George Perkins Marsh Online Research Center
Collection Overview
The George Perkins Marsh Research Center provides access to transcriptions and images of selected letters in Marsh's correspondence. With a generous grant from the Woodstock Foundation we have transcribed over 650 letters from the University...
Show moreThe George Perkins Marsh Research Center provides access to transcriptions and images of selected letters in Marsh's correspondence. With a generous grant from the Woodstock Foundation we have transcribed over 650 letters from the University manuscript collection and from Marsh's letters located at other institutions.
Major topics in the correspondence selected for electronic publication are:
The American Civil War. The letters present the war from two perspectives: as it was experienced by those in Europe and by those in New England, particularly in Vermont. Marsh, an ardent Unionist, wrote from Italy, where there were many active Confederate sympathizers in the American expatriate community and among English residents. The view from Vermont is represented by Albert G. Peirce, a Burlington grocer, who sent Marsh detailed accounts of the war as it affected the city. Other Vermonters and Charles Eliot Norton, the Harvard luminary and an active abolitionist, also wrote of their hopes and opinions as the war progressed.
Vermont geography. Creating an accurate geographical description of the complex Vermont landscape remained a problem throughout the nineteenth century. Marsh and his brother Charles, a Woodstock, Vermont, farmer, made several attempts to measure the elevation of Vermont mountains, and Marsh kept in contact with leading geographers of the day to find more accurate instruments to measure temperature and ascertain the exact landmass of the state.
Nineteenth century sculpture. Marsh's friendship with Hiram Powers, begun when both were children on neighboring Woodstock farms, led to a correspondence in which Powers not only described the trials and tribulations of a working sculptor, but discussed his ideas about classical and contemporary works in some detail. Powers's aesthetics are most clearly expressed in his letters to Caroline Crane Marsh regarding the bust he made of her, now in the Fleming Museum at the University of Vermont. In addition, Marsh corresponded with Larkin G. Mead, then a young sculptor from Barre, who designed the statue of "Agriculture" atop the State House, and with John Norton Pomeroy of Burlington about the statue of Ethan Allen, carved in Italy under Marsh's supervision, that now stands above Allen's grave in Burlington's Green Mount Cemetery.
Nineteenth century public architecture. The rebuilding of the Vermont State House in 1857 provides a detailed picture of how American connoisseurs and architects designed public buildings. The collection contains over ninety letters by Thomas W. Silloway, the architect, to Marsh, one of the building commissioners, discussing appropriate forms for each element, as well as the politics involved in construction. These are enhanced by letters from the building superintendent, Thomas E. Powers of Woodstock, from another commissioner, Norman Williams of Woodstock, and from state legislators and private citizens caught up in what was a highly controversial undertaking.
Creation of the Smithsonian Institution. The evolution of the museum and its support for scientific expeditions and collection development are documented in the correspondence between Marsh and Spencer Fullerton Baird which began in 1847 and ended with Marsh's death in 1882. Marsh was instrumental in securing a post at the Smithsonian for Baird, who eventually became its second director and founded the Oceanographic Institute at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The two men also worked together to increase the Smithsonian's collections and facilitate the exchange of scientific information with Italy.
In addition the letters provide information on nineteenth century domestic life, the politics surrounding Vermont's railroads, local and national social and political developments, the tangled relationships between the European powers, and other subjects of interest to educated and engaged individuals of the time.
The Center also includes the full text of contemporary publications that are related to the major topics of the letters.
Biography: When Man and Nature was published in 1864 it was immediately hailed as a major contribution to the field of physical geography. Now a classic of environmental literature, its author, George Perkins Marsh, was one of the first to recognize and described in detail the significance of human action in transforming the natural world.
Lawyer, diplomat, and scholar, Marsh, was born on March 15, 1801 at Woodstock, Vermont. In 1820 he graduated with highest honors from Dartmouth. He immediately tried teaching, but finding it distasteful, studied law with his father, Charles Marsh. Admitted to the bar in 1825, he practiced in Burlington, Vermont, where he became prominent in his profession. On April 10, 1828, he married Harriet Buell of Burlington. They had two sons; the eldest died a few days before his mother in 1833. Marsh immersed himself in the study of Icelandic and other Scandinavian languages, beginning a life long career as a philologist and linguist. Six years after his first wife's death, he married Caroline Crane of Berkley, Massachusetts. Already well known as a lawyer, business man and scholar, in 1835 he was elected to the Governor's Council. In 1843 he ran for Congress as a Whig, and during three successive terms proved himself a cogent speaker in support of a high tariff and in opposition to slavery and the Mexican War. He served on the committee that established and guided the future of the Smithsonian Institution.
