Posted on by Katie Shiber

The Life and Work of Elizabeth Lester Mullin

Mistress Brent’s Bluff, The Baltimore Sun November 7, 1915

Elizabeth Lester Mullin was born around the year 1874. Her father, Michael A. Mullin was a well-known lawyer in Baltimore, leader within the Catholic church, and graduate of Loyola College. Her mother, Elizabeth C. Mullin (born Josephine Cluskey) was also a prominent member of the Catholic church and founded the Fuel Guild. Miss Mullin had one brother who tragically died in 1906 after falling ill during his service in the Spanish-American war. According to census records it appears that Mullin never married, living with her mother until Mrs. Mullin’s death in 1919.

Elizabeth Lester Mullin was a member of the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore from 1899 until 1914, serving as the treasurer from 1904 until 1914. Mullin was also accepted as a member of the Maryland Historical Society in 1916 and served as the secretary of the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association.

Miss Mullin was fluent in French and served as a translator for several publications from French to English. Some of these titles included “The Codicil” by Paul Ferrier and “Atalanta” by Edouard Rod. She was also the author of her own works of short fiction. Her story “Mistress Brent’s Bluff” was published in the Baltimore Sun in 1915, and another work of short fiction is mentioned in the Woman’s Literary Club Meeting Minutes of October 2, 1901, but was not called by a title and is currently unrecovered.

Although Miss Mullin seemed to publish little of her own work, her translations made French works accessible to foreign audiences, making her an integral part of their literary production.

Sources:

“Edgar Allan Poe: A Centenary Tribute.” Baltimore: Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association, 1910.

“Maryland Historical Magazine.” The Maryland Historical Society, vol. XI, Baltimore, 1916.

“Michael A. Mullin Dead.” The Baltimore Sun, 1915 Jun. 10, p. 12.

“Mrs. Elizabeth C. Mullin.” The Baltimore Sun, 1919 Jun. 7, p. 6.

Mullin, Elizabeth Lester. “Mistress Brent’s Bluff.” The Baltimore Sun, 1915 Nov. 7.

Posted on by Jean Lee Cole

Taking names

As Sydney’s posts have documented, one of the challenges we’ve faced is the difficulty of finding even super-basic information– like, names–of the members of the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore.

Today, I happened to stumble upon a treasure trove of a document that had passed under the radar of our summer researchers. I was checking and verifying the names and addresses of the membership, which Sydney has painstakingly transcribed over about half of the summer. Names, we have all discovered, are very difficult to transcribe.

In the middle of a large, mostly empty, unlabeled book in the “Memberships” box of the WLCB, I ran across a few pages where the WLCB Constitution had been painstakingly copied, followed by an undated pledge signed by the membership.

Pledge
Pledge signed by officers, Board of Management, and members, probably 1898. MD Historical Society, MS988.vii.

We’ve been trying to find some of these names for some time. Mrs. George K. McGaw (Margaret!). Mrs. R. K. Cautley (Lucy!). If we had realized how momentous this document was when we’d run our eyes across it earlier in the summer, we’d have saved ourselves a lot of work– many of the most active members of the Club, unsurprisingly, appear on this list.

Page 2 of signatures. MD Historical Society, MS988.vii.

I was able to date this document tentatively to the 1898-1899 season. Part of my logic was that Mrs. John C. Wrenshall (Letitia!) took over the presidency of the Club from Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull (Francese!). I also referred to the lists of officers and Board of Management that Sydney & Clara have compiled this summer– and while the signatories here most closely resemble those listed in the programs for 1898-1899, they don’t match exactly.

So, an answer raises more questions: how stable was the Board of Management in the Club? Did people switch in and out after being elected? But for now, I am very happy that we now have first names for about 15% of the Club.

It is one of the few “public” documents of the Club in which the women made a concerted effort to use their first names. Now that I’ve become more familiar with the documents, I’m seeing first names scattered about here and there, including in the title page of the membership dues book from 1890 (which lists Mrs. Christine Ladd Franklin as treasurer). They also sign their first names when elections are being held (They are the ones voting, after all, not their husbands!) Their first names also appear in the minutes, perhaps because those are more “private” documents.

On this pledge, there are only 2 or 3 instances where a signee has used her “married” name (Mrs. Thomas Hill), or used initials rather than writing out their full names. I find these hesitations both sad and touching.

If only they had written their names. With their names, we can start fleshing out their histories.

