Bristow as Businessman and Musical Authority

Bristow organized two piano and melodeon businesses--the first a disaster, the second more successful. He provided testimonials to many instrument manufacturers (Steinway, Chickering, Bradbury, and Weber pianos) and other music-related endeavors. He was also associated with the United States Mutual Pianoforte Association (1867), a nonprofit that made pianos available to the general public at low prices. Bristow also served as a musical-instrument judge at the 1876 Centennial Exposition and became swept up in a controversy about the judging process. He was defended by some New York critics but was deemed guilty by association by many and must have rued the day he agreed to take on the task.

Crystal White

This chapter centers on Albert May Todd, who became familiar with the peppermint plants local farmers grew and the stills they used to process mint hay into oil when he was a young man. It explains how Albert discovered that the light amber color of most American peppermint oil was caused by resins that damaged the oil's flavor. It also analyzes Albert's development of a proprietary method to in order to remove the resins in peppermint oil. The chapter recounts how Albert marketed his Crystal White brand of peppermint oil and menthol crystals in 1875. It also mentions how Albert won a gold medal for his Crystal White Peppermint Oil at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.

Across the Traces: Lawrence Jordan’s Animated Documents

Since the early 1960s, Lawrence Jordan has appropriated a variety of Victorian engravings transforming them into experimental animations through the use of cut-out stop-motion techniques. In their outmoded style and technique, the dense tapestry of collaged ephemera begins to function as indices of their original Victorian context and its printing processes. But the stop-motion manipulation also renders these indexical documents surreal through the juxtaposition of apparently unrelated images. This amounts to a reflexive approach harking back to the early days of cinema when audiences perceived the new technology as a source of wonder, amazement and magic. Jordan’s animations, such as Patricia Gives Birth to a Dream by the Doorway (1961–1964) and The Centennial Exposition (1961–1964), employ a productive tension not just between animation and documentary but between indexicality and illusion as well. In these animations, the use of such tensions exposes history and culture as fragmentary constructions of memory, fantasy and experience, thereby open to alteration, re-reading and reconfiguration in the present moment.

Endings

This chapter focuses on events surrounding the end of the Cotton Centennial Exposition, in particular the Woman's Day celebration on May 30, 1885. Although it was Maud Howe's time to shine because the event centered on her gift of books, her mother presided at the occasion. Grace King noted, she did so “as a matter of course. She presides at everything & has done it so long that her air, manner, smile & language are actually thread bare,” King gossiped to her sister May. King and other local women had long ago tired of Howe's intruder personality, but she had delivered useful messages and employed effective tactics to make a successful Woman's Department.

The Locals

This chapter describes the local women who played key roles during the Cotton Centennial Exposition. Among them was Caroline Merrick (1825–1908) who singlehandedly managed her brother's plantation in 1862. All the men were at war that year, and her husband had secreted their slaves to another parish. Merrick wrote that, at Myrtle Grove, she was responsible for the welfare of family members and all the slaves as well as for clothing and crops. Merrick learned stratagems as she managed the plantation, for she also dealt with both Union and Confederate armies that regularly took what they needed as they trooped between Baton Rouge and Port Gibson. Another was Caroline Gratia Williams Walmsley (1832?–1905) who was one of the organizers of the Christian Woman's Exchange in 1881 and the group's president for more than two decades, from 1882 until the year before her death in 1905.