Saving Memories

Cora Belle Hardy Calvert Educator and Community Leader Cora Belle Hardy Calvert, 1927. RG1998.PH:1-11 Cora Belle Hardy was born in Gainesville, New York, in 1861 and came to Lincoln, Nebraska, with her family in 1865. Her father was an early mayor of Lincoln and was a candidate for governor on the prohibition ticket. Cora attended the University of Nebraska and was a teacher and principal in the Lincoln public schools for twenty-seven years. She was an organizer of the Y.W.C.A., a world traveler, and a charter member of the Nebraska Art Association. She died in 1940.   Scrapbooks are windows into the interests, hobbies, activities, and achievements of their makers. In Cora's scrapbook, the majority of the pages in the first half of the album are filled with newspaper clippings of poetry, the occasional print of a cat or kitten, and programs from commencements and literary presentations. Articles about her travels, about her family, and about her career as a teacher and school principal fill the last portion of the scrapbook. Mark Twain's Patent Scrapbook Cora's scrapbook is a commercially produced volume patented by well-known author Mark Twain. Twain was an avid scrapbook keeper and in 1872 he created and began selling Mark Twain's Patent Scrapbook. The innovation in this volume was that it was self-pasting, with dots of adhesive already placed on the pages. When these dots were moistened, clippings would readily adhere to them, simplifying the process of compiling the scrapbook, or so the advertising claimed. Twain included the following testimony in some of his advertising. Certificate Messers, Slote, Woodman & Co. I hereby certify that during many years I was afflicted with cramps in my limbs, indigestion, salt rheum, enlargement of the liver, & periodical attacks of inflammatory rheumatism complicated with St. Vitus's dance, my sufferings being so great that for months at a time I was unable to stand upon my feet without assistance or speak the truth with it. But as soon as I had invented my Self-Pasting Scrap Book & begun to use it in my own family, all these infirmities disappeared.         In disseminating this universal healer among the world's afflicted, you are doing a noble work, & I sincerely hop you will get your reward-partly in the sweet consciousness of doing good, but the bulk of it in cash. Very Truly Yours, Mark Twain. Given under my hand this 10th day of February, A.D. 1878. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported in June of 1885 that while he had made $200,000 from all of his other books published, he had realized a profit of $50,000 from his scrapbook alone.  Top Fenton B. Fleming Businessman and Community Leader Fenton Fleming RG3926.PH: 1-6 Fenton Burn Fleming was born in Kansas in 1883, attended Kansas State College, and moved to Lincoln in 1903, where he married Margarett Royce in 1906. He operated a jewelry store, and was mayor of Lincoln for two years. Fleming died in 1953.    Fenton Fleming's active business and political life in his community is reflected in his scrapbooks, which are filled with newspaper clippings that document his activities. The scrapbooks that he used were designed specifically to hold newspaper clippings and they, like the pages of Mark Twain's scrapbooks, were prepared with adhesive that needed only to be moistened to adhere clippings to the page.    As this advertisement for these patented Ideal Scrap Books illustrates, the clippings were to be layered from the inside edge of the page to the outside edge, allowing for far more clippings to fit on a page than otherwise possible. Clearly in this type of album, volume was far more important than aesthetics.  Glass advertising sign used by Fenton B. Fleming.

NSHS Home Exhibits Introduction Hide Paintings and        Ledger Books Diaries and Journals   J.A. Hill, Civil War   W. Richards, Surveyor   J.S. Morton, Statesman   Sara J. Price, Teacher        & Homesteader   W. Danley, Businessman   J. & E. Green, Farmers        & Homesteaders   S. Buck, Farm Wife Autograph Albums   S. & E. Allis, Missionaries   E. & L. Correll, Suffragists   W.J. Bryan, Orator   Lucy Drexel, Student   Viola Barnes, Student Scrapbooks   D. Canfield, Author   Willa Cather, Author   C. Calvert, Educator   Fenton. B. Fleming,        Businessman   Myrtle Soulier, Student   Verna Cort, Student   Martha McKelvie,        Movie Columnist   Emogine Moor,        Women's Army Corps   Scrapbooking Today Photograph Albums   W. B. Watson, Porter   Margaret and Edward        Gehrke, Adventurers   Nan Aspinwall,        Entertainer   Frances M. Creech,        Musician Quilts   Edith Withers Meyers,        Quilter   Sierra Nevada Bunnell,        Educator Home Movies Future Memories