More on Georgia O'Keeffe at Wiawaka

Early on in my research on Wiawaka I found a newspaper reference to artist Georgia O'Keeffe having spent the month of June 1908 on the property. It seemed at the time that she stayed at what is now Wakonda Lodge, which at that point in 1908 was still owned by Spencer and Katrina Trask. O'Keeffe was one of several artists from New York City who were chosen, based on their skill, to spend time at what the newspaper article describe as Trask's property.

Click the image to see it larger.

Tonight, however, while transcribing one of the Wiawaka guest registers, I found the entry for Georgia O'Keeffe and several of the other artists. This suggests they may not have stayed in Wakonda Lodge but in Fuller House, Rose Cottage, Mayflower Cottage, or Pine Cottage. She stayed in Room No. 18, though there is no indication of which building that might have been. Further work with the guest registers and other archival documents may provide the answer...

Research: Schlesinger Library

The Schlesinger Library. Radcliffe Yard is undergoing major work this summer,
so there are construction fences everywhere! July 24, 2012

I am currently researching at the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, part of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.(1)

In the archives at the Schlesinger are two collections from two other holiday houses: Fernside and Rockport Lodge (click on the names of these places to read the finding aids). Both were in operation at the same time as Wiawaka. Looking at their archives will give me a sense of how alike and different these similar vacation houses were. In the Wiawaka archives are promotional materials from Fernside, so they were certainly aware of each other!

Right now, I am transcribing index cards of visitors to Fernside so I can get a sense of who their visitors were, and can then compare them to those who visited Wiawaka.



(1) This research is generously funded by a Dissertation Research Grant from the Schlesinger Library.

Bunco Party!

Bunco Party, August 18, 1938. Wiawaka Holiday House Archives, Box 1.
Image use courtesy of Rensselaer County Historical Society, Troy, New York.*

In 1938, someone kept "YE OLE SCRAP BOOK - Parties, Teas, etc.." a typescript manuscript detailing the day-to-day entertainments of those staying at and visiting Wiawaka.(1) Spanning the summer, the book was likely kept by a staff member who was on-site all season -- perhaps the Housemother.

One of the games recorded in the book is Bunco, a dice game with origins in eighteenth century England and a history in the US that begins in 1855 during the California gold rush. By the late nineteenth century, Bunco was popular across the US. It remained popular through Prohibition, but largely faded from play by 1940.(2) While I'm not sure what it means, I find it interesting that Bunco was played at Wiawaka during the years it was declining in popularity. Unfortunately, we don't have the games rosters from earlier years to know whether it had a history at the site during its heyday.

One of the Bunco Party entries in Ye Ole Scrap Book, dated August 18, 1938 (and pictured above) reads:

On Thursday evening the Misses Fagans conducted a Bunco Party. Twenty two guests attended and from the noise that prevailed a very happy time was enjoyed by all present.
Miss Caroline Chadwick, from Ohio, won the following prizes:
     1. Door prize.
     2. Dark horse.
     3. Table prize.
Miss Chadwick certainly walked off with the prizes. The seventeenth must be her lucky day.
The prizes were numerous and each guest received one.
The Misses Oliver and Milspaugh assisted in the party preparations.(1)

Traditionally played with 12 to 20 players at tables of four, three dice are rolled and points allocated. Roll three of a kind and BUNCO! Bunco equipment is minimal: three 6-sided dice, one "fuzzy die" (you can substitute a different colored, regular-sized die!), a bell (or you can yell "DING"!), and score paper. A set of complete rules are available at the World Bunco Association website.

Sources:
1. Wiawaka Holiday House (1938) Ye Ole Scrap Book, Wiawaka Holiday House Archives, Box 1. Rensselaer County Historical Society, Troy, New York.
2. World Bunco Association (2012) Bunco History. www.worldbunco.com/history.html


Notes:
*  I was using ambient light while taking reference photos of documents. The shadow at the bottom of the page is my head...

Research: Rensselaer County Historical Society

Rensselaer County Historical Society, Troy, New York. June 20, 2012

I spent several days researching Wiawaka at the Rensselaer County Historical Society in Troy, New York. They have a great library and archives, including an extensive Wiawaka Holiday House archive. The Wiawaka archives includes annual reports, receipts and bills, financial statements, guest registers, advertising pieces, and newspaper clippings, to name just a few. Bonus: it's air conditioned.

Just up the street from the RCHS is St. John's Episcopal Church. Founded in 1830, Wiawaka founder Mary Wiltse Fuller was a member of this church. The short history of the church on their website tells of the active involvement of other members, including women, in other areas of reform.

