January 2011

The Nebraska State Historical Society checked into it and came up with this information: This school was not created in a photographer’s studio but, as Mr. Simon suspected, it’s not an ordinary classroom either. Actually, this is a photograph of a small school for white children that was held in the home of a white doctor—Dr. E. J. DeBell—on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in Nebraska. Two of Dr. DeBell’s children were students at the school (though they’re not identified in the photo).

The room pictured may have been used for other purposes (entertaining, etc.). Hence the place's makeshift appearance. The subjects, of course, had to be posed, due to the long exposures required to shoot interiors back then. So the “action” looks stiff. However, this was truly a shot of school in session.

This picture is part of an extensive collection from an amateur photographer named Lily Bruner Monroe (maiden name: DeBell), who was the doctor’s daughter. The teacher is identified as Ella J. Bruner.

The two things that age most quickly and irretrievably are what our forebears thought was funny and what they thought was sexy. In a bold attempt to rediscover the latter, the fashion historian Anne Hollander has orchestrated the first American Heritage swimsuit feature. The bathing beauties involved—older than Cheryl Tiegs and younger than Lillie Langtry—hold up remarkably well.

“One price of political greatness,” says John Steele Gordon, “is to be forced to campaign even long after death.” In 1923 the staunch conservative Republican Arthur Vandenberg wrote a whole book saying that if Alexander Hamilton were still among the living, the founding father of the American economy would be—a staunch conservative Republican. Maybe, maybe not. But as Gordon shows in a lively examination of Hamilton’s career, the wizard who created Wall Street out of chaos has left a highly pertinent legacy.

“My name is Mary Ellen McCormack. I don’t know how old I am. . . . Mamma has been in the habit of whipping and beating me almost every day. . . .” Mary Ellen was speaking in a Manhattan courtroom in 1874. She was the first abused child ever to do so, and her testimony outraged an unsentimental city. But as the death of Lisa Steinberg demonstrated to the nation, the work that began with the trial of Mary Ellen’s mother is far from done.

Unless you built your house, you’re sharing it with those who lived there before. Andrew Ward, who has moved in with the ghosts of a particularly picturesque Seattle family, explains.

The saga of Dan Patch, the most popular horse who ever lived . . . Victorian secret: Port Townsend, Washington . . . and, with an exuberance in keeping with the 214th Glorious Fourth, more.

The lacy geometry of the American Bank Note Company has imprinted itself upon our history since 1795, when its founder, Robert Scot, was appointed the first engraver of the National Mint. Responsible since then for bank notes, currency, and bonds of various countries, the company also produced the nation’s postage stamps from 1879 to 1893. Around 1900, for unknown reasons, the firm’s apprentice artists were set to work designing the elaborate collages shown here. Two book-sized volumes, each page planned around a theme of stamps, and ten large wall pieces—framed compositions of currency, securities, and countless stamps—were offered recently at Christie’s. The two volumes sold for $264,000, which may be counted a record, since nothing like them had ever gone on sale before.

George Catlin’s North American Indian Portfolio Prison Life among the Rebels Veteran’s Day

Introduction by James Gilreath; Abbeville Press/Library of Congress; 31 plates.

During his journey through the wilderness of the American West, George CatHn encountered a world so untamed that many people back East refused to believe what he saw. In 1830 he had abandoned his wife and family in Pennsylvania and ventured west to paint the Native Americans who had intrigued him since childhood. Catlin was on a mission, he said, to identify “some branch or enterprise of the arts, on which to devote a whole life-time of enthusiasm.” He found it at the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers, painting Plains Indians.

Edited by Edward D. Jervey; Kent State University Press; 94 pages.

The Reverend Henry S. White of Providence was a fervent abolitionist. Appointed chaplain of the 5th Rhode Island Artillery in 1863, he endeared himself to the men with his energy and passionate devotion to the Union cause. His zeal underwent a severe test, however, when Rebels took him prisoner in North Carolina the following spring.

As a chaplain White was spared the worst horrors of Confederate prison life, but his experiences in Rebel custody (written up for a church paper after his release and collected here) were harrowing enough. Teen-aged sentries gleefully shot prisoners on the slightest provocation, or none at all, as the quickest way to earn a promotion. Half-naked men driven insane by hunger, lack of shelter, and atrocious sanitary conditions pleaded with guards to put them out of their misery. White spent only a day at Andersonville, yet his description of that earthly hell is thorough, concise, and very chilling.