A Book a Day, week 2

BOOK EIGHT
Well, this week started off with a rare find that I was very much not expecting. This book isn't a book at all, but a photo album from the 1860s. There are 16 pages, with 32 photos, although I have found a 33rd photo hidden behind the very last one.

There is no writing (printed or handwritten) in the book at all, but many of the photo cards (they are some kind of thick, durable cardstock) do have some notes on them.

As carefully as I could, I pulled some of the photos out of the sleeves to inspect. On the back of a few photo cards: "Geo. Wells, Photographer. Rollins Street, Macon, Mo."

Underneath that is a blue 2-cent postal stamp with George Washington's face on it over which the photographer seems to have signed and dated his photo. "Wells, August 1866"

Another is stamped with "Photographed by L. H. Freeborn, Court Avenue, Des Moines, Iowa." Another, but red, George Washing stamp underneath that one, but with no writing on it.

Some photo cards have nothing on the back, others have different photographers from different cities.

A very few of them have names (presumably of the subject) written on them. Most being in 140-yr-old cursive that I can hardly make out. None of them names are recognizable as family, as far as I can tell.

The subjects range in age greatly, the oldest being a long-bearded Darwin clone, the youngest being an infant in a stroller named Emma Mullins - that photo taken by "Marion Berry & Racine, Photographers, Trenton, Missouri"

BOOK NINE
"Of The Imitation of Christ" by Thomas A Kempis, who was a monk who lived from 1380 to 1471 and wrote this around 1418. This book was presented as a gift to Friederick Baettger for Chirstmas 1925, as the inscription inside the front cover indicates. The name is not familiar to me, but my grandfather put his name in the front cover as well, three times, each with a different address (2 in Whittier, 1 in Van Nuys)

The bookmark inside is from the Bodhi Tree Bookstore on Melrose Ave. It opened in 1970 and is possibly closing in the fall of 2011.

BOOK TEN
"New Testament and Psalms" is a fairly battered book, and the cover is held together by clear tape. Inside the front cover is an inscription from my great-grandmother to my grandmother: "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make ye free - Juliette - dearest love from Mother, October 28 - 1927" In pencil, "(John 8:32)" was written in for reference on the quote.

Between the pages of Psalms 23-27, there is a small knitted cross bookmark and an Emerson quote on orange paper, the other side of the quote being a church activities calendar, listing couples club, singles club, potlucks, etc.

Stuck inside the back cover is a National Geographic Society Membership card from 1990, unsigned.

Also, I received an unusual text from my sister this afternoon.

"Grandma's missing!"

I showed my friend the text and he got all worried, as if I should run off and go find her or something. I explained, "Oh, no. It's cool - she's dead." Which only make him more confused.

Since I've started this project, I've been harassing my sister and parents for family information and there's been some renewed interest in our family history. So my sister decided to go visit our grandparents' graves today. But our grandmother's gravestone - which should have been right next to our grandfather's - wasn't there. After freaking out and texting my brother and I, she went to go find a groundskeeper for help. As it turns out, grandma was there all along. Just buried underneath 4 inches of dirt and grass, is all.

Photos courtesy of Allison Fry Photography, 2010.

BOOK ELEVEN
"Theosophical Manuals Number Three - Death and After?" by Annie Besant F.T.S., 1893.

My great-grandmother wrote her name inside the front cover and on the next page is Barbara R. Garver's name. So it looks like we were correct in thinking that B. R. Garver was Barbara. Still hoping to solidify the connection to Bayne and George, though.

In the back of the book is information on joining The Theosophical Society as well as a list of other works for sale. My favorite is "Lucifer - A monthly magazine of Theosophy and the Occult Sciences". Annice Besant is listed as the editor of this as well. A subscription costs 17 shillings. Just one copy, 1 shilling.

Also: "A group photograph of Col. Olcott (President of the T.S.), William Q. Judge (Vice-President), and Annie Besant can be obtained by writing to the Theosophical Society, 17 and 19, Avenue Road, Regent's Park, N.W. Price - 6 shillings."

Taken from the wikipedia article on Annie Besant: "In 1873 she married Frank Besant and moved to London where she became a prominent speaker for the National Secular Society and writer and a close friend of Charles Bradlaugh. In 1877 they were prosecuted for publishing a book by birth control campaigner Charles Knowlton. The scandal made them famous and Bradlaugh was elected MP for Northampton in 1880.