St. John's Episcopal Church, Troy, New York. June 20, 2012

New York State History Conference Schedule

The schedule for the 33rd Conference on New York State History has been posted, and is available online (click here for a .pdf version). Over 60 papers and presentations are scheduled between June 14 and 16, 2012. There are some really fantastic sessions and papers on offer; choosing which to attend will be difficult.

Our panel on the Reformative Power of Women's Leisure, which includes a presentation on Wiawaka, will be on Saturday, June 16 from 10:30am to 12:00 noon. Hope to see you there!

Who Were These People? GIS and Wiawaka's Visitors

Back in January, I introduced GIS as a tool to help understand Wiawaka's history.  I will use this post to give some concrete examples of how this works.

Last summer, when I had the opportunity to do preliminary documentary research, I recorded some of the guest books. I wanted to explore who the visitors to Wiawaka were, and the guest books include information like the person's name, address, religion, how much they paid for their room, and how long they stayed. This information, coupled with information available in the census for their home-town (who they were living with, age, color, occupation, whether they owned or rented their home, whether they were literate or not, etc.) can paint a fairly detailed image of who visited Wiawaka. I used the sample data I collected to see what sorts of information GIS would reveal. Click on the images to make them larger and make the data easier to read.

The data I had to work from was a sample of one hundred guests who visited Wiawaka in 1931 (see Figure 1). Unfortunately, although the 1930 census has recently been made available, it has not been completely indexed for searching. New York is one of the states that has not yet been indexed, and I did not have time to manually search the census for individuals living in larger cities like New York City! So, I could not incorporate the census data in my trial run.

Figure 1: Sample entry page from a Wiawaka guest book. Courtesy Wiawaka Holiday
House Archives, Rensselaer County Historical Society, Troy, NY

Loosely using Fyfe and Holdsworth's (2009) study of small-town hotel guest registers from other locations in New York state, I ran analyses of the home residence data of 100 of Wiawaka's 1931 guests. The very limited sample that I used provided some interesting suggestions about Wiawaka's guests in the early years of the Depression. Please note: these results are extremely preliminary! More in-depth analysis is needed to draw any conclusions, but I did see enough with this data to convince me that I will be using GIS in my analysis. Here are a couple of examples of the analyses I looked at.

Using GIS, I mapped the location which each of the 100 sampled 1931 visitors listed as their home residence in the guest book. While each location shows up only once on the resulting map, each location may (and often does) represent more than one visitor.

Figure 2: Where visitors came from, and their 1931 "Center of Gravity"

1) Measuring the visitors' "center of gravity." I asked the GIS program to calculate a value known as the central feature of the points, or locations, that I mapped (see Figure 2). This shows the average location of all the points, taking into account both distance from each other and the number of individuals from each place (a location with many Wiawaka visitors, therefore, would have more influence or "pull" on the central feature than a location with only one Wiawaka visitor). The central feature for the sample of one hundred 1931 visitors was located just south of Troy. This, in and of itself, is not terribly interesting. However, by calculating the central feature for many years worth of Wiawaka visitors will show if, and how, the geographical demographic changed. For example, if the central feature for the 1920 visitor data is located further south than that for 1930, it will indicate that, in 1920, more people visited Wiawaka from New York City and vicinity than from Troy. To me, this data is interesting if it shows shifts and if it shows no shifts -- the implications of a changing demographic or one that stays the same are equally interesting.

Figure 3: Proximity of visitor residence to Wiawaka.

2) Proximity of visitor residence to Wiawaka. I used the GIS program to draw rings around Wiawaka at 50-mile increments so that I could see how far people were traveling to visit (see Figure 3). While Fyfe and Holdsworth found that most of the visitors to their hotels came from within a 50 mile radius (2009), this was true only for 30% of the sampled Wiawaka visitors. Curiously, there was a concentration of visitors coming from the ring representing a distance of 150 to 200 miles from Wiawaka, including people from New York City and northeastern New Jersey; Scranton, Pennsylvania; and Ithaca and Rochester, New York.

Figure 4: Mapping Wiawaka visitor residences and railroad lines.

