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.”
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