The Daguerreian Society: DagNews (original) (raw)

On this day (June 29. . .in some unknown year) R.H. Vance wrote the following letter "Southworth & Co. The letter is now in the collection of the George Eastman House.

                                 Dover June 29th [no year.]

Messrs. Southworth & Co.

I should like to have you send me one set of your Plate Holders and one good [undecipherable]. I want you to be sure and send them to day by Niles Express, for I want them to send away to morrow. I shall be to the city before long and I will call and pay you for them.

                    Yours in hast [sic]
                         RH Vance

Two further items of interest regard previous DagNews posts of this month:

I received this delightful communication from Joan Gage regarding my post of June 9 of the article, "An Old Art Revived" by Poppy Cannon (published in "The Mentor" in June 1929):

I just got back from Europe after two weeks and was catching up on my DagNews. I was astonished and delighted to read the article from the Mentor written by Poppy Cannon in 1929. After I graduated from Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism in 1964, I went to work for the Ladies' Home Journal and Poppy Cannon was my first boss. She was then the food editor for the Ladies Home Journal and a real character. One of her five husbands had been Walter White, a blue-eyed gentleman who could easily pass for white but he was one of the founders of the NAACP and the inspiration for Sinclair Lewis's "Kingsblood Royal." Poppy Cannon herself was about six feet tall and always wore turbans which made her even taller. She was a wonderful character--a real eccentric--and for me, being one of her worker bees was not easy, for she considered that my job description included cleaning her home, writing her by-lined column, preparing her meals and generally taking care of her. It was interesting that, in all the time she was working as food editor for Ladies Home Journal and turning out recipes daily, the stove in her apartment was never hooked up and working, and she sent me out daily to get her take-out food. I have dozens of Poppy Cannon stories (which I won't bore you with now.) She was one of the great old-time autocratic women's magazine editors and I have affectionate feelings for her and real sympathy despite the fact that I was often the victim of her helplessness.
Sadly, in the end she committed suicide by throwing herself out of her window onto Fifth Avenue--the same fate as that of Amy Vanderbilt, another one of the editors of that period on the Ladies' Home Journal. They don't make magazine editors like that any more. (In fact, my 24-year-old daughter is now a magazine editor in New York.) In the old days the assistants had to iron their boss's clothes and pass out hors d'oeuvres at the cocktail parties. It was a real blast from the past to read the Poppy Cannon article that was written years before I was born. Thanks again. I'm a real fan of DagNews.

Best, Joan Gage

Nick Graver has nudged me to mention more regarding the source of two recent DagNews posts. My source was from the on-line database, "Accessible Archives Search and Information Server: Primary Source Material from Early American Periodicals." (http://204.170.102.11/) Both newspapers from which I quoted are from the collection of African-American newspapers. Here is the on-line information regarding the newspapers.

"The North Star" (Rochester, New York) In publication from December 3, 1847 to April 17, 1851 (DagNews post of June 8, "The Hanging in Boston, and who went to see it")

Frederick Douglass (c. 1837-1895) was born into slavery at Tuckahoe, Maryland, escaped in 1838, and safely reached New Bedford, Mass. There he worked three years as a daily laborer on the wharves, and in 1841 became a lecturer on slavery. In 1845, afraid of being again placed in bondage, he fled to England. There, friends furnished Douglass with enough money to purchase his freedom and establish himself in the publishing business. In 1847, with Douglass and M.R. Delaney as editors, The North Star was established: "...It has long been our anxious wish to see, in this slave-holding, slave-trading, and negro-hating land, a printing-press and paper, permanantly established, under the complete control and direction of the immediate victims of slavery and oppression..."

"Provincial Freeman" (Chatham, Canada West) In publication from 1854 to 1857 (DagNews post of June 23, "United States. Colored Exhibitors at the Ohio Mechanics' Institute.")

This weekly newspaper was edited and published by negroes in the Province of Canada West (now called Ontario) where many fugitive slaves from the United States had settled. The first number, intended as a specimen, was issued at Windsor, dated March 24, 1854. The editor was Samuel A. Ward. Mary Ann (Shadd) Carey was born on October 9, 1823, into a prominent black family, in Wilmington, Delaware; the eldest of thirteen children. When she was ten years old, her parents moved to West Chester, Pennsylvania, where she attended a Quaker school for 5 years. Early in her life she became dedicated to the promotion of self- reliance and independence among black Canadians. She helped found The PROVINCIAL FREEMAN and became the first black North American female editor and publisher, with the purpose of transforming black refugees into model citizens. In 1856 she married Thomas F. Carey, of Toronto, and the couple lived in Chatham, Canada, until his death in 1860. Mary Carey ultimately moved to Washington, D.C. where she opened a school for black children and in 1870 she became the first black woman lawyer in the United States. The PROVINCIAL FREEMAN was devoted to Anti-Slavery, Temperance and General Literature, and was affiliated with no particular Political Party. Its prospectus stated, "it will open its columns to the views of men of different political opinions, reserving the right, as an independent Journal, of full expression on all questions or projects affecting the people in a political way; and reserving, also, the right to express emphatic condemnation of all projects, having for their object in a great or remote degree, the subversion of the principles of the British Constitution, or of British rule in the Provinces." In July, 1856, the office was seized for debt and publication was suspended until Nov. 25, when No. 16 was issued. The volume was closed with No. 49, August 22, 1857.

Posted for your enjoyment. Gary W. Ewer

06-29-99