3) Influence of the Railroad? Changes in transportation routes and technology have been used to explain changes in visitor patterns at sites, including hotels. These include road improvements, railroad lines, canal access, and later in the twentieth century, changes in automobile technology. To see if transportation routes may have played a role in the pattern of visitors to Wiawaka (especially perhaps to explain that large group traveling between 150 and 200 miles) I plotted the home residences of Wiawaka visitors on a map showing rail lines (see Figure 4). Interesting: all of the 100 visitors sampled from the 1931 guest register lived in a town or city along a railway line. The 150 to 200 mile distance from Wiawaka may represent the distance/travel time that visitors are willing to travel by rail to spend a few days at Lake George.


Sources:
Fyfe, David A. and Deryck W. Holdsworth (2009) Signatures of Commerce in Small-Town Hotel Guest Registers. Social Science History 33(1): 17-45

The Reformative Power of Women's Leisure

The Reformative Power of Women's Leisure in Progressive-Era New York State, a session organized by Monica Mercado, a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago and myself has been accepted for the upcoming Conference on New York State History. The conference will be at Niagara University, near Buffalo, New York June 14-16, 2012.  We don't know when our session will be, yet, but here are our participants:

"Summer School for the Soul: Women at the Catholic Summer School of America"
Monica L. Mercado, Co-Organizer and Presenter
PhD Candidate, Department of History, University of Chicago

"Girl Guests and The Spirit of God in Woman: Retreat and Reform at Wiawaka Holiday House, Lake George, New York"
Megan E. Springate, Co-Organizer and Presenter
PhD Student, Department of Anthropology, University of Maryland

"Appropriating Sherry's: Gotham, Space, and the Early Suffrage Movement"
Lauren Santangelo, Presenter
PhD Candidate, Department of History, The Graduate Center, CUNY

Nikki Mandell, Commenter
Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

This session will explore places and spaces across New York State where women have spent time outside the bounds of their ordinary day-to-day lives. From rural summer getaways to fashionable urban amusements, what can re-examining these places of leisure offer historians of women?

Lauren Santangelo's paper, "Appropriating Sherry's," examines the early woman suffrage movement's approach to spaces of commercial leisure in New York City from 1870 through 1910. using sources ranging from literature to diaries to suffrage newsletters, she argues that by the early twentieth century, suffragists were strategically mobilizing Gotham's most prestigious venues -- including restaurants, theaters, and even amusement parks -- in an effort to gain support, attention, and respectability. In the process, she suggests, they made suffrage entertaining.

Monica Mercado's paper, "Summer School for the Soul," uncovers the experiences of women attending the Catholic Summer School of America at Cliff Haven, in Plattsburgh, NY. Modeled on the Chatauqua movement, the Catholic Summer School functioned, Mercado suggests, as a co-ed site that allowed women to temporarily participate in a new upper middle-class American Catholic intellectual and cultural life during the 1890s and early 1900s.

Megan Springate's paper, "Girl Guests and the Spirit of God in Woman," explores the experiences of woman at Wiawaka Holiday House in Lake George, NY during its early years, beginning with its founding in 1903. Springate explores the intersections and contradictions of leisure, reform, religion, and class at the oldest continuously operating women's retreat in the United States.

In each example -- be it rural summer getaways or fashionable urban amusement -- these scholars suggest that women transformed spaces of leisure into potential sites of political action and intellectual and cultural development.

Presentation at the Society for Historical Archaeology Conference

This past weekend, I presented a paper about the Wiawaka Project at the Society for Historical Archaeology Conference in Baltimore, Maryland. It was part of a session on the Archaeology of American Hotels. More about the conference, including a link to the full program with abstracts, is online here.

A copy of my paper, "Resorts and Reform: Archaeology at the Wiawaka Holiday House, Lake George, New York" is available online here, if you are interested in reading it. I look forward to any comments!

1923 Archaeology Lecture at Wiawaka

During 1923, visitors to Wiawaka were treated to two lectures by Dr. Jenkins who formerly taught at the Skidmore School of the Arts (later Skidmore College):

We always took advantage of any especial opportunity such as having with us Dr. Jenkins, formerly of the Skidmore School, Saratoga. She gave us a most interesting talk on the life of Turkish women, of which she could speak with knowledge from her own experience in Turkey; and on another evening she talked on Archaeology, which surprised the girls as being exceedingly interesting. -- House Mother's Report,Wiawaka Annual Report 1923-24 (emphasis mine!)

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday; we're back to regular weekly posts.

Girls' Friendly Society

Girls' Friendly Society (GFS) charm, donated to Wiawaka
in memory of Margaret S. Pattison.

