War in a time of Peace on Earth.

Since the very first settlers to the new world brought their holiday traditions with them, this has been a very special time of year for Americans. In the intervening centuries, these holiday traditions have grown and evolved in spite of wars, depressions, recessions, and natural disasters. Maintaining holiday traditions through difficult times is one of the ways that we maintain a sense of normalcy, and the Civil War was no different.

In the period of the Civil War, Christmas was probably second only to Easter as the most celebrated holiday of the year. The American holiday calendar looked a little different in the 1860’s. There was no official Thanksgiving Day until President Lincoln declared the last Thursday of November as a national day of thanksgiving in 1863. July 4th was celebrated as a holiday, but again, not in any official capacity. The relatively small Jewish population of the time, about 100,000 out of a total 31.4 million, and the suppression of African traditions under slavery led to the predominance of the Christian religious holidays.

Of those holidays, Christmas most reflected America’s immigrant heritage. By the 1860’s, the American Christmas celebration was an amalgamation of several Christmas traditions from all over Europe. The Christmas tree had come over from Germany. St. Nicholas came from the Dutch. Mistletoe, Yule logs, greens, and the Christmas feast all came from the English. Most of the Christmas imagery that we are familiar with that pre-dates the Coca-Cola Santa and the TV specials dates from this period. By the time the Civil War broke out in 1861, Christmas was a firmly established American tradition.

The first Christmas of the war, December 25th, 1861, came just about six months into the conflict. For most of the volunteer soldiers fighting in both armies, it was their first Christmas away from home. But, according the book We Were Marching Christmas Day by Kevin Rawlings, many of the soldiers were still caught up in the initial wave of war spirit and were full of vigor and enthusiasm. Letters to and from the front often had the tone of festive correspondence with distant relatives away for Christmas.

But by Christmas of 1862, the tone had changed. The previous year had been heavy with battle and loss. Shiloh, the Seven Days, Perryville, 2nd Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg had drained the enthusiasm from both the soldiers in the field and their family and friends back home. In dull winter camps or on ships at sea, the men in the service of their country had little to do but reflect on Christmases past and miss home desperately. At home, there was little to for which to be joyful. The war was no closer to over, and too many households had experienced loss.

But as is so often the case in our history, despair leads to action. Those who could not bring the soldiers and sailors home for Christmas sought ways to bring Christmas to those whom they could. Hospitals were decorated for the season, Christmas dinners were held (the bill of fare from one such dinner at the Broad Street Hospital in 1864 is pictured above), and care packages were prepared and sent to the front. For their part, the fighting men of the North and South sought to keep the Christmas spirit with dinners, dances, festivals, and decorations throughout the camp.

Christmas would pass twice more before the end of the war. Each came and went with a measure of the sorrow and homesickness of the year before. Slight changes in the locations where the holidays were observed marked the passing of the war. In 1864, William T. Sherman and the men of his army toasted each other Merry Christmas in Savannah, Georgia, having marched there from Atlanta over the summer and fall. That last Christmas of the war brought faint hope to some, and creeping dread to others that the war may soon be over.

In December of 1865, the Harper’s Weekly newspaper printed a holiday cover that was the first that did not portray some aspect of the war for the first time in four years. Everywhere, men and women, boys and girls, young and old, gathered round table and hearth to sing songs and raise glasses to peace. And even though the Civil War generation has long since passed away, it is still easy to imagine them, huddled in front of fires and candles, reading letters of Christmases past and present, dreaming of loved ones far away and hoping for the end of war.

Today, such scenes are repeated in far away places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where American men and women gather in tents and huts to dream of holidays and home. And here, those who love and miss them wish with all their might for a holiday season when all are home safe.

So, it is with a memory of those in the past and appreciation for their kindred spirits in the present that I and everyone here at the Civil War Museum of Philadelphia would like to wish all of you, and all of your loved ones the very Happiest of Holidays and the hope for peace on earth.

That document, continued.

Above is a 20th Century painting of the meeting between Grant and Lee at Appomattox Court House by Kieth Rocco. To the left, Colonel Charles Marshall and Colonel Eli Parker compare copies of the April 9th surrender agreement in Grant's manifold book.

When I last left you, we had just done an Associate Press story on a document from our archives we believed to be the Confederate copy of the terms of surrender signed at Appomattox Court House on April, 10th, 1865 (see last post)...

What we had not anticipated was the huge national interest that the story of the surrender document might generate. When the story hit the AP wire, it was picked up by newspapers and Internet sites all across the country. I was completely unaware that the story was growing and spreading until the day of our final open house when a friend of mine told me we were on the front page of Yahoo news. Within a few days, we were popping up everywhere. Newspapers from Miami to Montana, Washington, D.C. to Washington State were running the story with a pretty awful picture of me with my mouth open (never let yourself be photographed while you’re talking). Pretty soon, we were getting calls from local television stations and newspapers wanting to do stories on the document. I even got a call from a student who worked for a college newspaper in Virginia who wanted to do a story while he was home on break.

It was all very exciting for a while, but we were soon confronted with a couple of problems. First, we had begun the move of the artifact collection out of our old building in earnest, and all the media requests were becoming a distraction. After being accommodating for a few days, our CEO Sharon Smith and I decided to shut down access to the document. Second, we had never intended the story to be any kind of formal press announcement about the document. But the enormous media attention the story received became like a press announcement in spite of our intentions, and we were forced to defend our theories about the document before we were ready.

The first challenge to our conclusions came from the National Historic Park at Appomattox Court House. The historian there was interviewed for the original AP article on the document. At that time, he expressed doubt that we had an original copy, believing that what we had was more likely a Photostat copy or a souvenir copy. This was not unexpected, as we had considered those options ourselves when the document first surfaced. What I did not expect was that with a day of the AP story breaking nationwide, he emailed the reporter scans of the Maryland Historical Society copy of the surrender document and claimed that theirs and ours were exactly the same.

