New Acquisition 
Image: Cover of Home Sweet Home (call # L2011-09-23)
Long-time museum volunteers Eleanor and Don Valentine recently donated a beautifully bound and engraved edition of the poem Home Sweet Home to the Archives.
The poem was written and set to music in 1822 by American actor and dramatist John Howard Payne for a Covent Garden musical called "Clari, the Maid of Milan." The song was an immediate success and it remained hugely popular throughout the nineteenth century. Soldiers found the song so poignant during the Civil War that Union Army officers eventually forbade their bands to play 'Home, Sweet Home' for fear it would make men so homesick they would desert or become too demoralized to fight.
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You can also keep up with PMH on the following sites:
 
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About the Collections
PMH maintains the area's largest and most comprehensive collection of documents and artifacts relating to the history of Pasadena and neighboring communities.
The ever-expanding collection spans the years 1834 to the present and contains well over one million historic photographs, rare books, manuscripts, maps, architectural records, art, costumes and textiles, and objects.
The Mission of the Museum is to promote an appreciation of history, culture, arts, and sciences relevant to Pasadena and adjoining communities.
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The Collections Quarterly, sent out four times a year, features new acquisitions as well as select items from the Archives, art and artifacts collection, and the Fenyes-Curtin-Paloheimo collections.
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Archives Feature
Women's Suffrage
This year, California is celebrating a century of women's suffrage. The question of women's suffrage was put on the ballot and passed by the California voters on October 10th, 1911. The Women's Suffrage Scrapbook by Mary A. Holmes of Los Angeles is a goldmine for those interested in the suffrage movement.
The scrapbook was presented by the National Council of Women at the International Convention held in Christiana, Norway in September 1920. Recently, it was used by Wild West Women for a documentary on the centennial of women's suffrage. This scrapbook tells the story of the suffrage movement in the United States between 1911 and 1923 through clippings documenting women's work, meetings, rallies, tours, speeches, stories of the prominent and successful women of that era, and more. You can view the scrapbook in the Reading Room, which is open Thursdays through Sundays from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.
Image: Suffragists Campaign in Balloon, July 3, 1911. (Women's Suffrage Scrapbook, Box 52, Volume 112-6a)
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Collections Feature
 Sculpture by Pasadena Artist Maude Daggett
Like many Pasadena artists, Maude Daggett was not originally from southern California. She was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1883. After studying at the Chicago Art Institute, she came to Pasadena for a year to work at Throop Institute under Ernest A. Batchelder. Daggett later returned to Pasadena, after studying in Rome and Paris for three years, and was an active member of Pasadena's art community. There are several pieces of correspondence in the PMH Archives between Daggett and Pasadena art patron Eva Scott Fenyes, and Daggett is regularly mentioned in the Pasadena Star-News during her lifetime. Daggett remained in Pasadena until her death in 1941. The sculpture pictured, which is only 14" tall, was donated to PMH in 1988. Daggett signed and dated the artwork, which she sculpted in 1931. Although not a finished piece, this charming plaster bust of a small child is a wonderful example of Daggett's work as the artist specialized in garden sculpture featuring child themes. Image: Photograph by Dr. Martin A. Folb. This image will be included in the forthcoming book Emerging From the Shadows: California Women's Artist Works 1860-1960, by Maurine St Gaudens, fall/winter 2012 (acc. # 88.61.1) |
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Fenyes Feature
 Eva Scott Fenyes' Travel Diaries
The PMH Archives staff has digitized a selection of Eva Fenyes' travel diaries, which can now be read on computers in the Reading Room. Below are a summary and samplings from "Trip to Elsinore, May 1917"
May 19, 1917
7:20 am: Finding the doors to the Mansion still locked, Leonora climbs through Eva's bedroom window announcing her spur-of-the-moment auto trip to Elsinore with Babsie. Eva wants to go too, quickly dresses, orders lunch and the car, and packs her paints.
10:45 am: They finally leave. Carl (the chauffeur) drives and Eva writes, "[Leonora] is to follow us in her Scripps Booth & keep us in sight. We tell her the route. At Huntington Drive we look back & cannot see her. Fearing she has taken another road & is ahead of us, perhaps, we stop & ask several persons if they have seen a purple Scripps-Booth car. No one has. Then we fear something has happened to her."
11:25 am: "We stop at a house & ask if we may phone to [Leonora's] home. No news so we turn back & shortly meet them. They have had an accident...Bad beginning but, luckily no one was hurt."
12:32 pm: Later, as they lunch on the edge of a walnut grove, Leonora explains how, "...she didn't see the auto driver make a sign for turning," and how, "she ran on to the side-walk at Dr. Sherks near an iron lawn post. Her running board and mud guard are badly smashed [and she] must have new ones."
3:00 pm: Leonora and her car are again lost and found... Read the continuing adventure in the Archives Reading Room... Eva Scott Fenyes Diary, "Trip to Elsinore May 1917." (Fenyes-Curtin-Paloheimo Papers, Box 35 Folder 12)
Want to hear more about their road trips? Join us on November 1 for Travels with Babsie - a living history performance!
Image: Leonora, Babsie, and their Purple Scripps-Booth, April 1916. (Fenyes-Curtin-Paloheimo Papers, Box 102 Folder 4)
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