Dancing in the mountains of Idaho, 1906

In 1906, Anton Boisen, who, as a grandson of Theophilus A. Wylie, had grown up in Wylie House, was working for the U.S. Forestry Service. He was sent that summer, with four others plus a cook, to the mountains of Idaho, to do some forestry surveys near Mt. Sawtell in the Henry’s Lake Forest Reserve, which was near Yellowstone Park. They camped in a remote area several miles from the nearest habitation and stayed until the weather made it necessary to return to civilization. Despite the remote location, Anton wrote a weekly letter to his mother in Bloomington and explained, “It often takes four days for a letter to reach St. A [Anthony] after we get it down to Rieker’s. It goes, you see, from Rieker’s to Trude’s, from Trude’s to Rae P.O., from Rae to Spencer, and thence by stage to St. Anthony.” In early November, he wrote a very interesting letter describing a dance their crew had attended at a nearby ranch:

Sunday morning, Nov. 4, 1906

My dearest Mother,

Another week is gone now and we are reminded very strongly that our stay here is nearing the end. Galaneau left yesterday for Laramie, Wyoming to work on the Medicine Bow Reserve and Pond will join him there. Peters and I are therefore left alone to finish things up as best we can. We shall stay in the camp several days longer and then go to the lumber camps near Spencer for two or three weeks, and after that we go to Washington….

In honor of Galaneau’s departure we took a day off Thursday and went down to a dance at the Trudes’, one of the western dances where everybody comes for miles around and stays all night. We had to go seventeen miles ourselves driving down with John Rieker and his wife and children. The Trudes have a regular dance hall or at least a building devoted exclusively to those functions and that was where we went. Everybody was invited and people were there from twenty miles away, all sorts and conditions too, Mormons and all. We were attired in our field clothes with the exception that I had borrowed a coat from Peters, not having one of my own, but we did not feel out of place for there were plenty of men there with their sweaters on. The one bright and shining exception however was young Mr. Jack Ripley who wore a full dress suit, with a white four-in-hand necktie, a diamond scarf pin and white socks and white shoes. He acted as master of ceremonies and called out all the dances.

About one o’clock in the morning the feast was served, after that they went at the dancing again and kept it up till after four when we all adjourned to the main house and sat around and talked or snoozed until breakfast time. Some of the men however went over to the bunk house and had a nice little game of poker.

The journey home was accomplished in broad daylight. It might be interesting to say that as we approached the Ripley ranch, we noticed someone up on top of the thatched roof of the stable getting down hay for the cattle. We thought it was a woman at first but on closer investigation we discovered that it was Jack Ripley in all the glory of his evening suit and white shoes and diamond scarf pin–and a black bearskin coat. As we drew nearer, he went into the stable to finish up the rest of his chores.

These dances are held once every month or so, sometimes every two weeks when the weather is not too cold and they are always all night affairs. It could not well be arranged otherwise for the guests have to come such long distances and the nights here are always so cold.

We have been having some delightful weather lately, but the end of it has probably come now for it is half snowing, half raining today, and there is several inches of snow on the ground. Sam [the cook] predicts that there will be a foot or so of snow before this storm ends….

Please give my love to all there at home, and keeps lots of it for yourself

Anton

Wylie House Basket Collection

Three baskets in the Wylie House Museum collection

In 1914, Rebecca Grace Wylie (Reba) and Laurence Seabrook Wylie (granddaughter and grandson of Theophilus Adam Wylie) were residing in Indian Oasis, Arizona, to the southwest of Tucson, within the Tohono O’odham (previously known as the Papago) Indian Reservation. On January 22, Reba wrote a letter to her Aunt Louisa Wylie Boisen in Bloomington, indicating Laurence’s interest in purchasing the Lynehurst Ranch chicken farm. By April they were residing at Lynehurst Ranch. According to Reba, the ranch was located 12 miles from Tucson near the Santa Catalina Mountains which are to the northeast of Tucson, near the Gila River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. In other letters, Reba mentions the Native-made baskets and she included the photo you see here in one of her letters home. We believe that the 12 baskets now in the Wylie House Museum collection were sent by Reba to her Aunt Louisa and cousin Marie Boisen Bradley as gifts.

