American Antiquarian Society

It’s National Ketchup Day! 🍅

Did you know Thomas Jefferson was one of the first in the United States to cultivate the tomato (and legitimize the fruit?) One of the earliest recipes for “tomato catsup” appeared in the New Art of Cookery (1792) by Richard Brigg (link in bio to see the cookbook which has been digitized!).

By the mid-1800s, tomatoes and their purees had become popular, but preparing ketchup at home was time consuming. It’s no wonder that Americans embraced the first mass produced bottles of ketchup in the late 1860s. These chefs and businessmen, among those like Henry J. Heinz, would go on to produce a wide range of pickles, relishes, and other preserves for sale.

Just like you can’t have enough of the condiment, today we thought we’d over-indulge with our printed ephemera items related to the pantry staple:

🥫1. Uncataloged items which are part of the Stephen Davies Paine collection of ephemera gifted to the society last year (including images of the Heinz and Hazard & Co. factories AND the version of ketchup that comes decanted 💅),

🥫2. A collection of food labels for ketchup lithographed by Boston-based Louis Prang and Company for the “Boston Market” company in New Jersey (that gold on the labels 😍!!!); the sheet contains uncut product labels designed to go on the actual bottles of the product.

🥫3-5. The final item is a metamorphic advertising card for the Shrewsbury Tomato ketchup company; it was produced by the E.C. Hazard Company after 1870. We’ve included her asleep, awake, dreaming, and for those truly interested, the reverse. We can confirm the trade card must be held up the light for its before and after effect. The graphics printed on the reverse show through the thin paper to reveal the woman waking to a bottle of floating ketchup (?): “There is no vice so simply but assumes some mark of virtue in its outward part” (for those keeping score virtuous = ketchup 💪). What color ketchup do you dream in?

[In Heinz-sight 🥁 we probably should have posted these separately because they're so rich!]

It’s been 175 years since prohibition 🍻

On this day, June 2, 1851, Maine became the first state to ban the manufacture and sale of liquor. Today’s post is getting us ready for the Chat with a Curator event happening on Thursday (ALLLL the affidavits, court and legal documents from Worcester County!), but this item actually hails from our Prohibition affidavits from Maine from 1851.

The “Maine Law” stayed on the books until National Prohibition was repealed in 1934. This interleaved document contains eight affidavits written by one person but signed by various men in Maine. The affidavits reveal the names of saloon keepers and detail when and how they sold liquor. One man testifies “I have seen John Donovan, know him by sight. His business is selling liquor. Keeps a shop in Beddefords Water St. Keeps a few cigars.” Another man records a more dangerous encounter with a barkeep – “He caught me by the throat and threw me down [and] said if I did not give it [money] up he would pound me.”

If you’d like to keep exploring other 19th-century jail-able (and maybe bailable?) offenses, be sure to join us this Thursday! Link in bio for more.

Four new programs at AAS this month!

📅 In person program - Chat with a Curator
Crime and Punishment: Inside Worcester’s Historic Jail Records
Thursday, June 4 from 5:00-6:30pm EDT
With Worcester County Sheriff Lewis Evangelidis

📅 Hybrid program
In Their Words & Voices: Nineteenth-century Spirituals
Tuesday, June 16 from 7:00-8:00pm EDT
With Music Worcester and Everett McCorvey

📅 Hybrid program
Indigenous Books and America 250
Wednesday, June 24 from 7:00-8:00pm EDT
The Wiggins Lecture
With Phillip Round

📅 Hybrid program
From Press to Protest: How Printing Shaped the Revolution
Tuesday, June 30 from 7:00-8:00 pm EDT
With Andrew Volpe
Join us ahead of time for a free public tour form 5:45-6:30 pm!

Visit: https://www.americanantiquarian.org/programs-events/calendar-events to sign up for any of these free programs!

Happy 207th birthday, Walt Whitman! 🎉
This front cover and title page is from the third edition of Leaves of Grass, published Boston in 1860 by Thayer & Eldridge. This edition is known for its heavy embossing, including the vertical, zigzagging stripes that span the cover from top to bottom and the lettering of the title page (and date which says "year 85 of the States").

