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Robert M. O’Reilly

Posted for Susan Ottignon.

Recently the Digital Library completed a digitalization project of the “Robert M. O’Reilly” papers. The collection’s subject, Dr. Robert O’Reilly, was a Philadelphia native, who held a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and had a lengthy and distinguishable career in the U. S. Army which lasted over 40 years, from 1867-1909.

The O’Reilly collection consists of over 300+ items, chronicling Dr. O’Reilly’s personal life and military career, includes his personal letters, a selection of published U.S. Army General Orders, from the United States Adjutant-General’s Office, in 1870, and his scrapbook from the 1906 International Conference for the Revision of the Geneva Convention where he was a delegate for the United States.

There are several unique certificates, in this collection, given to O’Reilly signifying his succession in military rank; the certificates are sizable and elaborate in design and signed and countersigned by the President and Secretary of War. Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War under Lincoln and Johnson, signed O’Reilly’s first certificate, with his appointment as a Medical Cadet, in January, 1864. Several certificates display the signatures of Presidents Cleveland and Theodore Roosevelt authorizing O’Reilly’s promotion in rank; in most cases the certificate had a stamped Presidential signature, and were countersigned by the Secretary of War as well as recorded in the Adjutant General’s Office.

The Collection is owned by the American Catholic Historical Society and held at the Philadelphia Archdiocesan Historical Research Center in Wynnewood, PA. Be certain to check out the Center’s blog, by Amanda McKnight, entitled, “Robert M. O’Reilly, Surgeon General” which provides a summary of Robert O’Reilly’s life and career.

If you are interested in more information on the role of a Medical Cadet during the Civil War, 1861-1865, I suggest reading this blog: Schmidt, Jim. “Medical Department #36 – Medical Cadets.” Civil War Medicine (and Writing): A blog on Civil War-era medicine and my own historical research and writing. 11 October 2010. Accessed 13 July 2015.

Printed. Military Commission Certificate, To: Robert O'Reilly, Assistant Surgeon, U. S. Army Signed: Andrew Johnson, President of the United States and Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, July 24, 1867.

Printed. Military Commission Certificate, To: Robert O’Reilly, Assistant Surgeon, U. S. Army Signed: Andrew Johnson, President of the United States and Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, July 24, 1867.

Printed. Military Promotion of Rank Certificate, To: Brigadier General Robert O'Reilly, Surgeon General, U. S. Army Signed: Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States and Elihu Root, Secretary of War, December 2, 1902.

Printed. Military Promotion of Rank Certificate, To: Brigadier General Robert O’Reilly, Surgeon General, U. S. Army Signed: Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States and Elihu Root, Secretary of War, December 2, 1902.


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Internship project summary: William Robinson

Posted for William Robinson, Digital Library Intern, Spring 2014.

This Spring I worked as a Digital Library Intern at Falvey Memorial Library, working out of the Special Collections and Digital Library Team. I spent most of my time scanning primary sources, describing them with metadata, and making them available to the world on Villanova’s Digital Library.

As part of my main project as an intern, I scanned and described a significant portion of the Ships’ Papers Series, part of the Barry-Hayes Papers on loan for digitization from the Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia. I enjoyed reading and handling the vellum manuscripts that I scanned, and understanding what documents were necessary for a ship to complete a successful mercantile voyage. Through bills of lading, oaths of ownership, invoices, account statements, and consular documents, I could trace the voyage of a ship and understand how merchants exchanged goods.

I also came to understand how the Ships’ Papers reflected special circumstances in trade, such as shipwreck or war. I scanned and described marine protests, documents in which seamen testify to a consul or notary public about damage to a ship, meant to protect the owner of the ship against liability for damaged cargo (vudl:323486, vudl:324171). Several documents were produced during the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812 and reflected the realities of trade in wartime. In January, 1813, Henry Wellesley, the British Ambassador to Spain, signed a license of protection for the Brig Ranger, leaving Spain for the United States. The brig could proceed to any U.S. port “without molestation on account of the present hostilities.” (vudl:323355)

Henry Wellesley on Left

Henry Wellesley on Left (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Wellesley,_1st_Baron_Cowley)

