Provenance: Massachusetts, new to market.
Contents:
The diary is contained in a fancy, commercially manufactured, bound volume titled HERBARIUM on its front cover that contains approximately forty-one (41) blank, doubled sided, unnumbered, gilt edged pages. Gertrude Holbrook (b.1840-1912) 1/ collected and had mounted dried plant specimens collected as mementoes on each page, accompanied by the date and locale, and her manuscript ink or pencil comments about her activities at that locale. The comments are not scientific or botanical. Common plant names are used throughout, and specimens are often identified by her as native wild flowers and local cultivated flowers. There are seven (7) single inserted, loose sheets of folded paper enclosing loose and mounted specimens similarly annotated with Gertrude's manuscript personal comments.
Altogether there are over two hundred manuscript comments with dateline and approximately 235 plant specimens. Gertrude's personal comments and observations explain when (1845-1871), why and how she came to receive or discover by chance these still beautiful representatives of distant landscapes and startling personal discoveries. Her mature comments after 1866 have the wistfulness of a mature woman's autobiography. Gertrude commits to her diary - with an eye for the future- where she wandered on these solo travels and how she came upon local flora or where she was approached and given unexpected offerings. Some specimens were mailed to her from friends or family in the United States or internationally. A writer credits Gertrude with collecting all of the specimens, thus we are calling this the "Gertrude Holbrook HERBARIUM." It appears her mother had a hand in this work. All pages of the Gertrude Holbrook HERBARIUM are transcribed. Please see below. All pages have been photographed, with selections below.
This American travelogue and diary is remarkable as the work of a young woman in mid-19th c. traveling mostly solo to places of her choosing. Her commentary is political, social, historical and animated by the beauty of the natural landscape. Gertrude Holbrook's diary concentrates on three primary phases of her life: 1845-1847, 1854 [childhood] Aurora, Illinois; [married] 1871 Chicago, Illinois; c.1857 at school in Norton, Massachusetts at the Wheaton Seminary for Women with local trips; and in considerable detail and scope, [single and solo] Summer, 1864 in Nashville, Tennessee and vicinity. Certain pages have dated or undated comments: e.g., the Great Lakes region, Southern Canada (1854, 1857), New Hampshire and New York (1852), Rhode Island (1854). Manuscript identifications of plants are primarily by common and not botanical names, if at all. Gertrude visited mid-19th c. places of general interest for a mid-19th c. traveler, and otherwise she sought out personal destinations.
Gertrude writes on many pages the place names, such as "Cumberland River" [Tennessee] or the city or locale and date where and when each plant specimen was collected often next to an exquisite specimen. Some place names in Rhode Island, such as Providence, Pokonet or Tockwotton House may be a day's outing when on a walking holiday from her studies. Gertrude sometimes gives the name of the person who presents her in the field with a plant specimen, including on one field trip to Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts with her father whose cane was a handy grabbing tool. There are four gifts of flowers credited to Charles Allaire, some given to Gertrude in person, and one by mail of a flower in Illinois or Rhode Island. He is likely a family friend. In 1863-65 Charles B. Allaire was a Union Army soldier stationed in Alabama and Tennessee with the Illinois Eleventh Infantry. The cited correspondence with "Charles" may explain her motivation to travel to Tennessee during the U.S. Civil War.
In Summer, 1864 Gertrude visits Nashville, Tennessee and vicinity and certain well known sites. Commentary in the Gertrude Holbrook HERBARIUM credits several locals who spontaneously give Gertrude a flower or leaf specimen. At "Belle Mont", Mrs. Adelicia Acklen's Belmont Mansion 2/ specimens were "given me by one of the slaves in 1864", a Tulip Magnolia "given me by one of General Jackson's slaves at the Hermitage" and startling her at the "Insane Asylum a beautiful place" a "White Rose given me by a crazy woman in the Insane Asylum near Nashville" and a second flower given by a different "crazy woman." Using a term of the times for a secessionist, a note next to one specimen explains it as a wild flower "near Harpeth Shoals given me by an old Secesh woman" in 1864. Many of these Tennessee wild plants are not named. Gertrude picked them from the banks of the Cumberland River and Shoals perhaps because she didn't know what they were.
