The Smithsonian Institution will be celebrating its 175th Anniversary in 2021. In honor of the upcoming celebration we're taking a look back at some of the design work that went into the Smithsonian's 150th anniversary celebration in 1996.

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Smithsonian 150th Anniversary Logo, 1996. Image no. SIA2019-006021. Accession 97-069: Office of the Secretary, 150th Anniversary Program Records, 1992-1996, Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Rejected Smithsonian 150th Anniversary Logo, circa 1996. Image no. SIA2019-006023. Accession 99-099: Assistant Secretary for Institutional Advancement, 150th Anniversary Program Records, circa 1996, Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Program Cover - Smithsonian 150th Birthday Party on the National Mall, August 10-11, 1996. Image no. SIA2019-006022. Accession 97-069: Office of the Secretary, 150th Anniversary Program Records, 1992-1996, Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Instructions - Banners and Flags to Promote the 150th Anniversary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1996. Image no. SIA2019-006024. Accession 02-189: Visitor Information and Associates' Reception Center, Project Files, 1976-2001, Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Color drawing of 150th Anniversary flags on National Mall lampposts, circa 1996. Accession 02-189: Visitor Information and Associates' Reception Center, Project Files, 1976-2001, Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Black and white drawing of flags adorning the National Mall entrance to the Smithsonian Institution Building, circa 1996. Image no. SIA2019-006025. Accession 02-189: Visitor Information and Associates' Reception Center, Project Files, 1976-2001, Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Proposed design for National Mall lamppost flags by Mary Dillon Bird, Office of Exhibits Central, 1995. Accession 02-189: Visitor Information and Associates' Reception Center, Project Files, 1976-2001, Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Elevation drawing - 150th Anniversary flags inside the Smithsonian Institution Building, by Mary Dillon Bird, Office of Exhibits Central, 1995. Accession 02-189: Visitor Information and Associates' Reception Center, Project Files, 1976-2001, Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Elevation drawing - 150th Anniversary banner, by Mary Dillon Bird, Office of Exhibits Central, 1995. Accession 02-189: Visitor Information and Associates' Reception Center, Project Files, 1976-2001, Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Related Collections

• Smithsonian 150th Anniversary collections at the Smithsonian Insitution Archives

Related Resources

• Images from the Smithsonian's 150th Anniversary Celebration
• The Smithsonian: 150 Years of Adventure, Discovery, and Wonder, by James Conaway

DCist has published a guide to this weekend’s Library of Congress National Book Festival. [via DCist]

The DC History Center has reopened! [via infoDOCKET]

A blog post from the University of Florida Architecture Archives focuses on an underappreciated document genre: the napkin! [via UF Libraries]

The Washington Postprofiles two public historians whose walking tours discuss the legacy of Charlottesville’s Confederate monuments. [via NCPH]

Education Week features a summer school program for history teachers that foregrounds Native perspectives in archival collections. [via Amy Katzel]

Archaeologists in British Columbia recently uncovered a shell in a thousand-year-old trash heap that could affect modern-day fisheries policy. [via Smithsonian]

...And here is another archaeological find from waste, this time from puma feces! [via Ars Technica]

In a world drowning in images, where we swipe past photos of friends, relatives, and selves in mere seconds, a set of remarkable portraits taken in the 1910s and 1920s by Julian Papin Scott (1877-1961) deserve more considered attention. Sometimes, his subjects appear immersed in work, surrounded by microscopes, beakers, or stacks of books, as if unaware of the photographer. Other times, they stare down his lens with unflinching regard. The photographs offer far different images of scientists than conventional formal studio portraits. How did an amateur shutterbug with no scientific training or credentials persuade thousands of researchers (novices as well as Nobels) to pause and to pose?

The answer lies in a confluence of circumstances: a labor shortage because of the World War I military draft, workplace discrimination against people with disabilities, and an intelligent young man with the resources to purchase a good camera and take up a new hobby with diligence and creativity.

Born into an affluent family in St. Louis, Missouri, Julian Papin Scott was the middle child among nine siblings and had been named for one of many illustrious ancestors, the fur trader Joseph Marie Papin. A grandfather, Simon Gratz Moses, served as a Confederate physician during the Civil War, and later became the first Health Commissioner of the City of St. Louis. An uncle, Gratz Ashe Moses, was a professor at the St. Louis Medical College. A grandmother, Marie Papin Moses, was celebrated in her youth as one of the city’s “reigning belles.”