Traditionally, the Pima (now known as the Akimel O’odham) and Papago created complex abstract geometric designs in their baskets. The baskets in the Wylie House collection do not reflect the traditional designs of the Papago and Pima. Rather they reflect the influence of traders and tourists on basket makers. Many of the baskets in the collection display human and animal motifs. The inclusion of these types of figural elements was a development of the early twentieth century. The small size of a number of these baskets can be attributed to the popularity of miniature baskets among tourists.

Based on physical proximity it would be easy to infer that the baskets were created by members of the Papago tribe. However, by the early twentieth century both tribes had commenced the practice of basket making for the purposes of supplying traders and tourists with souvenirs. This produced a number of changes in the style and form of the baskets being produced. Papago and Pima tribal members were known to purchase baskets from one another to sell in various markets. Therefore, without more extensive testing of materials it is difficult to determine which people created the baskets in the Wylie House Collection.

Reba Wylie with Native American girl and baskets, 1914

Dance Cards

A dance card from a Sigma Chi dance at Indiana University in 1900

Anton T. Boisen, Marie L. Boisen, Samuel B. Wylie, and Reba Wylie were grandchildren of Theophilus and Rebecca Wylie who grew up here in Wylie House and attended IU. The two girls were members of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. Anton was a Phi Gamma Delta and Sam a Sigma Chi, as was Morton C. Bradley, Marie Boisen’s fiancée and later husband. Sororities and fraternities of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries held frequent dances and parties, judging by the letters, dance cards and party favors in our archive. Some dances were planned far enough in advance to allow for having programs printed, but some were fairly impromptu so that the dance cards were made by hand. Dances of that time and earlier were fairly formal events, with the order and kind of dances planned in advance and listed on the program or dance card. Each woman in attendance (and perhaps each man) was given a dance card that often had a small pencil attached. The idea was that when a certain dance was promised to someone, that person would write his or her name on your dance card next to the dance that was promised and in this way, no one would forget who had been promised which dance and thus there would be no hurt feelings or disagreements during the evening. The cards tended to be fairly small so as to be easily carried throughout the evening. The cord or ribbon that attached the pencil to the card also made a handy carrying device and could be slipped over a wrist or tucked into a belt. The Wylie grandchildren kept over a dozen of these dance cards. They give us a glimpse of an era when the customs and entertainment of young people were quite different from today.

Anton T. and Martin Luther King

The Rev. Anton T. Boisen was a grandson of Theophilus and Rebecca Wylie. When his father, Hermann B. Boisen died in 1884 at the age of 38, Anton’s mother Louisa Wylie Boisen brought her two young children back to Bloomington and moved in with her parents in what is now Wylie House Museum. Anton had an interesting career, most of it in the ministry. We came across this clipping from the Chicago Daily News, June 7, 1957 and noticed that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and Rev. Boisen were granted honorary doctorates from the Chicago Theological Seminary the same year. For more about Rev. Boisen, see our digital exhibit of his photographs.

I.U.’s Turkey Lake Biology Station

In the summer of 1895, Professor Carl H. Eigenmann established a “Biology Station”, the first inland biological station in America, at Turkey Lake, Kosciusko County, Indiana. He did this with the consent of Indiana University, but without financial support. The University trustees agreed to allow the use of apparatus from the zoology department for the duration of the nine weeks session with the understanding that there would be no cost to the University as a result of operating the station. The first year was such a success that, thereafter, the trustees provided permanent equipment. The purpose of the station was research and instruction in biological sciences. The first year 19 students attended. That number grew to 32 the second year, 63 the third, and 103 the fourth year. The number of classes offered also increased so that by the summer of 1898 students could study zoology, botany, bacteriology, mathematics, French, and German. At the end of the fourth year, the station was moved to Winona Lake where there were better facilities to care for the increasing number of students.