Furthermore, the Ships’ Papers Series introduced me to interesting lives and stories from the early nineteenth century. For example, Benjamin Nones signed and notarized many proof of ownership documents in the Ships’ Papers as notary public of Pennsylvania (vudl:324233, vudl:324241, vudl:324024). Nones was a Jew who had fought in the Revolutionary War and served on the staffs of General Washington and Lafayette, and later settled in Philadelphia. As a Jeffersonian and father of fourteen, he defended himself from attacks written in Federalist newspapers about his religion and poor finances. In a passionate reply published in the Philadelphia Aurora, he defended his faith, reminded Federalists of his military service, and contrasted Republican defense of religious freedom with the persecution of Jews under European monarchies. The Ships’ Papers also include documents signed by William Jarvis, an American consul in Lisbon appointed by Jefferson (vudl:324171). During the French occupation of Spain in the Napoleonic wars, as well as a British embargo on wool exports to the U.S. that influenced the War of 1812, Jarvis bought and smuggled 3,500-4,000 merino sheep through Portugal to the U.S. He gave merino sheep as gifts to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and started a successful sheep farm in Vermont.

William Jarvis, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jarvis_%28merchant%29)

William Jarvis, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jarvis_%28merchant%29)

Because Special Collections often supports several projects at a time, contingencies allowed me to contribute to other interesting projects. I helped digitize materials from institutions in the Delaware Valley related to World War I, to be featured in Home Before the Leaves Fall: The Great War, 1914-1918, a web project to reveal local World War I sources for scholarship. I also contributed annotations to an upcoming republication of two dime novels by prolific author Frances Doughty. Everyday unique, rare, or just plain odd items passed before me: a tea bag enclosed in a pyramid made of edible paper, General Sherman’s frock coat, early twentieth century Hebrew and Irish joke-books, maps of late nineteenth century New York City, the scrapbook of a vaudeville entertainer, private detective, and ambulance chaser, and stolen library items from a repentant alumnus. In addition to gaining a firm understanding of resource description in digital libraries, as a digital library intern I reinforced my interest in history and the diverse stories it has to tell.


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Fathers and Sons of the American Navy

Posted for William Robinson, Spring 2014 Digital Library Intern.

The Digital Library at Villanova continues to digitize and transcribe the Barry-Hayes Papers, owned by the Independence Seaport Museum. The papers remind us that in the 19th century, sons often followed their fathers into a certain line of work. The collection has many letters written by the relatives of Commodore John Barry, considered a “father of the American Navy”, that discuss the naval and merchant careers of the sons of Revolutionary War era naval officers. In “Letter, To: ‘My Dear Son’ From: Mother Elizabeth Hayes, February 21, 1815”, Elizabeth Keen Hayes, the daughter-in-law of John Barry, tells her son Thomas Hayes, a midshipman at Boston Navy Yard, about the injuries of Richard Dale Jr. Dale Jr. was the son of Richard Dale, one of the original commodores of the Continental Navy who had fought under the command of John Barry and John Paul Jones during the Revolutionary War. In January 1815, serving aboard the U.S.S. President in the War of 1812, the British took him prisoner after he was struck by a cannonball in a sea battle off the coast of Bermuda. Elizabeth Hayes has received news from Richard Dale that Dale Jr. has been injured, but still hopes for his recovery: “the report is that is most relyd on he has lost his leg his father is in some respects prepared for it but his mother flatters herself it is not so. I pray sincerely it may only prove a slight wound, the day the President was captured Richard was twenty years old”. Hayes also discusses a letter from Stephen Decatur Jr. to Mrs. Dale describing her son’s injuries. Decatur Jr. was a celebrated naval commander in the Barbary Wars, the Quasi-War with France, and the War of 1812, and his own father was a naval officer who had fought in the Revolutionary War. Hayes reports that “Mr Dale wounded and doing well was all Decatur said respecting Richard”.

