I ran across this old book...
Posted: Fri Jan 21, 2022 8:31 pm
First a little backstory. This past August we lost my Mom to dementia and that's where this story begins. I was home (Louisiana) for the service and a few days after my Dad asked me to sort through some of my Mom's belongings. Outside in a storage shed my Mom had a large trunk that looked to be easily 100-150 years old. In fact, it really looks like an old pirate's chest. It had an old rusty lock on it and I remember as a child my Mom was very protective of this trunk and always told us kids to leave it alone. My Dad and I pulled this trunk outside into the light of day that I'm sure it had not seen my entire lifetime, if not longer. Bold cutters made quick work of the cheap, rusty lock and we opened the lid hoping to find it full of booty. You know, gold doubloons, jewels, etc... That's a joke, we knew better, my Mom grew up dirt poor. Her entire family were farmers that didn't even own their own land. I know there's a name for that but it escapes me at the moment. Tenant farmers, maybe?
Anyway, to the contents. It was mostly personal items like postcards and letters from people I never knew. Even my dad had no idea who most of the people were. A deck of old playing cards, a few 1cent postage stamps (We've already checked, little value.), a couple of corn husk dolls and a single book. The book is the point of this story.
The title of the book is "The United States Centennial Commission 1776-1876" and here's a photo of the cover and binding.
As I learned from a quick Google search, this was the FIRST World's Fair! The government put out a two-volume book set that discussed in great detail all of the exhibits at this exhibition that took place from May-Nov., 1876 in Philadelphia to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Exposition
Something of interest when skimming through the pages was these handwritten birth records written on the last few blank pages of the book.
I mentioned they were dirt poor so writing paper was probably scarce for them so they took advantage of the "free" pages at the back of the book. This particular volume in the set spends most of its time discussing all of the agricultural exhibits at the exhibition so it's our guess that is the reason her family had this book. There are many pages discussing the cotton industry (They were cotton farmers.)
So now we get to the "astronomy" connection. Just two years prior to the exhibition, there was a transit of the Sun by Venus and some of the equipment used to study that event was on hand at the exhibition.
I haven't even went through the entire book at this point but my plan it to skim through the entire book and if I come across any other astronomy related subjects, I'll add to this story. Hopefully, you found this as interesting as I did. Maybe not the family stuff, but the astronomy stuff, anyway.
Anyway, to the contents. It was mostly personal items like postcards and letters from people I never knew. Even my dad had no idea who most of the people were. A deck of old playing cards, a few 1cent postage stamps (We've already checked, little value.), a couple of corn husk dolls and a single book. The book is the point of this story.
The title of the book is "The United States Centennial Commission 1776-1876" and here's a photo of the cover and binding.
As I learned from a quick Google search, this was the FIRST World's Fair! The government put out a two-volume book set that discussed in great detail all of the exhibits at this exhibition that took place from May-Nov., 1876 in Philadelphia to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Exposition
Something of interest when skimming through the pages was these handwritten birth records written on the last few blank pages of the book.
I mentioned they were dirt poor so writing paper was probably scarce for them so they took advantage of the "free" pages at the back of the book. This particular volume in the set spends most of its time discussing all of the agricultural exhibits at the exhibition so it's our guess that is the reason her family had this book. There are many pages discussing the cotton industry (They were cotton farmers.)
So now we get to the "astronomy" connection. Just two years prior to the exhibition, there was a transit of the Sun by Venus and some of the equipment used to study that event was on hand at the exhibition.
I haven't even went through the entire book at this point but my plan it to skim through the entire book and if I come across any other astronomy related subjects, I'll add to this story. Hopefully, you found this as interesting as I did. Maybe not the family stuff, but the astronomy stuff, anyway.