There was a bear sighting near the Society yesterday 🐻!

Don't worry, no one was harmed. It did make us think of this illustration of a hungry bear smelling a traveler (while another looks on safely from a tree 🫣) which comes from Marmaduke Multiply, Illustrated with Cuts Part 4. The book used humorous captions to teach children their multiplication tables.

Published between 1827 and 1831 by Munroe & Francis of New York, the text features illustrations attributed to American wood engraver Alonzo Hartwell (1805-1873), which were hand-colored by contemporary pieceworkers, likely women and children.

We’ve been waiting for just the right times (🥁) to share this!

The Society is closed Monday, May 25 in observance of Memorial Day

This (rare!) illustration was recently found in the first folio volume of the United States Revolution Collection dating from the years 1754-1928. This manuscript contains the returns of the third Massachusetts Brigade commanded by Brigadier General John Paterson (1744-1809) from September 4, 1779 to October 27, 1781. The collection has been pulled for photography as we commemorate America at 250.

Military returns include information such as muster rolls, pay of wages, rations, clothing, accounts, arms, ammunition, casualties, and officer rolls (and in this page from 1781, a hand-drawn face!)

The original documents in the US Revolution Collection are being digitized thanks to the generosity of Society member Dr. Jeffrey Griffith. Digital access to these items will soon be available for research.

Just a few weeks left of school here in New England! This is the stage (🥁) of the year when things get wacky. Did you know that grammar could look so fun?

This English language schoolbook was published by Hugh Anderson (1782-1866) in Cadez, Ohio around 1832. Anderson was an engraver who worked in Philadelphia before moving to Ohio in the 1830s. His picture books are extremely rare, especially a hand-colored copy. In this grammar-made-fun, each page has a different grammatical concept illustrated by an amusing image. In this case, verbs are “actors of eminence” including Harlequin and Lady Macbeth (with dagger in hand). 🎭

Step into the world of crime and punishment in Worcester during the late 1800s in this drop-in Chat with a Curator program on Thursday, June 4th from 5-6:30 pm

Last year, the Worcester County Sheriff’s Office donated approximately 100,000 records to the Society, dating mostly from 1860 to 1900. They include writs and mittimuses, legal documents specifying court orders or warrants for people taken into custody for a crime, as well as ledger books containing the registers, solitary confinement and medical records.

During the program, participants will be able to view a variety of jail records and talk with Worcester County Sheriff Lewis Evangelidis and Curator of Manuscripts Ashley Cataldo.

More information at link in bio!

On May 16, 1900 L. Frank Baum (1856-1919) published the Wonderful Wizard of Oz! What does that have to do with this independent monthly journal of finance?

The recent acquisition of an 1890 Aberdeen, South Dakota newspaper, the Western Investor brought an unusual level of excitement to the Society. Despite a slightly whimsical masthead, the paper appeared to be a standard, (slightly dull) business newspaper interesting only for researchers of bank and stock market history. This issue was acquired because South Dakotans are not well represented in the collection. A peek inside, however, revealed that it was published by Lyman Frank Baum, 9 years before he wrote the Wizard of Oz. It turns out it is one of only two known issues and the only one held by an institution.

Baum moved with his family to South Dakota in 1888 after his New York store burnt down because he heard of financial opportunities there. He bought a local paper, renamed it the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer and began its weekly run on January 25, 1890. While publishing this newspaper, he also started the Western Investor as a monthly publication. It ran from August 1890 until at least February 1891, issue no. 6. It is considered one of Baum’s rarest publications.

An added dose of mothers and their children this Mother’s Day for your feed 💐

These three recent acquisitions are now part of our photography collection:

📷: A collodion print mounted on card of Sarah Matthews née Carey (1876-1933) and her mother Lucilla Carey (1851-1933) taken by C.H. Berger in St. Paris, Ohio (ca. 1900).

📷: An unknown mother and daughter albumen photograph taken by John M. Dafoe in Alpena, Michigan ca. 1894.

📷: Ruth Curtis née Wetherbee (1860-1947) holding her 24 day old infant, Francis Shaw Curtis (1888-1950) taken by an unknown photographer around 1888.