Vol. 26:3 ISSN 0160-8460 September 1998
Editing the Papers of a Remarkable Family
by Sidney Hart
The Charles Willson Peale Family Papers, a historical editing project established in 1974 by Lillian B. Miller, is housed at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. The project has collected copies of over six thousand documents, spanning three generations of the Peale family, from the 1730s to the 1880s. The American Philosophical Society, the repository for most of the original documents, agreed to make their collection available for publication. In their entirety, the papers provide a history of one of the most talented families in early America.
The Peale Family, by Charles Willson Peale, ca. 1770-73 and 1808, oil on canvas. © Collection of The New-York Historical Society.
At the project's outset in the mid-1970s, financial considerations led many editors to debate the form and extent of publication. Should documents be published in a microform edition? Should letterpress editions be selective? The Peale Papers decided on a middle course - publication of all manuscripts in microform, and a selected letterpress edition. A desire to make the collection available to scholars as soon as possible led us to publish first a complete microfiche edition, The Collected Papers of Charles Willson Peale and His Family (Kraus Microform, 1980). Besides early circulation and availability, this course had many advantages, not the least of which was to begin editing the letterpress volumes with an organized and partially indexed collection. A major drawback, however, is that the microform edition does not benefit from subsequent research on the letterpress edition, research which inevitably reveals errors and omissions in the former.
Seven large and liberally illustrated volumes were planned for the Selected Papers letterpress edition. An agreement was reached with Yale University Press to co-publish the volumes in conjunction with the Smithsonian Institution. To date, four volumes, including a two-part second volume, have been published, with a fifth volume in press (Yale University Press, 1983-96). The Peale Family Papers has had the immense good fortune to be housed and largely supported by the Smithsonian Institution. However, the project has also received publication subventions from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as an initial grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The Peale Family Papers is usually characterized as an "art" project, a documentary history of a talented family of artists. Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827) painted more than one thousand portraits of the elite figures in colonial America and the early republic, in many cases providing us with our only likenesses of these individuals. Two of his seven sons were artists - Raphaelle (1774-1825) and Rembrandt (1778-1860). His brother James (1749-1831) was a noted miniature painter in Philadelphia. Two of James' daughters, Anna Claypoole (1791-1878) and Sarah Miriam (1800-1885), were among the earliest professional women painters in America. The "art" label thus does reflect a significant part of the family's history.
However, it is a label which obscures as much as it reveals about the Peale family in early America. Charles Willson Peale, the patriarch of the family, was not only an artist but a multi-faceted man of the American Enlightenment, who engaged in American society and culture in a wide variety of ways. His papers, as well as his children's, contain materials of a highly diverse nature, reflecting the varied interests and pursuits of the family. Completely edited and published, the material in the Peale Family Papers will add a rich vein to American cultural and social history.
Self-portrait in uniform, by Charles Willson Peale, 1777-78, oil on canvas. From the collections of the American Philosophical Society.
The papers of Charles Willson Peale form the core of the collection. Born in Maryland, the son of a convicted felon who had been transported to Britain's North American colonies, Peale was apprenticed at age 13 to a saddle maker, a situation he described as "abject servitude." Not successful in this trade, Peale tried his hand at other skills such as upholstering, metal-working, clock and watch repair, and, almost by chance, portrait painting. Peale displayed initial aptitude as a painter, and in 1767, several wealthy and generous Maryland planters sent him to London to study with Benjamin West. He returned to Maryland in 1769, and rapidly established himself as the preeminent painter of the middle colonies.
In June 1776, Peale moved his family to Philadelphia, right into the maelstrom of the revolutionary crisis which engulfed the city. Both Charles Willson and his brother James became active Whigs and fought in the American Revolution. Charles Willson was a member of a Philadelphia militia unit; he was present during part of the fighting in Trenton, and at the Battle of Princeton. His diary as a militiaman is published in volume 1 of the Selected Papers. James, in the Continental Army, also fought in several battles. Charles Willson also became active in Philadelphia's radical republican organizations, and was drawn into Philadelphia's tumultuous revolutionary politics. After the British army's withdrawal from Philadelphia, he served as an agent for the confiscation of estates, and in 1779, as a representative in the Pennsylvania Assembly. All of Peale's revolutionary activities are fully documented in volume one of the Selected Papers.
After the Revolution, Peale was never able to regain preeminence as an artist. Perhaps it was his insatiable curiosity, his many interests or "hobby horses," as he referred to them, that precluded his focusing on any single area, including portrait painting. What was lost, however, for Peale as an artist, was more than compensated for in his many other accomplishments and achievements. For the historical editor or biographer, the diversified patterns and rhythms of Peale's life prove to be far more interesting than any single activity. Peale would pursue many careers - as a naturalist and museologist, inventor, agricultural reformer, and even as a dentist at the end of his long life. At first, his other activities coexisted with his vocation as an artist, but by the second volume of the Selected Papers, entitled The Artist as Museum Keeper, 1791-1810, art no longer dominates his papers.
In the mid-1780s, Peale established his Philadelphia museum of natural history and art, which in little over a decade became the most successful institution of its type in early America. In 1794, with his museum absorbing most of his time and energy, Peale formally retired as a professional artist, painting portraits only for relatives, friends, and his museum. In 1801, Peale, with the assistance of the American Philosophical Society and his friend, President Thomas Jefferson, organized an expedition to upstate New York to exhume the bones of an American mastodon, an important event in the history of American science. Assisted by his son Rembrandt, Peale mounted the skeleton in his museum. It was an immediate sensation and became a huge popular attraction and a scientific achievement recognized by both American and European scientists. The mastodon exhibit was a spectacular example of what Pealehad accomplished with his museum - a synthesis of serious science, popular appeal, and democratic access within the context of a private proprietary institution.