Photographs of classes held at Turkey Lake Biology Station from Wylie House Archives

Morton C. Bradley, Sr. attended the Biology Station for at least two summers, 1897 and 1898. He was already courting his future wife Marie Boisen, granddaughter of Theophilus and Rebecca Wylie who lived here in Wylie House with her mother and grandmother. The two young people wrote copious letters to one another any time that Morton was away from Bloomington, so we have many letters written from the Biology Station, some of which provide interesting glimpses of student life there. Morton, or someone else, took photographs while there. Some of these were used in the 1899 Arbutus (Morton was business manager of the IU yearbook that year), and he also put together an album for Marie made up of images from IU and the Biology Station. Morton’s letters to Marie were largely lengthy, lovesick ramblings….a young man longing for his sweetheart. He says very little about his classes, concentrating more on the social life at the lake, but we have found a few interesting quotes that, paired with some of his photographs, give an interesting glimpse of what it was like to be an IU student attending the Biology Station in the last part of the 19^th century.

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June 28, 1897: “You asked about Turkey Lake. There isn’t much to tell. It’s just a common old lake about 6 by 2 miles. But I can better tell you when I see you…. I have been rowing so much I have ten blisters. I have rowed about eighteen miles in the last 2 or three days. … Don’t worry, sweetheart, I shall come back to you safe and sound…. I shall be none the worse for wear, mentally, physically, nor morally except that I shall, I hope, know a little Botany, be free from the cigarette habit, and a great deal tanned. The only thing I fear is that you won’t recognize me after such a change.”

July 18, 1897: “Since I wrote last nothing has occurred that amounted to much until yesterday. Our team played at Millford and won too—12 to 9. That’s pretty good for the second game isn’t it? … we went in a wagon. We started back about seven. As you probably know, whenever boys get together of an evening, they always sing. Well, last night was no exception. They sang everything I like to hear, Sweet Marie included. I think they sang that especially for the captain. I appreciated it anyway.”

Morton C. Bradley Sr. and IU baseball club1897 from Wylie House Archives

Aug 10, 1897:  “Last Friday everybody went to Winona. It’s an awfully pretty place so we spent the morning in ‘taking in’ the place. Just after dinner—if one could apply that worthy name to our unworthy meal—we went for a steamer ride around Eagle Lake. After the ride came the ball game. We made 4 and 8 scores in the first and second innings respectively. Then they settled down and we made but three scores, getting four ‘Eagle’ eggs. They scored in only five innings, one score an inning, we giving them four ‘Turkey’ eggs. We were happy with the score 15 to 5 in our favor. Patten pitched for us and he pitched a good game too. John Coulter played second base for Winona. I think he knows how to treat a fellow, but I fancy he has some traits of character that I am happy I don’t possess to any great degree. About the seventh inning in an attempt to steal home, I scraped about six square inches of skin off my right forearm. Besides I bruised the elbow so that it got real stiff as we were coming home. That’s one reason I couldn’t write.”

July 13, 1898:  “I hope that by the time you receive this letter you’ll have had your picture taken. You know, dear, I thought that only one of your pictures ever did you justice—I like the one I have in my watch more than I used to, however. By the way, I was glad the other day that Prof Andrews hadn’t a watch. We went to the lecture tent to take a lecture and he asked me for my watch so that he could tell when the hour was up. He placed my watch on a chair with the lid opened, in such a position that I could see your darling picture the whole hour. And for the first time since he has been lecturing to us, I didn’t get sleepy. It was such a comfort to have your picture where I could see it all the time!

Speaking of his lectures reminds me of the one today. I got awfully sleepy and was almost asleep when he said something that wasn’t true mathematically speaking. I corrected him in a moment and was wide awake the rest of the hour. This morning we—three boys of my class—went out into the woods to hunt flowers. We found some and classified them. Then we concluded that, since it was cool and shady there, we had worked enough for one morning. Consequently we went to sleep and slept about an hour and a half, nearly missing our dinners. Botany work is fine!!!”