Wiawaka was founded as a part of the Girls' Friendly Society or GFS, an international Episcopalian charitable organization. The GFS was originally founded in England in 1875 by Mary Elizabeth Townsend and was the first organization within the Church of England(1) with the purpose of serving women. Part of the mission of the Society in the early twentieth century was to protect single working girls – in Troy, often young Irish immigrant women – from what were perceived as the dangers of urban life. These dangers included idleness and pre-marital sexual activity. They also arranged educational programs for the working girls to teach them proper etiquette, various skills, and household management. GFS meetings and activities were held in the cities during much of the year, serving to both educate the young women and to literally keep them off the streets. Girl members of the GFS were required to be “virtuous” (code for virginal) and were expelled from the organization if they became “unvirtuous” by being sexually active outside of marriage. This standard was changed during the second quarter of the twentieth century.

Wiawaka was one of several Holiday Houses operated by the GFS across the country. The GFS found holiday houses particularly important, as many of the regular meetings and activities were curtailed during the summer months when the organizers went on holiday. The holiday houses were a means for working girls to experience the healthy benefits of consuming leisure and nature, while still being under the moral supervision and direction of the GFS. The working women who stayed at these holiday houses were referred to as “girl guests;" GFS organizers were known as associate members.

Certainly, many of the women working in the factories were very young. I don't (yet) have data for workers in the Troy factories, but women working in the Triangle factory in New York in the very early twentieth century were as young as 14. Single women at the time were also generally referred to as girls and not considered grown women until they married. Class status also played a role in the designation of women as girls – the founder of Wiawaka, Mary Wiltse Fuller, never married, but most certainly would not have been included in the category of unmarried women called “girls."

The Girls' Friendly Society in America Associates' Record, a publication documenting the activities and programs of the GFS from 1912 to 1914 (including descriptions of events and activities at Wiawaka -- search for "Wiawaka" and "Lake George") is available online via Google Books. You can read it online, or download it for free as a .pdf. It's a very interesting read, helping to put the early years of Wiawaka into a larger context.

The GFS remains a vital and active international organization serving girls and young women. There is only one surviving holiday house in the US operating under the auspices of the GFS; it is located in Cape May, New Jersey. There is very little academic research about the history of the GFS, and what has been written deals predominantly with the British arm. Some references include:

Cordery, Simon (1995) Friendly Societies and the Discourse of Respectability in Britain, 1825-1875. Journal of British Studies 34(1): 35-58.

Harrison, Brian (1973) For Church, Queen and Family: The Girls' Friendly Society 1874-1920. Past & Present 61: 107-138.

Richmond, Vivienne (2007) It Is Not a Society for Human Beings but for Virgins: The Girls' Friendly Society Membership Eligibility Dispute 1875-1936. Journal of Historical Sociology 20(3): 304-327.

If you don't have access to these through an academic library or online resources (most are available through JSTOR if you have a subscription), you can request them through your local library's reference/inter-library loan service (there may be a small cost for copies).


(1) The Church of England is also known as the Anglican Church and the Episcopal Church.

Working Conditions

What were the living conditions of the women who worked in the textile factories in Troy and Cohoes who visited Wiawaka? What were their family circumstances? Their working conditions? What were there lives like, and how did Wiawaka fit into that?

One of the important aspects of their lives and identities was their work in the factories. What was working in a textile factory like in the early twentieth century? (Troy was known as "Collar City" as the place where removable collars were invented and manufactured in huge numbers.) I don't yet have specific information about the Troy factories; but below is a discussion of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City by Dr. Robyn Muncy, who teaches here at the University of Maryland in the History Department. Her discussion describes the working conditions in the factory (which she describes as an example of a "good" factory for the time) and in textile factories in general. She also talks about the women's lives and how they were perceived in the labor movement.  Though there is no mention of labor relations or the specific working conditions of the factory women in the Wiawaka records that I've looked at, this was the environment in which the women worked and in which Wiawaka was organized.

If you click through to watch this on YouTube (here), you'll find links to the rest of the discussions and presentations at this conference held on the anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. If you're not familiar with the fire and it's effects, you can watch the other videos and read more about it at the following excellent sites:

Remembering the Triangle Factory Fire 100 Years Later (1911-2011) by the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University. An interactive website presenting many different aspects of the Fire and the people it affected.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Trial by Douglas Linder of the University of Missouri-Kansas City. This website explores the events in the legal context of the trial that followed.

About the Triangle Fire by Robert Pinsky of the University of Illinois. This site provides a brief history, and then presents both an eye-witness and photo-essay account of the events (be aware that the dead are present in some of these photos).

