Author Archives: Helene van Rossum

Protecting country and Indians: The records of Junius Wilson MacMurray (1843–1898)

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How likely is it to find Civil War let­ters and diaries among the papers of politi­cians, jour­nal­ists, and diplo­mats that are kept at Mudd Library? Or Colum­bia Plateau Indian pic­tographs? Meet Junius Wil­son Mac­Mur­ray, whose records are kept among the papers of his son John Van Antwerp Mac­Mur­ray, a diplo­mat most of our blog read­ers will know from his films of China (1925–1929) which have been dis­cussed exten­sively in our audio­vi­sual blog The Reel Mudd. As few peo­ple know about his father Junius Wil­son MacMurray’s papers, we will be shar­ing some par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing records below.

photo of Junius Wilson MacMurray, October 1862

J.W. Mac­Mur­ray, 1st Lieu­tenant at the 1st Mis­souri Light Artillery, Octo­ber 1862

Junius Wil­son Mac­Mur­ray was born in Mis­souri on May 1, 1843, the son of Irish immi­grant and black­smith John Den­ni­son Mac­Mur­ray and Eliza Wil­son. Accord­ing to a detailed hand­writ­ten and type­script descrip­tion of his mil­i­tary career, which includes a list of all bat­tles in which he par­tic­i­pated dur­ing the Civil War (find it here) he trained as an engi­neer and vol­un­teered for Engi­neer Bat­tal­ion “B” of the National Guard of Mis­souri from Octo­ber to Decem­ber 1860. When the Civil War broke out, two weeks before his 18th birth­day, he did not join the Con­fed­er­ates like most young men he knew, but started recruit­ing vol­un­teers for the Union army instead. His bat­tery was sworn in with the 1st Mis­souri Vol­un­teers and reor­ga­nized into the 1st Mis­souri Light Artillery.

Junius Wil­son MacMurray’s papers con­sist of his per­sonal and busi­ness cor­re­spon­dence, as well as his army cor­re­spon­dence and papers, his  account papers and ledgers,  and his diaries and note­books, and writ­ings. For researchers in Civil War or Native Amer­i­can his­tory MacMurray’s army cor­re­spon­dence and papers are the most inter­est­ing. They doc­u­ment his career as a vol­un­teer in the Army of the Repub­lic dur­ing the Civil War, and sub­se­quent ser­vice in the reg­u­lar army from 1866 until his death in 1898. The records include copies and drafts of his reports con­cern­ing the Vicks­burg cam­paign (1863) and the Pow­der River Indian expe­di­tion (June-November, 1865), as well as his inves­ti­ga­tion into land dis­putes of the Lower Colum­bia River Indi­ans (1884), when he met their leader and prophet Smo­halla (c. 1815–1895).

Image of the back of letter from MacMurray to his mother, November 6, 1863

Back of the let­ter from Junius Wil­son Mac­Mur­ray to his mother, Novem­ber 6, 1861

Of addi­tional inter­est is MacMurray’s per­sonal cor­re­spon­dence, which includes two let­ters to his mother, writ­ten on Novem­ber 6, 1961 and July 14, 1863. The let­ters con­trast sharply. In the first, writ­ten in Spring­field, Mis­souri in barely leg­i­ble pen­cil, he reas­sures his mother that he is very well fed: “Live on but­ter, bis­cuit, Turkey. Fresh beef, honey-chickens, pota­toes, &c.&c., so you see I’m not starv­ing but on the con­trary am get­ting fat and will some of these days make a fine mess for the buz­zards of Wilsons Creek,” he wrote (view first page). Despite the chill­ing ref­er­ence to the bat­tle­field where Union Gen­eral Nathaniel Lyon had been killed only three months ear­lier, he added on the back: “Now for Lords sake don’t write me a sor­row­ful let­ter as I don’t think of any­thing sor­row­ful since Freemont [John Charles Fré­mont] has been superceeded–and there is a pos­si­bil­ity of a fight in view. Send me papers!”

Junius Wil­son Mac­Mur­ray to his mother Elisa Wil­son Mac­Mur­ray, July 14, 1863 (view full page)

The sec­ond let­ter, how­ever, has a very dif­fer­ent tone. It was writ­ten on July 14, 1863 in a camp near Jac­into, Mis­sis­sippi, one day before the end of the Siege of Jackson.

