Featured Manuscript: The Introduction of Historical Parks

Pen used by President Herbert Hoover to sign an Act to provide for the creation of Morristown National Historical Park.

Curator's Note:

Among American presidents, Herbert Hoover has endured his fair share of negative press. Rightly or wrongly, Hoover will forever be linked in history with the Great Depression, an event which overshadowed his administration and cumulative legacy. Nonetheless, Hoover lived a long and eventful life and had many accomplishments beyond the troubles he endured with the Great Depression.

One example, which may not readily come to most people’s memory, is Hoover’s role in the founding of the historical park model within the National Park Service (NPS). Until 1933, the NPS had operated national parks which still evoke the natural grandeur associated with unspoiled nature at its most pristine. Parks such as Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, and the Great Smokey Mountains, are examples of such natural wonders which the NPS manages for the benefit of all Americans. (continued below)

W. Warren Barbour letter to Clyde Potts, 1933.

Lawrence Richey letter to W. Warren Barbour, 1933.

Yet, America is certainly more than its magnificent natural wonders and in the late 1920s, NPS director Horace Albright began thinking about moving the agency into a new field—historic preservation. The concept of historic preservation was nothing new in the United States; what was new, however, was the idea that the NPS should perhaps get involved and leverage the power of the federal government to help safeguard America’s cultural patrimony. Historic sites throughout the country had been destroyed in what many believed was an almost criminal act. The willful, unmitigated destruction of our nation’s heritage was a topic which drew Albright’s attention as a subject worthy of his agency and his talent and ambition.

Prompted by such historic preservation efforts as Colonial Williamsburg, Albright searched for an opportunity to put his plan to a test. In Morristown, NJ, several prominent men, principle among them mayor Clyde Potts, and businessman Lloyd W. Smith, were independently working on an idea for forming some sort of memorial at the site of the Jockey Hollow Revolutionary War winter encampment in 1779-1780. Through their connections Smith and Potts found their way to Albright who welcomed their idea with gusto.

During the very early 1930s, Albright, Smith, and Potts, coalesced their individual ideas into a more coherent strategy and by 1932 had finished putting the final pieces into place to create a National Historical Park at Morristown focusing on the Jockey Hollow encampment. As this plan progressed through the bureaucratic process, the Washington Association of New Jersey, founded in 1874 and running the Ford Mansion as a historic site for nearly sixty years, decided to donate the Mansion (Washington’s headquarters during the 1779-1780 encampment) and their considerable museum and archival collection to the National Historical Park venture pursued by Albright, Smith, and Potts.

With the inclusion of the Ford Mansion, the new National Historical Park at Morristown took on an added, dramatic dimension. The museum and archival collection of the Washington Association necessitated the building of a standalone museum building to house and exhibit the collection. That building of course still stands today as designed by noted architect John Russell Pope in 1936.

Finally, to create a National Historical Park, an act of Congress, creating a bill, had to be passed. And, for that bill to become law, it needed the signature of the president. When President Hoover put pen to paper to create the law establishing Morristown National Historical Park on March 2, 1933, he joined a long established tradition among president’s of having the pen utilized to create a law saved as a memento of the occasion. Particularly, pens used to sign legislation creating a new aspect of an agency, or a new agency altogether, are especially coveted.

Therefore, the pen used by President Hoover to create Morristown National Historical Park, the first historical park in the NPS system and representing a giant leap into the evolving field of historic preservation for the NPS, is preserved as a memento of the simple act of placing a signature on a piece of paper. That simple act, represented with the pen shown here, has dramatically altered the field of historic preservation and the involvement of the NPS over nearly eighty years.

Featured Manuscript: Edith Wharton

Happy Birthday, Edith!

Curator's Note:

Edith Newbold Jones Wharton was born January 24^th, 1862 (150 years ago) in New York City to Lucretia and George Jones, members of a prominent New York City family of great wealth. Her childhood was one of privilege and comforts both in the United States and during extended stays in Europe. She was tutored in the fashion of the time for a girl of her social status. She was not prepared for a career beyond marriage other than ultimately taking her place as a matron in society.

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Events were however moving society as a whole faster than the conservative, insulated society she was born into. She had a conventional upbringing for a girl of her time and class and saw her life as already mapped out for her from a young age. Yet, even her insulated realm was coming under attack. While the country nearly tore itself apart during the Civil War, she and her family remained safely removed from the horrors of war. Try as they might though, outside events could not be totally removed from the family’s life.

Outside of the tight knit, structured, prescribed environment within which the Jones family lived, young Edith began to sense her life could be more than presented to her. While nothing compared to the women’s rights movement of nearly a hundred years later, women during the later nineteenth century did experience a relative boost in the freedom’s allowed them. Edith Jones was quick to perceive this, and this perception only intensified after her marriage to Edward Wharton in 1885. Edward “Teddy” Wharton was not what we would consider to be a “good catch,” yet he was totally true to his social status.

Nearly suffocated by what she saw as the artificial limitations of her social state, she began to explore the options available to her as a woman as early as 1875. One area she felt particularly drawn to was writing. She felt a natural affinity to the craft of the writer and began to explore on her own her varied interests which she anticipated writing about. She published works of fiction and poetry throughout the late 1870s and 1880s before her marriage. Her first major publication however was not in the field of fiction or poetry. She was a noted amateur designer highly influenced by Classical Renaissance adaptations and with noted architect Ogden Codman wrote The Decoration of Houses in 1897.

To promote her ideas, she embarked on a building plan to construct a new home for herself based on her principles of design. The result, built in 1902 and named The Mount, in Lenox, MA, is a masterpiece of inspiration considered one of the truly fine works of architecture in the United States. Edith Wharton went on to a stunning career as a novelist and short story writer and was the first woman awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 1921 for her novel The Age of Innocence. She was a finalist for the Nobel Prize in 1927.