Locating the Original Pine Cottage

While I was up at Wiawaka the other weekend, one of the regular volunteers and I got chatting about the site. I forget exactly what we were talking about, but she mentioned that there was an image showing the location of the first Pine Cottage, built circa 1873 (at the same time as Mayflower and Rose cottages). It burned down in 1905, along with the Crosbyside Hotel and other buildings on the property. The current Pine Cottage, located near Route 9, was built in 1907. One of the questions I had was, "Where was the original Pine Cottage?"

A copy of the photo was located, and as the sun burned the mist off the lake the next morning, we went out to recreate the view. Here's a copy of the photograph:

Photo by Seneca Ray Stoddard, ca. 1876 to 1904.

We originally thought that the building on the left was Fuller House, but by standing outside, in the landscape, it became clear that it was actually the Crosbyside Hotel. The next building to the right is Fuller House. The presence of both the Crosbyside Hotel and the Fuller House indicates this photo was taken between 1876 (when Fuller House was built) and 1904 (the Crosbyside and Pine Cottage burned before the 1905 season opened).

View from approximately the same place, October 8, 2011. Photo by Megan Springate.

We then compared the other two buildings visible in the Stoddard photo with the buildings left standing at Wiawaka. In the photo above, you can just make out Fuller House in the distance, behind the pine trees; to the right is Rose Cottage. Comparing the location and shape of the buildings, it becomes clear that 1) the fourth building to the right in the Stoddard photo is Rose Cottage, and that therefore the third one from the right is the original Pine Cottage; and 2) that somewhere along the line, Rose Cottage got a new roof -- perhaps its roof burned during the 1905 fire?

Why am I interested in the location of the first Pine Cottage? Because it burned within the first few years of the founding of Wiawaka Holiday House. Things that were in the building when it burned (as well as in the Crosbyside Hotel, which was also used by Wiawaka to house guests) can tell me about the material experience of guests at the site in those very earliest years.

The amount of landscaping, specifically the raised roadway running in front of the Crosbyside Hotel in the Stoddard photo is quite impressive, and doesn't appear in the current landscape. It also doesn't appear in earlier photos of the Crosbyside that show a dirt lane (vs. raised road) running in front of the hotel. This makes me suspect the Stoddard photo above was taken closer to the 1904 date than the 1876 date; someone more familiar with clothing trends of the time may be able to offer some insight.

I wonder where the landscaping and the remains of the Pine Cottage and the Crosbyside Hotel ended up?

What does Wiawaka Mean? Part II

Back at the end of September, I posted Katrina Trask's piece describing what Wiawaka means. A commenter asked what the piece I quoted from looked like. I was just up at Wiawaka this past weekend, and here is an image:

I've also posted some images of Wiawaka's buildings on the Wiawaka Project Facebook Page; check them out!

Threads of Wiawaka

This video is a short introduction to Wiawaka. I love the early photographs and am fascinated by the segments of early motion picture film taken at the property.  Enjoy!

If the video gives you grief, you can watch it directly at YouTube.

What Does Wiawaka Mean?

The current mission of Wiawaka is to provide enrichment and revitalization for women at a historic lakefront setting. But shortly after its founding, Katrina Trask (who donated some of the land to founder Mary Wiltse Fuller), wrote the following piece. The original is a beautiful piece done in calligraphy.

Some of the border decoration on the original.
Photo by Megan Springate, June 18, 2011.

What is the meaning of the name Wiawaka. This question echoes from year to year when Holiday House opens its hospitable doors. How may we tell its meaning.

We may give in few words the Genesis of the name. How we found it or rather how we made it.

The last lines of Goethe's Foust are these

All things transitory
But as symbols are sent
Earth's insufficiency
Here grows to event
The Indescribable
Here it is done
The Woman's Soul leadeth us
Upward and On
--Bayard Taylors Translation

The Woman's Souls is Bayard Taylors rendering of a word that has come to be immortal "Ewigweibliche"

As our work is upon the shores of Lake Horicon where the music of the Indian still lingers and where the legend of the Mohawk and the Abenaki still are told it seems fitting to use the Indian tongue.

Bayard Taylor says in his notes on the translation of Foust "I can find no English equivalent of das Ewigweibliche except Woman's Soul which will express very nearly the same idea to those who feel the spirit which breathes and burns throughout the Scene.

Love is the all uplifting and all redeeming power on Earth and in Heaven and to man it is revealed in its most pure and perfect form through woman. Thus in the transitory life of Earth it is only a symbol of its deviner being the the possibilities of Love which Earth can never fulfil become realities in the higher life which follows. The Spirit which woman interprets to us here still draws us Upward there.