Letter, To: "My Dear Son"

The letter gives an interesting glimpse into the generational influence of naval warfare, the pace of communication in 1815, and the anxiety felt by a mother over her son’s work. The letter has references to three descendants of Revolutionary War era naval officers; Thomas Hayes, Richard Dale Jr., and Stephen Decatur Jr. Elizabeth Hayes can only speculate about the injuries of Richard Dale Jr. and must wait for more information. She expects that Dale’s mother will not admit the severity of her son’s injury, but his father is more prepared to accept bad news. Elizabeth Hayes also expresses worry about Thomas coming to harm in the war as a midshipman. She writes “you may judge my dear son of my feelings when I had you constantly before my eyes and did not know how soon it might be your lot, but thank God, Peace the sweet sound has revived my drooping spirits and giving me the hart felt pleasure that I will see my see my son again ere long”. The Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812, was signed in December 1814, but it was ratified in Washington only days before Hayes sent the letter to her son. In the time the Treaty of Ghent reached Washington, Richard Dale Jr.’s injuries worsened and he died in captivity in Bermuda.

Stephen Decatur, commander of the USS President, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Stephen Decatur, commander of the USS President, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Read more manuscripts from the Barry-Hayes Papers.

Find out more about the collection in the Barry-Hayes Papers finding aid, developed by the Independence Seaport Museum.


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Transcriptions from the Elizabeth Hayes letters

Posted for Summer 2012 Digital Library Intern Gail Betz:

Over the summer, I transcribed a portion of Elizabeth Hayes’s personal letters. Elizabeth was Patrick Barry Hayes’ wife, and she devoted a great deal of her time to corresponding with her seafaring husband and traveling sons. While only a few of the letters that Elizabeth herself wrote are included in the collection, she kept letters from her sons and her husband, which now provide a glimpse into their everyday lives. As a history lover, I greatly enjoyed reading these primary source documents, trying to figure out what the different words could be, and deciphering the context of the letter. I discovered that it was much easier to read the younger sons’ letters, because they had much neater cursive than their father did. It’s possible that Patrick Barry Hayes spent much of his time writing to Elizabeth while at sea, which could account for some of the jarring script that made much of his letters illegible. In contrast, his sons’ handwriting was easy to read, and they used more modern vocabulary than their father did.

Having the opportunity to read personal letters from the early 19th century was fascinating for me. It was like reading a diary, but with multiple perspectives and a great deal of guessing about missing information between dates and locations. I enjoyed learning that one son had reunited with his love, and had written to her father to ask for her hand in marriage. I was worried for the son who was away at school for the first time, was ill, and clearly homesick for his mother. While these letters were written almost 200 years ago, the thoughts and feelings they related were contemporary and relatable.

Thank you to Michael Foight and Laura Bang for sharing their knowledge and advice, and providing me with the opportunity to learn about and work with digital libraries. I enjoyed seeing the “other side” of the digital library process, and look forward to using this experience in future digital projects!

Editorial Note: These transcriptions are in the process of being attached to the digital images and will be available for the public in the near future.


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100th Year Anniversary of the Sisters of the Order of Saint Basil the Great

Submitted for: Taras Ortynsky, Descriptive Services Librarian.

The Sisters of the Order of Saint Basil the Great Collection is accessible thru the Villanova University’s Digital Library within the Catholica Collection.

 
Photograph, Mother Helena Langevich, OSBM.

On May 17, 2011, Villanova University, Falvey Memorial Library received items for the purpose of digitizing and cataloging the collection of the Sisters of the Order of St. Basil the Great, Fox Chase Manor, PA. By October 27, 2011, several Falvey Library staff members had digitized and cataloged the collection. Included in this collection are digital images of photographs, manuscript letters, and realia. All of the items are in the Ukrainian language and are dated from 1911-1916.  The prevailing theme of the letters is spirituality.

Back in November 1911, Mother Helena Langevich, OSBM and three Sister companions came to America from Ukraine at the request of Bishop Stephen Soter Ortynsky, OSBM to serve the Church. The Reverend Stephen Soter Ortynsky, OSBM was the first Greek Catholic Bishop in the U.S.A. The Sisters settled in Philadelphia 100 years ago to care for the Ukrainian orphans and to minister to the Ukrainian immigrants. This November 2011, the Sisters will be in celebration of 100 years in America.

The original materials are available at the Archives, 710 Fox Chase Road, Fox Chase Manor, PA 19406. For more information kindly see http://www.stbasils.com.


