Cultures & Communities - Overview
Furniture, cooking wares, clothing, works of art, and many other kinds of artifacts are part of what knit people into communities and cultures. The Museum’s collections feature artifacts from European Americans, Latinos, Arab Americans, Asian Pacific Americans, African Americans, Gypsies, Jews, and Christians, both Catholics and Protestants. The objects range from ceramic face jugs made by enslaved African Americans in South Carolina to graduation robes and wedding gowns. The holdings also include artifacts associated with education, such as teaching equipment, textbooks, and two complete schoolrooms. Uniforms, insignia, and other objects represent a wide variety of civic and voluntary organizations, including youth and fraternal groups, scouting, police forces, and firefighters.
"Cultures & Communities - Overview" showing 63 items.
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Carnival Mask
- Description
- This papier-mâché mask was made by Miguel Caraballo in 1985. Masks like this are typically worn by young men from the neighborhood, who don the costume of a vejigante , a character who roams the streets during Carnival, playfully scaring children and other revelers, and swatting them with vejigas (balloon-like, inflated animal bladders).
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1985
- maker
- Caraballo, Miguel Angel
- ID Number
- 1997.0097.0002
- accession number
- 1997.0097
- catalog number
- 1997.0097.0002
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Woman's African-style Headwrap
- Description
- This headwrap dating between 1972 and 1984 was worn by Fath Davis Ruffins, an African American woman in Washington, DC. Ruffins bought the fabric for this headwrap and matching dress, which is also in the Smithsonian collections, at an African shop on Georgia Avenue in Washington, DC. It was made in 1972 but was worn as part of a summer "dress-up" outfit through 1984. Elaborately tied headwraps were worn by young African American women during this period to acknowledge their West African ancestral roots.
- The flat cotton rectangular panel is a large floral "Java Print" in three shades of green with yellow accents on a cream background with a dark green with yellow floral design border. The forty-six inch long rectangle is narrower on one short side (twenty inches) than the other (inches) with stitched edges. "Guaranteed Dutch Java Print" is stamped on the selvage.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1972-1984
- used by
- Ruffins, Fath Davis
- maker
- Ruffins, Fath Davis
- ID Number
- 1992.0456.001
- accession number
- 1992.0456
- catalog number
- 1992.0456.001
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
1846 Merinda Shedd Wright's "Nine-patch" Album Quilt
- Description
- In 1846 nearly 100 friends and family members contributed signed blocks for an album quilt for Merinda Shedd Wright of Washington, N. H. Possibly made before she moved West, the inscriptions include the towns of Washington, Peterborough, Stoddard, and Goshen in New Hampshire, as well as Lowell and Cambridge Port in Massachusetts.
- The signers were the wives or daughters of farmers, marble cutters, mechanics, laborers, shoemakers, doctors, clergy, merchants, and others who populated the New England area in the mid-19th century. A few worked in the Lowell, Mass., mills. They ranged in age from two to the eighties, often mother and daughter combinations.
- Ninety-six pieced 8-inch “Nine-patch” signed blocks are set diagonally with 32 half blocks around the entire border. All are signed, and except for one stamped inscription, all are inscribed in ink. Three blocks are dated 1846. The blocks are separated and bordered with printed cotton sashing. The lower corners of the quilt are cut away to accommodate bedposts.
- Merinda Shedd, born May 1811, was the daughter of John Shedd (about 1784-1828) and Lydia Farnsworth (1785-1860). Merinda married Zophar Wright (1805-1880). The couple had seven children. It seems Merinda went West, but no further information about her was discovered. Zophar was listed as living in New Hampshire on the 1850 census (pauper) and 1860 census (basket maker). He remarried in 1877 and again in 1879.
- Sarah Shedd (1813-1867), sister of Merinda Shedd, penned the following on the quilt: “Oh! A Sister’s heart is deep - And her spirit strong to keep - Each light-link of early hours.” The lines are from a poem, “The Shepherd-poet of the Alps,” by English poet, Felicia Hemans (1793-1835). Sarah was 15 when, after her father died, she found work in the textile mills of Maine and Massachusetts to help support her mother and educate her brother.
- In addition to working in the mills, she became a poet and educator. She wrote for the Lowell Offering , and a book of her poetry, Poems of Sarah Shedd, Founder of the Shedd Free Library was published in 1883.
- Educated, independent, and able to pursue her own interests after her mother’s death, she aspired to found a public library for her hometown of Washington, N. H. Her entire estate, $2,500 (over $400,000 today), was left to the Town to establish a library which opened in 1869 as the Shedd Free Library and contained many of her own books. In 1881 a permanent building was dedicated that is still a functioning library, having grown from the original 292 books to over 9000.
