Category: Unique or Annotated Works

Tour of an Unusual Book: The Black Spot

The Bounds Copy of J.W. Shepherd’s Digest of the Alabama Reports from the 17th to the 29th Volume, N.S. [New Series]. Montgomery: Barrett & Wimbush, Book and Job Printers, 1858.

Our “Preserved in Amber” series of posts seeks to celebrate unique and interesting objects, usually but not always a particular volume. The uniqueness typically comes from one striking feature—such as the correspondence between Hannis Taylor and J.B. Bury, pasted in Bounds’ copy of Taylor’s Science of Jurisprudence and featured in our October 12, 2016 post. To the law review spader or other casual user, there would be nothing particularly arresting about our Shepherd’s Digest. Further investigation, however, reveals a book that is interestingly signed and tantalizingly inscribed. Still more investigation reveals a mysterious blemish—quite unexpected. This latter, to be sure, was a feature that invoked this writer’s inner twelve-year-old, who arrived equipped with one of his favorite books.

First, the Book and Its Owners:

J.W. Shepherd, author of the Digest, was born in Madison County, Alabama, in 1826. He graduated from Yale College in 1844 and returned home to practice law. By 1851 he was practicing in Montgomery and was tapped as the reporter for the Alabama Supreme Court, a post he would fill (with various interruptions) until the early 1890s.[1] In line with regional publishing practices of the time, Shepherd published his 1858 Digest close to home, with Barrett & Wimbush of Montgomery.

Shepherd's Digest title page.

The Bounds copy of the Digest is inscribed with three names on the front pastedown leaf. The first, written in red pencil, is that of R.W. Walker. This signature could well be that of Richard Wilde Walker, who in 1859 would be appointed to fill a vacancy on the Alabama Supreme Court. Walker would go on to serve in the Confederate Provisional Congress and (1863-1865) in the Confederate Senate.[2] In 1859, Walker sold the Digest to one Thomas Alan Jones, according to an inscription in Jones’ handwriting. At some point thereafter, Jones “presented” the Digest to James Irvine, quite likely the James Irvine who would represent Lauderdale County in the Alabama constitutional convention of 1865.[3]

Further Study:

The first indication that the Walker-Jones-Irvine Digest contains anything unusual can be found on the verso of the rear free flyleaf. There can be seen the remains of an inscription in pencil, almost wholly erased but beginning with the words “Preposterous Monstrosity” and ending with the words “to take it back.” It is written, apparently, in Walker’s hand; and its erasure probably represents nothing more than a courtesy from one owner to the next. Or was there something written that Walker or one of the book’s other owners didn’t want anyone to read? Unless we can stage a highly specific question-and-answer séance, we’ll probably never know.

Moving toward an examination of the exterior text block, we see more proof that every printed book—mass-produced or otherwise—can become a unique object in the hands of its readers. Part of this Digest’s individuality is inked on the fore-edge of the text block in the form of a handy index. The categories are broad, certain to have been applicable to the practice of the period: Criminal, Probate, Chancery and Civil. Each of these words was accompanied by an arrow marking its extent in the text, and also by a number from 1 (opposite Criminal) to 4 (opposite Civil). The intent—purely practical—is far removed from that of fore-edge artists who have decorated books with symbolic, heraldic, or decorative images.[4]

Shepherd's Digest inked fore-edge of the text block.
Inked fore-edge

Proceeding to the actual text of the Digest, we see that one reader (at least) has resorted to marking places with often rather emphatic dog-ears. These dog-ears are placed on or opposite to pages containing the following topics: Constitutional Law (p. 30); Court and Jury (p. 37); Pleading (p. 95); Statute of Limitations (p. 197); Assumpsit (p. 403); Evidence (pp. 626-627); and Execution (p. 630).Someone, in addition, drew (in ink) brackets around three sections of “The Trial of the Right of Property” (p. 761). Aside from these indications of research interests, there are few ordinary alterations to this copy of the Digest; but the dog-ears and marks suggest that its owners pursued the ordinary practice of law.