For future scholarly study, and to preserve the binding and contents of the bound HERBARIUM without damaging the original, a typed transcription of each page of the Gerturde Holbrook HERBARIUM accompanies this description. Higher resolution digital photographs (color) of each page of the Gerturde Holbrook HERBARIUM are color printed and presented in a loosebound binder. A list of the destinations in the HERBARIUM is included with these materials. Further research about the other individuals Gertrude names remains to be done. There is more to discover. Contemporary plant research about the exquisite and rare, high quality specimens may determine if they are survivors of now extinct species.
I. Description:
The Gertrude Holbrook book is a newly discovered 19th c. American woman's manuscript travelogue illustrated with her personal collection of field mementoes of approximately 235 plant specimens, many annotated only with her comments about when and why she visited a locale. The solo visits to the South during the U.S. Civil War are remarkable. Gertrude collected the plant specimen mementoes in this unique book throughout her life, at home and during her travel throughout the United States. In some instances they were sent to her from out of state, or from abroad from friends or relatives who may have been responding to a request. Some of Gertrude's travel was to attend boarding school at Wheaton Seminary in Norton, Massachusetts, a progressive new school, and at other times appears to be dedicated in part to collecting plants that were her mementoes of purely personal tourist travels.
The question of what initially motivated Gertrude to embark on creating the Gertrude Holbrook HERBARIUM can only be inferred. Perhaps Gertrude was developing this collection as a family heirloom or a shared creative exercise with her mother. Gertrude expresses throughout her book her attentiveness to the beauties and curiosities of the natural world. The name inscribed on the book's inside front free end paper can be read as "Mrs. B.H.[N.?] Holbrook, Aurora, Ills." likely her mother. The handwriting in the Gertrude Holbrook HERBARIUM throughout appears to be of one hand. Mrs. B.H. [N.?}Holbrook may be the writer who has transcribed Gertrude Holbrook's own notes, either received in Gertrude's correspondence to her mother or presented to Mrs. B.H. Holbrook when Gertrude returned home. Gertrude's wedding announcement is also in the book.
External correspondence of at least one individual named in the Gertrude Holbrook HERBARIUM may add to our understanding of Gertrude's remarkable travel to the South during the Civil War, an unusual and risky destination for a Northerner and a single mid.19th c. woman traveling on her own. Charles [B.] Allaire of Aurora, Illinois is named several times in the Gertrude Holbrook HERBARIUM dateline 1864 Nashville, Tennessee and vicinity and one "sent home from Alabama". Certain of Charles B. Allaire's Civil War letters are held in Special Collections. 3/ These letters are cited in literature about the Union Army's strategic canal project undertaken at Lake Providence and Providence, Tennessee to provide a militarily advantageous canal link the Mississippi River for the Union Army. In one such letter addressed to "Professor" Charles describes Tennessee's plants and the natural beauty of the landscape. Is "Professor" possibly Gertrude's father? Further research to study these archived Allaire Civil War letters, and to locate others is warranted to add to our understanding of Charles Allaire's own interests and relationship with Gertrude, and to why she was in Tennessee in 1864 perhaps at times accompanied by him although he was in active U.S. Civil War military service.
The Gertrude Holbrook archive straddles the decades before, during and after the Civil War. The Gertrude Holbrook HERBARIUM entries are organized for the most part chronologically, although the earliest dates are at the back of the book. Thus, the book was created and perhaps may be best read back to front for the actual timeline of Gertrude's collecting. Some pages are not dated. The earliest dated page in the book records Gertrude's first memento in 1845 "Flower of the Century Plant Picked in New York and given me by Josiah." This may be her maternal grandfather. The second memento on an early page is dated 1846 "Flowers from our old garden in Aurora, Ills." 4/ One page in the book has a specimen with a note that Gertrude picked flowers from the yard of her grandfather's old house in Aurora. The Holbrook Mill (c.1840-1843) was built by a John Holbrook and is one of the earliest buildings in Aurora. Perhaps this is Gertrude's father or paternal grandfather. The third earliest date with a memento of a flower is dated 1852, "Wild flower from grandmother Nyes grave in Berlin N.Y. picked by myself in July 1852." The "Mop-From an old stone wall in Berlin the wall laid by my great grandfather Hubbard [?]" is on the same page and likely from the same trip. The 1852 entry may be to her maternal grandparents' home in Berlin, on the Massachusetts-New York border.