Julian’s hearing was damaged by a childhood illness. He did well at St. Louis University but did not graduate, and his disability affected employment opportunities. Although he could lip-read, and maintained a positive attitude, he required a bulky, noticeable device to assist his hearing. One of his poems described listening to a symphony performance of Beethoven’s “Eroica”: “My deaf ear straining could but part of the feast enjoy— / But, who, with mortal ear, hears aught he would of music? / And perhaps the deafness pays its way, / For the more the effort, the more the gain....”

By 1910, five of Julian’s brothers had left home. William Davis Scott, Jr. (1869-1951) had married and moved to Oregon. George Eaton Scott (1871-1939) and Clarence Ashe Scott (1876-1932) were successful Chicago-area steel and foundry executives; Clayton Slaughter Scott (1880-1947) was married and working in Texas; and Jack Ashe Scott (1889-1958) was a lumberman in Minnesota. Julian lived with his widowed father, his eighty-three-year-old grandmother Cornelia Scott, brother Gratz Moses Scott (1873-1935), and sisters Cornelia Slaughter Scott (1883-1946), Mary Porter Ashe Scott (1884-1964), and Margaretta Ashe Scott (1887-1982).

During World War I, the entire Scott family volunteered to serve. John Ashe Scott joined the U.S. Navy, and George Eaton Scott became General of Military Relief for the American Red Cross. Gratz Moses Scott and the three sisters worked on St. Louis Red Cross projects, and in November 1918, Mary Porter and Margaretta Scott went to France as Red Cross volunteers.

As historian Robert M. Buchanan explains in Illusions of Equality (1999), both the military and federal government discriminated against the hearing-impaired during World War I. Julian tried engaging in Red Cross work with his siblings, but when he learned that Washington University Medical School professor Leo Loeb was having difficulty finding laboratory assistants, he offered to help the pathologist for free. “While untrained in scientific technique,” Julian explained later, “I had a rather capable pair of hands and could follow instructions.” For the next four years, Julian accompanied Loeb to laboratories around the country, spent summers at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, and began snapping portraits. 

Scott’s self-deprecating description of himself as a “Kodaker, not a photographer – just a button pusher” belied an innate skill. His camera, the No. 3A Folding Pocket Kodak, was relatively simple to operate, and his family’s resources allowed him to pay someone else to develop, enlarge, and copy the prints (“I believe in letting the other fellow do the work”). As each new photograph drew praise, and requests for copies, Scott began systematically documenting the people in scientific laboratories, offices, and libraries, approaching the task with an egalitarian, catholic spirit.

Even after the volunteer service to Loeb ended, Scott continued traveling to laboratories and scientific conferences, and he was welcomed each summer at Woods Hole (where he sometimes posed his subjects in a temporary gallery). Many scientists perceived portraits as visual validation of their profession and as positive public relations for the research enterprise. So, with their encouragement, Scott gave illustrated lectures and exhibited his work at places like the St. Louis Public Library (1923) and Scientific Society of San Antonio (1926). In September 1928, the Smithsonian Institution displayed 532 of his photos at the U.S. National Museum. Although the Washington Post did not consider the photographs “truly artistic,” it praised them for “a charm that a posed portrait does not always carry.”

By 1926, the collection included over 1,500 portraits, and Science Service’s interest in obtaining images for promoting science to the public led to an arrangement to manage Scott’s photographs and sell copies for fifteen cents. A majority of those photographs are preserved at the Smithsonian Institution Archives and all will eventually be available online.

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Matilda Moldenhauer Brooks (1888-1981) was a botanist at the University of California and spent most summers conducting research at the Woods Hole laboratory. Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 90-105, Image no. SIA2007-0392.

John Livesy Ridgway (1859-1947), artist and scientific illustrator at the Mt. Wilson Observatory, who later worked at the Smithsonian Institution. Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 90-105, Image no. SIA2009-2285.

John Adams Comstock (1883-1970), lepidopterist and Associate Director, Los Angeles County Museum, with a moth and owl. Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 90-105, Image no. SIA2008-1189.

Morris Henry Harnley, (b. 1895), Professor of Biology, New York University. Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 90-105, Image no. SIA2008-3504.

T.Y. Chen had traveled to the United States to study with Thomas Hunt Morgan. After returning to China, he became Professor of Zoology at Amoy University and established China's first marine biological station in 1930. Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 90-105, Image no. SIA2008-0218.

Hikokuro Honda was photographed by Julian Scott while completing post-doctoral studies in the United States. By 1926, he was a Professor of Zoology, Manchuria Educational College. Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 90-105, Image no. SIA2008-3986.

