Posted on by Ellen Roussel

Ode to Eliza Ridgely

Today, I finished transcribing the last of the minutes recorded by Eliza Ridgely as Secretary; what a bittersweet moment in time this was for me.

Despite my original chagrin with Ridgely’s style of note-taking, I now feel as though I have learned and grown with Eliza for two seasons of the Woman’s Literary Club’s existence, and truly am sad to see her go.

Eliza’s work was characterized by a surprising lack of detail for most of the meetings’ happenings. With her, there was only a vague allusion to what events might have transpired during the actual meetings. Nonetheless, it is Eliza Ridgely who has painted the only picture of the Woman’s Literary Club that I have ever known.

At the end of the second season, Ridgely’s position was taken over by Lydia Crane, who was much less willing to do the amount of work that Eliza put into her position as Secretary. According to Crane, her stipulation for accepting the nomination as Secretary was that she would only be the Recording Secretary during the meetings, and not Corresponding and Recording Secretary as Eliza had been. This leads me to conclude that Eliza Ridgely went above and beyond for the Club. Way to go, girl.

What is mysterious to me, is why Eliza Ridgely refused to accept her nomination as Secretary in the third year of the Club’s existence. During the second season, Eliza began missing more and more meetings, with Lydia Crane filling in for her, for undisclosed reasons. I can only speculate as to why Eliza would have missed so many meetings and why she did not feel it within her ability to remain Secretary, while preferring to be a member of the Executive Board.

All I can say is that, Eliza, it was a pleasure getting to know you through your words and your writing and your descriptions (or lackthereof) over the past two seasons.

Posted on by Sydney Johnson

Names and Dates: Connecting the dots

Diving into discovering who the women of the Club are has come with some rewards, and many challenges. For the past few weeks now I have been in charge of figuring out who was in the Club when and where they lived. Thanks to the incredible record-keeping in the early years that is not a difficult task. Much of the same information overlaps in different notebooks. Essentially, from 1980 to 1916 we have an almost complete record of who the members in the Club and also who the board of management was. However, these are just names and nothing more. My next task was to try to figure who these women were or at least try to find some of their real names—not their husbands names.

Instead of trying to find information about over a hundred women, we thought it would be best to start small, and higher up, with the board of management. This board includes an average of twelve women. One president, two vice presidents, a recording secretary, a corresponding secretary, a treasurer, and six members of the board. These are the women that help run and decide the direction of the club. Having the lists of the board from year to year all in one place can also help explain changes in the dynamic of the club. For example, Hunter has been transcribing the minutes for Fall of 1903 where Lydia Crane was recording the minutes. In the middle of a meeting the hand-writing changes indicating that Miss Crane is not writing anymore. Looking at the board of management for 1903-1904 we can see that Miss Crane is not actually the recording secretary, but she was for 1901-1902 and then comes back in 1906-1907. These are the tiny shifts that we are beginning to pick up the longer we read what these ladies were doing. We are able to piece together to try to get a more three dimensional image of the Club.

So the board of management seemed like a good place to start, since these are the women that the club revolves around, and we picked the year 1903-1904. Here is where the difficulty lies, as I have mentioned in my previous posts: many of the women are referred to by their husbands names, which makes it hard to find out their real names. However, I have been able to use different resources such as ancestry.com and findagrave.com to be able to locate the names of the men, and then many times they have the names of the women as well.

When doing these searches it is hard to determine if the information that I have found is really for the same person that I am searching for. Without knowing the birth and death information about a person before I search for them, a slew of people can come into the found list and I am unsure of if it is who I am looking for. Another thing that I am finding more relevant and difficult in my search is the cemeteries where these people are buried. Many of the ones that I have been able to find are in either Green Mount Cemetery or in Loudon Park Cemetery, with private church cemeteries thrown in throughout. Green Mount is the place where many people of prestige were buried. While I have not found out much information about Loudon Park Cemetery, there is a large portion of the cemetery which was dedicated to the burial of Union soldiers which might have had an impact on who wanted to be buried there depending on their sympathies during the war. Another piece of information is where the two cemeteries are located. Green Mount being located in Greenmount Ave, a couple of blocks south of North Ave. This is located close to where most of the members of the Club lived, therefore making it convenient for them to go to Green Mount. Loudon Park on the other hand, is a 30 minute drive from Green Mount when I put the directions into Google. On horse that would take much longer, let along a slow moving burial procession would be about two days.

The top middle of the map is a small green square which is Green Mount, Loudon Park is not pictured on the map but would be south west of the bottom left edge of the map.

