Black and white print depicting a large Greek Revival style building with a central dome and architrave on a hill. The grounds in front of it are filled with people strolling and reclining on the lawn and carriages and riders on horseback.
Color print of two Indians in a canoe coming at a river bank. The canoe contains deer killed in the hunt. A woman and child greet the canoe while another woman, two children and a dog are in the background. The setting is an Indian camp with many decorated tepeesk on a river bank.
This tub is similar in shape and size to those advertised for a child’s use in the 1869 Dover Stamping Company’s catalog. Mid to later–19th century advice books encouraged more frequent bathing for children.
Julia McNair Wright’s 1879 Complete Home: An Encyclopaedia of Domestic Life and Affairs recommended “If you want your child to be vigorous in play and exercise, give it an abundance of baths: bathe it every day, using warm or cold water—never hot, never freezing, but warm or cold water as best agrees with your child’s constitution.”* Parents likely bathed their children in the kitchen near the warmth of the fire and near a ready source of heated water. The Saturday night bath became a ritual in many households.
For more information on bathing and bathtubs in the 19th and early 20th centuries, please see the introduction to this online exhibition.
*Julia McNair Wright, Complete Home: An Encyclopaedia of Domestic Life and Affairs, (Philadelphia, Pa.: J. C. McCurdy & Co., [1879]), 136.
Although the Atlantic slave trade was abolished in 1808, some slavers continued to illegally buy slaves in Africa and transport them to locations where slavery was legal. This British print is based on an 1840 painting by the French artist Auguste-Francois Biard (1799-1882), depicts a West African slave market on the coast of Sierra Leone. At the center of the scene, two white French slave-traders inspect a potential slave who lies on his back. Another man brands a female slave. In the lower right, an African slave-dealer sits smoking a long pipe. Behind him, a white dealer reclines, apathetically watching the events in front of him. On the left, slaves are whipped and loaded onto ships. A muscular white slaver stands in the forefront with his back to the viewer, holding a device for restraining slaves.
Biard’s painting was exhibited in London, where its lurid subject matter fascinated the public. Charles Edward Wagstaff (1808-1850) based this print on Biard’s painting. Wagstaff trained as an apprentice engraver in London, later producing acclaimed portrait prints of English notables, including the Duke of Wellington, Queen Victoria, and Prince Albert.
Black and white advertising print depicting a seven-story sugar refinery building behind a row of two and a half-story buildings on a city street. The building is the expanded Harrison & Newhall refinery, formerly the Penington Sugar Refinery, circa 1855 or 1856. A number of horse-drawn carts or drays carry barrels to and from the refinery at one end of the street while a traffic jam occurs at the other end. This image was included in the 1856 edition of Colton's Atlas of America, as an example of businesses in Pennsylvania.
Color print depicting numerous tents in a wooded area. The tents are arranged in a rough semi-circle around rows of benches facing a stage. Men, women and children are in the foreground and in various places in the background. A food tent is on the right.
This black and white allegorical print depicts the course of destruction through drinking. A train with its engine labeled "Distillery" is stopped at "Drunkard's Curve Station". The train is leaving a tranquil valley and heading toward doom with skeletons and snakes in the background. The print has a considerable amount of descriptive and interpretive text.
This print was created by the artist Emil F. Ackermann, who was born in Dresden, Germany in 1840 and came to the United States in 1848. Ackermann eventually went to work for the lithography firm of J.H. Bufford and Sons, which produced the lithograph in the 1860s.
It was issued by the Massachusetts Temperance Alliance and published by Reverend Steadman Wright Hanks in his book The Crystal River Turned Upon the Black Valley Railroad and Black Valley Country -- A Temperance Allegory (also known as The Black Valley: The Railroad and the Country). Hanks called the print "probably the most successful temperance lecture in the country." Stedman Wright Hanks (1811-1889) was a Congregational minister in Lowell, Massachusetts, as well as an author, artist, and fervent supporter of both the temperance and anti-slavery movements. Hanks spoke to audiences around the United States about the evils of overindulging in alcohol. In addition to his book about the Black Valley Railroad, his published works included Sailor Boys, or, Light on the Seaand Mutineers of the "Bounty and compiled a temperance song book and served as a representative in the Massachusetts General Court. He is also noted for performing the sermon commemorating John Quincy Adams death at the St. John Street Congregational Church.