When the AP reporter called me with this particular revelation, my heart sank. It was one thing to be wrong about the document, but it’s a whole other thing to be wrong about it the day after the story went national. I certainly did not want the Museum to be embarrassed because I had failed to look at all the evidence. But even with this development, I did not think we were wrong.

I had talked to the historian at Appomattox about his concerns, but I had not seen the Maryland Historical Society scans, so I could nott comment on whether they looked exactly alike or not, but if they did it would create a huge problem with our theory. I was a little annoyed at the people at the Maryland Historical Society because I had spoken to them twice about the document and no one ever indicated to me that there were scans of it available. Had I known, I would have requested them at that time. So I had to see these scans.

It took several days to get a look at the scans due to the fact that the move was still going on and I was fairly out of touch. What I encountered when I finally did see them was worse than we had feared. The Maryland Historical Society copy did not just look like our copy, it looked exactly like our copy. We had to go back to square one a look at the document again.

The fact that the documents were exactly the same ruled out one of the possibilities first suggested by the historian at Appomattox, that it was a souvenir copy. It is impossible that two hand written and signed documents could be identical, even if they were written at the same time by the same people. So, the other option is that it is some kind of duplicate. I had very good reasons to believe that it was not a Photostat copy. For one thing, there were those pen marks on the paper. A Photostat would not leave pen marks of any kind. There was also the issue of access to the document to make a Photostat copy. Gibbon states in his memoirs that he gave his copy to the Maryland Historical Society. The memoirs were published posthumously in 1928, but Gibbon himself died in 1896. This means that the document was already at the Maryland Historical Society by 1896. Photostat technology did not exist at that time, so anyone making a Photostat copy would have had to do so at the Historical Society. Photostat copying was not common until World War II, and even then the machines were extremely large and ungainly. So a Photostat copy was not impossible, but unlikely.

Still, there was no question the documents were exactly the same. So we began to think that the most likely way that the documents could be exactly alike is that they were made at the same time. So we began to research the methods of document duplication that were available in 1865. I can safely say that in the process, I’ve learned more about the history of document duplication than I ever wanted to know. But the research led us to two duplication technologies that were available at the time; the polygraph and the manifold writer.

Most of us are familiar with the polygraph (though the name has been co-opted in modern times by the lie detector). The polygraph is a machine with two pens, the user writes a letter with one pen and the other pen copies it onto another paper. Thomas Jefferson is often credited as having invented it, but in truth Jefferson perfected one he ordered from Europe (it is on display at Monticello). The problem with a polygraph for our purposes is that it is fairly ungainly and we could find no evidence that they were carried in the field during the Civil War.

The manifold writer was simply a primitive form of carbon paper. The carbon paper was slipped in between two or more sheets of paper. The idea being that when you wrote on the top sheet, several copies could be made. Manifold writers were not uncommon in the Civil War, and were often used by staff officers who had to write multiple copies of orders frequently. The Museum has a manifold order book in its archival collections. A manifold order book had thin sheets of tissue like paper with carbon paper inserts. The user can slip several sheets of plain paper into the book with carbon paper in between. Using a stylus, the author writes the original order on a tissue sheet, making a permanent impression. The carbon produces two or more copies, and the tissue serves as the file copy in the book.

One of the difficulties of researching these copying devices is that the name manifold writer is sometimes used to describe a polygraph. As I said, we could find no indication that someone had lugged a delicate and awkward polygraph machine to Appomattox Court House and used it to make copies of important documents. But we did find evidence that at least one manifold writer was present and used for copying some of the most important documents of all.

The evidence comes to us through the memoirs of Horace Porter. Porter was aide-de-camp to General Ulysses Grant, and was in the McLean parlor went Grant and Lee had their historic meeting on April 9th. Porter recalls a key point in that historic meeting:

“’Very well,’ replied Grant, ‘I will write them out.’ And calling for his manifold order-book, he opened it, and laid it on a small oval wooden table which Colonel Parker brought to him from the rear of the room, and proceeded to write the terms. The leaves had been so prepared that three impressions of the writing were made.”

So we have proof that a manifold writer was at Appomattox Court House and was being used to make copies of important document pertaining to the surrender. This by no means proves our case that our document was produced on a manifold writer, but it certainly adds a great deal of credibility to the theory. If General Grant wrote the preliminary terms of surrender on a manifold writer, would it not make sense that the formal terms of surrender would be written on one as well?

So where are we now? Well, we have a great deal more to learn. We need to have the document analyzed to determine if it is the product of a manifold writer. It will be difficult to prove, but it would be a tremendous coup if we could prove that either General Gibbon or one of his staff officers had a manifold writer or used it at Appomattox Court House. We certainly need to know more about Bruce Ford and the provenance of the document.

The odyssey of our surrender document is not nearly over. As you read this I am probably doing more research in the Gibbon papers or some other such thing. But the effort has already been rewarding in the new insights and information it has made me gain. Its has also provided a health dose of the kind of mystery, that peering into the dark feeling, that draws all of us to history in the first place. We will certainly keep working until we solve the puzzle, and I’ll keep you posted every step of the way.

That Document You May Have Heard About, Part I.

It is a fundamental truth that all things come to an end. But it is how those things end which are often the most compelling stories. Wars are events of enormous upheaval. One of the reasons that scholars, students, and citizens have been studying warfare for a thousand years is because the subject is heavy with natural drama. The history of war is replete with life and death decisions, stunning success, tragic failure, and horrific loss all in the hands of the most human of beings.

Some of the most significant events in our history have taken place at the end of wars. It is often the end of war that does much to determine how the peace will be conducted. I have always been fascinated by the ends of wars, because the events of those final days are full of portent, move at a rapid pace, and take on a life of their own. If the American Civil War was a grand and terrible drama, then the final act was the most important.