Carl Frederick Abel Pantin (1899-1967), Zoological Laboratory, Cambridge University. Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 90-105, Image no. SIA2009-0766.

John Satterly (1879-1963), Professor of Physics, University of Toronto. Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 90-105, Image no. SIA2009-2665.

Scott then began a decade of exploration, perhaps encouraged by his younger brother’s new travel magazine, The Miami-Palm Beach-Havana Gimlet. Julian sailed to Cuba in 1928, Japan and China in 1929, and Japan again in 1931; he toured Europe in 1932, made a trip around the globe, and spent nine months in Africa in 1937, visiting laboratories along the way. Back in the United States, he continued advocacy work with the American Society for the Hard of Hearing, raising money for local chapters through illustrated lectures about his trips. 

In February 1944, Julian Papin Scott was diagnosed with “paralysis agitans,” the term used then for Parkinson’s disease. He survived until April 19, 1961, outliving most of his siblings. And thanks to digitization, over a century after he first snapped a shutter, Scott’s photographs have a new life contributing to the history of science. Because he documented people inside their laboratories, women as well as men, graduate fellows and visiting researchers dreaming of fame as well as celebrities posing mid-thought, we have invaluable glimpses of the communities behind laboratory doors.

Part Two on Tuesday, September 10, 2019, will discuss some of Julian Papin Scott's techniques and approaches and the people he chose to document.

Related Collections

• Science Service Records, 1902-1965, Record Unit 7091, Smithsonian Institution Archives
• Science Services Records, 1920s-1970s, Accession 90-105, Smithsonian Institution Archives

Picture this. It’s early June of this year. Having just received an incredible new collection item, the Hungerford Deed, I was hard at work making my final preparations before the Hungerford family came to visit. I had photographed every page, or membrane, of the parchment deed and zoomed in at high resolution on my computer screen to better scrutinize the eighteenth-century clerkly script. It became clear that what we assumed was a long, but cut-and-dried document, which established the division of family property between Elizabeth Macie, James Smithson’s mother, and her sister, Henrietta Maria Walker, was, in actuality, an account of eighteen years’ worth of family drama and tortured legal proceedings. Each unpunctuated line brought further revelations of juicy history, which I gleefully divulged to colleagues. I couldn’t wait to share these tidbits with the Hungerfords and make this deed breathe again with the vibrancy of their ancestors’ lives.

What is the Hungerford Deed, exactly?

Flash back a couple of weeks. When Interim Director and Chief Archivist Tammy Peters brought the deed to our conservation lab, it had been folded in half and then into thirds, forming a tight package that resisted opening. We carefully and slowly unfolded the deed, gently weighting the document so that we could better see what we were looking at.

As historian Pam Henson has already shared, the deed is an indenture tripartite, or three-way contract establishing legal property ownership. Written on sixteen pieces of parchment, made from chemically treated and stretch-dried animal skins, the deed is bound together with ribbons laced through the bottom edges of the parchments. One of the ribbons has a red wax seal, and each parchment sheet has a blue tax stamp affixed to the upper left side. Perhaps most excitingly for us at the Smithsonian, Smithson’s signature appears on the back of the document, where he appended his birth name, James Louis Macie, as a witness to the legal execution of the deed.

What did we do to get the deed ready for viewing and study?

Before I could get to the juicy details I teased above, I had to help the deed relax. Parchment was an ideal writing surface because of the qualities developed in the making process: drying it under tension created a stiff, smooth, sturdy, and optically white material. A less desirable characteristic, however, is its intense sensitivity to moisture. Parchment, like many organic materials, is hygroscopic, meaning that it expands and contracts in the presence of moisture, but if thoroughly wetted, parchment can lose its properties and become a limp skin once more.

This meant I could use moisture to help the deed relax, but that I needed to be careful and conservative in how I applied it to the parchment. An additional wrinkle was that I couldn’t take the deed apart to relax and flatten the individual membranes—the bound ensemble is too important to undo, and would be impossible to restore, setting aside the fact that taking it apart would destroy the already damaged wax seal. What I chose to do was gently humidify each sheet in turn, starting from the first, using a gently humidified sheet of 100% cotton blotter to transmit moisture through Gore-Tex, which allowed a high degree of control and gentle application of water. Each membrane was isolated with polypropylene sheeting from the remainder of the document and strongly weighted during the drying process to control any potential distortions of the parchment. I also cut a small window in the blotters we used to humidify and dry the sheets to prevent moisture or pressure from affecting the blue tax seals.