Photographs from Turkey Lake from Wylie House Archives

McFerson and Foster families

Mary Parke Foster, photo from the Wylie House Archives

Mary Parke McFerson (known as Parke), a childhood friend of Louisa Wylie Boisen’s, married John W. Foster who served in the Union Army during the Civil War and went on to become U. S. Minister to Mexico, then Russia and finally to Spain in the 1870s and 1880s. He served as U. S. Secretary of State under President Benjamin Harrison. Parke’s mother was Mrs. Eliza J. McFerson who served as principal of the Monroe County Female Seminary and then went to Glendale Female College in the 1850s to take up the post of assistant principal. Parke and Louisa kept up a correspondence for many years, and Parke’s letters to Louisa are now part of the Wylie House Museum archive. Her letters from Mexico in the 1870s are particularly interesting.

Mrs. Eliza J. McFerson, photo from the Wylie House Archives

John W. Foster, photo from the Wylie House Archives

Early Airmail Delivery

According to Edward A. Keogh in “A Brief History of the Air Mail Service of the U. S. Post Office Department (May 15, 1918 – August 31, 1927)”  [http://www.airmailpioneers.org/history/Sagahistory.htm], the first air mail service in the United States was in September 1911, when Earle L. Ovington was appointed an air mail carrier and, flying out of an air field at Nassau Boulevard, Long Island, N.Y. between September 23 and 30, he delivered a total of 32,415 post cards, 3,993 letters and 1,062 circulars to Mineola, N. Y. a distance of about 33 miles by road. The mail pouches were dropped at an air field in Mineola where the postmaster picked them up. One of those post cards was sent to Bloomington by Samuel B. Wylie, grandson of Theophilus and Rebecca Wylie. Addressed to his sister, Reba, Sam’s message on the back side of the card reads: “Am sending you this from the areoplane meet at Nassau Boulevard. It leaves the grounds by areoplane. Hope you get it. S. B. W.” The front of the card depicts the “New Wright Machine.”  Sam, a commercial artist, was living in New York City in 1911, but he had grown up in Wylie House, raised by his grandma, Rebecca Wylie, and his aunt, Louisa Boisen, after his father died in 1890.

 

Correspondence between Louise Bradley and Elizabeth Bishop

Louise Bradley, Camp Chequesset, Cape Cod

Louise Bradley (1908-1979) was the sister of Morton C. Bradley, Jr. the inspiration for this blog. As a young girl, she attended Camp Chequesset on Cape Cod in Massachusetts during the summers where she met a fellow camper, three years younger than herself, named Elizabeth Bishop. These two struck up a friendship that lasted for many years. Both dreamed of becoming writers, and in fact, Bishop fulfilled her dream and became a well known poet. Her papers are archived at Vassar College, her alma mater, and a short biography of her can be found at the Vassar College Library website. http://projects.vassar.edu/bishop/

We were delighted to find that Louise saved many of the letters (over 60) that Elizabeth, or Bishie as she called herself, wrote to her starting in 1925. Most of the letters are from the years 1925 through 1934, but there are two from 1950, so it is apparent that the two friends kept up at least a sporadic correspondence for 25 years or more. Included with the letters are several poems written by Bishop. Scholars interested in Elizabeth Bishop may contact us about obtaining access to these early letters and poems.

 

Kappa Alpha Theta

Louisa Wylie

Louisa Wylie Boisen, eldest daughter of Theophilus and Rebecca Wylie, was one of the earliest female students at Indiana University, graduating in 1871. She was also an early member of I.U.s Beta chapter of Kappa Alpha Theta, the first Greek-letter women’s fraternity, founded on January 27, 1870 at DePauw University. Louisa’s daughter, Marie Boisen Bradley, her granddaughter, Louise Bradley, and her niece Rebecca (Reba) Wylie were also Thetas while attending I.U. Sometime in the 1920s, Louisa wrote “A Theta Grandmother Reminisces.” We offer here an excerpt from that piece.