The history of those early days in April, 1865, is well known. But it is difficult to imagine what it was like to be there. After the fall of Richmond and Petersburg, Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was desperately scrambling to the west in order to get to a rail junction that could carry his men south to unite with Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s army in North Carolina. Nipping at their heals are Gen. U.S. Grant and the Army of the Potomac. When the spring campaign of 1865 began, few of the officers and men of the Army of the Potomac doubted it would be the last of the war. The string of defeats suffered by the Southern Confederacy in the fall and winter had left it staggering like a wounded animal toward its death.

Though they marched west on the same roads, the two armies were, in fact, marching in different directions. For the Army of Northern Virginia, the end was near. Exhausted and starving, the Rebels were carried along by the frail hope that they could get to Johnston and carry on the war. For many, however, this hope was not enough, and thousands of Lee’s men chose to desert and make their way home. The Army of the Potomac was marching faster than it had ever marched before. Equally exhausted, but well feed and equipped, these men were motivated to greater effort by the knowledge that if they just marched a little faster, and a little farther, they could get in front of Lee’s army and end the four year struggle that had taken the lives of so many of their friends and comrades.

The end came at the little hamlet of Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Lee discovered that the Union Cavalry Corps and the Fifth Infantry Corp under Gen. Phil Sheridan had gotten in front of him and closed the door. There was no where else to run. With an overwhelming sense of relief, both armies collapsed into rest, and themselves became spectators in the final act of the war in Virginia: the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia.

We have in our collection several relics that relate to the epic events of the last days of the war. Little did we know we may have one of the most significant artifacts of them all. Prior to moving the collection out of the building, we went through the archival collection in order to account for every item. In the process, we discovered what we believe to be a truly incredible piece of not only the end of the war, but of all of American history: a copy of the surrender document signed at Appomattox on April 10, 1865.

Needless to say, we were somewhat surprised.

The document was found by a former employee of ours, Herb Kaufman. He was going through all the boxes in the archives to make sure we knew exactly what was there before we packed it up. He came to me with a document that he had found at the bottom of a box of old, worthless prints of our old museum. The document consisted of two sheets of slightly yellow paper glued to a fragile heavy stock backing paper and brushed with some sort of lacquer on the surface. The sheets had handwriting and signatures. We had both recognized what it was right away; it was the protocol for the formal surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. We both assumed it was a facsimile. The lacquer on the surface gave it a shiny, artificial appearance. But the shiny surface drew our eyes to one of the most important aspects of the document: pen marks on the paper.

The pen marks, slight indentations on the surface of the paper, were the first indication we had that the document in our hands may not be a facsimile. The indentations lined up exactly with the pen strokes on the page, indicating that the document was hand written. We were intrigued. So we had this document, and an idea what it might be, but we had no proof. We had to start somewhere, so the first step was to establish how many of these documents may exist in the world. It was time to solve a mystery!

I should take a moment here to provide a little historical background on the document we believe we have. On April 9, 1865, Generals Lee and Grant met in the McLean parlor to negotiate a preliminary agreement on the terms of surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia to the Army of the Potomac. At that meeting, Lee and Grant agreed to appoint three commissioners each to meet the next day to create the formal terms of surrender. Grant appointed Generals John Gibbon, Wesley Merritt, and Charles Griffin, and Lee selected Generals James Longstreet, John B. Gordon, and William N. Pendleton. After an all day meeting on April 10, the terms were agreed to, and all six men signed the document. It is the April 10 document of which we believe we have a copy.

So my first step in unraveling the mystery was to call an archivist at the National Archives. Without saying what we thought we had, I asked him about the April 10 surrender document and where the existing copies might be located. Without having the benefit of looking into it, he told me that there was one copy, and it was in their possession. He indicated to me that not only did they have it, but that it was available to view on their website. This proved to be very helpful, because it was clear that the one we had was very different than theirs. The document in the National Archives was written on lined paper and had words added and other editing marks. Our copy was unlined, was not edited, and was in a different handwriting. At this time I described the document we had and asked for his help in tracking down the history. He told me he would get back to me.

He did so within the next couple days, and the information he had was not entirely clear. He told me that he had found a reference to there being another copy, that it was at the Maryland Historical Society and that it may have been donated by Col. Walter Taylor, who lived in Baltimore after the war. Taylor was Robert E. Lee’s aid during the war. This led us to believe that perhaps the answer was in the person of Gen. John Gibbon. Gibbon was the officer that presided over meeting that produced the surrender document and was, after the war, commander-in-chief of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, the organization that founded our museum. It seemed to be a reasonable hypothesis that if he had a copy, he might have given it to M.O.L.L.U.S.

This theory led me to call the Maryland Historical Society to confirm that they had a surrender document. I spoke to a librarian down there who told me that they did in fact have a surrender document and that he believed it had been donated by Taylor. This seemed to confirm the information we received from the National Archives. Or at least it did, until I received another call from our man at the National Archives. He had managed to track down a magazine article written by Gibbon and published some years after his death in which he described the surrender meeting in some detail. Gibbon wrote that there were three copies of the surrender document made, and that he had kept one of them for his personal records. He then stated that he himself had donated that copy to the Maryland Historical Society.

So our theory that we had Gibbon’s copy went right out the window. I called the Maryland Historical Society back and talked to an archivist who was more familiar with the document. He confirmed Gibbon’s account, and told me that they had a letter from Gibbon documenting that their copy was the one from his collection. So we had to come up with a new theory. At the same time, we contacted a conservator from the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts so that we could have someone look at the document at tell us something about what we had. While they could not comment on the historical aspects of the document, they could give us a condition report on its physical nature. One of the most important things they told us was that the document was a hand written original and not a facsimile. This was extremely important as we continued to investigate.

