Prologue: Pieces of History

Only 43 men in the history of the United States have held the title of President.

That’s a fairly small group , smaller than your average NFL team. But smaller still is the group of professionals who have held the title as the President’s chief photographer. To date, only nine men have served as the official White House Photographer.

President John F. Kennedy first appointed photographer Cecil Stoughton in 1960 in the role of White House Photographer. In the nearly 50 years following that first appointment, Presidential photographers have served as visual historians of the President’s daily life.

These photographers captured rare glimpses inside the White House and the historic moments of the Presidents they served. In addition to iconic images that enter the public’s memory of the President, private moments are captured as well.

On October 21, 2011, the Truman Library and Museum in Independence, MO, is excited to share the works of these photographers with  the exhibition “The President’s Photographer: Fifty Years Inside the Oval Office.”

The exhibit displays images from the 1960s, when the first Presidential photographer was hired, to today’s unprecedented coverage of Barack Obama. The National Geographic exhibition features works by veteran presidential photographers including David Hume (who photographed Gerald Ford), David Valdez (George H.W. Bush), Bob McNeely (Bill Clinton), and Eric Draper (George W. Bush).

This tradition continues today as the 44th President’s chief … [ Read all ]

If you’re planning to travel this Columbus Day holiday (and it was, like, 1835), you might thank this guy for building the first steam locomotive in the US: Peter Cooper—inventor, industrialist, and one-time Presidential candidate.

But, most important for our purposes, Cooper was the owner of a truly remarkable beard. Impressive facial hair is an asset to any Presidential candidate, but we are sorry to report that Peter Cooper’s beard did not win him the 1876 election, when he ran for the Greenback Party. Still, at the age of 85, Cooper is the oldest person to be nominated for the Presidential office.

Cooper was an active player in the anti-slavery movement and a firm believer that practical education in mechanical arts in sciences should be free. In 1853, he founded the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, a private college in New York that offered night classes to both men and women. Today, Cooper Union is still seen as one of the leading American colleges in the fields of architecture, engineering, and art. It continues Cooper’s belief that college education should be free: all its students attend with a full scholarship.… [ Read all ]

Since last week’s photo came from holdings at the National Archives at Chicago, we thought, what could be more appropriate than getting one of our Windy City colleagues to be our guest judge? Regional Office Management Assistant Mary Ann Zulevic stepped in for the duty and, after much deliberation, debating, and pondering, picked this genealogical joke for the win.

Congratulations to Alexis Hill! Check your e-mail for a code for 15% off in the eStore. We’ve got lots of goodies for all the knots in your family tree.

The original caption for the photo is: “On Demonstration Trail, ‘Trees for Tomorrow’ Conservation Workshop, at Eagle River. Walt Nicewander shows 2 teachers a knotty, low-grade bd. Produced by limby trees such as white pine to the left. Vilas Co. Wis. 07/1960″ (Records of the Forest Service, RG 95; ARC 2131639).

I don’t know if the men in this week’s photo for caption are from the same family tree, but they sure seem close. Put your best captions in the comments section below! We’ll reconvene again next week to pick a winner—same time, same place.

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Since it’s fall and October, our thoughts naturally turned to Oktoberfest as a possible topic for What’s Cooking Wednesdays. However, one too many encounters with Upton Sinclair’s letter to President Teddy Roosevelt about the working conditions in meat factories had us avoiding the bratwurst. And, apparently, drinking beer in the office is hugely frowned upon by the management. So we turned to another appropriately Oktoberfest-y menu item: the pretzel.

While its presence in the U.S. doesn’t pack quite the same punch to the gut as the (un)savory sausage, the pretzel has its own colorful history to tell. It’s thought to have originated from monasteries in the Middle Ages, where monks made little pastries from strips of dough to represent a child’s arm folded in prayer. The treats, called pretiola (Latin for “little reward”) were given to children for good behavior and memorizing their verses and prayers.

Thanks to human migration, the pretiola traveled to Italy and became called brachiola (Italian for “little arms”). In Germany, it was known as bretzel or pretzel. It crossed the oceans with the immigrants in the 1800s and settled in Pennsylvania.

Lancaster County, PA, boasted the first commercial pretzel bakery, which was established by Julius Sturgis in the town of Lititz in 1861. The pretzel business was a brisk one. To this day, about 80 percent of the nation’s pretzels are still produced in Pennsylvania. The pretzel capital of the world? Reading, PA.

But the pretzel is not … [ Read all ]

Since this week’s photo featured President Harry S. Truman, we turned to Tammy Kelly, an archivist at the Truman Library, to pick our winner for the photo contest. She has firsthand knowledge of this photo since she is the one who cataloged the doll into the Truman Library’s computerized system earlier this summer.

Tammy picked John W.’s quote as one that tickled her funny bone. Congratulations, John W.! Check your e-mail for a code for 15% off in the eStore.

The original caption for the photo is “Photograph of President Truman in the Oval Office, receiving a doll from Dr. Helen Kim, a Korean educator, as Dr. John Myun Chang, Ambassador of the Republic of Korea to the United States, and Dr. Frederick Brown Harris, Chaplain of the Senate, look on. 05/08/1951″ (ARC 200314; Harry S. Truman Library). Tammy added that while they do not have much information about the doll itself, she could tell us that the doll is wearing a dark red skirt, and the dress features brightly striped sleeves.

Dolls, puppets, and office politics aside, this week’s photo takes us back to nature. Put your best captions in the comment box below!

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