Author: weh3

Transcript of Luis Montesdoca’s Interrogation

A detailed archival record of official interrogations under torture practiced in the secular High Court of the Audiencia de Quito (present-day Ecuador).

Creators:  Judges, notaries, attorneys of the Audiencia de Quito, Baltazar Cárdenas, Luis Montesdoca.

Date of Creation: October 20, 1727.

Place of origin: Ecuador

Physical measurements: 45 folios (4 folios for the transcript) 20×30 cm.

Materials: Paper, iron gall ink

Process by which it was made: Handwriting

Current location: Archivo Nacional del Ecuador, Quito.

Further Reading

Burns, Kathryn.  Into the Archive: Writing and Power in Colonial Peru. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. 

Dean, Carolyn  (2009) “Beyond prescription: notarial doodles and other marks”  Word & Image, 25:3, 293-316 

Herzog, Tamar. Upholding Justice: State, Law and the Penal System in Quito. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004

Hull, Matthew. Government of Paper: The Materiality of Bureaucracy in Urban Pakistan. University of California Press, 2012

Sellers-García, Sylvia. Distance and Documents at the Spanish Empire’s Periphery. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2014.

Information contributed by Agnieszka Czeblakow.

“Who Are the Indians?”

“Who Are the Indians,” from the Juvenile Instructor 1, no. 1 (Jan. 1, 1866), pg. 1.

An 1866 article about Native Americans published for the youth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Creators: Anonymous author (likely George Q. Cannon) and anonymous illustrator.

Date of Creation: 1866

Place of origin: Salt Lake City, Utah Territory

Physical measurements: 26cm., 4 pages

Materials: Ink on paper

Process by which it was made: Typeset and engraved

Current location: Multiple libraries house copies.

Further Reading

Farmer, Jared. On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape. Harvard

University Press, 2009.

Mauss, Armand L. All Abraham’s Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and

Lineage. University of Illinois Press, 2003.

Rees, Nathan. Mormon Visual Culture and the American West. Routledge, 2021.

Reeve, W. Paul. Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness.

New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Information contributed by Nathan Rees.

“Admonitions for Confessors of Natives”

A trilingual (Nahuatl-Spanish-Latin) handbook for missionaries in Mexico.

Creators: Juan Bautista de Viseo

Date of Creation: 1600

Place of origin: Tlatelolco, Mexico

Materials: Vellum covers, rag paper, string, recycled materials.

Process by which it was made: Printed by Melchor Ocharte.

Current location: Special Collections, Mary Couts Burnett Library, Texas Christian University.

Information contributed by Alex Hidalgo.

“The Negro”

Courtesy of the Special Research Collection at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

A 1789 poem by Mary Leadbeater praising Edmund Burke’s speech supporting resolutions to end the slave trade.

Creators: Mary Leadbeater

Date of Creation: 1789

Place of origin: Ballitore, Ireland

Physical measurements: Eight-page manuscript booklet.

Materials: Laid paper, ink

Process by which it was made: Manuscript

Current location: UCSB Library Special Research Collections.

Further Reading

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York, 2018.

Fuentes, Marisa. Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive. Philadelphia, 2016.

Ghaddar, J. J., and Michelle Caswell. “‘To go beyond’: Towards a Decolonial Archival Practice.” Archival Silence 19, no. 2 (June 2019): 71-85.

Hartman, Saidiya. “Venus in Two Acts.” Small Axe 12, no. 2 (June 2008): 1-14.
Schellenberg, Betty. Literary Coteries and the Making of Modern Print Culture, 1740-1790. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Information contributed by Rachael King.

“Unwritten History of Slavery”

Table of Contents for the Unwritten History of Slavery: Autobiographical Account of Ex-Negro Slaves (1945), Fisk University Social Science Institute. Image courtesy of Drew University, Madison, New Jersey.

A 1945 collection of interviews with formerly enslaved African Americans.

Creators: Ophelia Settle Egypt, J. Masuoka, Charles S. Johnson

Date of Creation: 1945

Place of origin: Nashville, Tennessee

Physical measurements: 8 inches x 11 inches, 322 pages plus 5-page introductory note and table of contents.

Materials: Paper

Process by which it was made: Printing

Current location: Drew University Library, Madison, NJ.

Further Reading

“NAACP History: Carter G. Woodson.” NAACP.org. Online. https://www.naacp.org/naacp-history-carter-g-woodson/.