Where we went from there was a simple process of elimination. We knew from Gibbon that three copies were made. We could account for two of them. Gibbon’s personal copy was at the Maryland Historical Society. We knew that in any such written agreement as this, both parties would get a copy of the terms. It was logical enough to believe that the copy in the National Archives was the one that would have been forwarded to Grant’s headquarters and on to Washington. As an official document, it makes sense that it would end up in the National Archives. Therefore, the only copy unaccounted for would be the Confederate copy. If our document was authentic, then we must have the Confederate copy.

Having reached this conclusion, we were confronted with the next obvious question; why on Earth would we have the Confederate copy? In the history business, it is not enough that you think you have something of enormous historical significance; you must also be able to explain how you came to have the object. So I began to dig through our old records to find out what we had on the document. The first record of the objects in the Museum’s collections was an inventory of relics and framed items done in 1935. One of the very first projects I worked on when I was hired as a Project Assistant Curator four years ago was to help transcribe everything written in this inventory into an Excel spreadsheet. It was among the most mind-numbing things I ever had to do at the Museum, but I was sure glad it had been done on this occasion. It was so much easier to search the database than to go through the old book.

I found the document listed in the Catalogue of Pictures and Framed Relics section of the inventory. The citation read:

“Original Terms of Surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox. Presented by Companion Bruce Ford.”

The transcription indicated that someone had handwritten the word “Photostat” next to the listing. I pulled out the box with the original inventory books and checked to see if there was anything else written in them that we may have missed when we originally transcribed them. The first two copies of the inventory had no handwritten note. The third did, so it must have been the one we transcribed from. Unfortunately, there was no additional clue to be found. However, in the box was another partial inventory of notable objects done in 1968. The inventory gave the same information as the 1935 inventory, and also said that the document was framed and hanging by the front door. It too had a handwritten note, this one saying “copy??”

As was true with every step in this mystery, every piece of information we found brought as many questions as it answered. We now knew that the document had been framed at on time, and that it had been on display. We knew it was in the collection in 1935, and was still on display in 1968. We also knew that a Mr. Bruce Ford gave the document to the Museum. Now we needed to find out about this Bruce Ford.

Herb took on the task of looking through the old M.O.L.L.U.S. application files and he found that Bruce Ford had joined M.O.L.L.U.S. in about 1917. He was eligible because his father had been an officer from New York during the War (though his father had never joined). Some digging around on the internet revealed that Bruce Ford had established a company that made batteries for U.S. Navy submarines, a company that later became Exide Batteries. Ford also married a woman named Sophia DuPont. Yes, of THOSE DuPonts. We looked up the service record of Bruce Ford’s father, and found no evidence that he was present at the surrender meeting. Mr. Ford certainly had the resources to buy the document, as did his wife and her family. A call down to the Hagley Library revealed no immediate evidence that the document came through the DuPunt side of the family.

So at this point there were some things we knew, and many more we did not. We knew that there were three copies made, and that we knew the location of two of them. We knew that the object had been framed when it was hanging in the museum, but had been removed from that frame sometime after 1968. We knew it had come to the Museum sometime between 1917 and 1935. We knew that Bruce Ford, a man of some means, had donated it sometime in those years. With the information we had, we could make some educated guesses. It seemed to me that the notations in the 1935 and 1968 inventories indicated that as time passed they had lost the provenance of the document and began to believe it was a Photostat copy even though the 1935 inventory entry firmly states that it is an “original copy.” I believe that sometime after 1968 the document was removed from its frame and placed in an obscure box in the archives because the individuals handling it at the time believed it was a worthless copy.

One of the things we could not account for was the time period from April 10, 1865 until 1935. Nor could we find any evidence of how Bruce Ford came into possession of the document. It did make sense that of the three copies, the Confederate surrender document would be the one most likely to end up in private hands. The Confederate government had fled Richmond and was on the run when the Confederate copy reached Robert E. Lee’s headquarters. There was no government to speak of when Lee and his staff finished the surrender procedures and left Appomattox Court House. Any official documents not turned over to the Federal government were likely carried off as souvenirs. It is not unlikely that someone at Lee’s headquarters simply pocketed the document and walked away.

At this point, we were making some progress toward solving the mystery when things got away from us a little. Due to the pending move, we had put the continuing investigation of the document on hold for a while. We had a full plate. In anticipation of the move, we had submitted some stories and images to our publicity people in order to generate some press coverage around our closing. We included an image of the document and a little summary of what we knew so far. Soon after, we got a call from an Associated Press reporter who wanted to do a story on the document. We agreed and the reporter stopped by, did the usual interviews, took some pictures and was gone. We didn’t give it any thought after that.

In our next installment, we’ll see how a little news story turns into a very big deal, and a curator has a moment of doubt.

Next time on History Mystery Theater!

One Foot in the Past.

As you can see, I have spent the last few posts writing about the process of moving the collections out of our old home at 1805 Pine Street. Before I move on to other topics, I wanted to take a moment and say something about the old building that served us so well for so long. The Civil War Museum of Philadelphia is the oldest chartered Civil War institution in the country. We were founded here in Philadelphia by Union veterans in 1888. Since 1922, the museum has called 1805 Pine Street home. Through the many years, the museum has taken on new names and new missions. It has seen the passing of the last of the Civil War veterans that founded it, and several generations of those who took on the responsibility of caring for their memories. It saw days when several hundred people climbed up and down its narrow stairs, and many more days when no one came to our door. It was a silent observer of our comings and goings for eighty-six years.

I first came to it as a visitor about ten years ago. I’m not ashamed to confess I feel in love with the place on that first visit and vowed to myself to find a way to work there someday. I became a volunteer there five years later. On November 1, 2004 I was hired on the do a survey of all the objects as part of an eighteen month grant funded project. At the end of the grant, I was kept on as the full time curator and have been honored to hold that position ever since. In the course of the last four years, I have spent a great deal of my time at 1805 Pine Street, mostly in the musty basement. The benefits of the experience are immeasurable to me. I was able to handle some of the most extraordinary Civil War artifacts in the world. I got to meet, talk to, and work with some of the best people I have known. The memories I take from there are very personal and very special to me, but I will spare you the stories.

