Author Archives: Gabriel Swift

Rollins’s Friends and the PULC

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Philip Ashton Rollins ’89 donated his Collection of Western Americana to the Princeton University Library in 1947.  Yet nearly twenty years earlier Rollins gave a gift to the library of far greater value.  On March 28, 1930, Mr. and Mrs. Rollins gave a dinner party at the Union Club in New York City with the sole intent of forming a Friends of the Library group at Princeton.  The dinner invitations included an elegantly printed notice of Rollins’s intentions:

To meet with other Princetonians and friends who are sympathetic with an attempt to duplicate at Princeton the movement which, well established at Harvard, is there known as Friends of the Library.  University officers and professors will explain the movement which, to speak bluntly, is in no sense a money raising one.  It is books and the friends of books.

Thus the Friends of the Princeton University Library was born.  Mr. Rollins served as the first Chairman of the Friends and oversaw the formation of the Friend’s circular, Biblia, in 1930 (the first issue included a transcript of a recent purchase by Rollins,  a collection of manuscript notes made by Walt Whitman during a trip out West).  Rollins contributed the opening essay as well, which clearly stated the purpose of the Friends:

The aim of the association is the obtaining of printed and manuscript material for Princeton, doing this indirectly through creating an intimate acquaintance between Princeton’s Library and such Princetonians and other sympathetic folk as may desire the Library’s betterment.  Lovers of books can, by making or inducing gifts of volumes, do much to strengthen Princeton.

The Bib­lia was primarily devoted to library business matters, and in 1939 it was supplemented with a new publication, the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library Chron­i­cle.   The Chronicle, which has remained in publication ever since, is an inter-disciplinary journal whose mission is to publish articles of scholarly importance and general interest based on research in the collections of the Princeton University Libraries.  Today the Chronicle is published three times a year (Autumn, Winter, Spring), under the sponsorship of the Friends of the Princeton University Library, and it is the best introduction to the history of the Department of Rare and Special Collections and its holdings.  Two issues in par­tic­u­lar pro­vide a very thor­ough account of the his­tory of the Princeton Col­lec­tions of West­ern Amer­i­cana, Vol­ume 9, Num­ber 4 and Vol­ume 33, Num­ber 1.  Vol­ume 67, Num­ber 2, (available here) is a 2006 issue in honor of Alfred L. Bush, Princeton’s first Cura­tor of West­ern Americana.

Combined, Biblia and the Chronicle contain approximately 50 articles devoted to the history of the American West as told through Princeton’s Collections of Western Americana.  A compiled list of these WA articles, as well as links to online PDFs, can now be found at the following URL: blogs.princeton.edu/westernamericana/pulc

Powell’s Canyons of the Colorado

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Frontispiece portrait of J. W. Powell, Canyons of the Colorado.

“On my return from the first exploration of the canyons of the Colorado, I found that our journey had been the theme of much newspaper writing. A story of disaster had been circulated, with many particulars of hardship and tragedy, so that it was currently believed throughout the United States that all the members of the party were lost save one. A good friend of mine had gathered a great number of obituary notices, and it was interesting and rather flattering to me to discover the high esteem in which I had been held by the people of the United States. In my supposed death I had attained to a glory which I fear my continued life has not fully vindicated.”  –J. W. Powell, Canyons of the Colorado.

On August 29, 1869, John Wesley Powell and the remaining members of a small expedition emerged from the Grand Canyon after nearly 100 days of hardship and peril. Three months earlier, on May 24, they had embarked on a journey down the uncharted waters and canyons of the Green and Colorado rivers hoping to successfully navigate one of the last unknown territories in the United States.  Powell, a Civil War veteran whose right arm was amputated after the battle of Shiloh, soon found widespread acclaim and recognition for his remarkable achievement.  His success and fame led to government funding for a second trip in 1871-72, this time to map the rivers and canyons, a task which was abandoned in the first expedition in favor of survival.  In 1875, Powell published an illustrated account of the expeditions, Explorations of the Colorado River…, which he later revised and enlarged as Canyons of the Colorado (1895), a copy of which was recently acquired for Princeton. The work was privately printed in Meadville, Pennsylvania.

Canyons of the Colorado provides numerous accounts and illustrations of the perils involved in the expeditions, such as running the rapids and saving a man from falling into a canyon by lowering down a pair of britches as a rope:

Powell was also a professor of natural science (primarily self-taught), and his life-long interests in geography and archaeology are witnessed in the Canyons of Colorado as well. Powell’s reports significantly contributed to the scientific understanding of the Colorado River system and the formation of the canyons.  His work also included important studies of the Native American tribes of Arizona, Nevada, and Utah (Powell later served as a special commissioner of Indian affairs in Washington, D.C.).