If Bayard Taylor found no English equivalent for das Ewigweibliche how may we find an equivalent in the crude language of the Indian? It seems a daring thing to do at yet we have essayed it. WIAWAKA is in truth the very freest rendering. Perhaps we have caught an elemental quality from the elemental language which will compensate for the Literary license.

The exact meaning of WIAWAKA is The Spirit of God in Woman.

All this is simple enough to tell it is quite another thing to express the thought, the hope the ideal that lay back of the meaning.

It is no easy task to put an inward spiritual grace into an outward visible sign, and it is even more difficult to put the subtle grace of a thought into the explanitory words How can we describe the indescribable? Yet something we may try to say.

We have chosen the name WIAWAKA with a high purpose toward our work taking it as the outward symbol of the inward grace of the work.

WIAWAKA implies the though the hope that this work shall not be an organized institution of circumstance alone but that it shall be a work of the Spirit that not merely holiday rest and practical refreshment shall be given to women but that there shall be felt by all within the circle of WIAWAKA the inspiration and consideration of woman's privelege and womans obligation; the noblesse oblige of woman to exalt to uplift to inspire.

May we Founders Associates and Girl Guests all Sisters together finding here more leisure ponder our opportunity and study how we may realize our splendid obligation. We women have a double obligation.

There is the obligation of the life mortal to work to do something which will make us a part of the creative world around us. A great Queen of modern times has taken for one of her mottoes Work.

What better motto could be found? Work is the criterion of character. It makes no difference what that work is whether it is making shirts making collars writing books sweeping the floor tying bundles or painting pictures -- so long as it is well done.

There is also the spiritual obligation of the life eternal to lead Upward and on. Let us remember this. Let us feel a demand within us that every man every other woman and every child we meet must be the purer the better the more uplifted for the meeting.

Let us have a sense of exalted consecration about our influence that will restrain us from doing from saying from seeing from reading things that make more difficult the achievement of the true Ideal of Life.

We have chosen the name Wiawaka that we may by the echo of the word keep before us this ideal.

WIAWAKA

The great Spirit in Woman

Let us remember my sisters Associate Members and Girl Guests remember the obligation laid upon us by the Most High to lead Upward and On to a finer sweeter saner purer realization of Life to a higher holier concept of Love to a clearer Vision of God.

-- Katrina Trask

Some of the border decoration on the original.
Photo by Megan Springate, June 18, 2011.

Archaeology of the Cupboard: Part II

Last week, in Archaeology of the Cupboard: Part I, I described some of the small plates in use at Wiawaka and how I was able to find out when many of them were made. What can this tell us about Wiawaka?

Syracuse China maker's mark indicating this small Wiawaka plate was manufactured in November (indicated by the dots) of 1961 (indicated by the number 90).(1) Photograph by Megan E. Springate, June 17, 2011.

When I first looked at the hotel ware dishes in the cupboard, I assumed that at least some of them, including the custom Wiawaka plates, would date to the first half of the twentieth century. I assumed incorrectly; a preliminary survey of the makers' marks and date codes on the small plates indicates that they were manufactured in the 1950s and 1960s. The Wiawaka small plates, in particular, were manufactured in November 1961, November 1966, and December 1966. This variation in manufacturing dates on its own is testament to broken dishes having to be replaced; most of the Wiawaka small plates were made in 1966, bought for the 1967 season after the initial order of plates made in 1961.

What were they eating off of during the first half of the twentieth century, and what was going on in the 1950s/1960s that hotel ware plates completely replaced whatever was being used before?

Part of the answer was revealed in the Wiawaka Archives held at the Rensselaer County Historical Society. Minutes of the fall board meetings often described the number and type of dishes that needed to be purchased to replace those broken during the season. A passage in the Wiawaka Board of Director meeting minutes of 28 September 1957 notes that new dishes were needed, "preferably of the hotel type, which will withstand hard usage."(2) Other notes in Board of Director meeting minutes from the 1950s indicate that finances were a problem, and the shift to more economical hotel ware may have been part of cost-saving measures. The presence of a Buffalo China plate in Wiawaka's cupboard made in September of 1954 suggests that hotel wares may have been tried on the site earlier, but that they were not adopted.

