Ernest Hemingway in Havana Harbor after catching a marlin. Included in the picture are Carlos Gutiericz, Ernest Hemingway, and Sidney Franklin. Others are unidentified. July, 1934
From the Ernest Hemingway Collection of the John F. Kennedy Library
Author Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Old Man and the Sea was awarded the Pulitizer Prize for Fiction 60 years ago on May 4, 1953.
Today in 1902, John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California. His novel, The Grapes of Wrath, includes a dedication “to Tom who lived it.” But this does not refer to Tom Joad, the archetypal protagonist, but to Thomas E. Collins—a nonfictional “character” whom the fictional Joad family would have known well.
Collins managed the Resettlement Administration’s Arvin/Weedpatch federal “Migratory Labor Camp” for migrant agricultural laborers in Kern County in southern California. “Weedpatch camp” appears in The Grapes of Wrath in chapters 22, 24, and 26.
The records of Collins and Steinbeck’s relationship—and what they saw in the migrant worker camps—can be found in the records of the National Archives in San Francisco.
For the full story, read the online article in Prologue magazine: Archival Vintages for The Grapes of Wrath
via US National Archives on Facebook
Jules Verne, early science fiction author and godfather of the steampunk genre was born on February 8, 1828. What better day to share the National Archives’ Steampunk board on Pinterest?
Are you following the US National Archives on Pinterest? Our photographs from the Joint Committee to Investigate Dirigible Disasters, created to investigate the cause of the USS Akron disaster and the wrecks of other Army and Navy dirigibles, were the inspiration for the steampunk board. What are you favorite things to pin on Pinterest?
January 10, 1863 - Ralph Waldo Emerson recommends Walt Whitman for public service:
“A man of his talents & dispositions will quickly make himself useful, and, if the government has work that he can do, I think it may easily find that it has called to its side more valuable aid than it bargained for.”
Walt Whitman, an influential American poet and hospital volunteer, applied for government employment during the Civil War. However, under the so-called “spoils system,” many government officials obtained their positions not because of special skills, but because of whom they knew. So, Whitman wrote to his friend, the American transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and asked him to write letters of recommendation on his behalf to the secretary of state and secretary of treasury, who were both acquaintances of Emerson. Ralph Waldo Emerson described Whitman as “a man of strong original genius, combining, with marked eccentricities, great powers & valuable traits of character & a self-relying large-hearted man, much beloved by his friends; entirely patriotic + benevolent in his theory, tastes, & practice.” The government did indeed have work that Whitman could do, and for the next eleven years, Whitman was a public servant in three different cabinet departments. During the war years, while employed by the federal government, Whitman continued his volunteer work in the Union hospitals; he estimated that he visited between eighty thousand and one hundred thousand sick and wounded soldiers.
via DocsTeach
The First Inaugural Poet: Robert Frost
Today, the Presidential Inaugural Committee announced Richard Blanco as the inaugural poet for Barack Obama’s upcoming ceremony. Blanco will become the fifth inaugural poet in the history of U.S. Presidents.
John F. Kennedy’s 1961 inauguration was the first to feature a poet at the swearing-in ceremony, and he named Robert Frost for the honor.
Frost wrote an original poem for the occasion called “Dedication.” He presented a handwritten version of the poem to President Kennedy. Jacqueline Kennedy framed the poem and wrote on the backside in pencil,
“For Jack. First thing I had framed to be put in your office. First thing to be hung there.”
Frost had planned to read a typed copy of the poem during President Kennedy’s Inauguration, but due to sun glare reflecting off the snow, he was unable to read his own draft. Instead, he recited “The Gift Outright” from memory.
The handwritten poem now resides at the JFK Library in Boston.
Image: Framed poem, “Dedication,” handwritten by Robert Frost for the Inauguration of John F. Kennedy.
Happy Alaska Day & Moby-Dick Day
Color post card. “Eskimo in skin Omiak in pursuit of walrus. Caught in the act of throwing the harpoon, Alaska.”
from the Sir Henry Wellcome Collection, Photographs of the inhabitants of Metlakatla, British Columbia and Metlakatla, Alaska, ca. 1856 - 1936.
On October 18, 1867, the United States officially took possession of the territory of Alaksa, having agreed to purchase it from Russia for 7.2 Million Dollars.
A few years earlier on October 18, 1851, Herman Melville’s epic novel Moby-Dick; or, The Whale was first published in London.
If you love Laura Ingalls Wilder, don’t miss September 3 at the Hoover Library!
If you are a fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder, don’t miss our special events at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum on September 3.
Sarah Uthoff will be performing her Laura Ingalls Wilder program on Monday, September 3, at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Be transported back in time to 1931, when Laura Ingalls Wilder is trying to decide whether it’s worth reworking her first book to submit to the publishers one last time.There will also be a guided Prairie Walk of the 81-acre tallgrass prairie at the Hoover National Historic Site at 9:30 a.m. and 3 p.m.There is no charge for either of these events. Regular admission fees will be charged to go through the museum. For more information call 310-643-5301 or visit the website.
Did you know that Hoover Library has the papers of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter Rose Wilder Lane? She wrote a biography of Herbert Hoover. Read more here: http://www.ecommcode2.com/hoover/research/wilder/index.html
Happy Birthday, Ernest Hemingway! (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961)
Photograph of Ernest Hemingway with his son John Hadley Nicanor (Bumby).