Interesting Possibilities:

We encounter a much less ordinary set of marks beginning on p. 417. What presents itself, in the middle of §50 of the article on Attachment is a virtually circular mark 1.5 centimeters in diameter. It is a consistent dark brown in color; it has moved through the paper to produce an identical mark on p. 418. Each of these marks has stained its facing page (pp. 416, 419). The look of these dark marks suggests that they were burned—burned with considerable care, possibly by means of a fair-sized lit cigar.[5] For all the world, they look strangely familiar, like something that resonates in memory.

Shepherd's Digest Black Spot image.
The Black Spot

Of course! What we’re seeing is like a black spot in Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1883 classic Treasure Island. All at once the air seems full of references to lubbers and swabs—charged, too, with the likelihood that we’ll catch a glimpse of the fearsome one-legged seafaring man, Long John Silver. Just outside my office, surely, Billy Bones is explaining to young Jim Hawkins that the black spot is “a summons, mate,” issued by a pirate crew to someone they wished to depose or kill. I’m reminded of a scene late in Treasure Island, where Jim Hawkins watches the pirates preparing a black spot. They were clustering around a campfire; one was “on his knees in their midst.” Hawkins saw “the blade of an open knife shine in his hand with varying colors”; and “he had a book as well as a knife in his hand.”[6]

Melancholy Conclusions:

After a few days’ thought and very little (to be honest) further research, I am forced to admit that it is unlikely that our Digest ever fell into the hands of pirates, or even lawyers’ children pretending to be pirates.[7] For one thing, its spot[s] do not conform to the rules laid down in Treasure Island. Pirates of that book’s Caribbean cut their black spots out of books, leaving one side unscorched. The unscorched side was supposed to be blank, so the pirates could write on it some cryptic sentence of doom. The Walker-Jones-Irvine spot, on the contrary, is burned on both sides, and there is no evidence that anyone ever took a knife to the volume.

Moreover, the black spot made by firelight in Treasure Island (see above) still carried s few words of text—a spookily burned fragment of the Book of Revelations, namely: “Without are dogs and . . . murderers.” [8] The Bounds Digest also boasts darkened texts surrounding its double spot, but the texts are all about regulations for the attachment of property. One, for example, commences: “When a garnishee, against whom a judgm[ent has] been rendered by a justice [of the pea]ce, removes the case to the [unintelligible] [c]ourt . . .”[9] To be sure, this passage once provided a revealing look into legal maneuvers that preceded the carting away of one’s possessions; but it is a bit lacking in dramatic pep.

Finally, there are doubts concerning whether pirates ever used black spots at all.[10] Perhaps, after all, it is better to argue that the Digest’s black spot[s] were caused by the carelessness of a smoker, piratical or otherwise, who thought he was putting his cigar down into an ashtray.

PMP


[1] Thomas M. Owen, History of Alabama and Dictionary of Alabama Biography, introduction by Milo B. Howard, Jr. (1921; Spartanburg, S.C.: Reprint Company, 1978), IV: 1543-1544. Willis Brewer, in his Alabama: Her History, Resources, War Record, and Public Men from 1540 to 1872 (Montgomery: Barrett & Brown, 1872), 474-475, said that Shepherd was “a gentleman of a retiring disposition, but esteemed for many excellencies of head and heart.”

[2] Brewer, Alabama, Her History, 355-356.

[3] Owen, History of Alabama and Dictionary of Alabama Biography, III: 885.

[4] See Roy Stokes, A Bibliographical Companion (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1989), 117-118.

[5] An alternate theory is that the spots were formed by the application of ink. This seems less likely because the marks on pp. 417-418 are each enclosed by a little halo of what appears to be scorched paper. And ink, unless applied by a deft hand, would quite possibly not have been so neat.

[6] Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island (1883; Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University press, 2013), 22, 238.

[7] The latter possibility is still open to speculation, of course.

[8] Revelation 22:13.

[9] Shepherd, Digest, 417 (§50).

[10] See Wikipedia article “Black Spot (Treasure Island).”

Hugo Black and the Classics: An Exhibit

Hugo Black and the Classics is an exhibit in the University of Alabama School of Law Library’s Hugo Black Study that offers insight into Justice Black’s strong interest in Greek and Roman classical works. The collection shown here represents one component of the more than one thousand volumes of Black’s books held at the Bounds Law Library.