Princeton also houses several stereographs from Powell’s expeditions, most of which are attributed to either E. O. Beaman or John K. Hillers.  (For an online simulation of stereo views, see the Getty Museum’s How a Stereograph Works  or create your own simulation with the New York Public Library’s Sterogranimator.)

1,500 of Princeton’s stereographs have been digitized and can be viewed in the Princeton University Digital Library’s Western Americana Collection:

http://pudl.princeton.edu/collection.php?c=pudl0017&f1=kw&v1=stereographs

For those related to Powell’s various expeditions, see:

http://pudl.princeton.edu/results.php?f1=kw&v1=powell

Select Bibliography:

Fowler, Don D. “Powell, John Wesley,” American National Biography Online. Feb. 2000. Access Date: Tue Dec 25 2012 16:44:42 GMT-0600 (CST)

Powell, J. W. Canyons of the Colorado. Meadville, PA: The Chatauqua-Century Press, 1895.

Coronelli & Nolin, Le Nouveau Mexique… (Paris, c.1687)

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Vincenzo Maria Coronelli and Jean Baptise Nolin. Le nouveau Mexique, appelé aussi Nouvelle Grenade et Marata, avec partie de Californie selon les memoires les plus nouveaux. A Paris: Chez J.B. Nolin, sur le Quay de l’Horlogeà, l’Enseigne de la Place des Victoires Vers le Pont-Neuf, Avec Privilege du Roy, 168 (sic).

A new acquisition for Princeton’s Historic Maps & Western Americana collections, Coronelli and Nolin’s Le nouveau Mexique… is described in Philip D. Burden’s The Mapping of North America II (Raleigh Publications, 2007) as “the most momentous map of the American south-west published to date [1687] and would remain seminal for decades to come” (Burden, 307).  The primary importance of the map is the depiction of the Rio Grand, which is accurately described as flowing south-east and discharging into the Gulf of Mexico instead of the Gulf of California: “La Riu du Nort tombe dans le golfe de Mexique, et non pas dans La Mer de Californie.”

The map also prominently features several Indian pueblos, including Acoma, Nambe, Santa Clara, Santo Domingo, and Taos, as well as Apache and Navajo tribes.

The first printed state of the map has a regretful omission in the date, which is printed as “168.”

Wheat’s Mapping the Transmississippi West, 1540-1861 (Institute of Historical Cartography, 1957-1963) dates the map as 1685, while Burden suggests a later circa 1687 printing.  A second state of Le nouveau de Mexique… did not appear until in 1742.

Select Bibliography:

Burden, Philip D. The Mapping of North America II: A List of Printed Maps 1671-1700. Rickmansworth, Herts., U.K.: Raleigh Publications, 2007.

Wheat, Carl I. Mapping the Transmississippi West, 1540-1861. Six volumes. San Francisco: Institute of Historical Cartography, 1957-1963.

Sappington’s Theory & Treatment of Fevers

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As I have long since departed from the theory and practice in which I was principally taught, and am now engaged in writing against them, it may be proper that I should give my reasons to the public for doing so.  —John Sappington, Theory and Treatment of Fevers.

The library has recently acquired one of the earliest books published west of the Mississippi and the first medical book printed in Missouri, John Sappington’s Theory and Treatment of Fevers … Revised and corrected by Ferdinand Stith, Arrow Rock [Mo.], Published by the Author, 1844.

The book, Sappington’s first and published by the author in aproximatey16,000 copies, went against contemporary medical treatment of fevers, which included bloodletting, vomiting with the use of emetics, and administering Calomel or Mercury Chloride as a purgative, and instead advocated the efficacy of his own anti-fever pills. Sappington had found both medical and commercial success in fighting fevers with the release of his “Dr. Sappington’s Anti-Fever Pills,” which he began to sell in 1832. The ingredient responsible for their efficacy was quinine, a substance derived from the bark of a South American tree. It was soon discovered that the pills were highly effective in the treatment of malaria (a dreaded and wide-spread disease for southern frontier settlers), and in 1835, Sappington founded Sappington and Sons to meet demand and widen distribution.  The Theory and Treatment of Fevers, however, was not a commercial or advertisement ploy to sell more pills, which Sappington had been successfully selling for nearly a decade by the time of the book’s publication. Rather, the author professed a benevolent desire and purpose for the book and even went so far as to included the ingredients for his lucrative anti-fever pills:

Although the author has vended pills to a large amount, and realized considerable sums of money by his sales, the people have also saved a great many dollars by using them; been relieved of much pain and suffering, and very many lives have no doubt been saved and prolonged. The author considers himself driven to this alternative, more from motives of benevolence than from those of self-interest. (79)

Sappington’s Anti-Fever Pills “were simply composed of one grain quinine each, three-fourths of a grain of liquorice, and one-fourth grain of myrrh, to which was added just so much of the oil of sassafras as would give to them an agreeable odor” (79).

