Old State House Museum Collections Blog

   This spring, the Old State House Museum opened a new exhibit entitled Arkansas/Arkansaw: A State and Its Reputation. The exhibit sheds new light on the evolution of Arkansas's backwoods, hillbilly image.  Curated by and based on a book by Brooks Blevins of Missouri State University,  Arkansas/Arkansaw will remain open to the public (for FREE!) until March 2012.

As part of the museum's efforts to promote the new exhibit, I interviewed Dr. Blevins over the phone to produce a video podcast. (If you haven't watched the podcast, I highly encourage it!)  We spoke for about an hour, but only 20 minutes of the audio made the cut to the podcast.  As a bonus, below is a 3-minute snippet from the interview in which Dr. Blevins discusses the irony behind the exhibit and some of the more nuanced aspects of Arkansas/Arkansaw.

Arkansas/Arkansaw: Brooks Blevins Interview (Bonus) by Old State House Museum

 
  With the sesquicentennial of the Civil War rapidly approaching, the Old State House Museum is gearing up for an ambitious slate of five exhibits over the next five years.  In preparation, the collections staff has been spending a significant amount of time scouring the collection for items related to Arkansas in the Civil War, researching their provenance, and improving the museum's knowledge of their history and former use.  Among these recently visited objects is a carpet bag from a U.S. Naval Surgeon.

 The carpet bag belonged to Martin L. Gerould of Canaan, New Hampshire.  On September 22, 1863, Gerould was appointed Acting Assistant Surgeon of the ironclad USS Eastport .  The Eastport was originally a Confederate vessel which was captured by Union forces and converted into an ironclad ram. The Eastport and Gerould would serve the next two years along the Mississippi River and its tributaries, patrolling and capturing supplies.

The interior of the flap on the bag contains the information which has enabled the museum to document this provenance.  Pictured below, the bag is stenciled in black ink, "Surg. M.L. Gerould, USN."

    This episode of the Old State House Museum Collections Podcast covers the history of the prison system in Arkansas and the collection of objects acquired in 2008 from the Arkansas Department of Correction.  The collection consists of 236 objects ranging from the only two electric chairs used to carry out executions in the state of Arkansas, to inmate-made prison weapons, to the infamous Tucker Telephone.  As we have done in previous installments, we conducted an interview with an expert in the field, Dina Tyler, Public Relations Director for the Arkansas Department of Correction.   The podcast is embedded below as a YouTube video in two parts.  If you would like to subscribe to our podcast via iTunes, click here. (You must have iTunes installed on your machine.) If you would like to download a slightly smaller version of this episode directly to your hard drive, click here.



Part One

Part Two

    The subject of this post is a mounted poster of Johnny Cash, who is of course an Arkansas native, looking disheveled and wildly brandishing a machine gun.  The image appears to be a promotional photograph for one of Cash’s film roles.  Cash appeared in numerous films and television shows throughout his career, and though it is uncertain which role the image pertains to, it may be from his 1961 gangster film “Five Minutes to Live.”  The museum acquired the poster as part of a collection displayed in our Sweet Sounds exhibit on Arkansas musicians.   The poster is signed, as pictured below, “Sincerely yours Goddard Lieberson!”

     Initially we believed the signature on the poster to be Johnny Cash signing with his character’s name, but upon further inspection, we were able learn more about Goddard Lieberson and the possible meaning of the inscription.  Apparently Lieberson was the president of Columbia Records, Cash’s record label.  Cash often had a strained relationship with Columbia and the inscription may have been a humorous message to Lieberson, given the context, rather than a signature by Lieberson himself.  None-the-less, this is merely speculation.   The true meaning and author of the inscription may never be known for certain.