The Gertrude Holbrook HERBARIUM is thus a diary of Gertrude's childhood years at home (1845-46), on family trips to her mother's East Coast home and later at school at the Wheaton Seminary for Women (c. 1857-1859)5/ in Norton, Massachusetts (in 1903 Wheaton College). One composition of many flowers and plants "Norton wild flowers gathered and pressed by Gertrude while she was there at school" includes two Lady Slippers, a native Massachusetts orchid that is now scarce. Before and after Wheaton Seminary Gertrude travels to Canada, New England, Berlin, New York, New Jersey. She sought out historic places. In Rhode Island, she visited Pokonet, the Native American settlement. And she sought out a social reform institution, the Tockwotton House, a school built as a cluster of stone "cottages" that was established in 1847 by the Providence City Council as a reform school for boys, mostly poor who were sent by the court for care and to improve their prospects with education at what became a highly regarded residential school.
The Gertrude Holbrook HERBARIUM has additional aspects of a family diary. A newspaper clipping pasted on a page near the beginning of the book is Gertrude's Christmas Eve, Aurora, Illinois newspaper wedding announcement, placed below her bouquet. Her husband name is " I.[saac] N.[ewton] Hardin"./ One subsequent page in the book records that specimens were collected "while out for a walk with the children" - Gertrude or Gertrude's mother?
In 1864, a year after the Emancipation Proclamation and at the height of the U.S. Civil War, Gertrude travels from the North, possibly from Aurora, Illinois, to Nashville, Tennessee and vicinity a previously Union occupied city. She was likely in her early twenties. Tennessee was the last state to secede, and anti-slavery sentiment was strong in the Eastern and Central part of the state. Secessionist advocates tended to the Western half of the state. Gertrude's travels may indicate there was regular or irregular North/South travel across Civil War border states than commonly noted in histories. Gertrude writes that she accepts a flower from an enslaved person at least twice. She writes that she accepts a flower from an old woman secessionist on the banks of the Cumberland River. She appears unafraid to wander in these unfamiliar social settings.Gertrude visits the Nashville City Cemetery. She comments in her travel diary about the toll of the Civil War in one note accompanying a flower from a soldier's grave "one among ten thousand" in General Jackson's Army. She honors another soldier by name at "John Washington's grave". Felix Zollicoffer's grave is also noted. This is unusual first person commentary at the grave site in the South by a Northerner.
The section of the Gertrude Holbrook HERBARIUM that pertains to Nashville is one of its most intriguing. What drew Gertrude to the South during the Civil War? How did she as a single woman travel from either Aurora, Illinois or a different Northern location to Tennessee and areas along the Cumberland River? Commercially published traveller's guides were certainly available6/ and the Nashville & Chattanooga R.R. became a United States Military Railroad. 7/
The Gertrude Holbrook HERBARIUM is a unique conversation with and about flowers including then contemporary Civil War news. Another dimension to the Gertrude Holbrook HERBARIUM is the ongoing literary conversation between Gertrude and the compiler, likely Gertrude's mother, found in the manuscript notes accompanying many of the mounted plant specimens. The book's narrative sometimes refers to letters received by friends outside of Illinois. The Gertrude Holbrook HERBARIUM functionally is a multi-person letter archive, posting news sent among family and friends who lived throughout the country. One heavily ironic entry in the book is about a specimen "Given by Mr. P.L. Underwood of Chicago from a plant in his garden raised from seed brought from the place supposed to have been the Garden of Eden."