In 1849 President Taylor appointed Marsh U.S. Minister to Turkey. He aided refugees from central European revolutions of 1848, and in the summer of 1852 he was sent to Athens on a special mission. He collected specimens for the Smithsonian during an intensive tour of Egypt and Palestine.
Recalled by a new administration in 1854, Marsh labored to mend his bankrupt fortunes, to act as Vermont railroad commissioner, fish commissioner, and to lead a commission formed to rebuild the Vermont State House. He lectured throughout the northeast and mid-West and taught courses on the English language at Columbia College and the Lowell Institute. Having joined and campaigned for the Republican party in 1856, he was sent by President Lincoln as the first United States minister to the new kingdom of Italy in 1861, a post he held for the remaining twenty-one years of his life. He won admirers in the Italian government and a greater reputation as a scholar by his mastery of Italian affairs and his writings on language and environmental matters. He died on July 23, 1882 at Vallombrosa, near Florence, and was buried in the Protestant cemetery in Rome.
David Lowenthal's George Perkins Marsh: Prophet of Conservation. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000.
Caroline Crane Marsh's Life and Letters of George Perkins Marsh. Vol. I. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1888.
Biographical sketches can also be found in national biographical dictionaries.
Technical Information The text files were created using WordPerfect 7.0 as an SGML editor and the DTD for historical documents developed by Dr. David R. Chesnutt of the University of South Carolina and the Model Editions Partnership (MEP). The SGML publication used DynaText, a software package developed by EBT Corporation of Providence Rhode Island and granted to the University of Vermont under their educational grant program. WordPerfect 9.0 was used as the final editor and parser.
The actual coding depended largely on programs James P. Tranowski wrote to process the letters. Ellen Mazur Thomson did the bulk of it, although Cheryl Morrison and several graduate students connected with the MEP project at the University of South Carolina also worked on the letters. William Hicks of Tyrone, Pennsylvania, provided additional coding of the Correspondence Lists. Aaron Shamp coded the footnotes, entered copy editing corrections, parsed and cleaned all the SGML files and entities.
Paul Philbin and Marcie A. Crocker, at the Howe Library and Hope A. Greenberg, at the Academic Computing Service served as technical advisers for the hardware and software.
Original web publication came through DynaWeb, also an EBT grant program.
On November 26, 2008 The George Perkin Marsh Online Research Center was migrated from its original location http://bailey2.uvm.edu/specialcollections/gpmorc.html to its new home at the CDI. Documents were migrated from SGML to XML using openSP and XSL.
Contributors David A. Donath, the Advisory Board of Directors, and the Board of Trustees of the Woodstock Foundation provided the financial support that made this project possible. Bruce Kirby, archivist at the Smithsonian Institution Archives, and archivists at the Houghton Library, Harvard University, the New York Historical Society, and the Archives of American Art provided copies of Marsh correspondence in their collections for us to transcribe and publish. The Vermont Historical Society allowed us to reproduce photographs in their collection.
Connell Gallagher, head of the Special Collections Department, and Dr. Elizabeth H. Dow, created the project; Dr. Dow acted as Project Director. Ellen Mazur Thomson was Project Manager.
Faculty and staff members of the Special Collections Department gave us specialized and expert reference: David Blow, Ingrid Bower, Sylvia Bugbee, Karen Campbell, Sylvia Knight and Jeffrey Marshall.
Dr. Robert H. Rogers of the Classics Department, transcribed and annotated many of the Greek and Latin phrases used in the letters. Dr. Ralph H. Orth translated German materials, Ellen Mazur Thomson translated those in French.
Dr. Ralph H. Orth, Professor Emeritus of the University of Vermont, created the transcription protocols for the letters. He transcribed most of the Powers and Norton letters and provided notes for their correspondence with Marsh. John Thomas transcribed Marsh's letters to Baird and Jacob Colie transcribed the Peirce letters. Eileen N. Brown contributed notes.
Ellen Mazur Thomson selected the letters, designed the [original] web pages and wrote the introductory text.