The Housemother's Report of 1958 indicates that the board heeded the request, and hotel wares were purchased. Requesting 3 dozen cups and saucers, 2 dozen glass dessert dishes, 6 round meat plates, 4 dozen seven-inch bread and butter plates, 2 dozen 9-inch plates, 2 dozen cereal dishes, and 3 dozen egg cups, the Housemother asked again for "the heavier vitreous china such as was bought last year. It does not chip readily and withstands the rough handling and dishwashing better than the lighter weight."(3) Interestingly, this also suggests that the new hotel wares were being used simultaneously with the earlier dishes.

By the late 1950s, then, the finer china previously in use at Wiawaka was being replaced by hotel wares. Perhaps wishing to appear more upscale than would be indicated by plain and generic-patterned wares, in 1961 Wiawaka's board contracted with Syracuse China to produce custom dishes similar to those found in fancier establishments. Manufactured in November of 1961, these would have been in use at Wiawaka during the season of 1962.

Further research may help clarify the motivations and needs met by changing from finer china to generic hotel ware, and then to custom-printed wares during the 1950s and 1960s. Additional information may come from a review of receipts and other documents in the Wiawaka archives, and archaeology may reveal examples of the types and designs of china used before the switch.

Sources:

(1) Lehner, Lois (1988) Lehner's Encyclopedia of U.S. Marks on Pottery, Porcelain & Clay. Collector Books, Paducah, Kentucky.
(2) Rensselaer County Historical Society, Wiawaka Papers, Box 5, Board of Directors meeting minutes, 28 September 1957.
(3) Rensselaer County Historical Society, Wiawaka Papers, Box 5, Housemother's Report for the 1958 Season.

Archaeology of the Cupboard: Part I

Founded in 1903, Wiawaka continues in operation. There are both challenges and advantages to doing archaeology at a living site -- one which continues in use. One of the challenges is that things keep changing; the historical and archaeological record of Wiawaka Holiday House are still being created and there is no tidy end date to help organize information. One of the advantages is that the archaeological record is very rich, and is made up of more than just buried and broken artifacts.

Small hotel ware plate made by Buffalo China.
Photo by Megan E. Springate, June 17, 2011.

During my last research trip to Wiawaka, I raided the china cupboard and began documenting the dishes in use at the site. I started by documenting the small, 6-inch and 7-inch plates often used as bread and butter plates. All of these were a style of thick, hard-fired ceramics known as hotel ware or restaurant ware commonly still found in use in diners and other high-traffic restaurants. Wiawaka's cupboard boasted several different designs in the collection of small plates, including plain, green lines (single and double) around the edges, and a set of custom-made plates marked Wiawaka on the front in script.(1)

Small hotel ware plate made by Syracuse China.
Photo by Megan E. Springate, June 17, 2011.

The back of most of these plates are marked, indicating the company that made them. The most common manufacturers of Wiawaka's small plate assemblage were Syracuse China and Buffalo China, both well-known American manufacturers of hotel ware.(2) The marks that these companies used often changed, and the date ranges of use for many of the marks are known. In many cases, the companies actually marked dishes with a date code that allows us to determine the month and year a particular piece was made.

How does this tell us something about the history of Wiawaka? Stay tuned for next week's installment, Archaeology of the Cupboard: Part II...

Maker's mark on the Buffalo China plate shown above. This mark was used from the 1940s through the early 1960s.(3) The O-9 is the date code, indicating this plate was made in September, 1954.(4) Photograph by Megan E. Springate, June 17, 2011.

Notes and Sources:

(1) It was common practice for businesses including hotels, train lines, cruise ships, and restaurants to have dishes that were custom made with their name on them.
(2) The earliest beginnings of the Syracuse China Company were in 1841 in Syracuse, New York. They were still in operation in 1986.  Buffalo Pottery (later Buffalo China) was in operation in Buffalo, New York from 1901 through at least 1986.(5)
(3) Restaurant Ware Collectors Network (2009) Buffalo China, Buffalo, New York [Backstamps].
(4) Restaurant Ware Collectors Network (2009) Buffalo China Date Codes.
(5) Lehner, Lois (1988) Lehner's Encyclopedia of U.S. Marks on Pottery, Porcelain & Clay. Collector Books, Paducah, Kentucky.

Wiawaka Bateaux

Looking west from the Wiawaka dock, a navigation buoy (left) and mooring anchor (right) associated
with the Wiawaka Bateaux are visible. Photo by Megan E. Springate, October 10, 2010.

Just off Wiawaka's shoreline are seven sunken British ships known as the Wiawaka Bateaux. Bateaux are flat-bottomed vessels ranging from 25 to 40 feet long and pointed at each end, used to transport people and goods. These, and over 260 other British and provincial vessels were consigned to the cold waters of Lake George in the fall of 1758, with the intent of recovering them the following spring.