Below are links regarding Cash’s film career and Lieberson:
Johnny Cash on IMDB
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goddard_Lieberson
Johnny Cash and Goddard Lieberson (Google Books biography)

  
    Amongst the collections of the Old State House Museum, we have dozens of Civil War era prints and magazines.  Harper’s Weekly was of course one the most popular circulated publications in the United States and the prints and engravings from it’s pages are often fantastic works of art and pieces of historical documentary evidence.  Many talented artists illustrated for the magazine, including Thomas Nast and Winslow Homer.  Homer worked illustrating and engraving for magazines for nearly 20 years, long before he became renowned as one of the great American painters.  The print from the museum’s collections pictured below is from the November 21, 1863 edition of Harper’s Weekly.  It is entitled “The War in the Southwest – Guerillas Hunting Union Men with Blood-hounds.”

   
As a sneak peak into our upcoming podcast on the Department of Correction Collection, here is a short clip from our interview with Dina Tyler, spokeswoman for the DOC.  The topic of the clip is the death penalty in Arkansas, specifically the state's electric chairs - Old Sparky I and II.  Just click the red play button below.



The chairs and many other objects in the Department of Correction Collection are currently on exhibit at the Old State House in an exhibit called "Badges, Bandits, and Bars: Arkansas Law and Justice."

     As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve been spending time over the past few months working on the Old State House’s Civil War and Civil War Reunion Collection.  I’ve handled literally more than a thousand objects related to Arkansas in the Civil War and many, such as the subject of this post, deserve more attention.  The image above is a portion of an 1863 petition to Abraham Lincoln signed by officers of various Arkansas regiments supporting Isaac Murphy  as military governor of the state.  Of course, Murphy was eventually named as the eighth Governor of Arkansas, the lone member of the General Assembly to refuse to support secession from the Union.   The petition is signed by more than 160 Arkansas soldiers and includes a flattering account of Murphy’s loyalty to the Union.  Below is an image of the first page of the petition, as well as links for more information regarding Isaac Murphy and the petition on our eMuseum site.
                          eMuseum entry on the above petition with scans of each page

 
   This episode of the Old State House Museum Collection podcast deals with our most current exhibit, Arkansas / Arkansaw : A State and Its Reputation. We feature an interview with the curator of the exhibit, Dr. Brooks Blevins, a professor of Ozark Studies at Missouri State University. Through his research and book commissioned by the Old State House, Dr. Blevins explores the origins of the states image as a backwards hillbilly state. The podcast is embedded below in three parts (YouTube only allows 10 minutes per clip).







You can download this episode by clicking here, or subscribe to our podcast thru iTunes by clicking here.

   

I'd like to send a special thanks to the Minnesota Historical Society for permitting us to use a brief clip from one of their great podcasts concerning flag conservation.  You learn more about MNS here.

In addition to soliciting aid from the public, we are currently in the process of writing a grant proposal to the National Park Service's Save America's Treasures program. The following is an excerpt from our narrative concerning the severity of the threat to flags. (We have also decided to include a third flag in the grant proposal that is not covered in the video, but rest assured, it is fantastic!)

    Each of the three flags submitted in this proposal are in desperate need of professional stabilization. All textiles undergo a natural aging process based upon slowly occurring chemical reactions in the cloth’s fibers. Years of exposure to ultra-violet distorts pigment and speeds up this process, threatening the physical integrity of the fabric itself. The cloth becomes brittle and eventually breaks. This has already occurred to one of the three flags covered in this proposal, the 1868 Centerpoint battle flag. The Centerpoint flag is broken into numerous fragments and extremely fragile. Pieces of the flag are missing including portions that once contained embroidered text. Much of the color has faded from the red and blue fields, resulting in a thirteen bars of a grayish tinge alternating with soiled and oxidized off-white. In short, the flag has degraded to the point that it would require professional textile conservators to even safely unfurl the flag from its rolled storage.
    The other two flags, both Arkansas Civil War battle flags, are scarcely in better condition. In 2009, the Old State House Museum participated in a flag exchange with the Missouri State Museum, repatriating Civil War battle flags to each respective state. Through this exchange, the Old State House received two flags associated with Arkansas regiments – the consolidated 6th and 7th Arkansas Infantry and Hart’s Battery. At some point in the early 20th century, efforts had been made to preserve these two flags to the best of the period’s knowledge and ability. This involved placing each flag under protective black netting which was sewn, quite thoroughly, to a white cloth support. The reverse of each flag is obscured due this cloth backing and may be covering significant details or even further harming the flag beyond what is already apparent. While the netting and cloth backing may have provided some measure of stability, it also has confined dangerous contaminants. These contaminants have undoubtedly exacerbated the degradation of the flags’ pigment and fibers. Both flags have missing fragments. Both have large spots of discolored oxidization which likely resulted from moisture and other dirt and grime collected over time.
    If left in their current state, rolled and covered with possibly acidic materials, the flags will hardly survive another hundred and fifty years, much less be available for exhibition for the upcoming sesquicentennial. These extremely rare and significant artifacts of material culture, Arkansas history, and American military history, will continue to physically dissolve without treatment. With immediate action, we can conserve these objects, their stories, and the invaluable symbolic and historical valuable which is inextricably linked to the physical preservation.