Princeton’s copy contains the bookplate of H. P. Engle, M. D., undoubtedly the county physician Harry P. Engle of Newton, Iowa:

A biographical sketch and photograph of H. P. Engle, M. D., can be found in the Standard Historical Atlas of Jasper County, Iowa, while Dr. Engle’s early adoption of the automobile and its benefit to county physicians can be read in “The Most Satisfactory Investment for the County Physician Harry P. Engle, M.D. Newton, Iowa.”

The Sappingtons went on to became a very prominent and influential Missouri family.  A detailed account of Dr. Sappington’s life and his legacy, including portraits of family members and photographs of his Anti-Fever Pills and related ephemera, can be found on the State Historical Society of Missouri’s Historic Missourians, Nurses & Doctors, website: John S. Sappington (1776-1856). The historical society also houses the Sappington Family Papers.

Select Bibliography:

Eimas, Richard (Ed.). Heirs of Hippocrates: The Development of Medicine in a Catalogue of Historic Books in the Hardin Library for the Health Sciences, the University of Iowa. Third Edition. Iowa City: Published for the University of Iowa Libraries by the University of Iowa Press, 1990. Available online: Heirs of Hippocrates.

Morrow, Lynn. “Dr. John Sappington: Southern Patriarch in the New West.” Missouri Historical Review. Vol 90, no. 1 (October 1995): 38-60.

Sappington, John. The­ory and Treat­ment of Fevers … Revised and cor­rected by Fer­di­nand Stith.  Arrow Rock [Mo.]: Pub­lished by the Author, 1844.

Adam Clark Vroman

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Adam Clark Vroman was born in La Salle, Illinois, in 1856, and moved to Pasadena, California, in 1892 in hope of finding a better climate for his wife, Ester H. Griest, who was dying of tuberculosis.  Following her death in 1894, Vroman and an associate opened a store in Pasadena specializing in books, stationary, and photographic supplies.  The success of the store, which is still in operation today as southern California’s oldest and largest independent bookstore, Vroman’s Bookstore, provided Vroman with the means to pursue his many interests, including amateur pursuits in archaeology and historical documentation of the American Southwest.

In 1895, Vroman took his first trip through the Southwest, visiting Arizona and New Mexico, which he documented extensively through photography.  Between 1895 and 1904, Vroman continued to explore and document the Southwest, collecting Southwestern Indian artifacts and photographing Native American villages and the people and customs of the Southwestern Indians (Apache, Hopi, Navajo, and Pueblo).

The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections holds several individual Vroman photographs and three photograph albums, all of which can be viewed online in the Princeton University Digital Library. Two of the Vroman albums represent (at least in part) the cultural studies of the Museum-Gates Expedition of 1901, led by Peter Goddard Gates, a California philanthropist, and Dr. Walter Hough of the United States National Museum.  Vroman served as the official photographer of the expedition.

Vroman was a man of many interests, and after 1904 his attention turned abroad with tours in Japan and Europe, which included collecting Japanese netsuke and photographing European architecture.  His last tours in North America, in 1914, were of the Canadian Rockies and the East Coast.  Vroman, who died of cancer in 1916, left a substantial collection of Indian artifacts to the Southwest Museum, and his Californiana collection and sixteen albums of platinotype prints from his various expeditions were given to the Pasadena Public Library, where they are still available to view by appointment.  Vroman’s collection of Japanese netsuke is now part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which described the collection as one “considered to be the finest and largest in the United States at that time [1910].  This group of 2,500 pieces had been assembled by A. C. Vroman of Pasadena, California, and was purchased and presented to the Museum by Mrs. Russell Sage, one of the Metropolitan’s first great benefactors” (Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Fall 1980).

Select Bibliography

Apostol, Jane. Vroman’s of Pasadena: A Century of Books, 1894-1994. Pasadena: A.C. Vroman, 1994.

Mautz, Carl. Biographies of Western Photographers: A Reference Guide to Photographers Working in the 19th Century American West. Nevada City, Calif.: Carl Mautz Publishing, 1997.

Powell, Lawrence Clark. Vroman’s of Pasadena. Pasadena: [s.n.], 1953.

Vroman, A. C. Photographer of the Southwest: Adam Clark Vroman, 1856-1916. Edited by Ruth L. Mahood with the assistance of Robert A. Weinstein. Introduction by Beaumont Newhall. [Los Angeles]: Ward Ritchie Press, 1961.

Watts, Jennifer and Andrew Smith. Adam Clark Vroman: Platinum Prints, 1895-1904. Los Angeles: Michael Dawson Gallery; Santa Fe: Andrew Smith Gallery, Inc., 2005.

Webb, William and Robert A. Weinstein. Dwellers at the Source: Southwestern Indian Photographs of A. C. Vroman, 1895-1904. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1973.