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Roman Catholic High School Partnership Signed

Posted for Darren G. Poley, Outreach Librarian

Villanova’s Digital Library recently signed a digital partnership agreement with the Alumni Association of the oldest free Catholic high school still in operation in the city of Philadelphia, Roman Catholic High School. The impressive Gothic building on the northeast corner of Broad and Vine Streets continues to be the main building of the historic school commonly known as Roman. But Roman is not just another private Catholic high school for boys. Serving the entire metro area, while still staying close to its roots in the center of the city, Roman Catholic High School has the distinction of being the first free Catholic high school for boys in the United States. The partnership between Roman and Villanova University will allow Falvey to scan rare and fragile documents for the sake of preservation and to promote scholarship on urban Catholic education in Philadelphia at the turn of the last century; including, for example, a printed copy of the founders will, the first year book, and the earliest extant editions of the student newspaper and literary magazine.

In fact, as Joe Clark, a staff writer for the Philadelphia Daily News, reported in a Sept. 8, 1989 article entitled “Celebrating the Roman Century,” Roman is “the oldest and first free Catholic high school in North America.” Clark went on to say: “The school was founded and built through the benevolence of Thomas E. Cahill, a wealthy Catholic layman and Philadelphia merchant. When he died in 1878, Cahill left the bulk of his almost $1 million estate to establish a high school for the ‘practical and free education of boys over 11 living in Philadelphia.’” In the same article, Clark also wrote, “On Sept. 11, 1890, Roman Catholic High School opened its doors to 105 boys who four years later would be members of the school’s first graduating class of 1894.”

Known at different times as the Cahill School and Catholic High, it is no longer free, in the sense that it now charges a modest tuition as compared with the other Catholic prep schools in the area, but it continues its proud scholastic and athletic tradition which has produced some of the city’s leading citizens as well as fiercely loyal cohorts of what are affectionately known as “Roman men.” Falvey Memorial Library is now proud to aid Roman in an effort to document and preserve for scholars archival materials held by the Alumni Association at the school related to the school’s founding and it long heritage as a prominent Catholic educational institution.


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1611 King James Bible now online

Engraved title page of the 1611 King James Bible.

Title page of the 1611 King James Bible.

Over the past several months we have been working on scanning, processing, and completing metadata for a very special volume from one of our partners. In January, La Salle University brought over their latest batch of items for us to digitize, which included a first edition of the King James Bible from 1611. Not only is this an exciting and important work to digitize, but it is particularly timely now as this version of the Bible celebrates the 400th anniversary of its completion.

This book proved challenging to scan in many ways. Its bulky and unwieldy size meant that for most of the process, scanning was a two-person job. The volume is also fairly tightly-bound, which meant that getting the full page was difficult at times. We were able to meet these challenges, however, and we are pleased to present the entire volume online.

 

Sarah Seraphin, Special Collections Librarian at La Salle University’s Connelly Library, was very enthusiastic about the completion of this scanning endeavor. “This partnership makes it possible to deliver our content to scholars all over the world, on an excellent platform alongside the collections of other Catholic institutions,” Seraphin said. “Our aim is to curate a unique online selection of historic Bibles relating to the translation of the Holy Bible into English. With the 1611 ‘He Bible’ now online, the task of scanning one of our most prized volumes has come to fruition. We are grateful for the dedication of the Digital Library staff for their work on this and other invaluable works from the Susan Dunleavy Collection.”

Seraphin curated an exhibit called “Adornment & Alliance: Preserving Illustrated and Historic Bibles and Curating a Digital Collection Through Constructive Partnership.” This exhibit honors the mission of the Susan Dunleavy Collection of Biblical Literature and highlights La Salle’s partnership with our Digital Library—and, of course, it also celebrates the 400th anniversary of the 1611 King James Bible. The exhibit is on view in the main lobby of La Salle’s Connelly Library until mid-July 2011.

There were two separate issues of the first edition, both published in 1611. The volume featured in this article is a first issue of the first edition, which contained a type-setting error in Ruth 3:15: “… he went into the citie.” For this reason, the first issue is known colloquially as the “He Bible.” The second issue is known as the “She Bible” and it (and all subsequent editions) reads: “… she went into the citie.”

Text of Ruth 3:15 with type-setting error "... he went into the citie."

Ruth 3:15.