The nights are cold (not cool) some­times, there are no mos­qui­toes, but any amount of snakes and bugs. The tim­ber is mostly yel­low pine, the soil poor and [word miss­ing] the most mis­er­able and down­trod­den peo­ple I ever saw. Noth­ing scarcely to eat, dirt and filth pre­dom­i­nate although the wealthy (cot­ton deal­ers, judges, and civil offi­cers) have good clean houses.  Early Spring chicken 50 cts, late (smaller than your fist) ones 25 & 30. Milk 25 cts per quart (very poor) eggs–they laugh at you–In fact, South­west Mis­souri after all [Ster­ling] Price did to it is a par­adise to this dessert. (view sec­ond page)

MacMurray’s papers include two diaries kept in 1863, of which only one appears to be MacMurray’s. The diary con­tains daily entries in ink or pen­cil with occa­sional mechan­i­cal draw­ings of what look like trans­porta­tion devices, and includes descrip­tions of the bat­tle of Vicks­burg. Shown below are the pages for the last two days of the Vicks­burg Cam­paign, with a tran­scrip­tion of the entry for July 4, the day of the final victory.

MacMurray’s diary opened for July 4, 1963, the last day of the Vicks­burg cam­paign (full view)

Today, usu­ally a glo­ri­ous one–was more so than any of its pre­de­ces­sors. Vicks­burg sur­ren­dered and our army marched in at 10 AM. Men & offi­cers appeared in their best. I went in and met Sam Carlisle, Char­lie Hitch­cock, Larry Hutchin­son John Sadd & John New­mann, old friends. I also met Booren (?) at din­ner at dinner–visited the river and saw the river fleet all decked out with the flags of all nations. The trans­ports came down and filled the levee (?) for some dis­tance. Every­thing went merry as a mar­riage ball. For  few [illeg­i­ble] will ever for­get this day who were in Vicksburg.

Although Mac­Mur­ray took obvi­ous pride in his army career, he also had ambi­tions to teach and be a scholar. He served on detail as pro­fes­sor of mil­i­tary sci­ence and tac­tics at the Uni­ver­sity of Mis­souri (1872–1873) and  at Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity (1873–1875). His last post of ser­vice on detail was at Union Col­lege at Sch­enec­tady, New York, where he was in charge of san­i­tary and land­scape engi­neer­ing and taught pho­tog­ra­phy (1879–1883). That he ended up in Sch­enec­tady was not acci­den­tal: in 1873, he had mar­ried Hen­ri­etta Wiswall Van Antwerp, daugh­ter of the banker John H. Van Antwerp of Albany. Their son John Van Antwerp Mac­Mur­ray was born there in 1881, the third child, after two daugh­ters. In Sch­enec­tady Mac­Mur­ray edited  A His­tory of the Sch­enec­tady Patent by J. Pier­son at al. (Albany, 1883). He tried to use his con­nec­tions to stay longer, but in vain. He was sent to Van­cou­ver Bar­racks, WA to serve under Nel­son A. Miles (1839–1925). It was Miles who ordered him to inves­ti­gate land dis­putes of the Lower Colum­bia River Indi­ans in 1884.

J.W. Mac­Mur­ray, circa 1890

One of our researchers, Richard Scheuer­man from Seat­tle Pacific Uni­ver­sity, the author of Find­ing Chief Kami­akin: The Life and Legacy of a North­west Patriot (WSU Press, 2008), worked with sev­eral of the region’s Indian tribes. Accord­ing to him Mac­Mur­ray was a remark­ably enlight­ened thinker among mil­i­tary offi­cials for his time.  “I have found that he was sig­nif­i­cantly respon­si­ble for arrang­ing appli­ca­tions for title to many prop­er­ties along the Colum­bia and Snake rivers under the terms of the Indian Home­stead Act,” he wrote us in 2009. “This work did not endear him to many of his con­tem­po­raries, but thanks to his self­less ser­vice much of this land remains today under Indian own­er­ship and surely would have been lost to them oth­er­wise.” After spend­ing con­sid­er­able time with their leader and prophet Smo­halla. Mac­Mur­ray shared his obser­va­tions about the “Dream­ers” of the Colum­bia River Val­ley in a lec­ture to the Albany Insti­tute, which was pub­lished in 1887.