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 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 Katie Kazmierski

It’s 1909 and I smell drama

In my last post I mentioned how that week I found a lot in the Board of Manager’s minutes that stuck out to me. The main story I wanted to tell happens to be one that Dr. Cole has asked me to share, too, about a bit of drama that’s recorded in May of 1909.

The entry is from May 8th, 1909, but it refers to events that happened in late December 1908/early January 1909. What struck me initially was that the minutes were supposedly taken by the President, not Miss Lydia Crane, the Recording Secretary. It’s weird though because it all appears to be written in the same handwriting but then there are notes supposedly differentiating between who was writing what; Crane or Wrenshall. Why Wrenshall would be writing as opposed to the Secretary at all, I don’t know and I probably never will know–but I almost get the feeling that she wanted to make sure the story was relayed the way she wanted it to be told.

The matter actually concerns the Edgar Allen Poe Association, the Executive Board of which was, at the time, nearly identical to that of the WLBC. I’ll go into that in a later post–what’s important now is just to know that the Board members of the two groups are almost exactly the same, and so they took up affairs of the EAPA in the WLBC meeting.

The Edgar Allen Poe Association took part in the Centenary of Edgar Allen Poe, a celebration commemorating the 100th anniversary of Poe, held at Johns Hopkins University. The ladies worked closely with a few very important men at the time to organize the event, including the president of the university, Dr. Remson, and a man referred to as Professor Bright, who Wrenshall says Remson appointed as his “representative”. Wrenshall, in a lengthy statement to the Club, tells of three visits she had with Bright, the first two in December planning the program for the celebration. The speakers included the university’s pick, Dr. W. P. Trent, who was designated 40 minutes to speak, and two selections by the EAPA ladies, Dr. Huckel and Mr. Poe, who were to have 20-30 minutes each.

Wrenshall then explains how on their Janaury 6th meeting, Bright insisted that she cut Dr. Huckel’s time speaking to eight to ten minutes, and to reduce Mr. Poe’s to only four to five minutes. So to reiterate: the two speakers chosen by the EAPA were given less time to speak than the Hopkins choice to begin with, but then Bright had the nerve to try to compel Wrenshall to shorten her speakers’ time to nearly nothing.

The minutes read, “To do this Mrs. Wrenshall positively declined,–with difficulty maintaining the position of the speakers as asked by the Association.”

Already, this sounds like an uncomfortable position for Wrenshall to be in, especially for a woman at this point in time. Saying no to a prominent man was considered taboo, so I was impressed with Wrenshall in this moment for standing her ground. But then it gets more complicated.

Apparently, this whole time, Wrenshall was supposed to ask about incorporating a poem, written by Miss Reese, in the celebration. Because the meeting didn’t exactly go swimmingly, she didn’t end up bringing it up. This is ultimately why Wrenshall makes the whole statement on May 8th to begin with: to put it bluntly, Miss Reese is pissed off.

At this point, minutes from the meeting of January 11th are read to the group, recalling that Miss Reese was unhappy with the way matters stood so she insisted on going to Dr. Bright herself to ask permission to read her poem. After some back and forth over whether Wrenshall thought that was “suitable”, it was decided that the President would write a letter to Bright on the Board’s behalf, politely asking for the poem’s inclusion. She did so that night, she insists. After some more trivial commentary in the statement, it’s clear that Wrenshall means business:

In concluding Mrs. Wrenshall said she wished to emphasize the facts: First, that Miss Reese’s poem was not written when the poem was decided on, in Dr. Bright’s two visits of December 15th and 20th. Second, that after hearing from Miss Reese that she had a poem, (this in the last week of the year,) she was willing to forego her own judgment, and ask Dr. Bright for Miss Reese to be placed on the programme, according to the letter asking him to call before the programme was finally arranged.

Thirdly, that when he came on the evening of that day, the situation was so uncomfortable and strained that she could not consistently with the dignity of the Association ask for any further addition to the programme from the Association.”

That third ‘fact’ is what got me. From Wrenshall’s initial description of the encounter with Dr. Bright, I knew it was unpleasant, but that last sentence says it all. It sounds to me like Wrenshall felt helpless. I get the feeling that she did want to support her fellow Club member by including her poem, but the position she was put in with this awful man made it, she felt, impossible to push for it. It would be ‘inappropriate’. It also strikes me how she speaks of how doing so would sacrifice the ‘dignity of the Association’.

