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Public grief and the blue star flag

9/19/2018

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PictureBardwell WWI service flag
Guest post by Meguey Baker
Collections Assistant, Hatfield Historical Museum


The idea of social grief, that we are or could be united by loss, was an important part of the makeup of the 20th century. Yesterday in the Hatfield Historical Museum we inventoried the flags and banners from our textile collection. There are many, but the one that stopped me was this one: the World War I Service flag for Homer Bardwell and Curtis Bardwell (below).

These flags were used to signify the homes of people in the military. A blue star was for a person serving, a gold star was for a person who had died in service, a gold cross for a person injured in service. Some homes had one star, others had several. All of them helped those passing by to understand that this family was thinking of someone far away, possibly in harm’s way. This helped form a community and support for families if anything in the news was cause for alarm. If a family had a blue star and then it was replaced with a gold star, everyone knew what had happened. Everyone could be extra considerate and compassionate with the grieving family.

Picture19th century mourning wear
Also recently in the museum, we inventoried all of the hats, including an entire box of black mourning wear. Black hats, black bonnets with long black veils, black ribbon collars, dull black bands and black net shawls. There was a whole system of mourning wear, from deepest black through dark purple to lavender to gray and white. Colors would return as you felt able or after commonly accepted lengths of time.  Whole industries grew up around this, with whole methods of fabric production. Mourning wear served the same purpose for grieving individuals that blue star and gold star flags served for families. Beyond the message to people passing by the house, this mourning wear alerted everyone you interacted with throughout your day that you were in grief, and to perhaps be understanding if you took a little more time to do a simple task, or suddenly teared up for no clear reason.

PictureRuth Withun Lord, died 2007
I miss this. A dozen years ago, my family went through a long hard period of loss. In 18 months, I lost three grandparents (including my grandmother at left), my father-in-law, and two brothers-in-law. I remember standing at the counter at the gas station, trying to complete the exchange, and wishing so very much that I could be wearing a black mourning band or veil so that people would know, without me having to tell them, that I was bearing up under the pain of loss, and they might be more patient with me. I wanted to see other people around town wearing black or sober clothes, to have some sense of not being alone in the depths of my grief. Even if I did not know them, to have seen other people walking around with clear signifiers of loss and grief would have been a tremendous comfort.

We want comforting when we are grieving, and we want to know we are not alone when we are feeling so bereft. During many of our nation’s wars, the names of the injured and dead were published in the local papers, and buildings and people were visibly marked by loss. We have in our collective memory black-draped hearses and Jackie Kennedy in a black hat and sheer black veil, flag-draped coffins and candle-light vigils. Maybe sometime we will again have a way for people to convey their personal grief with the same simple wordless dignity that a WWI Service flag or a black armband gave to those in decades past. For now, let us remember that no matter what people are wearing, some of those we see each day are suffering great loss and none of us are or need to be alone in our sorrow.

Author

Meguey Baker studied early American textile history and material culture at Hampshire College. She is a member of the Mohawk Trail Quilt Guild, on the board of the Historical Society of Greenfield, and does textile repair and conservation for private clients.

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Making connections

11/11/2012

 
PictureWhere does this old math book lead us?
What I realized last week was that the more you know about something, the more interesting it becomes. Pretty obvious, I know, but let me give you an example as it relates to museums and artifacts.

Last Wednesday I wrote up an accession sheet and scanned the title and signature pages of an old algebra book (at right) donated this past summer by the Whately Historical Society. They donated it to the Hatfield Historical Museum because the name written on the first blank page was “Hattie A. Sanderson” (that’s what it looked like), followed by “Smith Academy, Hatfield, Mass., 1873.” The book was published in 1872, with a worn, but nice-looking leather cover, and has some equations in pencil scribbled on the inside back cover. The book is letterpress printed – meaning it was set with moveable type and leaves an impression on the page where the inked metal letters struck the paper. If you look closely (click on the image), you can see the imprint from the other side of the page -- which is pretty cool!

PictureClick on image to find Mattie A. Sanderson of Whately.
Then Thursday in the museum I came across a Smith Academy Bulletin from 1873, in which they list student academic honors – both overall and in subjects such as Latin, Greek, Geography, Book-keeping, Algebra and more. And there, under Honorable Mentions, was Mattie (it wasn’t Hattie) A. Sanderson, of Whately. Another Bulletin, from 1875, showed that Mattie had moved up academically to the Roll of Honor, and was listed as a top student in Rhetoric.

With just these added bits of information that give some context to her life, I found myself thinking about her in a different light and picturing a high school student not unlike my own son (who’s now a freshman at Smith Academy). But it also left me asking questions.