Page with Native Amer­i­can writ­ing, folded into MacMurray’s note­book (view full page)

Among MacMurray’s diaries and note­book is one he labeled “Col(umbi)a Indi­ans 1884,” which he kept dur­ing his inves­ti­ga­tions. Accord­ing to Scheuer­man, who tran­scribed the note­book, it pro­vides sig­nif­i­cant infor­ma­tion on Colum­bia Plateau reli­gion beliefs. Folded inside the note­book is an intrigu­ing piece of paper (shown right). When we asked Scheuer­man if he could tell us some­thing about it, he turned out to have won­dered about it him­self. About two-thirds of the images seem to be Colum­bia Plateau Indian pic­tographs, while the other third may be Indian horse brands. “Plateau Indi­ans widely used brand­ing in the 19th cen­tury as they main­tained enor­mous horse herds along the Colum­bia, Yakima, and Snake rivers, all places we know that J.W. Mac­Mur­ray vis­ited at that time,” accord­ing to Scheuer­man. If there is any­body out there who is able to enlighten us fur­ther, we would love to hear from you!

Mac­Mur­ray stayed in touch with Nel­son Miles, with whom he appears to have been quite friendly. His per­sonal cor­re­spon­dence includes sev­eral orig­i­nal let­ters that he wrote after Miles was pro­moted to gen­eral in 1890, includ­ing two let­ters about Smo­halla (the cor­re­spon­dence can be viewed here). The cor­re­spon­dence does not include replies, and it is not sure if the let­ters ever reached Miles, or whether he pos­si­bly returned them to Mac­Mur­ray or to his widow at a later stage. The cor­re­spon­dence does con­tain copies of let­ters of rec­om­men­da­tion, how­ever. Miles rec­om­mended Mac­Mur­ray for a pro­mo­tion to major on June 15, 1892. Sadly, Mac­Mur­ray received this only in 1897, only two months before he died of yel­low fever, which he con­tracted when in com­mand of the Post of Fort Bar­ran­cas, Florida dur­ing an out­break in 1897. When Junius Wil­son Mac­Mur­ray died, his son John Van Antwerp Mac­Mur­ray was a fresh­man at Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity. That is why his papers, hence those of his father, have ended up at Mudd Man­u­script Library.

(With thanks to Richard Scheuerman).

 


Johnny Sylvester ’37 and Babe Ruth

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Base­ball in Octo­ber is often marked by pre­mier teams, clutch plays, and mem­o­rable moments. One such moment came dur­ing Game Four of the 1926 World Series. In that game on Wednes­day, Octo­ber 6th, the St. Louis Car­di­nals hosted the New York Yan­kees and their great player Babe Ruth. Ruth would shine for the Yan­kees, hit­ting three home runs in a 10–5 vic­tory. These home runs would be sig­nif­i­cant in the base­ball world, but for one lit­tle boy, they appeared to be life-saving.
In 1926 Johnny Sylvester was an 11 year-old die hard Yan­kee fan liv­ing in Essex Fells, New Jer­sey. Dur­ing the sum­mer he was involved in a horse­back rid­ing acci­dent in which he fell off his horse. The horse then kicked him in the head, leav­ing Sylvester with a bad infec­tion that began to spread rapidly. Doc­tors feared he would not sur­vive. While it is true that Sylvester was sick, there is some dis­agree­ment in the his­tor­i­cal record as to how crit­i­cally ill he actu­ally was. Some think he had blood poi­son­ing or a sinus con­di­tion or a back problem.
Soon telegrams reached the Yan­kees in St. Louis, noti­fy­ing them of young Sylvester’s con­di­tion. There is some dis­crep­ancy in who ini­ti­ated the contact—Sylvester him­self or his father or uncle—but the end result was pos­i­tive. Ruth responded by send­ing back two auto­graphed balls (one from the Yan­kees, and one from the Car­di­nals). He also included a note to Johnny: “I’ll knock a homer for you on Wednesday.”
On Wednes­day, Octo­ber 6th, Ruth hit three home runs, ensur­ing a Yan­kee vic­tory. Remark­ably, Sylvester’s con­di­tion improved greatly after the game. He even­tu­ally made a com­plete turn­around, grad­u­ated from Prince­ton in 1937, served in the Navy dur­ing World War II, and was a suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man in Long Island City, New York.
While mem­o­rable and inspir­ing for Sylvester, when a year later Ruth was asked about the event, he report­edly said, “Who the hell is Johnny Sylvester?” The spe­cial home run mes­sage was not Sylvester’s last con­tact with Ruth. Sylvester vis­ited Ruth at the open­ing game of the 1929 sea­son at Yan­kee Sta­dium. And, while Ruth was in his declin­ing years, Sylvester vis­ited him at Ruth’s New York apartment.
A pos­si­bly apoc­ryphal story about the Sylvester-Ruth con­nec­tion revolves around the tra­di­tion of older classes car­ry­ing signs at P-rade. Though there is no proof of it extant in the Archives, Sylvester allegedly once car­ried a sign that read “Who the hell is Babe Ruth?” pay­ing homage to the great slugger’s for­get­ful remark and Sylvester’s mem­o­rable con­nec­tion to him.