One of the great pleasures of working with rare books and manuscripts is getting to “touch” history and make it available to a wider audience online through our Digital Library, though oftentimes these materials may have been forgotten. It has been an interesting and exciting experience to handle and digitize a 1611 King James Bible—a book that still has a tremendous impact 400 years after its original publication.

Student scanning the King James Bible.

One of our student workers, Celina Wildemann, scanning the King James Bible.

 

Over the past several months we have been working on scanning, processing, and completing metadata for a very special volume from one of our partners. In January, La Salle University brought over their latest batch of items for us to digitize, which included a first edition of the King James Bible from 1611. Not only is this an exciting and important work to digitize, but it is particularly timely now as this version of the Bible celebrates the 400th anniversary of its completion.

 

This book proved challenging to scan in many ways. Its bulky and unwieldy size meant that for most of the process, scanning was a two-person job. The volume is also fairly tightly-bound, which meant that getting the full page was difficult at times. We were able to meet these challenges, however, and we are pleased to present the entire volume online.

 

[title page]

 

Sarah Seraphin, Special Collections Librarian at La Salle University’s Connelly Library was very enthusiastic about the completion of this scanning endeavor. “This partnership makes it possible to deliver our content to scholars all over the world, on an excellent platform alongside the collections of other Catholic institutions,” Seraphin said. “Our aim is to curate a unique online selection of historic Bibles relating to the translation of the Holy Bible into English. With the 1611 ‘He Bible’ now online, the task of scanning one of our most prized volumes has come to fruition. We are grateful for the dedication of the Digital Library staff for their work on this and other invaluable works from the Susan Dunleavy Collection.”

 

Seraphin curated an exhibit to honor the mission of the Susan Dunleavy Collection of Biblical Literature and to highlight La Salle’s partnership with our Digital Library—and, of course, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the 1611 King James Bible. The exhibit is on view in the main lobby of La Salle’s Connelly Library until mid-July 2011.

 

There were two separate issues of the first edition, both published in 1611. The first issue of the first edition contained a type-setting error in Ruth 3:15: “… he went into the citie.” For this reason, the first issue is known colloquially as the “He Bible.” The second issue is known as the “She Bible” and it (and all subsequent editions) reads “… she went into the citie.”

 

[Ruth]

 

One of the great pleasures of working with rare books and manuscripts is getting to “touch” history and make it available to a wider audience online through our Digital Library, though oftentimes these materials may have been forgotten. It has been an interesting and exciting experience to handle and digitize the King James Bible—a book that still has a tremendous impact 400 years after its original publication.


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An Easter Treasure: Letters from Saint Elizabeth Seton.

It is with great pleasure and humble thanks on this Easter that we make available the small but important Elizabeth Ann Seton collection.  This collection includes letters from  Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton to Matthias and Joseph O’Conway.  Matthias, a prominent Philadelphian, especially within the Catholic community, was the father of Cecilia O’Conway, Philadelphia’s first nun and the first woman to join Seton’s order, the Sisters of Charity.  The correspondence is personal in nature and relates to several members of the O’Conway family.  Members of the Digital Library team are working on formatting transcriptions of the letters for increased readability.

This also marks a first for the Digital Library:  the scanning of materials physically owned and of course created by a Saint.   Indeed actually touching and photographing these sheets of paper involved treating the objects with the highest degree of reverence.  Speaking for only myself, handling the letters as a scanner was a sacred experience.


 

 

 

 

 

Photograph taken on Easter 2011

 



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Connecting the shards of history

Finding and making available lost or hidden treasures from collections is one of the greatest satisfactions in working with heritage materials.   In processing collections for digitization one occasionally finds materials that don’t seem to fit with the other materials in a collection, especially when dealing with a partner’s materials that may not have been fully described in paper prior to the digitization.

I was quite shocked and amazed when in the box of the Eleanor C. Donnelly personal paper collection, which is owned by the American Catholic Historical Society, Villanova University’s first digitization partner, I found a bound volume that she had owned that didn’t fit with the remainder of the materials, which largely contained correspondence to and from Eleanor, primarily from priests and Bishops throughout the United States in answer to her requests for facsimiles of episcopal seals.  Eleanor Donnelly, who lived from  1838 to 1917, was a figure on the Philadelphia literary scene.  She was known as “The Poet of the Pure Soul” and was also a contributor to numerous Catholic magazines and newspapers.  She edited the Augustinian magazine “Our Lady of Good Counsel” for a period and wrote over 85 books.  She was also sister to the infamous Ignatius Donnelly so her collection had at least the possibility of being filled with unusual treasures.   But this newly discovered bound volume upon closer examination proved to be in fact a manuscript containing signatures of Confederate prisoners of war held at the Johnson’s Island prison during the Civil War.