In 1908 Annie Besant became President of the Theosophical Society and began to steer the society away from Buddhism and towards Hinduism."

I must remember to look this lot up on my next trip to London.

BOOK TWELVE
"Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott, 1868-69 - this publishing 1912.

Inside the front cover, signed: "Billie Garver, from Jean - July sixteenth 1913" Presumably from my great-grandmother to her cousin, Billie, who was Bayne's sister.


BOOK THIRTEEN
"Beautiful Joe" by Marshall Saunders, 1893 - this publishing 1898. This is supposedly an autobiography.

Inside the front cover: "To my dear little daughter Jean, from her Mother, August 28th, 1899."

Preface: "Beautiful Joe is a real dog, and "Beautiful Joe" is his real name. He belonged during the first part of his life to a cruel master, who mutilated him in the manner described in the story. He was rescued from him, and is now living in a happy home with pleasant surroundings, and enjoys a wide local celebrity.
The character of Laura is drawn from life, and to the smallest detail is truthfully depicted. The Morris family has its counterparts in real live, and nearly all of the incidents of the story are founded on fact."

I love how, even in 1893, autobiographies didn't have to be 100% truth.

The introduction, referencing "Black Beauty" and how that book paved the way for other books to shed light upon animal cruelty and welfare, is written by one Hezekiah Butterworth who "was a well-known writer of books for young people, and a poet." (taken from wikipedia)

Seriously - Hezekiah Butterworth.

BOOK FOURTEEN
Chief Tahachee "was an Old Settler Cherokee Indian who was an author, a stage actor, a film extra, and a vaudeville performer. He was married seven times, fathered ten children, and died June 9, 1978" (taken from wikipedia)

He wrote 4 books. His first and most popular, "Poems of Dreams", was written in 1942.

Inscribed inside the front cover: "Cordially, Chief Tahachee"

A Book a Day, week 1

My Grandfather died in 1992 and my Grandmother died the following year.

Although I do have a handful of memories of each of them, I wasn't particularly close to either. A decade and a half later, a fair amount of my Grandparents' book collection made its way to me. Many of them are quite old, most of them spiritual in nature, and I assume the older ones were probably handed down from their parents or other relatives. Although I have yet to read through any of them, I have been meaning to catalog them for a few years now. Starting August 18th, my catalog process begun.

I am going to shoot one book a day until I have gone through all of them.

How long will this take? Honestly, I haven't counted the books yet. Fifty? A hundred? I can't say. They are in all colors, in all sizes, and certainly in all states of condition. And they are just in a bunch of stacks and rows on my bookshelf. I suppose I'll get a better idea of how much more I have to go through when the "inbox" starts to be overshadowed by the "outbox." Until then, I'm not thinking about the number.

So far, I have not made any preparations for any of these - I just grab a book each morning from the stack and shoot it, without any particular concept in mind. This may change in the future if I come up with some idea in advance that I'd really like to see, but at this point, I'm just starting with the book, thumbing through it briefly, and letting it go from there.

This post is the wrap up of the first week of books and what I'm learning from them.

BOOK ONE
The first book is from 1883, written by one Mrs. Nettie Pease Fox. Titled "Mysteries of the Border Land or The Conscious Side of Unconscious Life" and "The Golden Key or Mysteries Beyond the Veil", it is a great example from the lot of the nature of these books. The cover is gorgeous and I'm sure to use this one as a photo prop again in the future as I have already a few times in the past.

From a quick glance, it appears to be a novel, although I assume the narrative is just a method to convey the message of Mrs. Fox's spiritual guidance.

The inside cover is signed: "Presented to Mrs. B R Garver, by The Author Nettie Pease Fox"

The name Garver is known in my family, and at first I assumed it was my Grandmother's cousin, Bayne, that the inscription was for. My
mother reminded me that when Bayne married she changed her name and that this was most likely Bayne's mother, whose name (we think) was Barbara. From what I've heard, Bayne's father was the mayor of Des Moines, Iowa and there is an ornate cane with an inscription in the handle to Mr. Garver, presented to him from the city of Des Moines. Doing a little bit of research, I've found that there was a Charlton M. Garver who was mayor of Des Moines from 1922 to 1926, but I can find no record of a George Garver, as the name on the cane implies. Mayor or not, there is a story of George Garver (who we are assuming was Bayne's father and Barbara's husband at this point) stealing all of his brother's money and losing it in some great investment.