–Kris­ten Turner

Meet Mudd’s Brandon Joseph

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Name: Bran­don Joseph ‘12

Major: His­tory, with Cer­tifi­cates in African Amer­i­can Stud­ies and Amer­i­can Studies
Title/Duties: Project Archivist Assis­tant. It is my respon­si­bil­ity to help the archivists at Mudd arrange and process col­lec­tions. My duties include col­lect­ing details related to the con­tents of col­lec­tions, rehous­ing and arrang­ing col­lec­tions, and cre­at­ing folder lists for find­ing aids that guide researchers. Occa­sion­ally, I mon­i­tor the wel­come desk, read­ing room, and page mate­ri­als for patrons.
Recent projects: For the past year, I’ve been work­ing with Adri­ane Han­son on the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union (ACLU) records pro­cess­ing project. Before the ACLU project, I worked on the George S. McGov­ern Papers and the James V. For­re­stal Papers.
Worked at Mudd since: Jan­u­ary 2009, the begin­ning of the sec­ond semes­ter of my fresh­man year.
Why I like my job/archives: Mudd is a relax­ing place with a great staff. I enjoy com­ing into Mudd and engag­ing with the library’s col­lec­tions in the mid­dle of a hec­tic day of class. Also, as a his­tory major and researcher, I am fas­ci­nated by some the mate­ri­als that are unearthed as I help process a col­lec­tion. At times, some of the mate­ri­als that I come across at Mudd haven’t been seen or touched in decades. It’s fun to be a part of the recov­ery of lost infor­ma­tion as I comb through the col­lec­tions at Mudd.
Favorite item/collection: The col­lec­tion of His­tor­i­cal Pho­tographs, which pro­vide a visual time­line to cam­pus events of the past. It’s inter­est­ing to see how the build­ings I live and work in on cam­pus have devel­oped over time. The Daily Prince­ton­ian Col­lec­tion is another favorite of mine. I enjoy read­ing about how Prince­to­ni­ans from dif­fer­ent eras digested and dealt with the social and admin­is­tra­tive issues that arose on campus.

Stu­dent Ques­tion: What is the favorite part of the col­lec­tions at Mudd? I love to check out the let­ters sent to the pub­lic offi­cials and orga­ni­za­tions that have col­lec­tions at Mudd. I feel as if the let­ters from the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion in par­tic­u­lar serve as a great way to mea­sure pub­lic opin­ions related to a given topic. While pro­cess­ing the McGov­ern papers, for exam­ple, I found hun­dreds of let­ters from con­cerned cit­i­zens from across the nation. Some asked the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date to endorse a par­tic­u­lar opin­ion, some praised McGov­ern for his work and wished him well dur­ing his cam­paign, while oth­ers blasted McGov­ern because of his poli­cies. There were even tons of let­ters and draw­ings from school chil­dren orga­nized by teach­ers from around the coun­try. The let­ters in col­lec­tions pro­vide access to per­spec­tives that may have been lost over time.

Meet Mudd’s Q Miceli

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Name: Q Miceli ’12

Major: Reli­gion, with cer­tifi­cates in Cre­ative Writ­ing (Poetry) and Judaic Studies

Title/Duties: Tech­ni­cal Ser­vices Stu­dent Worker. My duties include sort­ing cur­rent University-generated pub­li­ca­tions as they arrive at Mudd in a process called “acces­sion­ing;” enter­ing doc­toral dis­ser­ta­tions into a data­base (I used to pack dis­ser­ta­tions on CDs to ship to Pro­Quest, before the Uni­ver­sity started accept­ing dis­ser­ta­tions online); dig­i­tiz­ing col­lec­tions and run­ning a macro to match scanned fold­ers with phys­i­cal bar­codes; pack­ing col­lec­tions to send to off­site stor­age and scan­ning the box bar­codes to dis­charge them; look­ing up dupli­cates in the library cat­a­log; mov­ing boxes; pag­ing mate­ri­als for patrons; and some­times mon­i­tor­ing the front desk and read­ing room.

Recent projects: This past aca­d­e­mic year, I made a folder list for part the James Hugh Kee­ley, Jr. Papers (MC 191) using Archivist’s Toolkit (and a mask and gloves, since these papers had been stored in a chicken coop and sus­tained severe rodent dam­age dur­ing that time). This sum­mer, as with sum­mer 2010, I cat­a­loged over 1,000 senior the­ses, double-checking the infor­ma­tion in the depart­men­tal data­bases with the phys­i­cal copies of the the­ses, assign­ing each the­sis a num­ber, and shelv­ing the boxes of the­ses. Most recently, I sorted the University-generated acces­sions by spon­sor­ing depart­ment in the acces­sions drop box.

