Archive for the ‘Civil War’ Category

Badges, Bandits, and Bars, our very popular exhibit focusing on law enforcement and justice in Arkansas has, sadly, drawn to a close.  It was a great success.    

I am pleased to say, this April, the Old State House Museum will open the first of five exhibits focusing on the American Civil War.  This exhibit, entitled An Enduring Union, focuses on soldier reunions held in the years after the Civil War.  One such reunion was held here in Little Rock in May, 1911.   

Old State House, 1911 U.C.V. Reunion Headquarters

The United Confederate Veterans held events at locations throughout the city and the Old State House was the center of activity.  In the post card shown, the Old State House is being used as the registration headquarters for the veterans.    

It is an exciting time here at the Old State House.  Please check in frequently for more updates and be sure to see An Enduring Union when it opens.

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.”

  
    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.”

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.

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.