This print was produced by J. Mayer and Company. Julius Mayer was a lithographer in Boston from 1857-1872. He was associated with Prang & Mayer (1857-1860), Mayer & Stetfield (1861-1862), and J. Mayer & Co. (1863-1872). His prints included scenes of Boston and Portland, Maine.
Campbell General Hospital, one of about 25 hospitals opened in the Capital and Alexandria to care for wounded Union soldiers, was located on the northern outskirt of D.C. near Seventh Street. It opened in September of 1862 and a wartime census in December of 1864 found that the hospital maintained 900 beds, of which 633 were occupied. This print displays the square-shaped formation of the hospital’s long, narrow buildings, which had previously been used as a barracks for cavalry. Campbell was among the hospitals at which the poet Walt Whitman volunteered as a nurse during the war.
Washington Sanitary Commission, a relief agency approved by the War Department on June 18, 1861 to provide assistance to sick, wounded, and travelling Union soldiers. Nurses and inspectors belonging to commission provided suggestions that helped to reform the U.S. Army Medical Bureau. Although the leaders of the Commission were men, the agency depended on thousands of women, who collected donations, volunteered as nurses in hospitals, and offered assistance at rest stations and refreshment saloons. They also sponsored Sanitary Fairs in Northern cities, raising millions of dollars used to send food, clothing, and medicine to Union soldiers.
Charles Magnus (1826-1900) was born Julian Carl Magnus in Germany and immigrated with his family to New York City sometime between 1848 and 1850. During the 1850s, he learned the printing business while working with his brother on a German language weekly newspaper, the Deutsche Schnellpost. He later began his own lithographer firm, producing city views and commercial letterhead designs. During the Civil War, he designed pro-Union envelopes and illustrated song sheets. The firm’s Washington, D.C. branch also produced small, hand-colored scenes of Union camps and hospitals. Soldiers purchased these picturesque scenes of camp life to send home to calm the worries of anxious family members.
Before Emancipation, the term “contraband” was used to refer to former slaves who had escaped and made their way to Union lines. This 1862 print depicts a young, previously-enslaved girl who has been intercepted by Federal troops. She smiles as the Union officer on the right lifts her onto a gun carriage. A caption below the illustration explains, “And her little limbs had, perhaps, become strengthened by some vague dream of liberty, to be lost or won, in that hurried night march.” To the right of these lines, the print contains the facsimile signature of Nathaniel P. Banks, the officer depicted on horseback who points towards the girl. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Lincoln selected Banks as one of the first major generals of volunteers. Before the war, he had served as Speaker of the House of Representatives and then as the Governor of Massachusetts. He lacked prior military experience, however, and many of his military engagements resulted in defeat. Despite these failures, this print focuses on the general’s continuing commitment to the abolitionist cause.
This print was published by the lithographer John Henry Bufford. The son of a sign painter and gilder, Bufford trained with Pendleton's Lithography in Boston, 1829-1831. He worked in New York with George Endicott and Nathaniel Currier (1835-1839) before returning to Boston where he had a good reputation for printing and publishing popular framing prints, commercial work, labels, and trade cards. The company went through several iterations and name changes until about 1865. He became the chief artist for Benjamin Thayer until buying out the firm to found J. H. Bufford & Co. (1844-1851). He continued to work in the lithography and publishing business for the remainder of his life. In 1865, his sons Frank and Henry John became partners in Bufford & Sons or J.H. Bufford’s Sons Litho. Co. After his death they continued the family business as Bufford Brothers and as Bufford Sons Engraving & Lithographing Company until 1911.
Seamed, flared cylindrical cup flat chased on its exterior with a scene of geese and chickens, including a rooster at right, amidst a broken post-and-rail fence overrun by grasses. Engraved "Virginia from Uncle Morgan / June 20\th..1900" in script on front, opposite a cast, floral C-scroll handle attached by shells. Rim molding is applied to the gold washed interior; that at base features pinnate leaves on triple reeding. Set-in flat bottom struck with a full set of incuse marks on underside for "TIFFANY & C\o / MAKERS" flanked by pattern and order numbers "7993" and "9684" above "STERLING SILVER", "925-1000" and date letter "T"; additional numbers scratched next to maker's name.