At the end of her statement, Wrenshall is met with a chorus of loving expressions of gratitude from her colleagues. They “agreed that [their] President had done all that she could have done under trying circumstances; and more than could have been asked or expected.” The strength of their affectionate response is interesting– in one way, it shows the Club’s dedication and appreciation for their President. But it also might show an underlying understanding–maybe these women reacted as strongly as they did to this particular story because they’d all been there, in one way or another. They’d all had their ideas and passions stifled by a man. Some of them, so much so, that their names have vanished from history in favor of “Mrs.” slapped onto their husband’s full names.

Posted on by Ellen Roussel

Club and their associations

I have completed transcribing the minutes from the first year and a half of the Woman’s Literary Club, and have been given a detailed view of the inner workings of the Club as they try to establish themselves and their methods of operating as a unit. What I do not have a good perspective on, however, is the Club as an external piece; as in, how does the Club operate within Baltimore, and how does it compare to other women’s groups during this time.

In the March 31st Board Meeting minutes, the President made the suggestion that the Club rent a house, and open it up to lodgers and the neighborhood when Club meetings were not in session. To this thought, some of the women thought that other women’s groups in Baltimore could unite with them in establishing a house that would benefit them all. This seems to suggest the Club wished to associate with other women’s societies in Baltimore.

Looking at other minutes, some of the ladies suggested that women college graduates in the city might be lonely, and that a list of their names should be kept for individuals within the Club to contact them should they feel so inclined. This seems to be an example of when the Club does not want to associate with women who are not linked to another society. I don’t know if this is because it could be risky for the reputation of the Club to associate with these non-Club women, or what, but I am interested to see the development of how the Club asserts themselves within Baltimore and how they interact with other women not in the Club.

Posted on by Katie Kazmierski

Motives behind giving

This past week, I continued working on transcribing the Board of Management meeting minutes from 1908 onwards. A lot caught my interest this week, and I found myself footnoting things with my own comments. I think I’ll write about these in a later post, but for right now, Clara’s post about philanthropy actually got me thinking about the character of the ladies of the Club– or the character they seemed to have wished to portray. As Clara puts it, they almost seemed “more concerned with crafting the image of the spirit of giving rather than the spirit itself.”

While I haven’t stumbled upon in my share of the minutes any talk of philanthropy (which, I guess, serves to prove Clara’s point even more) yet, when I read Clara’s post a particular point in the minutes stood out in my mind.

Basically, in February of 1910 a valued member of the Club, Mrs. Tait, decided to resign her membership after the death of her husband. As a parting gift to show her appreciation of the Club and the women in it, she offers them a bust of Sidney Lanier, an author and poet (who just so happened to also serve in the Confederate army). After some deliberation, the Board agrees that Tait must not know how expensive the bust is, as it’s estimated to be $25, (roughly $610 today!) so they offer to pay for it. Mrs. Tait happily accepts the Board’s offer, and the matter’s closed.

A month later in March, Mrs. Tait dies. Someone suggests that the Club send flowers to her funeral as a tribute, and after some very calculated deliberation on what is “acceptable”, it was deemed “unsuitable” to do this for “one no longer a member”. This is a month after Mrs. Wrenshall writes a lengthy poem to honor another deceased past member, Mrs. Whitney, mind you. But here’s the kicker:

It was recalled that the Board had very lately done a graceful action with regard to Mrs. Tait’s offer to give the Club her bust of Sidney Lanier,–by accepting it only with the condition of returning to her its full value; and having done so while she was living, and able to express–though only verbally–her grateful appreciation of the favor,–a floral tribute was of little consequence now.

This is where Clara’s notion of, are they doing good deeds to be good or to be perceived as good? comes in. It seems like they spent more time sitting and weighing how their actions would make them look than what the actions actually meant. Their treatment of this situation just strikes me as very inauthentic–especially the notion of “oh, well, we did this for her a month ago, so we’re good”. It makes me wonder how much of what the Club does is chosen because of how it will make them appear, not necessarily for its intrinsic value.

Regardless, it boggles my mind that they’d deemed it inappropriate to give flowers to a past member because a) she wasn’t a current member and that somehow made her unworthy and b) they had just done her a favor anyway, so basically they’re off the hook.

Not to mention, Mrs. Tait had only resigned a month before her death. I guess once you resign, you’re good as dead to the Club–they might as well have just given her a bouquet in February.