Every month our curators spotlight an item from our collections in our Pic of the Month feature.
This month, in honor of Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday, curator Cynthia Read Miller looks at images from The Henry Ford’s wonderful, eclectic collection of Lincoln-related photographs. These images span the years from Lincoln’s career as an Illinois legislator during the 1840s to his tragic death in 1865. Visit November’s Pic of the Month.
We’re excited to announce our newest collection on Flickr: photobooth portraits, which joins our other historic photos on Flickr in giving new access to our deep photographic collections. These photobooth shots give insight into the use of photography in everyday life in the twentieth century, from the 1930s to the 1970s. The collection includes shots of Harvey Firestone, Jr. and Elizabeth Parke Firestone.*
We’re excited about these photos: look for a post on the cultural history of the photobooth portrait, coming soon from Cynthia R. Miller, our Curator of Prints and Photographs–and the next time you’re at Henry Ford Museum, take a picture of your own in our photobooth near the IMAX entrance.
*The Henry Ford holds a great deal of Mrs. Firestone’s couture clothing, as well as the Columbiana, Ohio, farm where Harvey Firestone, Sr. was born, among other Firestone artifacts.
In 1929, Henry Ford sent a questionnaire across the country to men and women aged 75 years or older that asked about their childhoods in the early 19th century. Over 100 people responded with detailed accounts of their lives and so collectively created a wealth of memories of one of the most transformative periods of American history.
Historical Resources intern Christine Driscoll has written a series of guest posts on the 1929 questionnaire.
In the 19th century, politics and campaigns were the focus of debate and discourse in small towns. Naturally, the election of 1860 was particularly exciting as the future of the Union seemed to hang in the balance. Those who saw Lincoln speak recalled feeling an instant connection. At the same time there was vicious contention – some did not believe Lincoln would even survive the election. As it turned out, Lincoln survived, but the Union did not.
Although the 1929 Historical Questionnaire did not explicitly inquire about the Civil War or life during the Civil War, it made an enormous impact on the children in the frontier of Michigan – financially and emotionally, as prices for food increased and fathers or brothers went to war and sometimes did not return. As children, their memories were shaped by what affected them. For instance, one woman recalled that only three days into the school term, the teacher quit to enlist in the Union Army.
The bulk of responses came from Midwestern states and consequently few responses contained any mention of slavery. Virginia Parsons was one of the few respondents born in the South, and her family moved to the North deliberately to leave the environment in which women and children were kidnapped and sold.
Mattie Ford Swope, whose family owned slaves, remembered some men deviously took advantage of the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation:
When the Negroes were freed they were told that they must pay so much to obtain their freedom and I recall plainly how Northern men would set up a little office and how the negroes would line up even down the road to try to get a chance to purchase their freedom. My mother told our people that they need not pay, that Abraham Lincoln had issued the command that they be free. Those men may have been Southern men for all I know but of course we thought it could not be.
As we went through the questionnaires, we hoped to find a response from a person whose memory of slavery would be the most accurate – someone who was born a slave. As we neared the last box of responses, we were certain we wouldn’t find one until a man named Dave Williams began his response with “I was born a slave.”
This is a guest post by Judy Endelman.
Henry Ford may have said “History is bunk,” but he founded one of America’s premier history museums–The Henry Ford
Eighty years ago this month, as the world teetered on the brink of depression, Henry Ford hosted a grand party. To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Thomas Edison’s invention of the light bulb, he assembled an international audience of the “best and the brightest” to celebrate “Light’s Golden Jubilee” and dedicate The Edison Institute of Technology, known today as The Henry Ford.
In 1921, Henry Ford posed by a Model T, the car that changed America and made his fortune
The Model T, which first rolled onto the streets of America in 1908, had made Ford a very rich man. By 1920, nearly half of all cars on America’s roads were Model T’s. Ford now turned his tenacity, his attention to detail, and his fortunes to creating a museum that would “show people what actually existed in years gone by.”
The Menlo Park buildings under construction in Greenfield Village
Henry Ford had considered Edison his hero ever since he had met him at an electrical convention in 1896. Not only did Ford dedicate his new museum to his great friend, but Ford had Edison sign the cornerstone, and the centerpiece of The Edison Institute was Edison’s lovingly reconstructed Menlo Park Laboratory, complete with seven train carloads of New Jersey dirt!