This black and white tinted print depicts the sixth of eight scenes based on George Cruikshank's The Bottle. The series shows the progressive degeneration of a family due to the evils of drinking. This print is an interior scene of a man attacking his wife. Their son and daughter are trying to intervene. Another woman enters the room in the background.
This series of prints is by the English artist George Cruikshank (1792-1878). Cruikshank’s father, Isaac Cruikshank, was an artist who specialized in song sheets and caricatures and trained George and his brother Robert Cruikshank in these arts. George started as a caricaturist for magazines and children’s books. His most famous works included The Bottle and The Drunkard’s Children, designed and etched by Cruikshank to show the wickedness of alcohol. Cruikshank's father and brother were both alcoholics and he himself drank heavily until he took a vow of abstinence in 1847. These prints were published by David Bogue, who published most of Cruikshank’s other works in the 1850s. David Bogue, (1807–1856) was born in Scotland and moved to London in 1836. Bogue began working in Charles Tilt's bookshop as a publisher and bookseller in 1836 and became Tilt's partner in 1840. Bogue bought the shop in 1843. He was the principle publisher of Cruikshank’s short-lived periodicals, brief illustrated stories, and the Comic Almanack 1835-53. David Bogue published The Bottleseries in 1847. Bogue suffered from heart disease and died in 1856 at the age of 48. There is no information available about the lithographer of this series however the inscription on the print reads COPYRIGHTED BY M. MARQUES, 1885.
This black and white tinted print depicts the third of eight scenes based on George Cruikshank's The Bottle. The series shows the progressive degeneration of a family due to the evils of drinking. This print is an interior scene of a family whose furnishings are being removed by a sheriff and two men for failure to pay debts. The father and mother are seated near the fireplace, consoling themselves with drink. The three children linger nearby.
This series of prints is by the English artist George Cruikshank (1792-1878). Cruikshank’s father, Isaac Cruikshank, was an artist who specialized in song sheets and caricatures and trained George and his brother Robert Cruikshank in these arts. George started as a caricaturist for magazines and children’s books. His most famous works included The Bottle and The Drunkard’s Children, designed and etched by Cruikshank to show the wickedness of alcohol. Cruikshank's father and brother were both alcoholics and he himself drank heavily until he took a vow of abstinence in 1847. These prints were published by David Bogue, who published most of Cruikshank’s other works in the 1850s. David Bogue, (1807–1856) was born in Scotland and moved to London in 1836. Bogue began working in Charles Tilt's bookshop as a publisher and bookseller in 1836 and became Tilt's partner in 1840. Bogue bought the shop in 1843. He was the principle publisher of Cruikshank’s short-lived periodicals, brief illustrated stories, and the Comic Almanack 1835-53. David Bogue published The Bottle series in 1847. Bogue suffered from heart disease and died in 1856 at the age of 48. There is no information available about the lithographer of this series however the inscription on the print reads COPYRIGHTED BY M. MARQUES, 1885.
This abolitionist broadsides depicts six scenes revealing the cruelty and injustice of American slavery. These scenes include: enslaved women working in the field while their children are left alone; a freedwoman and her child watching as their free papers are destroyed by a man who has kidnapped them from the street; enslaved men being whipped and beaten; an enslaved woman watching as her child is taken away from her and sold; a slave auction; and a shipment of slaves being loading onto a ship at Baltimore bound for New Orleans. Above the images, the broadside challenges how slaveholders could see their slaves as people but not adhere to the rule of “Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them.” Below the images, a quote from Unitarian preacher William Ellery Channing argues that keeping a man enslaved is just as much a crime as reducing him to slavery.
The print was produced and distributed by the Emancipator, a weekly newspaper published by the American Anti-Slavery Society. The Society was an abolitionist activist group founded by William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan in 1833, which had gained between 150,000 and 200,000 members by 1840. The Society held public meetings, printed vast quantities of anti-slavery propaganda (such as this piece), petitioned Congress, and sponsored lecturers to further the cause of the Abolition Movement in the North. Its membership was composed of white Northerners with religious and/or philanthropic convictions, but also free black citizens, including Frederick Douglass, who often delivered first-hand accounts of his life as a slave during the Society’s public meetings.