The Exhumation of the Mastodon, by Charles Willson Peale, 1805-08, oil on canvas. From the Collections of The Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, Maryland.
By the second decade of the 19th century, Peale had increased the museum's collections to over 100,000 objects, including 269 paintings, 1,894 birds, 250 quadrupeds, 650 fishes, and over 1,000 shells, with 313 books in its library. During these creative years (when he was in his 40s, 50s, and 60s) besides expending his major efforts on his museum, Peale devoted himself to another of his favorite "hobby horses," mechanics and invention. He obtained patents for an innovative bridge design, fireplace improvements, and a portable vapor bath. Peale also co-invented a writing machine called the polygraph, which made copies of letters and documents. While not commercially successful, the polygraph was a remarkably precise instrument, and was responsible for preserving three important collections of documents. Peale used it to copy all of his own letters and made similar models for two of his friends, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Jefferson had previously used a letterpress to make barely legible copies of his correspondence. He purchased one of Peale's polygraphs while serving his first term as president, and used it until his death in 1826, providing grateful historians and editors with clear identical copies of his letters. Latrobe also used the polygraph for his correspondence, with similarly beneficial results for the editors of the Latrobe Papers.
Scholars utilizing the Peale collections will also be rewarded by the quantity and richness of their materials on the inner workings of the American family. Soon after his father's early death, Charles Willson Peale assumed the role of family patriarch with great earnestness, and this is reflected in the collection. His letters and diaries explicitly touch on issues of parenting, gender relations, family structure, and kinship. When completed, the volumes of the Peale family papers should take their place as one of the major collections of family history for the 18th and 19th centuries.
Materials of this richness and variety has been published in the first four volumes of the Selected Papers, which are largely devoted to Charles Willson Peale. A fifth volume in press will contain Charles Willson Peale's autobiography. Almost a thousand pages in manuscript, when published, Peale's work will compare favorably with Benjamin Franklin's as one of the most important early autobiographies in American letters. The final two volumes of the Selected Papers will be devoted to Peale's children. Rembrandt Peale's papers not only document his work as a portrait painter; but contain material on his quest for government patronage, his European travels, and his attempt to market a book on penmanship in America's newly established public high schools. Rubens Peale documents are filled with material about his art and science museums in Baltimore and New York. Titian Ramsay Peale's collection includes his participation in one of the major voyages of exploration and science in 19th-century America, the Wilkes Expedition. Benjamin Franklin Peale's papers contain material on the new tools and machinery of 19th-century America, and on his position as chief coiner of the United States Mint. The letters of Charles Willson Peale's daughter, Sophonisba, which are valuable both for their information on the Peales and as documents of family life in 19th-century America, will also be included.
The Artist in His Museum, by Charles Willson Peale, 1822, oil on canvas. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Gift of Mrs. Sarah Harrison (The Joseph Harrison, Jr., Collection).
The methodology of the Charles Willson Peale Family Papers occupies a middle ground in modern editing between the more highly technical literary editions and those meant for a more popular audience. The editors have published complete Peale documents, not excerpts. The selection process for the four published volumes on Charles Willson Peale has been based on two criteria - the document had to refer to an event or subject of historical interest and significance, or it had to maintain the continuity of the Peale family narrative. Volume five, Charles Willson Peale's autobiography, will be published in its entirety. Selection for volumes six and seven will be a more complex process. The sheer number of documents for Charles Willson Peale's children precludes a straight narrative or chronological approach. Instead, as indicated above, the editors will select certain thematic lines for several of the Peale children.
Transcriptions published in the letterpress volumes retain original spelling and grammar. However, crossouts are only printed if they are judged to be significant; slips of the pen and simple mistakes are omitted. Interlineations are silently inserted, and superscripts are brought down to economize on printing costs. Scholars who need to study the actual manuscript may consult the Collected Papers, but they can be assured that the transcriptions in the Selected Papers are reliable and readable.
Annotation in the Selected Papers has been kept to a minimum, but is still on the full side. There are no 10- or 20-page editorial essays, but the volumes contain a liberal number of headnotes and chapter introductions to provide context for the diverse interests and pursuits of the Peales. For example, a headnote discussing the development of taxidermy in Europe and America accompanies the document in which Charles Willson Peale describes his own method of preserving museum specimens. With Peale's autobiography, the editors have been more reluctant to interfere with the narrative, and have restricted footnotes to brief identifications and explanations. Still, because Peale was involved in so many activities, the editors have been compelled to cast a wide research net in the annotation process.
On November 27, 1997, while we were working on Peale's autobiography, Lillian Miller died unexpectedly. This was a personal and professional loss, and her presence and leadership will be missed. Sidney Hart was appointed Editor, and David C. Ward, Senior Associate Editor. The staff is determined to complete the project and publish the full seven-volume letterpress edition. These volumes will not only add a great deal to our knowledge of American art history, but because of their unique cross-disciplinary character will be extremely valuable to scholars and researchers in cultural and social history.
(Sidney Hart is Editor of The Selected Papers of Charles Willson Peale and His Family.)