Aside from the interesting information about the cemeteries I have been somewhat successful with finding information about the women. Out of the twelve members of the board of management for 1903-1904, I was able to find birth and death years for six of the members and was able to determine the names of two of the women that had gone by their husbands names. In 1903 Mrs. Jordan Stabler, or Jennie Stabler (although I am not positive that this is her) was 35; Mrs. Philip Uhler, or Julia Pearl Uhler, was 44; Miss Lydia Crane was 70; Miss Ellen Duvall was 62; Miss Lizette Woodworth Reese was 47; and Miss Eveline Early was 35.  I was really disappointed that I could not find anything on Mrs. John Wrenshall, who is the president for many years of the Club. Thanks to findagrave.com I was able to find a picture of Miss Lizette Woodworth Reese.

This image was uploaded to findagrave.com. Unfortunately we have no ability to double-check if it is really her, but hopefully it is.

It is a sad realization that many of the women in the Club are only recognized by a name that is not really theirs. Thankfully there are tools out there that help make it possible to learn about Julia Pearl Uhler instead of just Philip Uhler.

Posted on by Ellen Roussel

Lehmann’s Hall–What are you?

Taken from http://www.mdhs.org/digitalimage/street-scene-lehmanns-hall-café-des-arts-852-north-howard-street-baltimore From the Julius Anderson Photograph Collection

In the early years ofthe Woman’s Literary Club, they met at 861 Garden Street. Some time later, they began meeting at Lehmann’s Hall, which is addressed as 858 N. Howard Street, but, as Dr. Cole told me, used to be at 861 Garden Street. My assignment for this week was to research the history behind Lehmann’s Hall, and how the women came to meet there.

After some research, I came to the conclusion that any discoveries I made would not come about easily. In fact, there was remarkablylittle information on Lehmann’s Hall, and virtually nothing about 861 Garden Street. I assumed the address change of Lehmann’s Hall from 861 Garden Street to 858 N. Howard Street occurred after the Great Baltimore Fire in 1904 that left a huge portion of the city decimated.

I cannot paint a complete picture of Lehmann’s Hall, nor can I answer the questions of why the women started meeting there and why they eventually stopped. However, through my research, I found some interesting tidbits about Lehmann’s Hall, which, today, is right behind the popular coffee joint, the Bun Shop.

The earliest record I could find of Lehmann’s Hall is from the Maryland Historical Society, which credits various musical performances, concerts, Glee Clubs, and plays as being performed at Lehmann’s Hall between 1875 and 1914.

Lehmann’s Hall was also mentioned in an 1890 edition of Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine, which described the “Orioles” Subordinate Lodge as meeting at Lehman’s Hall [sic] on 861 Garden Street on the second and fourth Sundays of the month.

In the 1898 Volume XXVIII of The National Druggist, the forty-sixth annual meeting of the American Pharmaceutical Association met at Lehmann’s Hall, though the address was written as 856 N. Howard Street, which would debunk my hypothesis about the fire sparking the change of street names.

In the August 22, 1907 edition of the “Daily Bulletin of theManufacturers’ Record”, the single mention of Lehmann’s Hall is to highlight the remodeling and addition to the building by the Ellicott and Emmart architects.

By 1935, right before World War II, Lehmann’s Hall was a popular destination for Nazi sympathizer rallies, as well as the local bowling alley and dance hall. In a photograph in the Maryland Historical Society archives, Lehmann’s Hall has a sign out front describing it as a “Café Des Artes,” and it is addressed as 852 N. Howard Street.

I cannot fully uncloud the mystery behind Lehmann’s Hall, nor can I provide conclusive, definitive answers as to how the Woman’s Literary Club came to find itself there. However, it does seem that, despite road changes and address inconsistencies, Lehmann’s Hall remained a gathering spaced for quite a number of years, and even lends itself to a popular gathering space today. It was the primary meeting space of the Woman’s Literary Club during their genesis and early years, and I wait with anticipation to see where/when/and how Lehmann’s Hall falls off the radar of the Woman’s Literary Club, should that information come about through further transcription of club minutes.

Posted on by Katie Kazmierski

What was the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association?

At a certain point in my transcribing, I started to notice that the minutes often mentioned the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association–a club which, the minutes explain, boasts nearly the same Board of Management as the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore. From the 1908 minutes, I got the feeling that the Club was becoming more invested in the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association than the original woman’s club– meetings were few in the beginning of the year and at one point an ‘informal meeting’ was held simply to cancel another Club meeting in favor of an event for the EAPMA. I started to wonder what the deal was with this other club.

I found that in 1907, the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore decided to create the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association. Their original goal was to erect a monument for Poe to be completed by 1909 for the centennial of his birth. I was surprised that I read nothing of this sort in the Club minutes, though I guess this would be discussed in the minutes of the EAPMA, if there are any. Its omission also might be due to the fact, though, that the statue didn’t end up making its way to Baltimore until 1921– some time after its 1909 goal. The monument had, well, what can be politely described as a series of mishaps.