Why Morristown?

Morristown NHP is naturally best known for its association with George Washington, the Continental Army, and the terrible winter encampment of 1779-1780. But there is another side to the Morristown NHP story. In 1955, Lloyd W. Smith donated his vast rare book and manuscript collection to the park. While sometimes overlooked, the collection is a tremendous source of primary information. Among the hundreds of thousands of manuscripts is a short note from Edith Wharton to an editor and friend John Brisben Walker. The letter dates from July 19^th, 1900, and shows the life of a writer who is busy getting a work prepared for her publisher. Wharton is writing from Lenox, MA, not yet at The Mount, to Walker in New York. She asks Walker to send her a copy of the galleys for her short story “The Rembrandt.” The story was going to be published by Scribner’s and Wharton had left her galley copies in New York when she left for Lenox. She wanted to make final edits for Scribner’s before the deadline passed.

What this letter shows is not only the obvious, that Wharton was published by a major American publisher, Scribner’s, she was also actively involved with editing and preparation of her manuscripts. While a short letter overall, it does highlight several key points of the writer’s life which Edith Wharton is known for.

• Wharton, Edith. 1900, July 19. Lloyd W. Smith Archival Collection. LWS 2703. Morristown National Historical Park, Morristown, NJ.
  
  
• Edith Wharton Estate & Gardens

Featured Artifact: Edward Savage Painting

Edward Savage (1761-1817)
Portrait of George Washington
Circa 1795
Unsigned
Oil on canvas
25 X 30 inches
Morristown National Historical Park, MORR 3252


Physical Description:
This painting reveals the image of an austere and stately George Washington. The background is a dark brown bronze. In almost profile, his face bears a long nose, dark eyes, and a protruding chin. Two brown, arching eyebrows frame his slender features. Four horizontal rows, one above the other, depict his gray and white hair. In a three-quarter length bust portrait, George Washington wears a solid black coat. It is open enough to reveal a white linen shirt underneath. The linen appears to zigzag down Washington’s chest. An ornate, gilded frame adorns the oil portrait.

Attribution:The history of this George Washington portrait begins with debates about its attribution. Jennie Elizabeth Thompkins of Caldwell, New Jersey donated the painting to the Morristown National Historical Park (MNHP) on May 6, 1941. She believed Gilbert Stuart painted the portrait from life. In addition, she noted that Ebenezer Thayer, the portrait’s first owner, acquired the painting directly from Stuart in Boston or bought it from a Boston museum. The Chicago World’s Fair displayed the painting as a Gilbert Stuart; however, the Washington Centennial Exhibition at the Metropolitan Opera House exhibited the portrait under an unknown artist.[1]

After the portrait arrived in Morristown, the Frick Art Reference Library disputed the Stuart attribution. A letter from September 8, 1941, states: “[The portrait] bears no resemblance to any Stuart of which we find reproduction; it would seem, rather, to be nearer to the Edward Savage type of Washington Portrait.”[2] This letter illustrates that the Frick Art Reference Library compared the photograph of the Washington portrait from Morristown with examples of Stuart’s work. They noted that Washington’s eyes in the MNHP portrait appear dark while Gilbert Stuart’s paintings portray him with grey-blue or hazel eyes.[3] This detail, along with differences in style and technique, proved enough to discredit Gilbert Stuart’s attribution.

The park changed the official attribution to Edward Savage in 1942. The bust portrait of George Washington at the Morristown National Historical Park is an important painting in Savage’s oeuvre, or collective body of work. It displays the influence of Savage’s earlier portraits along with foreshadowing later paintings and mezzotints. While his contemporaries also painted portraits of George Washington, Savage’s portraits reflect his own unique style and technique. His paintings and engravings of George Washington have contributed to our national image of America’s first President.

[1] Information obtained from Mrs. Tompkins, April 28, 1941, MNHP, object file folder, Morr 3252.
[2] Letter from the Frick Art Reference Library to MNHP, September 8, 1941, MNHP, object file folder, Morr 3252.
[3] Letter from R. P. Tolman of the Smithsonian Institution to MNHP, September 20, 1941, MNHP, object file folder, Morr 3252.

Student Intern Exhibit Features Native American Artifacts

In the fall of 2011, during an internship here at Morristown National Historical Park Museum, archaeology and anthropology major Brian Williams from Drew University utilized the Native American collection on site to create a temporary exhibit now on display at the museum. Through tedious research as well as some help from the staff here at Morristown National Historical Park, Brian created a fascinating exhibit showcasing some of the collection’s most unique artifacts.

Of the 20,000 Native American artifacts in the collection ranging from local tribes such as the Lenne Lenape to artifacts from across the Midwest and South, Brian focused in on a process called “knapping”. The tool-making process of Native Americans through knapping involved lithic reduction. This was done by striking workable material with a much harder tool, such as a rock. It was through this process that Native American tool making took a giant step forward during prehistoric times in North America. Through knapping, Native Americans formed sharper and more useful tools and weapons, some of which are exhibited in Brian’s display. Arrowheads are the most well-known products of knapping and are some of the most fascinating to look at.

The exhibit consists of two display cases, the first of which exhibits the tools used for the knapping process, while the second shows the process and end results of knapping. Included in the exhibit are some examples created by Brian himself in order to replicate the process while others are the actual artifacts in MNHP’s collection. Through Brian’s work in one short semester, we are now able to showcase some of the more unique artifacts in collection here at Morristown National Historical Park Museum.

Exhibit by Brian Williams, Drew University.