| Title |
National Monument to the Forefathers 1863 |
| Category |
| Booklet, gallery |
| Date |
|
1863 |
| Why It's Interesting |
|
This booklet was issued as part of the campaign to erect at Plymouth Rock [called Forefathers' Rock] a 70′ statue [on an 80-foot tall and wide base] called the National Monument to the Forefathers. I first ran across this effort as a graduate student in the early ’80s researching popular sculpture in the mid-19th century. This project still remains obscure. The operating committee also issued to this end the Illustrated Pilgrim Almanac in 1860. The booklet shown here has many interesting essays and illustrations addressing early-American history. Also a section on more recent immigration to the U. S. Most interesting though for art historians is the section at the back on the monument itself. The tall statue was “Faith.” Smaller seated figures at the base were to be Morality, Education, Law, and Liberty. Oblong bas-reliefs below these represented “Departure from Delfthaven,” “Signing of the Social Compact in the Cabin of the May Flower,” “Landing at Plymouth,” and “The First Treaty with the Indians.” Small niches flanking Morality had figures of a prophet and an evangelist. The booklet then gave instructions on how to contribute toward the effort and provided a full list of members [contributors] divided by state and city. The great bulk lived in Massachusetts, especially Boston. This fascinating item is actually one of the more common pieces to appear on this site, in that around 50 libraries report possessing it. |
This website seeks to encourage researchers and collectors to discover and study obscure ephemera that document American culture and life. Worldcat reveals that most of the items that I post cannot be found in more than a few research libraries–often none at all. Alternately, research libraries do not bother to catalog ephemeral publications like these. I believe, however, that because these were distributed free, or at nominal cost, to consumers, they were the publications most likely to make their way into homes and be read by large numbers of Americans.
I acquire pre-1960 examples of the kinds of publications that prove so useful when scholars study 19th-Century America. The limited competition that I encounter for them suggests that libraries, which could easily outbid me, have little interest in post-Civil War and 20th-century ephemeral publications in general.
I try to anticipate what materials future historians will find useful. Being an historian first and a collector second, I organized this website to encourage others to do this too—even if this means new competition for me. I am aware that I could be wrong in prizing particular ephemera or even whole classes of ephemera. I may even be wrong to encourage scholars to study obscure ephemeral publications; these may be obscure for good reason.
Ephemerastudies.org will permit me to share with others the information and imagery that I am acquiring, and to benefit from the knowledge, intelligence and experience of other scholars and collectors. Please contact me with your impressions of the site.