The final result was a visibly flatter and more relaxed item. Instead of requiring two people to gently but firmly wrestle the document open to peer between the parchments, one person could safely page through the deed.

So what does the Hungerford Deed actually say?

I knew that after this initial and basic treatment was done, I wanted to be able to share more with the Hungerfords about the indenture’s contents, as well as satisfy my own curiosity. To my surprise, the sixteen membranes contained more family history than legal jargon (though there was plenty of that too, in the distinctive legal French descended from the Norman conquest of England). The Hungerford Deed is, it turns out, the third in a series of contracts between the Hungerford sisters divvying up family lands, and caps off a saga that would be at home in a period drama.

First contract: the 1769 marriage settlement of Henrietta Maria

When Lumley Hungerford Keate died without a will in 1766, his claims to family lands passed on to his sisters, Elizabeth and Henrietta Maria. On the strength of this property inheritance, Henrietta Maria was wooed by George Walker, who accepted her fifty-percent stake in the Hungerford properties as her dowry. This is particularly interesting because at this time, the sisters didn’t hold legal title to any of these lands; they were embroiled in off-and-on lawsuits to get possession of them.

Second contract: the 1773 indenture of intent to partition

Having successfully litigated their way to land ownership, Elizabeth, the Walkers, and the trustees agreed to entrust the partitioning of the land to a property expert and enshrined that agreement in another indenture. This expert would divide the lands into equally valuable parcels, and they agreed to accept his work as binding. Unfortunately, he was unable to make an equal division for unspecified reasons, and so it was agreed that the sisters would draw lots for their properties. Whichever sister drew the more valuable lands would then owe her sister a fixed sum to equalize the shares. Elizabeth drew the proverbial short straw.

However (and here’s where it gets dramatic), Henrietta Maria refused to execute the necessary legal documents to accomplish the partition. The deed is silent on her motivations, only recording her refusal.

Remarkably, Elizabeth is seemingly content to let this go for a time, but eventually she loses patience. In 1782, Elizabeth takes her sister to court and sues for the enforcement of the 1773 partition. And this isn’t some small claims court. Elizabeth brings her case to the Chancery Court, England’s highest civil law authority, which was notorious for long, drawn-out inheritance cases, some stretching on for hundreds of years. [Check out Dickens’ Bleak House for a satirical—but not overly exaggerated, shockingly—look at Chancery.] Despite regular summons, Henrietta Maria refused to appear in court and was held in contempt, and the case was escalated up to the Master of the Rolls, the senior Chancery judge. Henrietta Maria again failed to appear, and the Master of the Rolls ruled in Elizabeth’s favor; he then ordered his clerks to begin drawing up the legal documents of partition, of which the Hungerford Deed is a principal example. Henrietta Maria was also ordered to pay the money she owed her sister and was obliged to assume all court costs associated with the case.

Third contract: the Hungerford Deed

And so we arrive about halfway through the deed before we get to the legal kernel at the center of this family drama nut, where the flowery yet dry prose rears its head. Despite another nine parchment sheets of legalese, featuring endless repetitions of the sisters assenting to the terms of the partition and assuring each other that they renounce all claims on each other’s lands, there is a lot to unpack and probe further into.

First, Henrietta Maria proves herself as enigmatic a figure as I have ever encountered in a legal document. No justification or even explanation of her actions is offered, and I have a hard time imagining a rational reason for her dogged refusal to sign the needed documents to get her properties.

The deed also throws some interesting light on the state of women’s property rights at this time. Elizabeth was a thoroughly litigious woman (famously, she was the last person to successfully argue a suit of “jactitation” against her second, wastrel husband, meaning that he was legally prevented from declaring himself her spouse in public) and Henrietta Maria also appears to be no stranger to bold action. Throughout the deed, the rights of the sisters to hold their properties without reference to any man is repeatedly stressed, which goes against my preconceived notions of women’s property rights during this period.

Why is the deed so exciting to the Archives and to the wider Smithsonian?

Aside from James Smithson’s signature on the reverse, itself a valuable addition to our collections, the most exciting piece of the Smithson puzzle that this provides is a detailed look at the seeds of James Smithson’s wealth, which ultimately would engender the Smithsonian itself as we know it today. While Smithson was a self-made man in many respects, his money had its origins in his family inheritance. We know his mother spent much of her inherited fortune, and Heather Ewing, Smithson’s biographer, estimates that a very small percentage of the land wealth represented in this deed made it to Smithson. But he parlayed that into a fortune ten times larger than what he started with through his own initiative.