For Light's Golden Jubilee, Thomas Edison reconstructed his invention of the electric light bulb. This photo was taken during a rehearsal
As Ford’s distinguished guests dined by candlelight in the unfinished great hall of the museum–Marie Curie, Herbert Hoover, and John D. Rockefeller were some of the guests; Albert Einstein spoke to the assemblage by radio from Berlin–Ford and Edison repaired to the Menlo Park laboratory in Greenfield Village where Edison “reconstructed” his great invention of incandescent light. As the successful “experiment” concluded, the millions listening by radio heard NBC broadcast Graham McNamee shout, “It lights! Light’s Golden Jubilee has come to a triumphant climax!”
Independent museum scholar Kiersten Latham is conducting a study on what it means to experience “the real thing” in a museum. Contact her if you’re interested in participating!
Can you think of a time when you visited a museum to see something real? How did it feel? What does it mean to you when a museum object is real? How do you know it is real? Does it make a difference in your experience if it is not? Join me in a research study about the meaning of real things in museums.
In previous investigations on museum objects and visitor experience, I have found that a common explanation for a strong reaction to a museum object is that it is “Real.” It left me curious as to what people mean by this. What is it like to experience something real? The issue about “the real thing” is especially pertinent in today’s digital age where the majority of Americans have joined in a lifestyle that involves a large amount of time in virtual and electronic worlds. With technology supplanting many physical things in our lives, how important is it to see the real thing? If you can think of specific encounters with real things and would like to describe these encounters to me, please contact me, Kiersten Latham, at kierator@yahoo.com to learn more about participating in this study.
Tintype Portrait of W. A. Floyd, aged 17, circa 1859 (29.3170.3)
In 1929, Henry Ford sent a questionnaire across the country to men and women aged 75 years or older that asked about their childhoods in the early 19th century. Over 100 people responded with detailed accounts of their lives and so collectively created a wealth of memories of one of the most transformative periods of American history.
Historical Resources intern Christine Driscoll has written a series of guest posts on the 1929 questionnaire.
The last two years I was in the army there was a price placed on my head.
This statement came from W. A. Floyd, one of the respondents to the questionnaire Henry Ford sent across the country to men and women over seventy-five in 1929. The men and women who wrote back were all born before the Civil War, but few were old enough to serve in the army at the time. Floyd was one of the few men who did and his stories of his time as a scout for the Union Army in Georgia are the sort of war – adventure tales that have provided material for books and movies for nearly a century.
The duty of a scout is to survey the enemy’s location, strength, and size. Any information that could be attained to ensure victory was worthwhile. In this case, Floyd rode around Northern Georgia to gather information about the Confederate Army’s status. At other times, he searched for train robbers and other Confederate spies.
After enlisting in the Union Army, Floyd arrived in Dalton, Georgia and partnered with another scout called Woody. Of Woody Floyd said:
I rode many a day with Woody when he had a man’s ear in his pocket. He was the worst man I ever saw – he would kill a man but if he took him prisoner he would treat him like a brother, but he took very few prisoners.
It was with Woody that Floyd went to capture a band of Confederate men camped in Ellijay, Georgia.
54! That’s how many telephones are now on exhibit in the Henry Ford Museum. The exhibit is one of our new “collections platforms,” a new way to spotlight some of our under-the radar-collections.
The telephones span from one of Thomas Edison’s experimental phones (a “loud-speaking” chalk phone) to a first-generation iPhone, showing the different ways people have communicated by voice in the last hundred years.
Many of our telephones are from the turn of the twentieth century, an exciting time in phone development. Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated a working telephone in 1876, and a number of key patents and discoveries were in place by 1900, so that the wall phone was a reliable but still rare and fascinating instrument.
Around 1900, the Bell Telephone system and their manufacturing company Western Electric were market leaders, but they served mostly urban areas on the East Coast. Independent telephone systems sprang up to provide service to rural customers and customers in the Midwest. C.J. Moore, who I’ve written about elsewhere, was a Michigan entrepreneur who both ran an independent phone company and manufactured his own phones. Most independent phone service providers used phones from independent telephone manufacturers, like Stromberg-Carlson, a Chicago company whose “farmers’ phone” was the introduction for many rural Americans to the way telephones could shrink long distances. Other independents used phones imported from Europe, like this Siemens-Halske phone from Germany.