So, it was a bittersweet experience when we came to the end of the move, and it was time for me to leave the old house for the last time. I know as well as anyone how inadequate the building was for the safe storage of our collection, for proper exhibition of artifacts, and for the access of our patrons. But it was a special place, filled with the phantoms of long lost memory. We museum people are a special breed and we live our lives with one foot in the past. Nostalgia is especially dangerous for us, because we bathe in it every day. It is too easy to believe the past is better, clearer, and safer. But I know that the best days of the Civil War Museum of Philadelphia are yet to come, and I look forward to the part I will play in creating them.

So when I ran my hand over the marble doorframe and walked away, I didn’t look back. I knew I had no reason. I learned during the move that the phantoms of memory swirl around the artifacts, not the house. I had packed those phantoms as carefully as every uniform, painting, and sword. The house is now an empty shell, ready to take on whatever role its new owner intends. The soul of the place is coming with us. The great thing about living with one foot in the past is that you are also a bridge to the present… and the future.

Packing Old Baldy

Perhaps the most famous single item in our collection is the stuffed head of Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade’s favorite war horse, Old Baldy. Old Baldy had occupied a position of honor in our museum, specifically a case of honor, in the Meade Room for decades. In that case, relatively secure against the passing of time, Old Baldy looked out at the world with his particular glassy-eyed stare. He saw the museum through good times and bad, endured many a joke, and through no effort of his own became our most enduring symbol. I have a passion and reverence for all things Civil War, both as a person and a professional, so everything in our collection is of great significance to me. But for some reason, perhaps it is his record of service and battle wounds, or that he is the remains of a living thing, it is very hard not to get a little sentimental about Old Baldy.

Old Baldy has been on display in a custom made case for over two decades. In that time, the only access to him was through an opening in the top of the case, and even that was mostly to change the light bulbs in the fixture inside. So, like the large painting, a big part of the challenge of packing Old Baldy was that we would have no clear idea how to do it until we cracked open the case and looked at the situation. Even this proved harder than we thought.

The case itself had essentially been assembled around him, and was clearly intended to be hard to open. It was a steel frame with the wood and Plexiglas built over it. There was a good bit of redundancy built into it, as we discovered when we started taking screws out. After we had removed every screw that could conceivably be holding the case together, nothing moved. We pushed, pulled, jimmied, and wedged as gently as possible, and still nothing. We climbed over it, under it, and through it until we removed every screw we could find. It turned out that the backboard to which Old Baldy was attached was connected to the rest of the case in a way we never would have thought of, and it wasn’t until we removed the very last screws that it finally came loose. Once we knew how it came apart, we had the information we needed to make a plan for packing Old Baldy for moving. As a precaution, we reassembled the case so that he would be protected as other items were being moved out of the room.

The plan to pack Old Baldy was beautiful in its simplicity. I have to give all the credit to Justin, one of the excellent movers who worked on this project with us. Clearly a student of the measure twice, cut once school of doing things, Justin had the job broken down into four steps that were prepped and ready so we could move easily from one step to the other. The idea was this: we would pack Old Baldy on an L-pallet that fit inside a crate. We would remove him from the backboard that fit in the case and attach him to a new board that fit in the L-pallet. In preparation, we disassembled the case, and had two saw-horse work stations set up, and had the L-pallet and the crate lined up.

One thing we did have to think of before we actually moved Old Baldy was the safety of both Baldy and the crew. We knew nothing of Old Baldy’s internal structure and little about the hazardous chemicals that were used to treat him. In this area we got a great assist from Jennifer, who works for one of the outstanding natural science museums here in Philadelphia. Her familiarity with taxidermy, and her evaluation of the condition of Old Baldy, gave us vital information on the issues relating to the safety of the object and the crew and the confidence to proceed with the move.

The two most important things we learned from Jennifer’s report were that Old Baldy was structurally sound, and that he posed a moderate chemical risk to the crew. The structural report was a great relief, because we had been concerned that Baldy could come loose from his plaque if he were jostled or laid on his back. Knowing this was not an issue, we felt much more comfortable about the plan we had in place. The chemical risk, in the form of arsenic in the hair and skin, and lead in the ears, were things we took seriously. Since the threat was from contact, not through any airborne transmission, the crew wore protective suits and gloves throughout the process (I have to confess that while I wore the gloves, I did not wear the suit. This may or may not have been wise, but as Curator I accepted risks that would not have been acceptable for the crew.).

Old Baldy, being a popular guy, had some special guest to keep him company as he left his old home. Nancy Caldwell, who was a former volunteer and an advocate of horses in the Civil War, and her sister had attended our final open house when we closed the building to the public. Both had long been Old Baldy’s biggest fans, and they asked if they could be there to see him off. It was my pleasure to have them there to watch, and they took some excellent pictures of the process, like the ones at the top of the page. In addition, the story had caught the eye of Ed Cunningham, a reporter for WHYY, the local PBS station here in the Philadelphia. He was interested in doing a video blog of the process of creating the new museum, and the packing of Old Baldy was a great place to start. It was an honor to have him as our guest, and his first piece can be seen here: http://www.whyy.org/community/edsphilly.html

