Manuscripts Division:

Helen M. Noye Papers

Acquisitions have been coming in at a record pace in the Manuscripts Division. Among many fine new collections are the papers of Helen M. Noye (later Hoyt), a woman from Buffalo, N.Y., who, in 1863 was sent by her local Sewing Society to serve as a nurse at the U.S. General Hospital in Annapolis, Md. Only 19 at the time, so young that she was asked to hide when Dorothea Dix came to inspect the staff, Noye's letters are animated by a lively curiosity and, as they might have said at the time, an "expanded conscience" relative to the suffering and mental and moral state of the soldiers whom she nursed. During her year of duty, she tended to wounded soldiers from Gettysburg and Petersburg and a host of malnourished, diseased, and broken prisoners from Belle Isle and Libby Prisons.

Kirk Cunningham Papers

The papers of Kirk Cunningham are as unusual as they are odd. A Scots immigrant, Cunningham left his family in Massachusetts in the 1840s to settle in the more congenial climate of the slave states with his wife, a hard-edged woman who liberally sowed discord in the Cunningham clan. Struggling through desperate times in Mobile, Ala., where he worked with less than modest success as at a cotton factory and boarding house keeper, Cunningham fled legal troubles in 1854 to try his luck in California, only to find the ravening wolves of competition and poverty were as well known in San Francisco as Mobile. Besides some outstanding descriptions of his financial troubles and Gold Rush-era San Francisco, the Cunningham Papers are one of the best collections available for documenting the intellectual formation of a working class proponent of Spiritualism. Through lengthy letters to his brother, John, Cunningham subtly outlines his reasons for becoming a convert to Andrew Jackson Davis' Harmonial Philosophy, and more generally, in Spiritualism.

Norton Strange Townshend Papers

Through the generosity of Mrs. Alice Dodge Wallace, the Clements has received a very substantial gift of the papers of Norton Strange Townshend, an abolitionist, Civil War surgeon, and agricultural innovator and educator in Ohio. Townshend's correspondence while an administrator with the Medical Department during the Civil War is quite interesting, but a scrapbook, letters, and notes he kept while working for the Liberty Party in the 1840s are revealing of the sort of small-scale, local activism that sustained abolitionism in the north. Townshend was a delegate to the World Antislavery Convention in 1840.

United Sons of Salem Benevolent Society, Minute Book, 1839-1867

Self-help societies have been integral to the life of African American communities since at least the time of founding of the first "African" Masonic lodge in Boston in 1775. The United Sons of Salem were organized in 1839 in the Delaware River port of Salem, located in rural southwestern New Jersey. They took as their goal "to assist in alleviating the miseries of each other in Times of sickness and distress and contributing to the support of our wives and children," and apparently held to that goal for over 25 years. Holding monthly meetings, the United Sons occupied themselves with collecting dues, electing officers, and distributing the cash reserves within the Society in the form of small loans, performing a vital function in a community that could not rely upon white support, even among their many progressively-inclined Quaker neighbors.

The minute book of the United Sons is an extremely rare record of a 19th century African American benevolent society.

Map Division:

Holland, Samuel. Plan of the Island of St. John (London : A. Dury, 1775)

This copy of a Revolutionary-era map of the Island of St. John -- today Price Edward Island, Canada -- was owned by Lord Percy and is stamped with his coat of arms.

Wadsworth, James. Plan of the Town of New Haven... 1748 (New Haven : William Lyon, 1806)

The first published map of New Haven, Conn., printed just after Yale passed its centennial.

Manuscript map of Newton Township, Trumbull County, Ohio, 1819

An early depiction.

Photographs Division:

The Frederick P. Currier and Amy McCombs Collections

In November, 1997, the Library was the recipient of the extraordinary gift of the photographic collections of Frederick P. Currier and his wife, Amy McCombs. The collections are a diverse assemblage of photographic images and books, dating from the mid-19th century through the present, and feature representative work of major artists from Weegee to Wolcott, Steichen to Stieglitz, and Beato to Bonfils. Perhaps the most unsual aspect of the collection is the vast number cartes de visite and cabinet cards -- perhaps 30,000 total -- which form a core reference collection of late 19th century studio photography and a valuable resource for the study of American portraiture.

In honor of Mr. Currier's and Ms McCombs's gift, the Library has renamed the Photographic Division in their honor.

Patrick Nagatani portfolio

Thanks in part to the generosity of the artist, the Library acquired a complete portfolio of Patrick Nagatani's work of rememberance on Japanese American Concentration Camps. Taken between 1993 and 1995, the 125 images are stark and emotionally powerful evocations of the memory that resides in the desolation of places like Heart Mountain, Amache, Gila River, Topaz, and Tule Lake, as well as Manzanar and Jerome, where his own parents were interned. In Mr. Nagatani's words, "Landscape retains memory."

Staff activities at the Clements

In the Map Division, Curator Brian Dunnigan has recently finished his book entitled Frontier Metropolis: Picturing Early Detroit, 1701 - 1838, to be published by Wayne State University Press in the spring of 2001. The publication is the academic centerpiece of Detroit's 300th Anniversary Celebration.

The Clements Library has recently appointed Jan Longone, widely recognized expert on the history of food and cooking, as Curator of American Culinary History. She will assist in collection development and help the Clements Library become a national center of research and scholarship in the field.