came to Philadelphia from Scotland in 1746. Died January 12 1777 of wounds received at the Battle of Princeton, N.J.”
A handsome, large weapons display. Touch the screens to learn about each of the items in this giant case.
On the left you see weapons that were commonly in action from 1775 to 1777. Some, the display notes, were local, some captured, some left over from previous conflicts. On the right are weapons that show up later in the war, including some standardized French weapons were so important in the fighting.
I wonder if historians and docents got a little giddy putting all of those things on display.
And why is this humble little canteen just as intriguing?
The UStates branding suggests it belonged to the Continental Army, somewhere around 1777. The other initials might be people who carried the thing.
The every day items are just as fascinating as all of the big ticket items here.
These buttons adorned soldiers’ coats. They also date to 1777.
The museum then, note that gunpowder casks in 1776 also were stamped with USA, but these coat buttons, 25 per coat, were the first widespread use.
Archeologists found these all over the place at Valley Forge and other camps.
There’s a naval section. More pamphlets set the scene.
Here, friend, learn this MANLY SONG, and then join the American fleet. “A privateering we will go my boys, a privateering we will go!”
I wonder when they had time to do much sailing, singing 10 verses of this MANLY SONG. You know it’s MANLY because of all of the bravely dying and cheerfully dying going on in this song. Between this, and my 2009 experience learning about what life was like aboard the U.S.S. Constitution I don’t think the sailor’s life would have been for me.
That exhibit tells of 14-year-old free African American James Forten who volunteered aboard a privateer ship. He survived the war, became a prominent abolitionist, a wealthy Philadelphia businessman and the head of a hugely prominent regional family name.
This is the flag of the 2nd Spartan Regiment of South Carolina. The sign says that this is the first time it has been displayed since it flew over arms.
This sword belonged to Maj. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, Washington’s second-in-command at Yorktown. Yorktown was where the British surrendered, you might recall. When General Cornwallis sent his second-in-command to surrender, Washington sent Lincoln to receive him.
This is a panorama.
(Click to embiggen.)
One of my ancestors, a great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather according to online genealogy, was at Yorktown. He was born in 1751 in colonial Virginia, served twice in the militia and helped guard an estimated 500 British prisoners after they quit the field in Yorktown.
There’s also an ax head on display with Lincoln’s sword. The continental soldiers used axes like that to chop their way through British fortifications at Yorktown. (If you were wondering, Benjamin Lincoln was apparently the fourth cousin, three times removed, of Abraham Lincoln through his mother’s side.)
These beautiful buttons, the sign says, were sold as souvenirs of George Washington’s 1789 inauguration as president. They were sewn onto clothing.
Don’t you want a copy of each of those? (Real ones, of course. Not repros. Never repros.)
Just read the text on this sign. Go ahead and read it. I’ll be waiting on the other side of the photo.
“Charges spread through the partisan press that the state’s inclusive voter laws encouraged election fraud.”
We’ve been fighting this same stupid “Can’t let ’em vote, that’s how cheating happens” battle for more than 200 years. We’ve been fighting it because it is powerfully effective rhetoric. It’s nothing more than that, but still we are fighting it
At the end of the part of the museum we saw — because we didn’t get to see everything today, despite four hours! — there was a section of digitized reproductions of photographs of Revolutionary War era Americans. (Much later in life, obviously.)
Jonathan Harrington had seem some things. (And if I knew this story beforehand I would taken a more careful photo.) Harrington was, at 16, a fifer in a company at the battles of Lexington and Concord. His uncle and namesake was killed at Lexington, the boy escaped, only to rally and reengage the enemy soon after.
And, lastly, Daniel Bakeman, at a remarkable 109, was the last survivor receiving a veteran’s pension for service in the American Revolutionary War. If you believe his story, that is. It seems he might have served in some militia units. And then was a teamster for the military, then became a farmer in New York.
He had difficulty proving his service, but was eventually judged credible for pension purposes. Congress, on February 14, 1867, passed a special act which granted Bakeman a pension of $500 a year. Presumably he collected that twice before dying in 1869. Two other men were his last contemporaries to be pensioned for the Revolutionary War. By that point in the late 1860s the government was busy fending off requests from Civil War soldiers. (We have a history of treating our patriots poorly.)
My (apparently) great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather was not on the photo display. Of course I looked. But here he is.
He is buried in Illinois, in some woods between two fields, an all-but-forgotten family plot, I’d guess. He was laid to rest in a place that, even now, is quite rural. That photo, if it is indeed the man, would have been taken sometime in the first five years of the Daguerreotype style of photographs, and he would have been between 89 and 93 there.
Since it falls on Sunday this year, I’ll just go ahead and acknowledge the date today. Sixteen years ago, Sunday, this happened.
It took place right under this tree. That’s Our Tree, in Savannah. Every time we go there, we go back to the park and sit right there, beneath it’s beautiful branches.
(Click to embiggen.)
I hope Our Tree is having a season of it. I hope we go back soon, and the sun is warm, the breeze is a delight and the ground is dry enough to lay upon all day.
history / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off on We sit and stand and play and dream beneath them 25 Nov 24
I received a memo from the desk of the Office of Kitteh Complaints, and such memos are always to be urgently read and promptly acted upon. Previous memos have explained and, again, reiterated the process. Cat photos are expected on Mondays as part of the site’s most popular weekly feature. Their Insta drives a lot of traffic, it turns out.