Once we had everything laid out and ready, the transfer from the case to the crate went fairly smoothly. We disassembled the case and gently tipped Old Baldy on his back and placed him on the first saw-horse work station. There we removed the large screws that secured the heavy wooden plaque on which Old Baldy is mounted from the backboard. At the next saw-horse station, the new board was ready and waiting. We easily slid Old Baldy from one station to the next, and bolted him to the new board. The new board was then fitted into the L-pallet and bolted down. At this point we encountered the only problem of the entire operation. We noticed a gap between Old Baldy’s plaque and the new board he was bolted on that was not there when he lay flat. The concern was that the plaque was too heavy and the screws were not holding the weight. We detached him from the L-pallet and put him back on the saw-horse station to add more screws. When we bolted him back on the L-pallet, the gap returned, albeit smaller. The actual problem was that the new backboard was slightly warped, so that Old Baldy was flush when we attached the screws at the work station, but not when the board was bolted to the pallet. Once we figured that out, we were not too concerned. As a precaution, however, we bolted an extra strap across the top of the plaque to provide more support. We then attached a brace across the L-pallet, under Old Baldy’s head but not touching it, as insurance that if he came loose from the plaque he would not fall far. We then slid the L-pallet into the case and bolted it shut. It fit perfectly. In the end, the whole process went like clockwork. It was a testament to the good planning done beforehand.

As I said, it was hard not to be sentimental when packing Old Baldy. I think for me it went beyond just who he was and what he represented. Even though he was one of the first large items we packed, I think that putting Old Baldy in a crate and taking him out the door was the first time I truly realized that our time at 1805 Pine Street was coming to an end. If Old Baldy had left the building, the rest of the collection, and its curator, would soon follow.

Moving the Collection, Part III

Some of the oversized items we had to move out of the building were large and awkward, if not actually heavy. One of the biggest (literally) challenges we faced in was an extremely large painting that was mounted to the wall at the top of the stairwell on the third floor. Aside from the size ( 7 ½ feet high by 13 feet wide), the painting also presented problems in that we could determine very little about it due to its location. How much it weighed, how it was mounted to the wall, and whether or not it could be easily removed from the frame were all things we did not know. The painting turned out to be three problems in one: how to remove it from the wall over an open stairwell, how to pack it, and how to get it down multiple flights of narrow stairs.

When once asked what characteristic he desired most in his generals, French Emperor Napoleon replied, “Luck!” Luck is always a good thing, and we got lucky with the painting. It turned out to be much lighter than we initially thought. To find this out, we had to get the painting off the wall. Before that, however, we had to get to it. For that purpose, we built a platform that was anchored on the third floor landing and extended out into the stairwell. We called it the “deck.” From there, we used trestles to create an additional platform that was the same height as the railing of the landing so that once the painting was off the wall, it could be lowered onto the trestles and then slid gently over the railing and into the hall with minimal stress to the painting. The entire process would be made either very easy or very hard depending on the weight of the painting and the frame. It turned out that the painting and frame were surprisingly light, so once the brackets that secured it to the wall were removed, it was lowered to the trestles and over the railing to the hall in two easy movements.

We were also lucky in that it turned out the frame was easily removed. This further reduced the weight, and also made the painting about two feet smaller in each dimension. This was very good news in terms of getting it down the stairs. So after the frame was removed, the painting was wrapped in plastic and encased in ridged cardboard for the final step in the process.

We had spent a good bit of time prior to the move thinking about just how we would get this painting down the stairs. For those who have never been in the old house at 1805 Pine Street, the stairs are fairly narrow and zigzag back and forth from landing to landing up to the top floor. Even with the frame removed, the painting was too large to turn the tight corners of the stairs at each landing. This gave us pause. But, working with the simple theory, “they got it in here, didn’t they?” we worked out the best plan to get it out. The answer was a gap of about a foot between the stairs as they zigzagged. It was wide enough and deep enough to fit the painting through. The only question was the weight. If the painting turned out to be extremely heavy, we would need to install some kind of block and tackle system to lower it to the ground. As it turned out, because it was not heavy, we were able to secure two straps to the rigid cardboard container and lower it down with muscle power (photos above). In the end, a project we thought might take the better part of a day only took a couple of hours. Luck is a good thing.

In truth, though, while the painting and the heavy objects were challenging, they were not that unusual for the movers. Packing a horse’s head, however, was quite a different matter. But that’s a story I’ll save for next time.

Moving the Collection, Part II

Anyone who has moved in or out of a house with lots of stairs knows what a difficult and exhausting project it can be. If you add to the equation that what you are moving is a one of a kind collection of Civil War artifacts, the stakes go up in a hurry. In a move such as ours, size does matter, and we had our fair share of things both big and heavy.

As curator, it is far too easy to myopically focus on the primary object when considering the difficulties of a move. In my case, I was very concerned about getting some large bronze busts, one of Abraham Lincoln and one of Admiral George Melville, down the stairs and out of the building. It did not at first occur to me that the busts are hollow and not exceptionally heavy, or that the marble pedestals on which some of them perched might be a bigger problem. But this turned out to be the case.

An experienced mover might tell you that the problem isn’t getting a heavy object down the stairs; it’s getting it to stop at the bottom. For this problem, particularly in the tight spaces we were forced to operate in, muscle power was a better option than any gizmo or gadgetry we could come up with. So in much the same way the Egyptians moved blocks up as they built the pyramids, we built a ramp to bring things down.

The key component is what they call the L-pallet. An L-pallet is basically one third of a box; the bottom and one side. With a brace on each side, the L-pallet gives you a rigid frame on which a heavy object can be moved. As you can see in the picture at the top, the object, whether it is a bust, a pedestal or a battle log, is strongly secured to the L-pallet with minimal contact from the packing materials. The L-pallet thus becomes a movable vehicle for the artifact. Using a dolly, we were able to move the pallet to the edge of the stairs, tip it over on its back, and slide it onto the two by six boards we screwed to the stairs to make the ramp. The original idea was to rig a pulley system to ease the pallet down the ramp. In practice, this proved to be a too complicated for the space that we had. In the end, we attached straps to the L-pallet so that half the crew could lower from above while the rest, myself included, manhandled it to the bottom. This process was slowed by the narrow stairs, which made lowering the items perfectly straight an important priority. To keep the pace from getting away from us, we screwed a board across the ramp about a third of the way up the stairs to provide us with a brake.