II. Themes:
There are many themes in mid-19th c. American history raised by the Gertrude Holbrook HERBARIUM. One is mid-19th c. woman's higher education, not social manners but substantive academic knowledge which Wheaton Seminary (founded 1835) offered in its curriculum to Gertrude. Another theme is how during the U.S. Civil War ordinary Americans attempted to go about their business, traveling both in industrialized and rural Union territory and into Confederate secessions notwithstanding the ongoing hostilities of the U.S. Civil War. Finally, this book is a first person record of the experience of the early 19th c. Holbrook family, originally Easterner's who emigrated to the new western territory, and settled in Illinois when towns were still forming. The book is also a remarkable first person, sociological record. The Gertrude Holbrook HERBARIUM illustrates that the family became prosperous enough to travel back East with their children in order to maintain that generation's knowledge of their Northeast settler origins. Gertrude's father also travels from Illinois to Norton so that together they may visit Plymouth Rock in Plymouth, Massachusetts near Norton to witness the landing place, not so distant, of the first English settlers in the Northeast. The Gertrude Holbrook HERBARIUM proves the enduring value of this lore.
The Gertrude Holbrook HERBARIUM was not undertaken as a scientific sampling of plants. The Gertrude Holbrook HERBARIUM is her unique, personal record over a twenty-six year span of her relationship with the natural world. Yet Gertrude's book differs entirely from a conventional 19th c. woman's poetic gathering of petals in the language of flowers, e.g. The Floral Keepsake for 1850. 8/ Gertrude appears to have selected flowers for which she does not know the plant name. She visits both tourist places and unnamed spots on river banks, mountain tops, stone walls, oceanfront and fresh water islands - and she visits different climate zones as adventure travel during which she collect wild flowers and plants. Her notes are not romantic or poetic. Gertrude also includes plant specimens to record current events: there is a unique grey tinged specimen, dated "October 12, 1871, Chicago just after the Great Fire" fresh from Chicago that embodies the ash of that now 150 year old conflagration. On maps, the Great Chicago Fire is a marker in Chicago's urban landscape and history. Gertrude intuitively accepts this ashen flower as a memento of a major historic event.
Conclusion:
There is much to absorb in the Gertrude Holbrook Herbarium. This analysis only summarizes the considerable original source material, suggesting a framework for seeing the unique and remarkable 50 pages of content from a variety of perspectives: this is American culture and it is American history, including environmental history. This essay suggests some highlights and themes. Please enjoy and take time with these vital plants themselves for their surprising freshness. We can recognize many of these plants. The Gertrude Holbrook HERBARIUM is also an invaluable inventory of America's loss of habitat and the extinction of many plant species. The book is a slice of life in mid-19th c. America and a private, civic interlude during the U.S. Civil War. The book is a mid-19th c. American first person account by a woman narrated over a twenty-six year period of her life filled with curiosity about this world.
Notes:
1. two genealogies match our Gertrude, both date her birth 1840, New York/New Jersey and d. 1912; mother Betsy W. Huntoon b. 1814, Berlin, Vermont d. 1885 Brooklyn, NY, buried Aurora, Ill. and father John Holbrook b. 1794 Massachusetts d. 1866 Aurora, Ill. m.1839; Gertrude m. Isaac N.[ewton]Hardin (b.1838, d. 1921) in 1865, Illinois: three children, John Hardin (1866), Gertrude Hardin (1868), and Geraldine Hardin (1871), Illinois. see, Mrs Betsey N. Huntoon Holbrook (1814-1885) buried in West Aurora Cemetery located in Aurora, IL | People Legacy
2. Belmont Mansion History - Adelicia Acklen was one of the wealthiest plantation owners in Tennessee. Her Italianate mansion was designed by the same architect who designed the Nashville Insane Asylum, which Gertrude describes in her Herbarium as a beautiful place.
3. see LSU, Univ. Tennessee. Please see also: The Papers of the Blue and Gray Papers Society, "The Winter of 1863: Grant's Louisiana Canal Expedition", Caroline Pace Davis, BGES, Danville, Virginia 1997 Microsoft Word - #4, complete - monograph_4_complete.pdf, in the Bibliography, Unpublished Material, Allaire Collection, Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collection, LSU, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, quoting Charles B. Allaire 1863 letter to "Professor":
"Providence is a small town of only a few hundred inhabitants on the Louisiana shore of the Mississippi about 300 miles below Memphis. . . . I think this country comes as near to my idea of Paradise as is possible . . . this fills my expectations of the "Sunny South." flowers are already in bloom. Our camp is pitched on the western bank of Lake Providence her Peach trees have been in bloom 3 or 4 weeks. . . . The road . . . is bordered on either side with the Palmetto,
China trees filled with little white balls about the size of the end of your little fingers and there is trees filled with moss hanging down like a goat's beard.108"
Charles B. Allaire was mustered out of the 105 Regiment, Illinois Infantry Volunteers, promoted to Sergeant Major, Aurora, 1865.