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Related Archival Collection
Sub-collections
Pages
- Title
- Caroline Crane Marsh Diaries
- Date Created
- 1861-1865
- Description
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Caroline Crane was born on December 1, 1816 in Berkley, Massachusetts to Benjamin and Alinda (Briggs) Crane, and was the eldest daughter of ten children. She received her education from schools in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, as well as from her older brothers, until the age of sixteen, when...
Show moreCaroline Crane was born on December 1, 1816 in Berkley, Massachusetts to Benjamin and Alinda (Briggs) Crane, and was the eldest daughter of ten children. She received her education from schools in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, as well as from her older brothers, until the age of sixteen, when she moved to Middlebury, Vermont to live with her eldest brother, Silas, and his family. In 1837, she and her brother’s family moved to Burlington, where she taught at a local Episcopal boarding school run by Silas. In 1839, after teaching for a short time at the school of a family friend in New York City, Caroline married George Perkins Marsh (1801-1882) and returned to Burlington to live with him and his son, George Ozias Marsh. When George Perkins Marsh was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1843, Caroline, her husband and his son, and her sister, Lucy, all moved to Washington D.C., with all but George Ozias remaining in the city until 1849.Caroline lived abroad for most of the next 34 years of her life. In 1849, her husband was appointed U.S. Minister to Turkey, a position he held until 1853. During this period, the Marshes, along with George’s son, his niece Maria Buell, and family-friend Caroline Paine, traveled extensively through Turkey, Egypt, the Levant, and Southern Europe, remaining in Greece for several months in part to complete a diplomatic mission there. Caroline returned with the rest of her party to the United States in 1854, residing in Burlington once more until 1861. In that year, her husband was appointed U.S. Minister to the Kingdom of Italy, and the couple traveled to Europe that June in the company of Caroline’s niece, Caroline “Carrie” Crane. While in Italy, the Marshes took several sightseeing trips through northern Italy, southern France, Switzerland, and western Austria. They also moved several times to stay near the capital of Italy, which moved from Turin to Florence in 1865 and then to Rome in 1873. George Perkins Marsh died in 1882 at the Marshes’ home in Vallombrosa, and Caroline returned to the United States the following year, living with her nephew Alexander Crane and other relatives until her death on October 27, 1901.
Throughout her life, Caroline suffered from several health challenges, including strokes, eye ailments, and difficulty walking and sitting for long periods without pain. Before the latter ailments were corrected through surgeries in 1866 and 1873, they hindered her ability to read and move without help, yet they did not prevent her from becoming an accomplished poet and translator or from participating in various philanthropic projects. She learned French, Italian, Swedish, and German by having others read aloud to her, which enabled her to read widely and prodigiously even during periods of near-blindness. In 1856, after mastering the German language, she translated The Hallig or, the Sheepfold in the Waters: A Tale of Humble Life on the Coast of Schleswig by Johann Christoph Biernatzki. Three years later, she published a collection of original poetry, The Wolfe of the Knoll, and other Poems, and later compiled and edited a collection of her husband’s correspondence, which she published as Life and Letters of George Perkins Marsh, Vol. 1 in 1888. During the latter years of her life, she became involved in several charitable ventures: she collected autographs from famous Italians to donate to the U.S. Sanitary Fairs, which supported sick and wounded Union soldiers during the Civil War; she served for many years in Florence as president of the board of managers of the Collegio Ferretti, an orphanage for Protestant Italian girls founded Salvatore Ferretti, and in 1876, she and her husband became the adopted parents of a Swedish toddler, Carlo Rande, who they raised as their own during their final years together in Italy.
Caroline Crane Marsh’s 17 “Italian” diaries (1861-1865) included here document the Marshes’ day-to-day lives during their time in Italy, particularly during their stay in Turin.
Topics include the American Civil War, race and slavery, Catholicism, European political and social relations, British-American political relations, Napoleon III and Second French Empire, King Victor Emmanuel II and Italian politics, Giuseppe Garibaldi and Italian nationalism, religious and funerary practices in Italy, the status and treatment of women in Italy and elsewhere, problems within and interactions between the Italian social classes, the experiences of Protestants, Jews, and rural peasants in Italy; health and medicine in Italy, Italian industries and agricultural practices, the Italian education system, the Italian language, crime and punishment in Italy, Italian fashion and etiquette, tourism and hospitality in Italy and the Alps, popular books and reading habits during the 1860s, George Perkins Marsh’s diplomatic and scholarly activities in Italy, and the everyday experiences of upper and lower-class Italians.
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