Did Whately have its own high school? Why did her parents send her to school in Hatfield? How did she get to school? Did it still cost money to attend Smith Academy at that time, and if so, what did it say about her parents’ economic status and what they felt about the importance of education?

PictureClick on image to see "girlie" cards found inside.
Oh, and it gets more interesting. Tucked inside the pages of this 140-year-old math textbook, I found three small trading cards, each a montage of 20 tiny photos – actresses or pin-up girls. One of the cards was stamped on the back with “James A. Bardwell, No. Hatfield, Mass.,” so presumably these cards belonged to young Bardwell and made studying algebraic equations a little more palatable!

 The more connections you can make about something, the more interesting it becomes. We have done this often in the Polish Immigration exhibit and Hatfield’s Buried Colonial Village exhibit, but I’d like to expand it to the whole museum. Of course, that takes time, space, and knowing what you have so you can start connecting the dots. Another reason why doing an full inventory of one’s collection is so important!
 

Where did I put that 17th century...?

11/4/2012

 
Picture
Thursday marked the first day of the “Collections Management and Preservation Project” for the Hatfield Historical Museum. Approved at Town Meeting in May 2012, and funded by the town’s Community Preservation Act, this grant allows for the start of an official inventory of the museum’s collection, which will be done by me, the curator. That inventory starts with 1) our backlog of donated items, and 2) the two categories of artifacts most at-risk in our current space – paper and textiles.

Why do we need to DO an inventory, you ask?

Coincidentally (or maybe by alignment of the stars), I received the “Collections Caretaker” e-newsletter from the Northern States Conservation Center Thursday morning – Day 1 of the project. It couldn’t have been more apt. Rather than paraphrase the start of her piece, I’m just going to let Peggy Schaller say it because she puts it so well:

Regular inventories protect collections
by Peggy Schaller

Why are periodic inventories important?

Inventories are an important function of museum collections management. There are two reasons for doing periodic inventories. The main reason is to keep track of your collections. You cannot display or otherwise use what you cannot find. If you cannot find it, you have not lived up to your public trust responsibilities regarding your collection and the object might just as well be gone. And how do you know it is not gone? Maybe there has been a theft of which you are not aware?

Secondly, periodic inventories allow you to monitor the condition of the objects. Doing an inventory forces you to look at each individual artifact as you are verifying that it is where it is supposed to be. This is the perfect opportunity to make an examination of the current condition of your objects. If that small crack you noticed last time has gotten bigger, maybe the environmental controls need to be checked. If there is evidence of insects where there was none before, maybe you have an infestation that needs to be dealt with. Many small or large changes can be caught by regular examination of your collection.


***

Picture
Ms. Schaller notes the two primary reasons for doing periodic inventories. These reasons become all the more pressing when the initial inventory has not been done. The majority of the items on display and in storage in our museum have collection numbers and have been logged into a museum accession register, but the register only gives a brief name of item, name of donor and collection number. The register does not give condition or a detailed description of the item, contact info for the donor, category, or a photo. Nor does it include its location in the museum. So the chances of being able to find one of some 5,000+ artifacts when a visitor comes looking, are, well, pretty slim.

The inventory that results from our “Collections Management and Preservation Project” will fill in this missing information and store it all in a computerized database (we use Frostbow Collection Manager 3, which I’ll write more about in a later post). We’ll also have accession sheets and a hard-copy printout for each completed artifact record. With this information at our fingertips, we will be much better positioned to serve the community and researchers alike.

Why hasn’t this inventory been done before? Mostly because it takes many more hours than the all-volunteer Hatfield Historical Society members (including myself) could afford to give. Which is where the grant comes in. Thank goodness for the Community Preservation Act (see some other historic preservation projects here) and a Community Preservation Commission that values the town’s history and heritage enough to support this work.

 I’ll be making periodic posts as the work progresses and will be sure to let you know about interesting discoveries.

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    Curator's musings...

    As the curator of a small town Historical Society museum, I wonder a great many things. Am I alone in these thoughts that come to me while driving, or exercising, or falling asleep at night? Is it unusual to be constructing displays and writing copy in one's head for an enlarged museum space that does not, as yet, exist?

    If you're wondering about the blog title, "bird by bird," see my First Post for an explanation! Click HERE to read it.

    When I'm not thinking about our museum or rehousing artifacts with my fellow museum committee members, I'm working with our exhibit committee to plan physical or virtual exhibits, and working with our board to help fundraise.

    I invite your comments and reactions.

    --Kathie Gow


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