4. Aurora, Illinois, 1840, Township 38 North, Range 8 East - Historic Maps of Aurora - Illinois Digital Archives The Holbrook Mill is a state designated landmark 1840.
5. Journal of school founder Eliza B. Wheaton 1875, Friday 5(1875), "...Gertrude Holbrook now Mrs. Harding of Chicago... pupil(s) at Seminary in 1858- at Delavan
House-".
6. For example, the Traveller's Guide to the Hudson River ...Falls of Niagara..Also to the Green and White Mountains with map, J. Disturnell, NY 1864. In 1863, Colton published a map of the Southern States.
7. Please see The First Railroad in Tennessee for railroad history of this era.
8. The Floral Keepsake for 1850, John Keese, Editor, Leavitt and Company, New York M.DCCC.L. (1850)
III. Maps as Research Aids:
Aurora Historic Maps, please see Historic Maps of Aurora - Illinois Digital Archives
IV. Bibliography
Wheaton College, 1834-1957: a Massachusetts Family Affair
Paul C. Helmreich
Cornwall Books, New York and London 2002
Wheaton College, 1834-1957 : a Massachusetts family affair [web edition]
V. Gertrude Holbrook Herbarium: Locales Identified
United States:
Alabama c. 1863-64 reference to Charles Allaire sending home specimens in his letter from the South.
Illinois: Aurora, 1846 2nd entry Flowers from Our old garden in Aurora Ills., given me by Gertrude
Aurora, 1858 Mr. Holbrook's father's old house. Walked with two of his nieces, Ermeline and Sarah.
Peru, 1854 Picked from the old stone house in Peru-out for a ride with the children, September, 1854
Chicago, Oct. 13, 1871, after the fire, plants from Mr. P.L. Underwood including one said to be from a seed from the Garden of Eden
Massachusetts, c.1857? Cape Cod, Marshfield, near Mt. Auburn, Nahant, Norton c. 1857, Plymouth, Plymouth Rock, Old Plymouth Burying Ground, Stoughton, 1864
Michigan, Lake Mackinac
Green Bay ? March, 1864 by Ann when carrying home father's dead body
New Hampshire White Mountains, Franconia Range, top of Mt. Lafayette
New Jersey Montclair, Patterson (1854) given me by mother from Mrs. Crosby
New York 1845 - first entry, flower of the Country Plants picked in New York and given me by Josiah 1845
1852, Berlin, Grandmother Nye's grave and Great Grandfather Hubbard, mop plant found near stone wall, Berlin, New York
West Point
Rhode Island 1854 Picked at Pokanoket, Smithfield R.I. (vic. of Mt. Hope) [Historic Pokanoket First People of East Bay, Bristol, Rhode Island. They welcomed the Pilgrims.]
1854, Providence given me by Frank, brought from Providence
Tockwotton House
Tennessee:
Nashville, 1864, summer Belle Monte, 177 acre mansion of Adelicia Acklen (1859- 1860) remodeled (1859-60) with architect Adolphus Heiman occupied by Union Troops, a flower picked by a slave.
Nashville, 1864 The Hermitage, General Jackson's estate, a flower picked by one of General Jackson's slaves
Nashville, 1864 Tennessee Hospital for the Insane in Nashville. Also designed by architect Adolphus Heiman.
Nashville, 1864 Nashville City Cemetery with comments on Grave of Zollicoffe, a "Soldier's Grave" in General Jackson's army "one among ten thousand", John Washington's grave
Harpeth Shoals On the banks of the Cumberland River Old Secesh Woman
Shoals of the Cumberland
Cumberland Banks
Vermont, Montpelier
International:
Canada:
1857 Canada side of Niagara Falls
1864 Sault St. Marie
Fall, 1864 Marquette
Italy sent from Lake Como and Lake Lugano
Scotland sent from Furness Abbey (?)