Early phones included a battery, a magneto for signaling (powered by a crank), and a ringer, so though the candlestick desk phones on exhibit might look small, each would have a companion ringer box hanging on the wall, or discreetly tucked under a desk.
We have rotary phones, touch tone phones, pay phones, business phones, car phones and cell phones. Come by the exhibit, located in the front of the museum between With Liberty and Justice for all and Made in America, and see the diversity of telephone history.
In 1929, Henry Ford sent a questionnaire across the country to men and women aged 75 years or older that asked about their childhoods in the early 19th century. Over 100 people responded with detailed accounts of their lives and so collectively created a wealth of memories of one of the most transformative periods of American history.
Historical Resources intern Christine Driscoll has written a series of guest posts on the 1929 questionnaire.
In the 19th century celebrity sightings were just as exciting as they are today. So much so that in responses to the questionnaire that asked them to look back on their lives and memories, many men and women told of themselves or their family members meeting a famous person. The list of people ranges from those whose fame lasted into our own century – men like Jesse James and Abraham Lincoln, to more obscure persons like an opera singer named Lillian Nordica.
Who the respondents name-drop is more illuminating about the person writing than it is about the famous person. Although these men and women wrote about their lives, facts about their status were left out of the responses because it was irrelevant to the questions the Henry Ford sent to them. The question “Are, or were, you a famous person?” unfortunately wasn’t included on the questionnaire.
Through reports of celebrity sightings, we can gather an idea of who respondents were and what they valued. Which famous people were worth mentioning in an account of their lives? Regularly, it was famous people who had something to do with the respondents’ careers. Of course, some tailored their response to the audience and so a few men wrote of meeting a young Thomas Edison.
The most illuminating case of connection through a celebrity came from two women from New England.
Girls reading outside a bookstore, New York or New Jersey, 1890-1910, by Jenny Chandler
The Henry Ford has an extensive collection of historic photos, and we’re excited to make them more accessible on the web. We are hoping to join the Flickr Commons, but we couldn’t wait to share these pictures with you! For starters, we’ve put up on our Flickr page a collection of the photos of Jenny Chandler, an early twentieth century woman photojournalist from Brooklyn. We’d love to know more about the photos and their subjects: can you help? Take a look at the collection.
We’ve also posted a set of Ford Model T advertisements on Flickr, and we have a collection of photographs called Image Source up on our own website too.
Please check out our photos on Flickr and tell us what you think, or if you see your great-great grandmother! What other images would you like to see The Henry Ford share on the web?
This is a guest post by Susan Schmidt, Director, Food Service and Catering
I think I have the greatest job in the world; I get to do what I love which is to work in the food business and get to do it here at The Henry Ford. Spring gets me particularly jazzed. We get to open up the restaurants and food units in Greenfield Village for all of the visitors eager to burst out into the fresh sunny air as we get ready to roll in to another season of food activities and events. But what I love the most is that we get to ramp up our purchasing of fresh local produce from our network of regional farmers. It’s almost like being a kid making a list for Santa only we’re asking for awesome Michigan fruits and vegetables. Now we have to be good and wait to see what gifts we get, only ours are from Mother Nature. Even though we’ve been getting hoop house greens all winter from Farmer Jon (Jon Goetz Farms), there’s nothing like the steady up tick of fresh from the field produce that’s already begun with asparagus and will, by fall harvest, be in our kitchens in abundance.
It may be a best kept secret, but food service at The Henry Ford has been committed for several years to sourcing as much of our ingredients from local farms and food businesses as possible. Once we hit the height of the Michigan growing season that means about 60% of all that we buy. Not only is buying local a good thing for our regional and state economy, the satisfaction of supporting our neighbor farmers and their families is priceless. For me, that’s a huge part of what makes my job so great. Through our local food initiatives I’ve been able to meet so many resilient and resourceful people dedicated to preserving and bolstering our food system, from the farm to the table and everywhere in between. This morning Peter (Peter Stark of Renaissance Acres) dropped off heirloom tomato and veggie plants for our kitchen garden and herb pots. We can’t let the farmers have all the fun – we like to dig in the dirt too. Stop back to see how our garden grows.
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