The artist, Moses Jacob Ezekial, finished the first sculpture in 1913 but it was destroyed in a fire. The second model was also destroyed, this time in an earthquake. The third was done by 1916 but World War I delayed its shipment across the Atlantic by 5 years. Despite the bizarre delays, the tribute got to Baltimore eventually, and today it sits in Gordon Plaza at the University of Baltimore, thanks to our ladies from the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore. 

Another interesting thing I found was a book entitled “Edgar Allan Poe: A Centenary Tribute” which was published in 1910, on account of, again, the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore and the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association.

A page from the beginning of the text. The Board members were almost identical at this time.

The book is a published account of the Centenary Celebration–the lectures/speeches given by the speakers at the January 1909 tribute were recorded and bound together in the text, along with an introduction explaining the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association, written by, I’m assuming, Mrs. Wrenshall.

From the introduction I found out that the WLCB had originally talked about forming the Association in 1904, and in 1907 they officially formed it with the goal of, “erecting in Baltimore a monument to the poet worthy of his genius”. The introduction also boasts that the birth of this association and its goal was received enthusiastically among other women’s clubs in the state, and also in the press. Apparently the Association received support across state lines, all of this being completely voluntary with respect to the importance of honoring the poet. Even through all this support, though, it’s mentioned that in June of 1907 the efforts had to be halted due to the “financial stringency”. That explains why the first statue wasn’t completed until 1913, then.

As I read the introduction praising the Association and also the speakers who “graciously permitted” to record their tributes in the text, Miss. Reese was in the back of my mind–the source of the drama regarding her poem’s inclusion in the celebration. I was surprised, and delighted to see that the very first tribute in the book, right after the introduction, was Lizette Woodworth Reese’s poem. I can’t help but wonder if her poem was included first for a reason, maybe as a way to make up for its apparent omission at the celebration itself.

From my understanding, the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association served not only as a tribute to the infamous poet, but also as a way for the women involved to engage in a community bigger than themselves. Through it, they worked with prominent, if entitled, men from Johns Hopkins and other Poe fans across state lines to come together to form a monument for a comment interest. Where the Woman’s Literary Club seems to have been a means for sharing art and literature with each other while straying from state or national woman’s clubs, through the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association those same women seemed to extend themselves outward, while creating a monument that stands to this day.

Posted on by Hunter Flynn

Language and education

These past two weeks, I’ve had the privilege of going back further in time than I had been before, picking up transcriptions during the 1893-1894 season. I’d previously been transcribing from the 1911-1912 season. I was able to identify some shifts in the Club’s interests, but for the most part it seems that the Club’s interests were more or less preserved during that almost twenty-year period. But it does seem to me that the Club was somewhat more academic in its earlier years.

They even had a Committee on the “Exact Study of the English Language.” I didn’t see it in the 1910s, and so can only assume it was retired. It met twice during the 1894-1895 season, and discussed everything from etymology and pronunciation to linguistically-rooted philosophy. Club member Maria Middleton even gave a talk regarding such (we think) contemporary concerns as the inexactitude of English pronouns, and the “careless use of the word ‘like,’ especially in making it do duty as a conjunction.” I can’t help but think of the neologism “juvenoia” here—defined, roughly, as the eternal tendency of older generations to worry about or criticize the youth. But maybe nothing really changes.

So what I’m finding most interesting about going back in time is seeing how social views change—or how they don’t. To me, the article that most illustrated this is the poet Lizette Woodworth Reese’s talk on “Poetry as a Means of Education,” which I found reflective of the growing tendency of humanity to regard the child as a legitimate social unit, with its unique needs and anxieties that merit extra care. Children—and specifically childhood—we think, ought to be protected.

This is the sort of notion it’s all too easy to take for granted. But really the concept of childhood is a relatively modern phenomenon in Western thought—perhaps first put forth by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and nourished, perpetuated, and elevated by the English Romantic poets. (See: concise Wordsworth and copious Wordsworth.)

In her talk, Lizette Woodworth Reese speaks of the capacity of children to appreciate poetry (for her purposes, apparently, synonymous with all forms of literature) in a uniquely childlike way. The reading of children is not vested, as that of adults. It’s innocent—maybe even enlightened. She says, “We cannot parse John Milton, and read him too.” So maybe something is lost when we analyze art. To paraphrase the words of French filmmaker Robert Bresson: “I’d rather my films be felt than understood.”