The Macie Deed is a fascinating object and offers a window into a time and its mores and practices that are now lost or foreign to our modern eyes and minds. But its link to the Smithsonian’s founding is even more significant and gives us a glimpse of both the tangible and interpersonal inheritance that James Smithson received from his mother. From the seeds of wealth planted by this indenture has sprung a profusion of culture and knowledge that enriches the lives of people across the globe.

Related Collections

• Draft of the Will of James Smithson, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 7000, James Smithson Collection, Box 2. 

Related Resources

• "Hungerford Family Visits the Smithsonian," by Pamela M. Henson, The Bigger Picture, Smithsonian Institution Archives
• James Smithson, Founding Donor, Smithsonian Institution Archives

Smithsonian Magazine features a fresh look at one of SIA’s all-time favorites: the Megatherium Club. [via Smithsonian]

Thousands of Vivian Maier’s street photographs have been donated to the University of Chicago. [via WTTW]

Twodigital humanities projects shed light on structural inequality in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. [via Utah State Archives]

Atlas Obscura profiles the work of NARA employee Mitch Yockelson, an investigative archivist (not a library cop). [via SAA]

Recently-published research on metabolism involves fuzzy goslings, wind tunnels, and a NASA astronaut. [via Jessica Meir]

A current Met exhibition explores depictions of the moon across centuries. [via Hyperallergic] 

Watch a guided tour of the HMS Terror shipwreck! [via New York Times]

Julian Papin Scott (1877-1961) never pretended to be anything other than an amateur photographer, someone fortunate to be allowed to snap portraits of people whose work he admired. His legacy, however, is far greater than was acknowledged at the time, or he probably realized, both because of who he photographed and how he pursued that “hobby.”

Unlike candid photographs that captured significant historical moments (like the 1925 Scopes trial) or celebrities (like Charles Lindbergh), Julian Scott’s images preserve a record of life in and around scientific laboratories in the 1910s and 1920s. Some of his snapshots are blurred and ill-composed, and some mundane in their sameness. But when his camera lens captured a young woman gazing intently at a skull (Caroline Whitney) or a chemist using a Bunsen burner (Henry Winston Harper), we view a scientist in context, and the results can be arresting. Sometimes, a subject leans back in a desk chair, as if about to ask “may I get on with my work?,” which can afford clues to personalities and social attitudes. “Scientists are mostly always absorbed in their work,” Scott told a St. Louis reporter in 1927, “but when you can draw them out of it they are just like any other human beings of a high order. 

As in Scott’s stunning portrait of Princeton astronomer Henry Norris Russell, many of the indoor shots project a sense of stillness and contemplation, an attribute which has much to do with the photographer’s reliance on available natural light rather than a flash attachment. The laboratory poses often feature a distinctive framing, with the image’s bottom half dominated by a polished surface or desk. This dramatic feature came about by accident. As Scott explained to a reporter, when subjects were shy or uncooperative, he would engage the person in conversation (Scott could lip-read), and then “set my camera down on some convenient bench or chair and get a picture of him in some good working or thinking pose before he realizes it.” Although the foregrounds may be slightly out of focus, the backgrounds of glassware, book shelves, calendars, wall charts, and specimens preserve a historical record of laboratory life.

Scott’s collection eventually grew to over 2,000 images and included such famous scientists as California Institute of Technology physicist Robert Andrews Millikan,  Rockefeller Institute bacteriologist Hideyo Noguchi, and biologist Jacques Loeb. Scott’s broody portrait of celebrity archaeologist and lecturer Count Byron Khun De Prorok, who directed excavations in the Middle East during the 1920s, captured the romanticism of such adventurers. Scott also documented a few scientists before fame made them less apt to pose, such as physiologist and 1922 Nobel prize winner Archibald Vivian Hill or Frederick Grant Banting, who received the Nobel prize in 1923 for his discovery of insulin.

Understandably, Scott took many photographs of researchers, professors, and graduate students in his home town of St. Louis. Caswell Grave was head of the Department of Zoology, Washington University; Rev. Alphonse Schwitalla, S.J., was dean of the St. Louis University Medical School; Kehar Singh Chouké had moved to the United States to attend Washington University and later became a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine; and Beatrice Whiteside-Hawel taught histology and neuroanatomy at Washington University Medical School. Scott photographed Mildred Trotter and Caroline Whitney while they were earning their Ph.D.s at Washington University. Except for service as a U.S. Army forensic anthropologist following World War II, Trotter spent her entire career as a professor at Washington University; Whitney became the first female intern at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis and taught at Washington University until her death from tuberculosis in 1928.