- Her sister's quilt descended in the Nathan Reed Wright family, but they were not related to Zophar and Merinda Wright. Jane Wright, adopted daughter of Nathan, did sign the quilt, apparently as a friend of Merinda.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1846
- maker
- unknown
- ID Number
- TE*T15195
- catalog number
- T15195
- accession number
- 290274
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Engraved woodblock of a "Zuni eating bowl"
- Description
- This engraved woodblock of a “Zuni eating bowl” was prepared by the Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C.; the print was published in 1883 as Figure 425 (p. 357) in an article by James Stevenson (1840-1888) entitled “Illustrated Catalogue of the Collections Obtained from the Indians of New Mexico and Arizona in 1879” in the Second Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian, 1880-81.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1883
- publisher
- Bureau of American Ethnology
- printer
- Government Printing Office
- author
- Stevenson, James
- ID Number
- 1980.0219.0032
- accession number
- 1980.0219
- catalog number
- 1980.0219.0032
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Engraved woodblock of a "Zuni eating bowl"
- Description
- This engraved woodblock of a “Zuni eating bowl” was prepared by the Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C.; the print was published in 1883 as Figure 427 (p.357) in an article by James Stevenson (1840-1888) entitled “Illustrated Catalogue of the Collections Obtained from the Indians of New Mexico and Arizona in 1879” in the Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian, 1880-81.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1883
- publisher
- Bureau of American Ethnology
- printer
- Government Printing Office
- author
- Stevenson, James
- ID Number
- 1980.0219.0038
- accession number
- 1980.0219
- catalog number
- 1980.0219.0038
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Engraved woodblock titled "Shell Gorget - The Cross"
- Description
- This engraved woodblock of “Shell Gorgets – the Cross” was prepared by the Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C.; the print was published in 1883 as Plate LI.1 (p.268) in an article by William H. Holmes (1846-1933) entitled “Art in Shell of the Ancient Americans” in the Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian, 1880-81.
- A gorget is a piece of shell that has been engraved and perforated so that it can be worn as a pendant; in this case, it has been engraved with a cross insignia. The caption beneath the image reveals that the gorget was found in Union County, Illinois.
- In a footnote to his article, Holmes identifies “Kate C. Osgood” as an accompanying artist on his collecting expedition.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1883
- printer
- Government Printing Office
- publisher
- Bureau of American Ethnology
- author
- Holmes, William Henry
- ID Number
- 1980.0219.0080
- catalog number
- 1980.0219.0080
- accession number
- 1980.0219
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Engraved woodblock of a "House-burial"
- Description
- This engraved woodblock of a “House-burial” was prepared by Henry Hobart Nichols (1838-1887); the print was published by the Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C. in 1881 as Figure 27 (p. 175) in an article by Dr. H. C. Yarrow (1840-1929) entitled “Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians” in the First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian, 1879-80.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1881
- printer
- Government Printing Office
- publisher
- Bureau of American Ethnology
- graphic artist
- Nichols, H. H.
- author
- Yarrow, Harry Crecy
- ID Number
- 1980.0219.0084
- catalog number
- 1980.0219.0084
- accession number
- 1980.0219
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Engraved woodblock of a "Handled cup, province of Tusayan"
- Description
- This engraved woodblock of a “Handled cup, Province of Tusayan” was prepared by the Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C.; the print was published in 1886 as 298 (p.327) in an article by William H. Holmes (1846-1933) entitled “Pottery of the Ancient Pueblos” in the Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian, 1882-83.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1886
- publisher
- Bureau of American Ethnology
- printer
- Government Printing Office
- author
- Holmes, William Henry
- ID Number
- 1980.0219.0152
- catalog number
- 1980.0219.0152
- accession number
- 1980.0219
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Engraved woodblock of a "Navajo Indian with silver ornaments"
- Description
- This engraved woodblock of “Navajo Indian with silver ornaments" was prepared, after a photograph, by the Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C.; the print was published as Plate XX (p. 178) in an article by Dr. Washington Matthews (1843-1905) entitled “Navajo Silversmiths” in the Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian, 1880-81.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1883
- publisher
- Bureau of American Ethnology
- printer
- Government Printing Office
- author
- Matthews, Washington
- block maker
- J. J. & Co.
- ID Number
- 1980.0219.0442
- accession number
- 1980.0219
- catalog number
- 1980.0219.0442
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Engraved woodblock of "The Warrior and his Bride"
- Description
- This engraved woodblock of “The Warrior and his Bride” was prepared by Henry Hobart Nichols (1838-1887) and the Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C.; the print was published in 1875 as Figure 15 (p.44) in Report of the Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries. Explored in 1869, 1870, 1871, and 1872, under the direction of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution by John Wesley Powell (1834-1902).
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1875
- publisher
- Bureau of American Ethnology
- printer
- Government Printing Office
- author
- Powell, John Wesley
- graphic artist
- Nichols, H. H.
- ID Number
- 1980.0219.0465
- accession number
- 1980.0219
- catalog number
- 1980.0219.0465
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
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