Recently I had the pleasure of conducting a telephone interview with Dr. Brooks Blevins regarding the recent exhibit at the Old State House and his book "Arkansas/Arkansaw: How Bear Hunters, Hillbillies, and Good Ol' Boys Defined a State." We spoke for about an hour and the resulting audio will be used in a forthcoming podcast. As a teaser for those who have not yet purchased the book or seen the exhibit, here is the Google Books preview embedded below...



I encourage you to come back to the blog and check out the video podcast after it's been posted this next week. And even further, come out to the museum and see the exhibit!

We're gearing up for the Civil War Sesquicentennial and while doing so, we're going through our entire collection of Civil War and Civil War Reunion artifacts to ensure that each artifact has an image. For the past two days, we've been photographing some Civil War reunion related flags. One of the most interesting ones we've come across was a flag made from the material that covered the Arkansas monument at the Shiloh Civil War Battlefield before its unveiling in 1910. We're hoping to prove through research that it was exhibited during the 1911 Little Rock Reunion. You can see the flag in the photograph above.

After photographing the flags, we re-rolled them in new acid free tissue and muslin and then rehung them. Ah, the life of a registrar.

   In 1981, roughly 16,000 architectural drawings by Charles L. Thompson were donated to the Old State House Museum.  Hundreds of Thompson's buildings still stand across the state of Arkansas, and in order to make this resource more accessible, we have spent the last few years digitizing the drawings and making them available online for public viewing.   You can view those drawings and records that are currently available at the following link - eMuseum Thomspon Drawings.  We also accommodate information requests for those drawing not yet online, as well as high resolution scans.  Below is an excerpt from the Old State House Museum page concerning Thompson.

    Charles L. Thompson was born in November 1868, the third of James C. and Henrietta Lightner Thompson's seven children. Charles became a draftsman at an Indiana mill, but, dissatisfied, he decided to seek employment elsewhere.
    On his way home from New Orleans in 1886, Thompson stopped in Little Rock. He chose to stay here, in part, because there were many opportunities for his architectural expertise. Later, he was quoted as saying that he chose Little Rock because it was "the farthest in the wilderness." Thompson began work for Benjamin J. Bartlett; in 1888, he became an architect and full partner in the firm. In 1890, Bartlett left for Mississippi and the firm became known as Charles L. Thompson, Architect and Superintendent. Throughout the next several decades, Thompson worked by himself and with a variety of partners. Many homes in the historic Quapaw Quarter were designed or modified by Thompson or his firm. His work was not limited to central Arkansas. Carnall Hall at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville (ca. 1900), the Newport Jr. and Sr. High School in Newport (ca. 1930), the Monroe County Courthouse in Clarendon (ca. 1911), and the Charles H. Murphy, Sr. House in El Dorado (ca. 1926) are just a few of Thompson's designs located around the state. Charles L. Thompson retired in 1938. After 20 further years of retirement service to his community, he died in 1959 at age 91.

The Walter W. Brown Home, Camden


The A. N. Tanner House, Helena

The Peter Hotze House, Little Rock


For more information on Charles L. Thompson, see F. Hampton Roy's book Charles L. Thompson and Associates: Arkansas Architects, 1885-1938.