Scott’s camera also recorded foreign visitors to American laboratories and universities during the 1910s and 1920s. Dutch zoologist Hilbrand Boschma later became director of the Rijksmuseum of Natural History in Leiden, Holland; Emilio Erquiza Bulatao, a surgeon and University of the Philippines professor, was a Rockefeller Foundation fellow in the United States; graduate student Teikichi Fukushi later became Professor of Botany at Tottori Agricultural College in Japan; and Shinkishi Hatai, who was studying neurology at the University of Chicago, became the first professor in biology at Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan.

When photographing artists, Scott sometimes posed them near examples of their work, just as he had posed scientists peering into microscopes.  Russian biologist and artist Eugène Gabritschevsky did research in the United States during the 1920s. British-born Stephen Haweis studied art in Paris and was known for his paintings of tropical fish.

And last, but by no means least, the inclusion of so many women in the collection, although a small fraction of the whole, has been a special gift to historians today. Thanks to the women’s history efforts at the Smithsonian Institution Archives, and to digitization and online dissemination of the images, there is ever more “rediscovery” of female scientists who pioneered in their fields, inspiring long overdue recognition 

It is a rich legacy for a man who claimed to be “just a Kodaker.”

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Robert Andrews Millikan, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 90-105, Image no. SIA2009-0906.

Frederick Grant Banting, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 90-105, Image no. SIA2009-0783.

Archibald Vivian Hill, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 90-105, Image no. SIA2008-3902.

Jacques Loeb, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 90-105, Image no. SIA2008-5403.

Caswell Grave, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 90-105, Image no. SIA2008-2049.

Rev. Alphonse Schwitalla, S.J., Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 90-105, Image no. SIA2009-2796.

Beatrice Whiteside-Hawel, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 90-105, Image no. SIA2010-1128.

Mildred Trotter, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 90-105, Image no. SIA2010-0139.

Hilbrand Boschma, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 90-105, Image no. SIA2007-0310.

Emilio Erquiza Bulatao, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 90-105, Image no. SIA2008-0314.

Teikichi Fukushi, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 90-105, Image no. SIA2008-1770.

Shinkishi Hatai, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 90-105, Image no. SIA2008-3548.

Eugène Gabritschevsky, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 90-105, Image no. SIA2008-1795.

Stephen Haweis, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 90-105, Image no. SIA2008-3573.

Roxana Judkins Stinchfield Ferris, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 90-105, Image no. SIA2008-0592.

Wiktorja S. Dembowski, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 90-105, Image no. SIA2008-0975.

Charlotte Haywood, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 90-105, Image no. SIA2008-3576.

Margaret Alger Hayden, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 90-105, Image no. SIA2008-3578.

Related Collections 

• Science Service Records, 1902-1965, Record Unit 7091, Smithsonian Institution Archives
• Science Services Records, 1920s-1970s, Accession 90-105, Smithsonian Institution Archives

Related Resources

• "The Scientific Portraits of Julian Papin Scott, Part 1 of 2: The Photograpger Behind the Lens," by Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette, The Bigger Picture, Smithsonian Institution Archives

Information about exceptional people can sometimes be surprisingly tough to find, especially when you are looking to learn more about those who have often been ignored in American historical narratives, like people of color and women. But, hope is not lost if you can find even the smallest thread to follow in your research. In the case of Mildred Glover, I knew that she had worked in the Office of General Counsel, both in an administrative role and as an attorney, and that she had an impressive knowledge of the Smithsonian’s history. We didn’t know much else about Glover, but we were sure we wanted to find out more.

When conducting a search through the finding aids in the Archives’ collections, one folder name revealed that Glover had won, or at least been nominated for, the Robert A. Brooks Award for Excellence in Administration. Here was the thread we needed! A small clue that would hopefully lead to more.

So, I pulled a little more at the thread. In this folder, there were multiple nominations for Mildred Glover for the Brooks Award. From the strongly worded recommendation letters, it was crystal clear how hardworking and well regarded Glover was by her Smithsonian colleagues. Charles Blitzer, then Director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center, gave glowing praise, calling her the “single most effective person in the Castle” and saying that “she was the Office of General Counsel.”  A thank you letter written by Glover gave insight into her personality. Not only was she incredibly dedicated, but she was gracious and kind as well. While this folder shed a lot of light on her career and reputation at the Smithsonian, this was not the end of the thread. Whether or not Glover had won this award and exactly which roles she held at the Smithsonian throughout her career were still unclear.