I don’t know about all that, but I see her point: maybe we can learn something from children about literature. But her concern is really what children can learn from literature. She’s interested in literature as an educational tool; the recording secretary writes, “Jack is becoming a dull boy instructed in facts and figures, and is letting his mysteries and illusions go.” Literature, she thinks, can teach “mysteries and illusions.”

In support of her theory, she cites the “Rollo” series of children’s books. I did some poking around, and found that the Rollo stories were a series of fourteen children’s books, written by American writer Jacob Abbott, that aimed to educate children, while, apparently, entertaining them. The series begins with Rollo Learning to Talk, moves onto Rollo at Play, to Rollo’s Museum, to, eventually, Rollo’s Philosophy Part IV: The Sky. Here’s the text of the first part of Rollo’s Philosophy (“Water”). As you can see, much of it takes the form of a pseudo-Socratic dialogue.

This concept is still prevalent today—probably more so. Think of Children’s shows like Baby Einstein (for people who want their children to be well-versed in Mozart and Bach) or Dora the Explorer (for people who want their children to learn Spanish at the dazzling rate of one word per episode). Abbott’s Rollo series was a precursor.

Miss Reese, as far as I know, never had any children. But she was a teacher; and maybe she saw her poetry as another outlet through which she could educate—if only subconsciously.

Posted on by Ellen Roussel

Early grapplings

I must admit I came into this project with some preconceived notions about the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore. After an entire semester taking a class called American Feminist Public Intellectuals, in which we thoroughly grappled with the ideas of authority and identity and how these are influenced by gender, race, education level, and even appearance, I found myself resenting the Woman’s Literary Club. After all, it is a group of primarily (totally??) middle- to upper-class, educated, white women gathering to assert their literary prowess and celebrate their intellectual accomplishments. To me, some of the cluckings of the Club seem rather frivolous when considered against the social and historical background of this time period. Some women, primarily black women, do not have the same advantages during this time period, and I find it difficult not to resent a club that claims to promote the intellectual development amongst women of “similar tastes.” Were there any black women in the Club at this time? Would an educated black woman even be allowed in? What are these “similar tastes” in regards to, and who determines if they are enough to let an individual into the Club? I do realize that I have a rather cynical view of the Club. For me, my personal challenge with this project will be to set aside my own initial views and opinions, and approach the Club with an open mind so as not to belittle their grand-scheme accomplishments. After spending some time with the 1890 minutes written by Eliza Ridgely, the first secretary of the Club, I don’t know that I can say that I have done a complete 180 in terms of this sour taste in my mouth in regards to the Club. However, I will say that it is a pretty grand and significant thing to be able to interact with these women in this medium. I look forward to continuing to peer through this window in history as the Club takes its form in the early years of its development.

Posted on by Katie Kazmierski

The Club’s Arithmetic: An Overwhelming Flow of Additions and Resignations

On Thursday I started transcribing the minutes of the Board of Management of the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore from 1907-1908. Here’s what has caught my attention so far, besides the delightful phrases “dainty refreshments” and “queen of an afternoon”:

It’s hard to keep up sometimes with the amount of women who apply for membership in the Club, are suggested by current members to join, or resign. It feels like for every member who wants to join, another member is resigning—whether it’s because she’s sick, her husband is sick, or simply “too busy” to devote the time and energy required to be an active member. Both the additions to the Club and the resignations are fascinating. Whenever a current member suggests a woman she thinks should join, she is expected to vouch for the candidate’s credibility in several different avenues. Has she sat in on a Club meeting? What did she think of it? Does she write or make music or make any contribution to the arts? While these are all valid questions, it makes me wonder about the seriousness of the society. These women are certainly not playing around. They’ve taken something that seems like it can be casual and have made it very formal and exclusive. I wonder why.

Which leads me to the resignations… why are so many women resigning so frequently? Why was the Club and its duties so exhausting that it caused so many women, month after month, to resign? It makes sense to me that Board members would resign occasionally because seemingly a lot more work was done on the Board, but even so, that happened so often that there was what feels like a constant game of musical chairs on the board of directors. It leaves me wondering what these positions meant to the women who held them and what exactly pushed them away—whether it was a heavy workload or something beyond that.

It’s also worth mentioning that they’re constantly debating whether a past member should become an “honorary member” or not. Well, debating not so much as making unanimous decisions that the lady in question should be an honorary member without a doubt (they often will pose questions only to come to a unanimous positive decision regardless—above anything, these women are agreeable). Regardless, what is an honorary member? Does she attend meetings when she wants to? Does she contribute to the Club? Or is this simply a title, nothing else? I hope to find out more about what being an honorary member entails; maybe the Constitution says something about it.

In the mean time, I can’t wait to see who resigns next. This is better than reality TV.