The first step was to describe the newly discovered work. A careful count finds that the manuscript itself consists of 62 leaves of unnumbered pages filled with not only signatures but also place and dates of capture and sometimes even other information.

After describing the album, I next reached out to other organizations to communicate the new find.  A short Google search provided the name of the heritage organization that documents and collects information about the prison:  the Johnson’s Island Preservation Society.  A little further digging found that they also have a page of documentation about the C.S.A. autograph books which have already been digitized and collected.

Next I reached out to them to let them know the url and the title of the work.  They were very excited – as can be imagined – about the discovery.   They immediately saw the benefit of cross-linking to our content and we asked for and received permission to link to theirs; thus we are digitally uniting two disparate physical collections into one linked set of resources that connects together the shards of history heretofore lost by the vagaries of time and place.

The final step is the creation of a detailed hand transcription of the document that will provide readers an easy way to view the text, and searchers a way to discover the names and other content from search engines and tools like Google and the library catalog.  Indeed we have started this process already as  one of our student transcribers has specifically requested to work on this item because she shares her home town with many of the captured Confederate soldiers whose names were written in this memorial almost 150 years ago.


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A View from Behind Bars: The Diary of Thomas Lloyd, Revolutionary and Father of American Shorthand, from Newgate Prison 1794-1796.

Thomas Lloyd

One of the more interesting and unique items in the Falvey Memorial Library Digital Collection is the diary of Thomas Lloyd (1756–1827) – teacher, stenographer, soldier in the American Revolutionary War and “Father of American Shorthand”. The diary covers the latter half of Lloyd’s incarceration time in London, first at Fleet Prison for debt and later at Newgate Prison for seditious libel against the British government. This item is part of the Lloyd Collection, a subcollection of the American Catholic Historical Society collection hosted at the Villanova University Digital Library.

Born August 14th, 1756 to William and Hannah Biddle Lloyd, Thomas Lloyd first studied shorthand in what is now modern day Belgium at the College of St. Omar. Shortly after, Lloyd immigrated to America right before the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, where he joined the war effort as part of the Maryland Militia Fifth Independent Company. Later, as part of the Maryland Regiment Fourth Company, he was wounded and captured at the Battle of Brandywine (which took place a short drive from Villanova University’s campus). After the war (he was released in a prisoner exchange, recovered in a hospital in Lancaster, PA, and later discharged from the army in 1779), Lloyd used his shorthand skills to record the debates of the Pennsylvania Assembly. Starting in 1787, this work included recording and publishing the debates of the Pennsylvanian Convention to ratify the United States Constitution.

This job led to both note and notoriety, as Thomas Lloyd’s pro-ratification stance was well-known, and reports and rumors abounded of Lloyd taking bribes to help the pro-ratification side. Although Lloyd recorded both pro-ratification and anti-ratification stances, both for the Maryland and Pennsylvanian delegation, the bulk of the speeches that were published were almost always of the pro-ratification kind. Eventually, with the Constitution ratified, Thomas Lloyd attended the First Federal Congress with the goal of recording the entirety of the debates — this job became official when Lloyd was appointed official recorder of the second session of the House of Representatives. The works of Thomas Lloyd during this period, including his notes and published articles, are considered the most accurate representations of the goings-on of Congress during this historic portion of American history.

Visiting family members in London in 1791, he stayed on to help with his father’s business. During his time in London, his desire to familiarize Londoners with the new Republic and its systems led Lloyd to publish “The Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States of America, with the Constitution prefixt” in 1792. Unfortunately, Lloyd also ran into financial difficulties (his London agent failed to make good on his agreements), and Lloyd was arrested and incarcerated in Fleet Prison in London for debt.