I have to confess that just prior to moving the heaviest of the pallets down the stairs (this one was the marble pedestal for the Melville bust) I took the opportunity to have some fun at the expense of an intern named Laura we had working in the basement archives. The basement archives were located directly under the stairs, so I stuck me head in there and made a little show of measuring the room. When she asked what I was doing I told her what we were about to slide a heavy object down the stairs and that I just wanted to make sure that if we lost control of it and it crashed through the floor that it wouldn’t land on her. I assured her that, having looked at the situation, I was “pretty sure” she was safe. She was a trooper, and took it as a joke, but I noticed that when the pedestal was coming down the stairs, she had abandon the archives and watched from the safety of the hallway.

All kidding aside, it was a great relief when we had them down the stairs and out of the building. But we weren’t done moving big things just yet, and more challenges remained. I’ll have more on that next time.

Moving the Collection, Part I.

Well, as some of you may have noticed, there has not been a blog posted here for some weeks. I apologize for that, but I have a pretty good excuse. For the last four weeks, I have been overseeing the packing and moving of the museum’s entire book, archive, and artifact collection out of our longtime home at 1805 Pine Street and into storage in anticipation of our new museum at the First National Bank Building in 2010. It was an extremely difficult job, and one from which I gained a great deal of insight and knowledge.

I benefited from having an excellent crew from Artex Fine Arts Service, to whom I’m extremely grateful for their input, wisdom, and experience. Such an enormous job would not have gotten done without them.

There is an old army expression, “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.” It was certainly true during this move. Even the most fundamental of plans were inevitably disrupted by closed streets, crew illness (including a car accident), truck breakdowns, and other things too numerous to mention. The heat was often intense; the dust was thick, and the stairs plentiful.

The most challenging aspect of packing and moving any historical collection is that most of the work is custom designed and made right on the spot. From framed paintings and engravings of every size and shape, to uniforms, weapons, battle logs, sculptures, and nearly anything else you can imagine, it had to be packed and transported. Accomplishing this remarkable task requires an artist’s eye for detail, a delicate hand, a strong back, and an ability to improvise.

As shown above, some of the items in our collection needed extremely specialized care. Among the most delicate items in our collection are the leather items, such as sword belts, saddles, knapsacks, and scabbards. Leather is especially susceptible to changes in temperature and humidity. Leather dries out over time and becomes extremely brittle. Moving these items in a safe manner is extremely difficult.

In the photograph at the top of the page, just a few of our leather items are shown as they were packed before they were shipped out of our museum. They were held in place with the clever use of foam and tie downs. It was very important that the leather be stabilized, but with minimal contact from the packing materials. Packed flat on a foam backing, and protected from dust and debris, these items were stable and safe for transport.

In the bottom photo, the Museum’s significant edged weapon collection sits packed and waiting to be loaded on the truck. While it may seem that swords made out of brass and steel would be less of a concern, they too required care and creativity to pack. First, we determined that the best method of storing these objects was in their own scabbards. This made sense for two reasons; first, the scabbard is the natural protective covering for the blade, and we determined that we could not come up with anything that would function better. Second, the blades of the swords in turn provide support for the scabbards. We found this to be a particularly appealing solution to the problem of the fragile nature of the leather scabbards. The swords are supported in two places, insulated against vibration, and again there was a significant effort made to keep the contact between the objects and the packing materials minimal.

One aspect of the move that was out of our control was the weather. While it was often very hot, the more problematic element, rain, was not an issue. We were able to move the materials outside to the waiting truck with no fear of them getting wet. Traffic proved to be a greater problem than the weather, as the city of Philadelphia saw fit to do road work on many of the streets around us. We had difficulty at times getting the truck in and out of Pine Street, and loading in the street was sometimes a tight fit, but it did provide us with the frequent sight of people straining their necks to see some of the amazing pieces that were being loaded. That made me smile many times.

We had some very interesting challenges getting some of the larger, heavier, or more awkward items packed and out of the Museum. I’ll be posting some blog entries on some of those challenges very soon. Stay tuned.

Ordnance.

As a museum curator, you spend a lot of time thinking about how the various elements of the environment can do harm to the artifacts in the collection. You think about heat and humidity, mold and mildew, and numerous other threats to historic materials. In our case, we think a lot about how our 1850's row home facility and the people who visit it can potentially harm the objects. Researchers using books are hard on the old paper and weak spines, leather and metal can be harmed by the oils on the skin. You take the utmost precautions to prevent harm to the objects by keeping them in controlled environments, conserving and stabilizing items that are in urgent need of care, and saying over and over again, "please don't touch."

What you don't spend much time thinking about is how objects in the collection might harm you. And not just you, but harm the other staff, the visitors, and the public at large. For most museums, such as those covering art or science, the concern is largely chemical or particulate. For a museum like ours, the danger is more direct and immediate. Like unexploded ordnance, for example.

In our case, unexploded ordnance is anything from relic shell stuck in battle logs, shells dug out of the ground, unfired bullets, percussion caps, and artillery fuses. It is too easy to think of these things in their historical context, as an original hand made .58 caliber cartridge or a shell that lodged in a tree at the Battle of Gettysburg, and not as the weapon that it truly is. But as we prepare to move our collection, it became imperative that we determine without a doubt the safety of these items.

As a result, on July 8th, the museum was visited by a team of experts with a fascinating array of equipment and information in order to certify the safely of our ordnance. Using techniques both high and low tech, the team was able to provide us with crucial information about these unique artifacts. The most impressive piece of technology is pictured above. It is a mobile x-ray machine that the team used to get instant digital x-rays of artillery shells to reveal if there is any powder left in them. This is of particular value when examining battle logs, because there is often no other way to learn if they are inert.