This occurred during the French and Indian War (1754-1763), a long-running territorial battle between the English and the French and their various Native American allies that extended from Virginia to Nova Scotia. The Lake George/Lake Champlain corridor was a critically important navigable water route connecting the interior colonies to the St. Lawrence River -- a northern route to the Atlantic Ocean and therefore supplies, colonists, and military support from Europe. Both the English and the French wanted control of this route and the territory surrounding it, and several French and Indian War battles took place in the area.

Drawing of a colonial bateau by Mark Peckham. Image courtesy of Bateaux Below, Inc.

In 1757, the English Fort William Henry, located near Wiawaka at the southern end of Lake George, was destroyed. As a result, the British had no safe place to secure their fleet from French raids during the winter months, when the lake was frozen. To save the fleet, the British sank it. Approximately 75% of the sunken fleet was raised the following spring, but several of the boats, including the seven off the shores of Wiawaka, were not recovered. The organization Bateaux Below, Inc. was instrumental in documenting these vessels and continues to be involved in their stewardship.(1)

The Wiawaka Bateaux (also known as The Sunken Fleet of 1758) are one of three New York State Submerged Heritage Preserves in Lake George. The other two are: the Land Tortoise, a floating gun battery that was also sunk in 1758 and never raised; and The Forward Underwater Classroom. The Wiawaka Bateaux were listed on the National Record of Historic Places in 1992. Divers are welcome to explore the Wiawaka Bateaux. This is an intermediate dive to depths ranging from 20 to 45 feet.(2) To access the site from the Wiawaka property, you must contact Wiawaka's Executive Director in advance.

More information about the Wiawaka Bateaux and other vessels sunk by the British in 1758 can be found at the Raising The Fleet Project: An Arts/Science Collaboration Exploring the Underwater Frontiers of Lake George. In addition to the background information and photos of the vessels, the website includes a series of artwork inspired by the project. Additional resources include the documentary Wooden Bones: The Sunken Fleet of 1758, and the book Lake George Shipwrecks and Sunken History.(3)

Notes:

(1) Bateaux Below, Inc., P.O. Box 2134, Wilton, New York 12831
(2) Information about diving the site, including a map, Lake George conditions and guidelines, can be found on the New York State Department of Environmental Preservation website.
(3) Zarzynski, Joseph W. and Bob Benway (2011) Lake George Shipwrecks and Sunken History, The History Press, Charleston, South Carolina.

Sources:

Raising The Fleet
The Sunken 1758 Fleet

Artist Georgia O'Keeffe at Wiawaka

In 1908, Mary Fuller bought several acres of land adjoining the Wiawaka property to the north. This parcel was the location of a two-story Adirondack-style building that Katrina Trask built circa 1905 and used to house visiting artists. Katrina named the property Amitola; the building is now known as Wakonda Lodge. The visiting artist residence is a precursor to Yaddo, the Trasks' artist retreat which remains in operation in nearby Saratoga Springs, New York.

Several famous people are reported to have spent time at Amitola, including the artist Georgia O'Keeffe. In 1998, when the National Register of Historic Places nomination was written, no proof of her visit to the site was known.

During preliminary research for the Wiawaka Project, documentation of Georgia O'Keeffe's stay at Wiawaka was found in an issue of American Art News dated June 13, 1908 (Vol. 6., No. 31). An image of the article is below, with the sections mentioning Georgia O'Keeffe highlighted (click on the image for a larger, readable version):

News about the Art Students' League, American Art News, June 13, 1908 (Vol. 6., No. 31)

In the spring of 1908, Georgia O'Keeffe, then 21 years old, won a general scholarship to the Art Students' League in New York City for her untitled oil painting of a dead rabbit with a copper pot. That summer, she was one of twenty Art Students' League students to spend a month at Wiawaka. That fall, she stopped painting, convinced that she could never compete artistically with others in the realistic style. Four years later, she began painting again after taking a class that introduced her to a more expressionist approach to painting, and she went on to create a spectacular body of work.(1)

Georgia O'Keeffe, Untitled (Dead Rabbit With Copper Pot), oil on canvas, 1908. Collections of the Smithsonian Institution, Control No. IAP 82380053. Photograph of the painting by Peter A. Juley and Son, Smithsonian American Art Museum. (2)

References:
(1) Georgia O'Keeffe Museum.
(2) Search Results: O'Keeffe Rabbit