By Katherine Benenati
LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas’ history is in a metal building off La Harpe Boulevard, across from a law firm and just outside the bustle of downtown Little Rock.
Confederate flags thin with age are carefully tucked in acid-free frames laid flat in drawers.
Souvenirs of governors’ past are cushioned in little green boxes with tags: “Gov. David Pryor items 1975-1979.”
Looking across gray metal row after gray metal row in the 8,066-square-foot building that houses the Old State House Museum’s archives, curator Joellen Maack paused.
“There are times you feel like it’s a mini version of the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark,” she said, referring to a vast warehouse of artifacts in the Indiana Jones movie.
The carefully catalogued rows are home to some of Little Rock socialite Willie Oates’ hats and a Johnny Cash guitar.
“We just have the most wonderful things,” Maack said, standing in one row lined with portraits, watercolors, sketches and an autographed photograph of Gov. Jim Guy Tucker’s 1996 staff.
“We have beautiful paintings, beautiful flags, wonderful gowns and then we have items like this,” she said pointing to an old spin washer that predates washing machines and resembles a modern toilet plunger.
The Old State House, completed in 1842, was Arkansas’ first Capitol building. At any given time 10 percent or less of the 60-year-old museum’s collection is on display at 300 W. Markham St.
Many items are so delicate they are rarely displayed. Some date to 1819 - 17 years before Arkansas became a state.
“There’s just no way you can put your whole collection on exhibit,” Maack says.
In a sense, the museum has been trying to do just that since August when it began offering its online eMuseum, a part of the Gallery Systems software it has used since 2004.
Click below to continue reading.

 
As promised, here is the extended audio version of our first podcast on the history of the University of Arkansas Medical School at the Old State House.  Additionally, I've upload the full 40 minute interview with Dr. Wolfe, for those who would like more information.

Audio Podcast

Full Interview with Dr. Jon Wolfe

    With this post we are proud to debut a new series of collections podcasts designed to focus on particular objects in the Old State House Museum Collection.  For the first podcast, we decided to look at the history of the building itself, as it is our largest and most important artifact. The Old State House has had numerous uses since the beginning of its construction in 1833, particularly after the state capitol moved to its current site in 1911.  Several organizations sought shelter at the Old State House prior to the building being re-purposed as a museum in 1949.  Some of these organizations include the Arkansas State Police, various women's organizations, the American Legion, and so on.  But the group that came to dominate the building during this period was the University of Arkansas Medical School. 

   To learn more about the medical school at the Old State House, we visited Dr. Jon Wolfe from UAMS.  Dr. Wolfe has previously curated an exhibit on medical education at the museum and is certainly an expert on the subject.  The two-part video below is the result of our research and interview with Dr. Wolfe.  The images used are almost entirely from the Old State House collection and the UAMS Historical Collections.

Part One


Part Two


For more information about the history of the medical school, consult David Baird's Medical Education in Arkansas, 1879 - 1978.

In the near future, we'll be posting an audio version of the podcast to this site and iTunes.  Additionally, we will make the entire Dr. Wolfe interview available through this site.  To view all our videos, click podcast button in the menu bar at the top of the page. To subscribe to our podcast, click the appropriate button below.

   Recently the Old State House Museum acquired a group of letters, 2010.003.01-03, dating from territorial Arkansas.  The documents, authored by Gov. John Pope, Chester Ashley, and a man named Aaron Goza, describe a land transaction between Goza and the State of Arkansas.  Goza purchased a portion of thousands of acres of land granted to the state by U.S. Congress in late 1832 to fund the construction of a state capitol.  The result of this project and the money that it generated was what is today known as the Old State House, the oldest surviving state capitol west of the Mississippi.
Below is an incomplete transcript and scan of the earliest of the three documents:

Little Rock A/ Dec. 28th 1832
To his Excellency
John Pope, Governor of the Territory of Arkansas

