News from the DeGolyer Library August 2022

“Send Me a Postcard! Women on the Road across 19th-20th Century America” highlights women’s voices and their stories across America’s roadways. Though travel has generally been associated with men, and the male prerogative of exploration, investment, and research, women have always been on the move. Women traveled for a variety of reasons including education and knowledge, a sense of adventure, and a newfound freedom to move outside of their traditional sphere. This exhibition examines the experiences of women travelers. From a group of college students on a summer road trip, to an anthropologist documenting the American Southwest, from trips to National Parks, to diners and dives, these manuscripts and narratives are full of memories and adventures and represent a variety of perspectives.

Included in the exhibit are trailblazers such as Blanche Stuart Scott, the first person to inaugurate a transcontinental motor trip for the purpose of interesting women in the value of motor car driving; Alice Huyler Ramsey, who in 1909 was the first woman to drive an automobile across the United States from coast to coast; and Harriet White Fisher Andrew, the first woman to circle the globe in a Locomobile. Also highlighted are everyday ladies on family vacations and girls’ trips. Elizabeth Dalrymple, who motored with her friends from Pennsylvania to Colorado in 1940, said of travel: “never worry about getting lost out here in the great open spaces, as every road eventually leads to somewhere, no matter how lonely or how long.” Documents such as these provide invaluable insight into women’s experiences traveling and what life was like for women on the road. While no two experiences are alike, these narratives weave together women’s shared experiences with life on the road, demonstrating in fact that “women can handle an automobile just as well as men.”

“Send Me a Postcard” features materials from the DeGolyer Library’s holdings of rare books, pamphlets, ephemera, and manuscripts, including the Archives of Women of the Southwest.

April 28 – September 2

Hillcrest Exhibit Hall, Fondren Library West

8:30 a.m. – 5 p.m., M- F

The Joy of Cooking: Two Centuries of Cookbooks at the DeGolyer Library highlights the vast collection of cookbooks preserved in our library. These cookbooks are a storehouse of recipes, as well as a sign of technological, sociological, cultural, and economic change over time. From handwritten recipe collections and household guides of the 19^th century, to ‘reducing’ cookbooks of the 1920s and the rationing cookbooks of World War II, this exhibit will chart changing attitudes and approaches to homecooked meals. The Joy of Cooking exhibit will also examine food communities in America, including Jewish cuisine, African American foodways, and church and community cookbooks. If we are what we eat, cookbooks can tell us much about our character in the past.

In her latest blog post, librarian Cynthia Franco detailed her summer housekeeping project, organizing and rehousing our collection of miniature books. The books all measure 10 cm or less in length, and include bibles and juvenile literature. Many of the books were published by Stanley Marcus’ Somesuch Press, and were donated to the DeGolyer from his personal collection. Click here to read more about our miniature books.

This month, Joan Gosnell, University Archivist, was a co-panelist in the virtual workshop Trauma Informed Collecting, hosted by the Society of Southwest Archivists. The workshop addressed the challenges faced by archivists, oral historians, and folklore collectors when dealing with trauma as a collection topic, as well as when going through traumatic periods themselves, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic. Joan talked about her involvement with the Voices of SMU Oral History Project (team members pictured here) which documents the experiences of the SMU students, faculty, staff, and alumni, and particularly with the “Class of COVID” special project. With registration at full capacity and participants from the entire southwest region, the workshop was recorded and will be posted on the SSA YouTube channel at a later date.

Clare Ennis, a recent SMU graduate and former student assistant in the SMU Archives, has published a research article, “Notes from a pandemic: the class of COVID oral history project at Southern Methodist University,” in The Historian. “Notes from the pandemic” examines how the pandemic exacerbated disparities along racial and socioeconomic lines across the SMU community. As an undergraduate, Clare served as a research assistant on the Class of COVID Oral History project. Congratulations Clare!

The Ridge family papers include John Ridge’s 1835 journal while he was a Cherokee Nation delegate to Washington D.C. when the Cherokee Nation was in the process of ceding all Cherokee lands east of the Mississippi. Also included in the collection are letters from Arkansas, photographs, newspaper clippings, printed material, poetry by John Rollin Ridge, a leather pouch, and Elias Boudinott’s published speech, An address to the whites (1826).

This collection contains Chicago and North Western Railway detail drawings, architectural drawings for various stations and facilities, and some track charts and railroad ephemera.

Recently Accessioned

A2022.0033c – Collection of 1984 Republican Convention memorabilia

A2022.0034c – Frances Gillette family correspondence

A2022.0035 – Louise Thelma Shofner scrapbook

A2022.0036c – “The Pioneer” Aunt Pearl’s Story

A2022.0037c – Winnie Wackwitz audiotapes

A2022.0038c – The girl graduate, her own book : scrapbook by Viola May White

How to Cook and Eat in Chinese, by Buwei Yang Chao, was first published in 1945, and is considered the first Chinese cookbook to connect with a wide American audience. How to Cook features recipes, as well as a discussion of Chinese cooking techniques and culture. It was written by Buwei, a medical doctor born in the Jiangsu province in 1889, while her family was living in Massachusetts during WWII, and it’s publication was a family affair–her daughter Rulan Chao helped her collect over 200 recipes, and her husband, linguist Yuen Ren Chao, aided in writing the text. The couple coined the terms “pot sticker” and “stir fry” for the publication. Click here to learn more.

The Frances Gillettte family correspondence collection contains letters between a young woman living in Arizona in the 1910s, and her family in Massachusetts. We have the Ruth Morgan Fund to thank for this accession. Ruth Morgan was SMU’s first woman provost, and a founder and long-time Advisory Board member of the Archives of the Women of the Southwest. Her papers are housed at the DeGolyer, and in addition to her acquisition fund, she endowed the Ruth P. Morgan grant to support researchers in women’s and political history. Click here to learn more about the Ruth P. Morgan Research Travel Grant.

30 images from the Elmer and Diane Powell Collection on Mexico and the Mexican Revolution were uploaded to the digital library last month. These images, which date from around 1910 to 1920, depict battles in Ciudad Juarez, scenes of urban combat, and soldaderas–women in the military who participated in combat, pictured here. Click here to explore the collection.