High tech isn't the only way, however, and the team used methods as simple as probing the inside of the shell with a straightened wire hanger or simply weighing the item. The team brought a large binder full of data on Civil War shells, such as how much they weight when both full and empty. This information proved useful for one shell that turned out to be stubbornly resistant to x-rays. Simply placing it on a scale revealed that it was significantly less than the 24 lbs. it was supposed to weight. It was empty, and therefore safe.

So we gained a great deal of information about the ordnance in our collection. The serious part is that it is safe. We will be issued a "certificate of inertness" (I need one of those for Saturdays), and can proceed with moving these items with confidence. We also learn some fascinating things that were more fun. For example, the battle log above actually has a metal rod inserted through it that holds the shell in place (many years ago they must have worried that it would fall out). Another battle log that we thought had two cannon balls lodged in it turned out to only have two fragments in it. The tree had grown around them in such a way as to make the fragments appear to be solid rounds.

It was a fun and interest day at the museum. We learned a lot, and got to watch a team of highly trained and dedicated experts do their thing. We are very grateful to them, and appreciate their efforts to insure that our ordnance is safe. That is, as long as you don't drop it on your foot.

July 3, 1863

The battle that took place of July 3, 1863, on the fields just south of the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was largely the result of the decisions of two men. The first, of course, was Robert E. Lee. His questionable decision to resume the offensive after being repulsed the previous day with significant losses has been debated since the last gun fell silent that day. The other was George Gordon Meade. Meade held a council of war in the very early hours of July 3rd, and concluded that the best course of action was to stay where he was and see what Lee would do next.

Battles are won and lost, and lives are spared or sacrificed, on decisions such as these. We tend to think of these judgements being made by historical titans who stride through our books and our imaginations like giants. But Meade and Lee were mortals like the rest of us. Uncertain about the intentions of the other, receiving questionable information about the situation, and under the influence of very human elements we work through every day; too much work and too little sleep. It is something of wonder that these men were able to think clearly at all, much less make such decisions with so much at stake.

It was at that early morning council that Meade had the clairvoyance to caution General John Gibbon that the next attack would likely be on the Union center. He was wearing the uniform coat and hat pictured above at that council, as he had been for the entire battle. It is a custom made uniform frock coat, possibly made for him here in Philadelphia, and has a beautifully embroidered lining featuring eagles and stars and shields that unfortunately can not be seen when the coat is on display. The hat, in the wide brimmed style usually favored by Meade, has a bullet hole through the crown from a previous engagement. After Meade's death in 1872, these items went to his son, George G. Meade, Jr., who served on his father's staff durning the Battle of Gettysburg and throughout the war. Meade Jr., gave them to the Museum, one of the first to come to what was then called the War Library and Museum.

The items connect us not just to the man and the event, but to the very moment one of the great decisions in our American history was made. He earned the rest that came with victory.

July 2, 1863

When the sun rose over the Gettysburg countryside on July 2, 1863, it brought the familiar sticky heat from the previous days, as well as something unexpected: quiet. But, with the Union Army of the Potomac and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in such close proximity, veteran soldiers on both sides knew the quiet would not last. When the calm was finally broken by Confederate General James Longstreet's attack on the Union left flank near the Devil's Den and the Round Tops around 4 o'clock in the afternoon, it broke like a thunderstorm.

Museums use objects to tell different aspects of history. Some convey personal stories, some are relics of key events, and others are mementos of people who were there. One of the things that even those of us who have spent our entire lives studying and reading about events such as Gettysburg find hard to conceive of is the shear chaotic violence of a battle such as the one which erupted on that hot July afternoon.

Relics such as the one pictured above provide us with a stunning frame of reference. It is a battle log. Specifically, it was cut from a tree on the western slope of Big Round Top. The 10 lb. rifle shell lodged in the log was fired by Reilly's North Carolina Battery against the men of Col. Strong Vincent's brigade as the desperately struggled to hold the Union flank. The log itself came from a tree that fell in a storm on Sept. 30, 1906, and was given to the Museum by John P. Nicholson, one of the leading figures in creating Gettysburg as a National Military Park.

But aside from what it is, its significance is what it represents. There were thousands of these shells flying through the air that afternoon. This one was a dud and failed to detonate, but most where not. It is visual, tactile evidence of the enormous amount of iron and lead that was tearing through trees, splitting rocks, digging up earth, and cutting flesh. Through it, we hear the deafening sound, smell the acrid smoke, and better understand that while to us the battlefield is a vast sweeping space, to the soldiers in the fight it was a very tiny, deadly place.

Battle logs were somewhat common souvenirs after the war, and were often cut by the veterans themselves and contained debris from the part of the battlefield on which their unit fought. Some, like this one, have been lacquered in order to prevent decay or insect damage. Our museum is fortunate to have about a dozen of these relics in our collection.

July 1, 1863.

July 1st, 1863 was the first day of the epic Battle of Gettysburg. To commemorate, I thought I would post an image of three objects in our collection that are significant to that day. And it doesn't come more significant than this!

In the photo you see above are the sword belt, sash, and saddle of Union General John F. Reynolds. He was wearing the sword belt and sash, and riding on the saddle when he was shot an killed while leading the Iron Brigade forward that morning. These items were given to the Reynolds family just days after his death. They were donated to the Museum in the 1930's.

These are some of my favorite items. They are both historically significant and poignant.

Welcome.

Welcome to Collections Notes, the Curator's blog of the Civil War and Underground Railroad Museum of Philadelphia. My name is Andrew, and I'll be posting here about events, curiosities, thoughts, and issues that come across my desk.

Some upcoming events we'll be talking about are the packing of our collection for the move into storage, as well as the design and implementation of our new museum at the First National Bank Building (set to open in 2010).

There should be lots of exciting stuff going on, so feel free to check in often to see what's going on.