Sir
I hereby apply to [illegible]ane of you three hundred twenty acres of the inappropriated lands of the United States in the territory of Arkansas by virtue of the authority [illegible]fided to you by an act of Congress for the sale of ten sections of land appropriated by Congress to erect a public building at Little Rock for the use of the Territory of Arkansas, which land is yet unsurveyed is situated in township fourteen, South of range two West of fifth principal meridian. Tis the land that will be contained by the lines of the public surveys when made- designated by those surveys on the South half of section twenty four [this section crossed out] in the township & range [illegible] this said land including my present [illegible] &[illegible] lately purchased by me of Daniel W. Hampton and including no other involvement of any bonafide [illegible] & improved in the actual occupancy[illegible] of the same, the purchase to be made in conformity with your proclamation except that of with the right to pay the [illegible] of the money unpaid in three payments on the first days of March 1834, 1835, 1836.
Respectfully yours,
Aaron Goza

I am willing to select & sell to Mr. Aaron Goza the land described in the within application so far as it can be surveyed & approved by the Surveyor General he shall have all the little I am authorized to [illegible] by virtue of the act of Congress passed at the last session of Congress. Concerning the within mentioned ten sections of land granted to the People of the Territory for a Public Building at Little Rock, he can have it on the terms mentioned in his application & by proclamation reserving to myself the full right and privilege of reselling the said lands provided the monies shall not be paid within ninety days after the time limited for the payment of each several installments. Mr. Goza's payment to C. Ashley of the monies now to be paid stating[illegible] his benefit for same will be equivalent to a payment to myself.

Little Rock, Dec. 28th 1832.

John Pope

Click the images below to enlarge.

 
   Next week, the collections and exhibit staff of the Old State House Museum will be taking down our recent temporary exhibit, A Circus Hitched to a Tornado: Arkansas Politics in the 20th Century.  As such, this week and weekend will be that last chance to get to see the exhibit. Here's some information from the museum's webpage concerning the exhibit.

     Over the years, Arkansas elections have been full of drama, excitement and even scandal. And while campaigns more often revolved around personalities than policies, the choices that voters made over the years profoundly shaped our history and public persona. Our state’s political legacy is powerfully demonstrated in the Old State House Museum’s exhibit, A Circus Hitched to a Tornado: Arkansas Politics in the 20th Century, at the Old State House Museum through October 25, 2009. The title is taken from a Saturday Evening Post reporter’s description of Hattie Caraway’s whirlwind canvass of the state with powerful Louisiana politician Huey Long for her U.S. Senate campaign in 1932.
    A Circus Hitched to a Tornado: Arkansas Politics in the 20th Century showcases many items from the Old State House Museum’s extensive collection of Arkansas political memorabilia including vintage campaign buttons and signage, photographs, clothing, and the personal effects of many of the state’s most notable politicians. The exhibit divides the state’s political history into several distinct eras, and examines 20th century Arkansas politics by focusing on the state’s most important politicians and the elections that cemented their place in history.

In it's place, the museum will be installing an exhibit called Arkansas/Arkansaw, which will investigate the state's reputation culturally.  More information and images of the takedown will follow in the near future.

As a follow-up to a post a few weeks ago, in which we featured a 1903 World's Fair Clock, I thought I would post some scans of photographs from our collection.  In the Collections in :60 Seconds video of the clock, a series of photographs are used depicting the Arkansas exhibits at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis.  Those photographs are scans reproduced in a book from the time period.  As a bonus, if you will, the Old State House Museum has the original large format prints of the photographs in our collection.  Below are the scans.  Click the images to view an enlarged version.

This segment of the Old State House Museum Collections in :60 Seconds discusses the Edmund Joy Collection.  Edmund Joy was a Union officer during the Civil War and spent roughly two years stationed in Little Rock, Arkansas.   Joy was a lawyer, a businessman, and a good friend of General Frederick Steele.  The Old State House museum houses the Joy Collection, which contains letters, his diaries, photographs, and even Joy's uniform.  This episode is a very brief look at the Joy Collection, and as such, I'd be remiss if I didn't provide more information.  To look at more of the Joy Collection on our online collection website, eMuseum, click the links below:

eMuseum - 1996.003 - Joy accession
eMuseum - 1998.004 and 1998.049 - Joy accession