Q Miceli2

Worked at Mudd since: I started in May 2010 and worked full-time for most of the sum­mer. Then I con­tin­ued as a tech­ni­cal ser­vices stu­dent dur­ing the 2010-11 school year and for June 2011. After a ten-week intern­ship with the Smith­son­ian Archives of Amer­i­can Art, I returned to Mudd for the 2011-12 school year. It’s going to be dif­fi­cult to leave Mudd when I graduate!

Why I like my job/archives: “The world is quiet here.” –Lemony Snicket. The hum and energy of peo­ple work­ing to make mate­ri­als more acces­si­ble brings me a sense of peace and shows me that there can be order in the uni­verse. I like how archival work mixes the phys­i­cal (mov­ing boxes) with the intel­lec­tual (cre­at­ing intel­lec­tual order out of a col­lec­tion of mate­ri­als). I think the imme­di­ate goal of archives is to main­tain a repos­i­tory of well-ordered infor­ma­tion that is acces­si­ble to patrons, and I like know­ing that my work con­tributes to an ulti­mate goal of a well-informed public.

Favorite item/collection: It’s a toss-up between the Senior The­sis Col­lec­tion (AC 102) and the Arthur J. Hor­ton Col­lec­tion on Coed­u­ca­tion (AC 039). While cat­a­loging the Class of 2010 and the Class of 2011 senior the­ses, I read many a student’s inde­pen­dent work and saw how much stu­dents have learned (or not!) in their four years. I scanned part of the Arthur J. Hor­ton Col­lec­tion on Coed­u­ca­tion, and some of the ill-informed com­ments regard­ing the ulti­mate goals of females attend­ing universities–i.e., women only go to col­lege to get their “MRS” degree–made me laugh and feel thank­ful that the university’s atti­tude towards non-males has improved since then.

Stu­dent Ques­tion: Besides your senior inde­pen­dent work, what else from your time as a Prince­ton stu­dent would you like to keep in “Princeton’s Attic?“
I would donate my diaries and col­lages from my time at Prince­ton in order to make another pri­mary source avail­able to researchers who want to doc­u­ment the expe­ri­ence of under­grad­u­ates on cam­pus. These mate­ri­als would serve as a coun­ter­point to the crit­i­cal part of my senior the­sis. In the event of some­one try­ing to extrap­o­late from my senior the­sis my views of the world twenty years later, I would donate them posthu­mously, in neatly ordered boxes so as to save some stu­dent worker the trou­ble of deci­pher­ing my hand­writ­ing. I would also donate the orig­i­nal note cards for the recipes that I devel­oped in the With­er­spoon, Pyne, and Lock­hart kitchens for use by future under­grad­u­ates han­ker­ing after dorm-friendly cake.

Bonus Ques­tion: Why “Q?” Short answer: I was one of five Stepha­nies in my high school grad­u­at­ing class, and since I went to school with the same peo­ple from first grade on up, we had dif­fer­ent nick­names to dis­tin­guish us. Long answer: I began col­lect­ing plush cats when I was four. When I was five or six, I thought, instead of call­ing myself a pet owner–for I viewed my cat col­lec­tion as my pets and playmates–I should call myself Ownie. Ownie is a either fem­i­nized or diminu­tive ver­sion of owner. Like the nick­name Suzy Q, my mother (Joanne Naples ’85) began call­ing me Ownie Q. Then my brother short­ened that to Q. I’ve been known as Q since high school, and that’s how I sign the Honor Code.

Lights, Camera, Action!

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The See­ley G. Mudd Man­u­script Library has launched a new blog at http://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/, ded­i­cated to its audio­vi­sual hold­ings. Through it, we will announce items that we have posted on Prince­ton University’s two YouTube Chan­nels (http://www.youtube.com/user/princetoncampuslife and http://www.youtube.com/user/princetonacademics). We encour­age view­ers to post com­ments that will con­tribute to our knowl­edge and under­stand­ing of these materials.

In con­junc­tion with the Library’s Preser­va­tion Office and the New Media Cen­ter, the Uni­ver­sity Archives has worked to dig­i­tize over 40 items and these, along with some films from our Pub­lic Pol­icy Papers and addi­tional mate­ri­als, will be posted on a reg­u­lar basis.