And, as the weekend memo pointed out, they did not feature into the site last week. It was a serious memo. The subject line was was terse.
So here are the cats.
Not too long ago we ordered pizzas. It was a coolish night, and so they availed themselves of the boxes.
We have, you can see, created two monsters.
Here’s Phoebe taking her afternoon sun in the dining room.
And here’s Poseidon and you can almost see his little mind thinking “PILLOW FORT! PILLOW FORT!”
So the cats, as you can see, are doing well. And now I have to fulfill the rest of their tasks on the memo. They are very particular.
Some time back we had a limb fall from a tree. I cut away a lot of the small stuff by hand soon after it fell, then waited a while and bought myself a chainsaw. This weekend, finally, I got around to cutting it up. I don’t know why I waited so long. This was fast and easy and awesome.
I cut it into firewood-sized sections. The limb was still partially attached to the tree, so eventually I had to break all of the chainsaw rules, fetched the ladder, climbed up, firmly established my balance, reeeeeeeached up, closed my eyes and did what needed to be done for that last bit of the wood.
Felt quite macho.
First time using a chainsaw, as you can probably tell.
We inherited that wheelbarrow in the move, and I’ve come to value it. I had to put some air in the tire, but it works just fine. And the crickets were loving it when I evicted them for these chores.
Things still look properly festive on the front porch. Pay no attention to the dirty floor in need of a fresh coat of paint.
That’s coming in the spring. I am making a list of things to do and that’s well up the list.
My lovely bride has broken out all of the Christmas paraphernalia this weekend and we have deployed it strategically throughout the house and yard. When it was done, we wandered outside and down to the street to see the effect.
Festive, but not overstated. She did a nice job.
The candles in the window are always my favorite.
The tree I was working on earlier? This is it, in the early evening.
The people that we inherited the wheelbarrow from had three kids. Maybe they climbed that tree. I hope so. I hope they had a lot of fun in that part of the yard. It’s easy to be romantic about a place when it gives you shots like that.
These are a couple of quick shots with a lot of substance behind them, so let’s get to the good stuff.
This was a play or a skit and we have no idea what was going on here. There’s nothing written to support this one moment in their lives. Hopefully it bubbled to the surface for them from time-to-time, and they thought of it fondly.
Dig that fancy flash the guy is holding. And is this really hazing? You could get in a lot of trouble for that today, of course. But things were different, one supposes. Or maybe it was just in fun.
“Fun.”
I’m beginning to think the impression I’ve been given of the morally upright 1950s might not have been a complete … picture.
What do you suppose this guy was working on? Note the ink jar, too.
This feature has a “post every bike” policy, and now that extends to unicycles. This could come back to haunt us later.
That guy is riding at the gates at Toomer’s Corner. The brick column and the Class of 1917 sign are the clues. This it what it looks like today (in 2015).
I find I’m over the dodging and burning they were doing in the darkroom to cut out these images. What was going on behind the uni-cyclist could have been interesting to us, too.
From the advertisements in the back … This is obviously a sporting goods store, one I’ve never heard of. A quick search tells me they existed at least until the 1960s. They had a great spot, right next to Toomer’s Drugs.
Businesses come and go. The one in Atlanta is gone, too. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the model’s choice of footwear for this photograph.
J&M is still going strong, though. I bought my first Auburn t-shirt in that store. Shopped there a lot over the years.
Trey, a kind-hearted guy, still owns the place, and it’s still a family concern. Trey was a football walk-on. He grew up in town, and around that store, which his father opened the year before this book was published. It’s a part of everyone’s lives and has always been a part of his. It’s one of the last things downtown that feels old and familiar and I hope it goes on for forever. (Another bookstore I shopped in closed in 2022.) Trey’s lifetime devotion to the place and the people deserve that.
Hawkins is gone.
Has been gone for decades. Hawkins, over time, became Johnston & Malone. So this book is at the beginning of the crossover period. (J&M traces their roots, indirectly, back to the 19th century.) And Burton’s were the headwaters.
Robert Wilton Burton opened the first bookstore in Auburn. They offered “Something New Everyday” for 90 years.
Born in 1848 in Georgia, he enlisted in the Confederate cavalry at the end of the war. At the ripe old age of 17 he spent two days in the saddle before he was captured and spent the last three months of the war in captivity. Burton spent most of his adult years in Auburn, first as a teacher, and then a business man. In 1878 he opened his bookstore became the literary center for the town. Himself a poet, Burton was published in newspapers and magazines around the country, and had a successful series of children’s stories, too. He died in 1917, and his daughters took over the store, until it closed in 1968 when his last surviving daughter was 77.
Burton, his wife and his two daughters are all buried in Pine Hill, an old cemetery steeped in the area’s history, a place I enjoy as much as one can say they enjoy a cemetery, and, oddly, the last place I visited on the weepy, dreadful day we moved away.
And that’s the end of the 1954 Glomerata. These are the editors. And I bet those tires and candles made for a good joke.