Happy Birthday to writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau, who was born on July 12, 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts. This census record from 1850 shows Thoreau (line 33) living with his family in Concord. He died of tuberculosis at the age of 44 in 1862. Which do you think it is Thoreau’s most important work: his essay “Civil Disobedience” or his book “Walden Pond”?
This puzzling sketch from the Ernest Hemingway collection (from our colleagues at the John F. Kennedy Library) seems a fitting post for today, the anniversary of the enigmatic author’s death (July 2, 1961):
Hemingway fans – can you help our archivists solve this puzzle? The documents pictured are from the Ernest Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. We think it depicts a scene that took place shortly after Hemingway’s time as an American Red Cross ambulance driver in Italy in June and July of 1918. Any help is appreciated!
Happy Bloomsday!
A copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses, with Ernest Hemingway’s signature. From the Ernest Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Library.
An archival note states the pages of the book are not cut - implying Hemingway might never have read this copy.
But before we get too judgmental, have you ever read Ulysses?
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Song of My Beard
(with apologies to the original Whitman poem!)
1.
I celebrate my beard, and sing my beard,And what I grow you shall growFor every follicle belonging to me as good as belongs to you.
I loafe and stroke my beardI lean and stroke my beard at my ease observing the other bushy mustaches.
My hair, every follicle of my face, form’d this beard, this ’stacheGrown here of my hair grown from hairs thesame, and their hairs the same,I , now ageless forever in photographs begin,Hoping to inspire more beard growing.
*******
Walt Whitman spent many months with wounded soldiers in the hospitals of Washington, DC, while one of his brothers fought in numerous battles. Walt and his family were prolific letter writers. You can read more about his correspondence and experiences in the Civil War in this new Author on the Record interview with Robert Roper in the Summer 2010 issue of Prologue.
Whitman also worked as a clerk in the attorney general’s office during the Civil War. Recently, a researcher discovered over 3,000 documents in Whitman’s handwriting from his time as a civil servant in the holdings of the National Archives. You can read more about this fascinating discovery “Whitman, Walt, Clerk” in the Winter issue of Prologue magazine.
[This post originally appeared as a “Facial Hair Friday” post on the Pieces of History blog. We’re reposting in honor of Walt’s birthday today!]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4w30eRO8R1r5j9hco1_500.gif)
Song of My Beard
(with apologies to the original Whitman poem!)
1.
I celebrate my beard, and sing my beard,
And what I grow you shall grow
For every follicle belonging to me as good as belongs to you.I loafe and stroke my beard
I lean and stroke my beard at my ease observing the other bushy mustaches.My hair, every follicle of my face, form’d this beard, this ’stache
Grown here of my hair grown from hairs the
same, and their hairs the same,
I , now ageless forever in photographs begin,
Hoping to inspire more beard growing.*******
Walt Whitman spent many months with wounded soldiers in the hospitals of Washington, DC, while one of his brothers fought in numerous battles. Walt and his family were prolific letter writers. You can read more about his correspondence and experiences in the Civil War in this new Author on the Record interview with Robert Roper in the Summer 2010 issue of Prologue.
Whitman also worked as a clerk in the attorney general’s office during the Civil War. Recently, a researcher discovered over 3,000 documents in Whitman’s handwriting from his time as a civil servant in the holdings of the National Archives. You can read more about this fascinating discovery “Whitman, Walt, Clerk” in the Winter issue of Prologue magazine.
[This post originally appeared as a “Facial Hair Friday” post on the Pieces of History blog. We’re reposting in honor of Walt’s birthday today!]
Shortly after Harriet Beecher Stowe published “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” or “Life Among the Lowly,” F.W. Thomas, the editor of a German newspaper in Philadelphia, began translating the work and publishing it in installments - without paying the requisite royalties. Stowe and her husband sued in the Federal court in Philadelphia, and Mrs. Stowe submitted a deposition describing her authorship, filed on March 11, 1853.
In this March 10, 1906 letter to President Theodore Roosevelt, author Upton Sinclair supported the presence of federal inspectors in the meat-packing houses. He advised that inspectors should come disguised as workingmen to discover the true conditions, as Sinclair did when he researched his book “The Jungle.”
“The meat was laid on a board in the backdoor shed, and every piece was sprinkled with salt. The hams and the shoulders were put to pickle in brine, for they would be smoked, like the venison, in the hollow log.
‘You can’t beat hickory-cured ham,’ Pa said.”
-Laura Ingalls Wilder, “Little House in the Big Woods,” 1932
Born February 7, 1867 Laura Elizabeth Ingalls began her life in the Big Woods of Pepin County, Wisconsin. Her pioneering journeys began a few years later when her father started his search for a farm and home in the west. This journey continued for the next ten years as the Ingallses moved often, faced hard luck, hard work, and shared many adventures which Laura recounted in her “Little House” books.
The Hoover Library holds the papers of Rose Wilder Lane, the only child of Laura Ingalls and Almanzo Wilder. Lane was the first biographer of Herbert Hoover which led to a friendship with the 31st president that lasted more than 40 years.
Learn more about Half-Pint at the Hoover Library.
Happy birthday Laura Ingalls Wilder!