“I was a product of the Female Seminary Era! The first school I attended was Mrs. McFerson’s Ladies’ Seminary in Bloomington, Indiana, I being about six years old at the time I entered; the second, Rev. Dr. Scott’s Female Seminary in Oxford, Ohio; the third, Glendale Female Seminary in Glendale, Ohio. After I was graduated from Glendale I planned to teach—that, and marriage being pretty much the only fields open to women. But the Civil War came along, and all was chaos. There was war work of all sorts to be done in our town, a brother died in the war, and I was needed at home. After it was all over, I went to Princeton, Indiana to teach. Although my school was only an elementary one, I had many men in my classes, splendid fellows who had enlisted as mere lads at Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers and had come back determined to go on with their educations.

In 1868, a wonderful thing happened. Indiana University opened her doors to women! My father was professor of Physics and Chemistry there and I had always secretly longed to take some of the courses. So in the fall of 1869 I entered the Sophomore Class. It was a strange transition from my Female Seminary days! Many of the men were much incensed at this petticoat invasion of territory that had been sacred to them since 1820; others welcomed our coming and showed a brotherly, and sometimes even warmer, interest in our welfare and progress. Out of the seven girls who were graduated in 1871, three married fellow students—proof positive that they did not all hate us!

But the leaven was at work and wonders did not cease. In the spring of 1870, Minnie Hannaman came to me in great excitement. She said that the girls who had founded Kappa Alpha Theta, the new Greek letter fraternity at De Pauw wanted us to have a chapter at Indiana, and they were coming down to talk to us about it the very next day. They would meet us in her room. She was going to ask Lizzie Harbison and Lizzie Hunter to come too. Oh, wasn’t it just wonderful, and wouldn’t I come?

Of course I went, and I met our founders. Bettie Locke did most of the talking. I can remember her splendid vitality, her magnetism and enthusiasm as if it were yesterday! And still, I let the chance to become one of Beta’s charter members pass me by. Sometimes I try to think that, because I was older than the other girls, I was simply more conservative; again, I feel it was just a plain case of Cold Feet! It seemed to me that co-education was still on trial, and that we should first prove our right to it. Besides that, the men’s fraternities were just then giving a good deal of trouble—I heard a lot about that from my father—and I feared the advent of a women’s fraternity would not be welcomed by either trustees or faculty. Fortunately for Beta Chapter the three other girls did not share my conservative views. As history shows, they went right ahead, just the same, and Beta Chapter was established in May, 1870. The weeks slipped by, and things went serenely on; everybody was happy, trustees, faculty, boys, girls. I realized that I had been unduly apprehensive and I was proud to have the Kite—at that time about an inch and a half long—pinned on me. I was proud again when my daughter became a Theta in 1896, and my granddaughter in 1927!

Marie and Thetas 1899

It would undoubtedly amuse you of today to know the elaborate secrecy of our meetings in the old times. We were in very truth a secret society. Even the time and place of our meetings were shrouded in the blackest secrecy. The whispered word would go round—“Tonight, 7:30, Min’s”—and if by chance or hard work some inquisitive outsider should discover the appointed hour and place, well, we would just fool him by changing.

I did not know the joy of being an active Theta long, for I was graduated in 1871, the second class at Indiana to graduate women.”

“More for the genealogists…..”

Cyrus Dodd, photo courtesy of IU Archives

Cyrus Morris Dodd graduated from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts in 1855 and spent most of his professional life teaching at his alma mater. However, during the year or two that he spent teaching mathematics and Latin at I.U. in the 1860s, he formed a firm friendship with T.A. Wylie. Likewise, Mrs. Dodd and their three daughters, Alice, Agnes and Grace became very attached to the Wylie family. This closeness was reinforced when Louisa Wylie Boisen and her husband Hermann moved to Williamstown in late 1880 so that Prof. Boisen could teach at Williams College.

Mrs. Dodd with daughters Alice, Agnes, and Grace. Photo courtesy of Williams College, Williamstown, Mass.

They only stayed one year, and when they moved away Mrs. Dodd and her daughters took up an affectionate correspondence with Louisa that lasted at least through 1901. These letters to Louisa are part of the Wylie House Museum archive.