Smith, John David, “Dubois and Phillips – Symbolic Antagonists of the Progressive Era.” The Centennial Review 24, no. 1 (Winter 1980): 88-102.

Stevenson, Louise L. “The New Woman, Social Science, and the Harlem Renaissance: Ophelia Settle Egypt as Black Professional.” The Journal of Southern History 77, no. 3 (Aug. 2011): 555-594.

[Woodson, Carter G.], “Book Review: American Negro Slavery by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips.” Journal of Negro History 4, no. 1 (Jan. 1919): 102-103. Online. 

Yetman, Norman R. “Making the Collection Known.” Under Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938. The Library of Congress. Online. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snintro12.html

Information contributed by Anne M. Ricculli.

Former Site of Printer Christopher Saur’s House

Rudolf Cronau, “Bilder aus Alt-Germantown” (Pictures from old Germantown). Die Gartenlaube. Halbheft (half-issue) 20 (1899): 633

Saur (1693-1758) printed the nation’s first European-language Bible and a widely-read German newspaper.

Creators: Christoph Saur and Family, Trinity Lutheran Church.

Date of Creation: House built in 1731, torn down in 1860, site exists today

Place of origin: Germantown, Philadelphia

Materials: Stone and wood

Current location: Philadelphia

Information contributed by Bethany Wiggin.

Compendio de la Historia de los Estados Unidos

Photograph by Jessica Linker.

Georg Sünder’s personal copy of a Spanish-language translation of Emma Willard’s History of the United States.

Creators: Emma Willard, Miguel Terube Tolón.

Date of Creation: 1852

Place of origin: New York City

Physical measurements: 400 pages

Materials: Blue cloth-covered boards with gilt-stamped flag, leather spine.

Process by which it was made: Print, hand-written annotations.

Current location: Owned by Jessica Linker.

Further Reading

Homestead, Melissa J. “‘When I Can Read My Title Clear’: Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Stowe v. Thomas Copyright Infringement Case.” Prospects 27 (October 2002): 201–45. 

Kanellos, Nicolás, and Helvetia Martell. Hispanic Periodicals in the United States, Origins to 1960: A Brief History and Comprehensive Bibliography. Houston, TX: Arte Publico Press, 2000.

Kelley, Mary. Learning to Stand and Speak: Women, Education, and Public Life in America’s Republic. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.

Lazo, Rodrigo. Writing to Cuba: Filibustering and Cuban Exiles in the United States. Envisioning Cuba. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.

Information contributed by Jessica Linker.

“A Ball by Mrs. Lindsay”

Courtesy of the Library Company of Philadelphia

An eighteenth-century invitation to a ball in Antigua.

Creators: Unknown

Date of Creation: 1768

Place of origin: Saint John’s, Antigua

Physical measurements: 7 x 10 cm

Materials: Heavy paper and ink

Process by which it was made: Text printed, type ornament

Current location: Library Company of Philadelphia

Further Reading

Barringer, Tim and Wayne Modest, eds. Victorian Jamaica. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018.

Frohnsdorff, Gregory. “‘Before the Public’: Some Early Libraries of Antigua.” Libraries & Culture 38 (2003): 1–23. 

Goodman, Glenda. “Joseph Johnson’s Lost Gamuts: Native Hymnody, Materials of Exchange, and the Colonialist Archive.” Journal for the Society of American Music 13.4 (2019): 482-507.

Information contributed by Maria Ryan.

Trilce

A book by the poet César Vallejo, manufactured by inmate-workers at the Lima penitentiary.

Creators: César Vallejo

Date of Creation: 1922

Place of origin: Lima

Physical measurements: 18.6 x 13 cm; 121 pages.

Materials: Paper and ink

Process by which it was made: Printed

Current location: Numerous copies across various libraries and private collections.

Information contributed by Carlos Aguirre.

Catálogo de Tipos, Orlas y Rayas

Courtesy of Biblioteca Nacional de México.

A catalogue of the printing type at Mexico’s government printing office, created by its workers in 1913.

Creators: Talleres de Imprenta y Fototipía de la Secretaría de Fomento.

Date of Creation: 1913

Place of origin: Mexico City

Physical measurements: 33cm, 106 pages.

Materials: Paper and ink

Process by which it was made: Printed

Current location: Biblioteca Nacional de México

Information contributed by Corinna Zeltsman.