UPDATE 9-18-10: My sister and I are now thinking that Charlton M. Garver was Bayne and Billie's father and was George Garver's son. My great-grandmother's father was Henry Fusselman Garver, who would have been Charlton's brother. Now the trick is to find out who stole whose money...

BOOK TWO
"The Proof Palpable of Immortality; Being an Account of the Materialization Phenomena of Modern Spiritualism" by Epes Sargent, 1875.

Proof PALPABLE! I love these titles! "Mrs. Hendricks" is written in pencil inside the front cover, but I have no idea who that is. A request for a family tree has been sent to my uncle via my mother and perhaps the name Hendricks will pop up in there. I'm not hopeful, though, as I've never heard that name in our family before.

I haven't looked through the book itself much, but I did stop on one page as it seems to be the only diagram in the entire book. The diagram seems to be of a jail cell and a quick passage from that section reads:

"The Eddy family, originally twelve in number, are now reduced by marriage and death to five - three sons and two daughters. The great-grandmother on the female side was condemned to death in Salem in 1692, for witchcraft. She escaped the gallows, however, by being rescued from the jail by her friends."

Oh, I have got to read this one further someday!

BOOK THREE
"How to Heal and Help One's Self" by Charles F. Winbigler, PH.M., 1916.

Ah, the beauty of a 94-year-old self-help book! Browsing through the table of contents, I see chapters on relaxation, breathing, sleeping, exercise, eating, bathing, drinking water, worry, fear, self control, reasoning, etc...

For this shot, I focused less on the book and more on the writings inside the covers. There is writing inside the front cover reading "This Book is the Property of Miss Carrie Malcome 38th Street Oakland Cal." The name means nothing to me at this point.

But the back cover has a fantastic message from one sister to another, as far as I can tell. "Catherine called said couldn't come up until late sat up with father all night [...] he is very [...] be home before night. Sister"

I cannot make out all the words, but the general idea is clear. I'm fascinated that a casual message was written in the book (no paper to be found at the time?) and that it was signed "Sister".

BOOK FOUR
"Famous Tales of Fairyland and Fancy" edited by Frederick B. De Berard, 1899.

This book is part of "The Famous Tales Series" as the ad states on the 2nd page, claiming that the series "are to-day the most unique and valuable collection of the world's best literature, especially valuable to the thoughtful, home-loving people of the twentieth century."

$1 a copy, three for $2!

A few of the other titles in the series are "Famous Tales of the Sea" including something from Melville, "Famous Tales of Wonder" with works from Irving and Tennyson, "Famous Tales of the Orient" with Aladdin and The Forty Thieves, "Famous Tales of Enchantment" with Kipling and Melville, "Famous Occult Tales" with Irving and Wells.

17 series in all. And I got the fairies. But, it does have "Through the Looking Glass", which was a great prop to use in my Tea Party photo shoot. The girl with the heart-shaped eyepatch is reading this in that shot. This book also has "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" and 8 other works of lesser fame to me.

BOOK FIVE
"The Light of Asia; or, The Great Renunciation (Mahabhinishkramana)" by Edwin Arnold, M.A., 1879.

It has a great silver and gray cover, but the pages are so age-worn that I chose to shoot the inside instead. No markings in the book from long-dead relatives in this one, but it's still one of my favorites, aesthetically.

BOOK SIX
"A Soul's Travel among the Flowers" by May E. Stevenson, 1904.

The cover is one of the least interesting in the whole lot, the font of the text is boring and huge, but there is a full-page photo of Stevenson on the 2nd page with her holding a book and pen that stands out too much to be ignored.

She appears to have written quite a few other books, two of my favorite titles being "Thought Communication by Magnetism" and "Correct Breathing as a Body Builder - A handbook for students of the internal and external systems of breathing".

BOOK SEVEN

"Treatment, or Healing by True Prayer" by Frederick L. Rawson. The book was first published in 1922, a year before Rawson's death, and this 2nd edition was published in 1942. My great-grandmother's name, Jean G. Saylor, is written inside the front cover along with "1946".

Tucked between pages 190 and 191 is a little booklet with the Fourteen Stations and meditations underneath each image. On the front is a stamp reading: "Franciscan Fathers - O.M.C., St. Thomas Catholic Church, box 78, Arlington, Calif."

Going through these, I'm finding a few little trinkets left between the pages here and there. Along with the booklet in book 7, there is some sort of receipt in book 3, for example, that needs to be closely inspectd. After I've shot all the books, I may go through them deeper and document what I find inside as well, if there are enough interesting treasures.