After a little more digging, it became that Glover received the Brooks Award in 1995. A helpful citation for a 2008 edition of The Torch, the Smithsonian’s staff newsletter, was the next clue. This was exciting! Could someone have recognized Glover’s accomplishments and written an article about her? Was this an announcement of her retirement? In this edition of The Torch, at the Smithsonian upon her retirment. Finally, I was able to answer some of my most pressing questions.

Mildred Glover began working at the Smithsonian in 1959 as a clerk stenographer in the Museum of History and Techology (now the National Museum of American History), before the museum even had its own building. After a little over five years, Glover was hired as the secretary for the Office of General Counsel, the Smithsonian’s newly created legal office. She continued to work in the Office of General Counsel for the rest of her nearly fifty-year Smithsonian career. While continuing her dedicated work as the Administrative Officer, Glover obtained both her bachelor’s and law degrees.

After she earned her JD from Georgetown University, Glover became an Assistant and then Associate General Counsel. She worked on a wide variety of legal issues, from the Congressional budget to copyrights and everything in between. Glover was held in high esteem by her colleagues for her extensive legal knowledge and her expertise on the legal history of the Smithsonian. John Huerta, the second General Counsel, called her “a true treasure of the Smithsonian, absolutely irreplaceable.” Without that small thread to follow in the finding aid, the extent and impact of Mildred Glover’s career at the Smithsonian may have been lost to those who did not know her.

Related Resources

• Profile: Not all of the Smithsonian's Treasures are in the collection, The Torch, August 2008
• Mildred Glover (Brooks Award), Smithsonian Institution Archives, Accession 09-295, Box 2 

Two historians discuss how research for a Smithsonian exhibit led to the story of 19th-century orator Mary E. Harper. [via the Conversation]

After conducting so many oral history interviews, a pair of labor historians finally get their own! [via NCPH]

The New York Times highlights the Wellcome Collection’s new standards for exhibit accessibility. [via Adam Rozan]

French archaeologists turned up hundreds of footprints, perhaps remnants of a Neanderthal daycare center. [via Gizmodo]

A journalist for the Washington Postasks why National Historic Sites dedicated to women's history have been so underappreciated. [via National Women’s History Alliance]

A new digital humanities initiative explores the lives of the colonial-era people of color interred in Connecticut's burial grounds. [via Hartford Courant]

Jillian and Paitoon have come home to the National Zoo! [via DCist]

As the American Women’s History Initiative Curator at the Smithsonian Institution Archives, I have the opportunity to create digital resources and exhibitions about women in science at the Smithsonian.

In the first few months of my work, I’ve spent some time identifying and collecting information about some of these women by recording names, titles, years worked, research specialties, affiliations, and other useful data in a spreadsheet. 

It’s actually a big job! Since the Smithsonian’s founding in 1846, women have worked as principal investigators, lab technicians, curators, assistants, illustrators, educators, preservationists, and in many other roles that span the sciences—from astrophysics to zoology. In the earliest years, women, such as Mary Jane Rathbun, worked in science at the National Museum, which would become the National Museum of Natural History; and women, such as Florence Meier Chase, worked at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Later, women worked in science at the National Zoological Park, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, the National Air and Space Museum, the National Museum of American History, the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, and the Museum Conservation Institute. 

Identifying a good number of these women in science at the Smithsonian might seem simple. Download a staff list? Done. It’s more complicated though. Sure, I can capture many women currently working in science by using our staff directory, and I can talk to colleagues at museums and research centers across the Smithsonian to make sure I’ve captured all the right people.

But identifying women who have worked in science in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is a little more, let’s say, complicated. Not only do I get to dig around in old annual reports and publications with staff lists (some of which are—gasp—not digitized), I can’t always rely on things like official titles, publications, or photographs to identify women in science. That’s because, as historians such as Margaret Rossiter and Sally Kohlstedt have documented, women in science have, historically, worked sometimes without pay or titles that reflect their labor and contributions. They have also been uncredited in bylines, and left unidentified in photos. 

Lucky for me, I have colleagues across the Smithsonian who have been working on the history of women in science for decades. With their help, along with the exceptional research of Smithsonian intern Margaret Slevin, we have identified hundreds of women who have worked in science at the Smithsonian as full-time—officially recognized—staff. 

And we are still digging. There are more women in science to find! In future posts, I’ll tell you more about the next stages of our research.

Related Resources 

• “Uncovering Hidden Stories,” Because of Her Story, Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative
• “This Lady Scientist Defined the Greenhouse Effect But Didn’t Get the Credit, Because Sexism,” by Leila McNeill, Smithsonian Magazine

With International Day of Peace just three days away, we’re highlighting the advantages of a strong, wide, and active network of visionaries invested in peace.