While in Fleet Prison, Thomas Lloyd was charged with seditious libel against the British government for posting a placard containing a “declaration of republican principles” on a chapel door. Found guilty, he was sentenced to one hour in the pillory, fined five thousand dollars, and received a three year sentence in Newgate Prison. It was during his prison stay that Lloyd, along with Mathew Carey, a friend and prominent publisher/employee of the Pennsylvania Herald, published “The System of Shorthand Practiced by Thomas Lloyd in Taking Down the Debates of Congress and Now (With His Permission) Published for General Use”. It was this work that made Thomas Lloyd famous for his shorthand style.

Thomas Lloyd Diary Page 10-11 

Looking for a cure for an ulcer?

During his time in Newgate Prison, Lloyd kept a diary with near-daily entries on every topic from daily prison life to recipes for medicines to shipping manifests and prices of various goods. The diary reads less like a typical journal of events and thoughts and more like a batch of notes lying haphazard on a desk (or rather more like an engineer’s notepad). This gives the impression the diary wasn’t intended to be published, but rather used as a collection of random notes for things to be remembered in the short-term for later use. An example of this can be seen starting on page 9, where Lloyd, rather than using the space for daily events, lists several recipes in his diary, including some medicinal ones. An example on page 11 has a treatment for ulcers – Lloyd had complained of being ill on several previous pages, which might be the impetus for this entry. As well, entries are written both vertically and horizontally on the page, with numerous scratch-outs, inserts and margin notes. The haphazard style of the diary, while making the pages harder to read, gives the diary the advantage of authenticity – the chance to read the thoughts and notes of someone before they got too heavily filtered for the general public. In addition, the various topics and notes give a more complete picture of the time period and the daily comings-and-goings of both the prison and the outside world.

An interesting item from the diary to those unfamiliar with London prisons is the sheer amount of visitors who call on Thomas Lloyd during his incarceration — it seems like he gets at least one, if not two, visits a day, mostly on either business or legal reasons. These visitors often dine with Lloyd as well. Visits occur frequently enough that Lloyd often makes note of the days without visitors (as well as recording his tendency to get despondent on those days). This is due to the two-tier prison system common in 1790s London – commoners are housed in one section of the prison and have little rights and privileges, whereas more upscale citizens (or at least those with money) are housed in a separate section of the prison and given leeway to have visitors, conduct business, and on occasion even live outside the prison walls. According to the information contained in the diary, Thomas Lloyd is definitely in the latter group.

This of course isn’t to say Lloyd had an easy life in prison – on the contrary, as early as page one Lloyd complains of being assaulted by fellow prisoners as well as being very ill. Lloyd often records not being well over the two years covered in his diary, suggesting that prison sanitation may not be all that great, or that stress was getting the better of his immune system. My own hypothesis on this is that it’s a bit of both.

Thomas Lloyd Diary Page 97-98 

The 1790s version of drunk dialing…

For historians, lots of historical references are peppered throughout the diary. Two examples: page 171 of the diary notes that Friday, September 11th was the 18th anniversary of the Battle of Brandywine (where Lloyd was wounded and captured by the British) and page 93 has a note on receiving news of the death of Robespierre, the famous figure of the French Revolution (as well as some opinions on the man and his ideals). On a lighter note, head over to page 97, where Lloyd records taking 30 drops of Laudanum (read: opium) for his fever, which may have contributed to his declaration that a British officer “was afraid to kiss [his] posterior” later in the entry.

For those interested in shorthand, the diary has numerous examples of shorthand notation. A good example can be seen on page 107 where Lloyd shortens words that end in “-ought” with “ot”. Lloyd was also known to remove vowels from words in his shorthand, like the word “said” with “s.d”, also seen on page 107.

You can see the diary for yourself, as well as obtain a transcript here in the Digital Library.

Debtors’ PrisonWikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 2 April 2011 Web. Apr 2011.

National Shorthand Reporters Association. “Unveiling the Lloyd Memorial Tablet” The National Shorthand Report Vol. 1 No. 9. Sept 1903. Google Books. Web. Apr 2011.

Newgate PrisonWikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 10 April 2011 Web. Apr 2011.

Thomas Lloyd (stenographer)Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 21 November 2010. Web. Mar 2010.

Thomas Lloyd commonplace book, 1789-1796 Notes” American Philosophical Society. Web. Mar 2010.


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Last Modified: April 11, 2011

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