For those of you that would prefer to read a more detailed biography, here is an excerpt from History of Iowa by Benjamin F. Gue:

        EDMUND L. JOY was born at Albany, New York, October 1, 1835, and was educated at Anthony's Classical Institute, Albany Academy and the University of Rochester. He studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1857 and immediately thereafter removed to Iowa, making his home at Keokuk where he entered upon practice. Later he settled in Ottumwa where he was chosen city attorney in 1860. At the beginning of the Civil War he was active in raising troops and upon the organization of the Thirty-sixth Regiment of Iowa Volunteers he was elected captain of Company B. He participated in the campaigns in Tennessee, the siege of Vicksburg and the Yazoo Pass expedition, taking part in the engagement at Fort Pemberton. At the Battle of Helena he commanded the left wing of the regiment and was in the Little Rock campaign. In 1864 he was appointed by President Lincoln Judge Advocate, with the rank of major, and assigned to the Seventh Army Corps, serving in the Department of Arkansas. He assisted in the organization of the judicial system of the State under reconstruction and aided in the reestablishment of the State government after the close of the war, under a new Constitution. After retiring from the service he removed to Newark, New Jersey, where he served in the Legislature of that State in 1871-2. He was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1880and in 1884-5 he was a Government director of the Union Pacific Railroad Company by appointment of President Arthur. Mr. Joy died at Newark, New Jersey, February 14, 1892.

The video above is an experimental segment that I've dubbed, "Collections in :60 Seconds."  The topic of this particular segment is a clock currently on exhibit at the Old State House Museum.  (Photographs are from the Old State House Museum Collection, the Eighth Biennial Report of the Bureau of Mines, Manufacturers and Agriculture, and NewWoodWorker.com.)  

The large standing clock was one of the decorations in the Arkansas Building at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. The inlaid design features 50,000 pieces of 27 varieties of Arkansas hardwoods applied to a base of southern pine.  The clock was made by Charles Becker of Little Rock.  Becker, a graduate of Yale University, was born in Illinois, but was listed in the Little Rock census of 1890 as a painter and cabinet maker.  Click here for more information on Charles Becker.

Back in 2002, the Old State House Museum displayed a temporary exhibit on Arkansas's role in the 1904 fair entitled "Meet Me in St. Louis."  To see the other 109 objects the museum has in it's collection concerning the fair, click here to navigate to our eMuseum page.

We've officially begun recording our first podcast. The OSH Collections podcast, in an attempt to increase accessibility, will focus on some of the more interesting objects in our collection. While it can be awkward to step in front of the mic, I think we are off to a good start and should have something ready to post soon. As a teaser, our first topic is going to be the University of Arkansas Medical School's use of the Old State House building between 1911 and 1935. Can't wait to let everyone hear what we have been working on!  In the mean time, feel free to brush up on your Old State House and Medical School history at the following links: 

     Begun in 1934 as a make-work program for architects and photographers during the Great Depression, the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) documented thousands of architectural landmarks across the US.  The survey didn't attempt to restore or preserve the physical structures themselves, rather document their current state as thoroughly and accurately as possible.  In the state of Arkansas, over 140 historic buildings were surveyed, including the 1836 Old State House in February 1934.  The Library of Congress currently houses the results of the survey, but has made all of it's contents available online, which is an amazing research tool for those interested in historic preservation.

   Welcome to the Old State House Collections Blog.  This is the first post of what will hopefully be a productive and well-received project.  Our goal is to provide regular updates on the activities of the Collections Department, rich with information and multimedia concerning the museum's history and extensive collections.  The Old State House Museum has been on the leading edge of museum technology, seeking ways to make the museum's collection accessible and useful to the general public.  Rare for historical museums, the OSH Museum has posted it's entire collection for public viewing on our eMuseum website.  After all, a museum preserves and interprets collections of artifacts in trust of the public. E-Museum and this blog are simply modern extensions of this basic function.  We hope you enjoy the articles and podcasts we provide, and should you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact us with your thoughts.  Thanks for visiting!