One person who often comes to mind when considering major actors for peace and dignity is Mahatma Gandhi. Two photographs of Ghandi came to the Smithsonian Institution Archives by way of the Science Service Records. Similar to the Smithsonian, the founders of Science Service, a news source established for disseminating scientific and technical information, were conscious of avoiding any particular science agenda. So what’s the connection to Ghandi?

The Science Service editorial staff built a global network not only of scientists across many disciplines but also scholars, journalists, and educators. One such correspondent was Kanaiyalal Maneklal Munshi (1887-1971) of India, known also as Kanhaiya Lal or K. M. Munshi, who had the privilege of working with Ghandi as part of the Indian National Congress and the Indian Independence Movement. Munshi had many interests and advocated for education throughout his life. He was instrumental in establishing the University of Bombay’s department of chemical technology as well as Bhavan’s College and five other schools in the 1920s. Perhaps it was Munshi’s work as a proponent for applied chemistry that initiated the correspondence with the Science Service, though the specifics are not clear. 

Although Munshi’s interest in literature, science, and education did not waiver, his commitment to a non-violent political process did. So much so, that Ghandi asked him to leave the Indian National Congress. Later, Munshi returned to a non-violent expression of his convictions, and Ghandi invited him to rejoin in 1946.

While political seasons and agendas will change over time, this profile points to the value of a wide network of colleagues if science and scholarly pursuits are to advance. Maybe this year, we can respond to the United Nation’s call to action, “Climate Action for Peace,” and learn more about our climate and the threats it faces. Knowledge is power, yes?

Related Collections

• Science Service Records, 1902-1965, Record Unit 7091, Smithsonian Institution Archives

Museum Day is tomorrow, September 21—request a free ticket! [via Thrillist]

Smithsonian Magazine profiles one of the earliest historians of women in science. [via Smithsonian]

Afghan archivists are digitizing a century of film collections threatened by war and age. [via SAA]

The Washington Post explores how U.S. history teachers approach the topic of slavery. [via Washington Post]

The RepoData project sets out to identify the archives most at risk from climate change. [via Sam Winn]

Oral historian Holly Guise has documented the World War II stories of Alaska Natives for an upcoming digital humanities project. [via KNOM]

The National Archives is asking the public to help describe archival NASA footage! [via Space] 

As a preservation intern at the Smithsonian Institution Archives this summer, I worked for preservation coordinator Alison Reppert Gerber, who initiated the project of reorganizing the oversize collections. As a part of the massive reorganization project, my main task was to preserve and rehouse the oversize items in the personal collection of Alexander Dallas Bache. 

Alexander Dallas Bache (1806–1867) was an American physician, scientist, and engineer. After graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1825, he became a professor of natural philosophy and chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, from 1828 to 1843. During the same period, he was actively involved in many other educational pursuits. From 1836 to 1838, Bache spent two years studying in Europe, where he examined the European education system. Immediately after he returned to America, he became the president of Girard College. Bache was later appointed superintendent of the American Coastal Survey in 1843.

Most of his documents in the Smithsonian Archives were housed in archival document boxes, but his honors and appointment letters, as well as the maps and drawings concerning the coastal survey, are oversize materials. They were folded and stored in six 24”x 36” folders in the storage room. When we retrieved them from storage, they were in bad condition. The materials contained stains and dirt; some of them were brittle and starting to fall apart.

To make this collection more accessible to the public, Alison and I decided first to examine and sort the collection materials based on their content. We then performed minor conservation treatments like surface cleaning, flattening, and mending. Afterward, they were rehoused into bigger folders.

After mending several drawings with the heat-set tissue, we found that the tissue did not adhere well to the drawing paper. Thus, we decided to switch to another mending method, using the Japanese paper and wheat starch paste. 

After all the mending was complete, the collection was rehoused in bigger folders, in which items lay flat. The items will soon be back to the collections storage and available for researchers.

 Related Collections

• Alexander Dallas Bache Papers, 1821-1869, Record Unit 7053, Smithsonian Institution Archives

Related Resources

• "An Intern's Perspective on Preserving Scrapbooks and Conserving Blueprints," by Jenna Bossert, The Bigger Picture, Smithsonian Institution Archives
• "A Medal-y of Materials: Preserving a Small, yet Robust, Collection," by Rita Rushnan, The Bigger Picture, Smithsonian Institution Archives