HUGO BLACK AND THE CLASSICS

Hugo Lafayette Black (1886-1971) was a native of Clay County, Alabama, and a 1906 graduate of the University of Alabama School of Law. Elected to the United States Senate in 1926, Black proved to be a reformist senator and leading New Dealer. In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him to the United States Supreme Court.

Confirmed despite a furor over his earlier brief association with the Ku Klux Klan, Black served on the Supreme Court for thirty-four years, promoting the First Amendment, working to make the Bill of Rights applicable to the States, and supporting the landmark civil rights decisions of the Warren Court.

Both as Senator and Justice, Black sought to follow programs of reading and self-education. He found Will Durant’s 1929 article, “One Hundred Best Books,” to be particularly useful. Durant’s vision of history was anchored firmly in the Greek and Roman classics, and the writers of antiquity likewise appealed to Black.

In part this was because Black enjoyed the dignity and measured tone of the classics in translation, but even more because he viewed human nature as essentially unchanging. To his mind, the historians and philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome had set forth many observations perfectly applicable to mid-twentieth century America. Daniel J. Meador, who was a Supreme Court clerk for Justice Black in 1954, later commented on Black’s interest in the classics in Mr. Justice Black and His Books (1974), “If there is any single book out of the hundreds he owned which might be said to have been the favorite, it is Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way…. Law clerks over a span of many years recall having The Greek Way recommended by Black in their initial interview with him, or in the early days of the clerkship…. More than any other single book, The Greek Way is essential reading for anyone attempting to understand the mind of Justice Black.”

In his quest for the classics, Black frequented the various out-of-print bookshops of the Washington, D.C. area. He was also a dedicated reader of dealers’ catalogues. Preferring older editions, he assembled a collection of more than forty volumes on the classics.

Numerous volumes contain Black’s annotations and underlined passages. These books, many of which reflect the height of Victorian classical scholarship, can be considered the cornerstone of Black’s larger library of more than one thousand volumes.

Image of Black's underlinings and marginal notes.
Black’s underlinings and marginal notes in Aristotle’s Politics

Accompanying this post are images of several pages featuring Black’s underlinings and annotations.

Black habitually wrote in his books, commenting on passages that he liked or disliked, summarizing texts, and pointing out ideas, facts, or passages for future reference. The pages seen here from Black’s copy of Aristotle on Government reflect his lawyerly interest in practical abstractions. See page 98 for his brief observations: “City—object of law,” “Object of Government to live well and happily,” and “Rulers should be best, not richest.”

Image of Black's underlinings and marginal notes.
Black’s underlinings and marginal notes in Aristotle’s Politics

As Aristotle turns to practical instructions concerning governance (p. 210), Black’s marginalia matches the philosopher’s didactic mood: “Laws not men” (for a passage arguing against giving magistrates discretionary powers), “Pay all Officials,” and most pointedly, “No life terms.” This last annotation, sadly, gives us no idea what Black, the holder for a lifetime appointment, actually thought about Aristotle’s advice.

Image of Black's underlinings.
Black’s underlinings and notation in Edith Hamilton’s, The Greek Way

Reading Hamilton’s commentary on Thucydides (p. 187), Black singled out a passage of some eight lines which eloquently discusses “greed, that strange passion for power and possession”—a complicated emotion that is, according to the author, at the root of all wars. Similarly in The Greek Way (p. 202), Black singles out a passage which, though written in Hamilton’s conversational style, constitutes a solemn warning to the powerful Democratic states of Black’s times—or of our times.

Image of Black's underlinings.
Black’s underlinings in Edith Hamilton’s, The Greek Way

“She [Athens] had reached the point where she did not care to use fine words about ugly facts, and the reason was that they had ceased to look ugly to her.”

Jessie Gillis Parish: A Woman Voter of Barbour County, Alabama

Jessie Parish Voter Registration Certificate
Jessie Parish Voter Registration Certificate

In response to our recent posting of D. Pierson’s 1902 “Lifetime” voter registration certificate, our friend David E. Alsobrook sent us an image of his great grandmother’s 1929 certificate. As you can see, it was issued to Jessie Gillis Parish of Barbour County, Alabama, on January 3, 1929. Jessie Parish is one of the individuals discussed in Alsobrook’s forthcoming book Southside: Eufaula’s Cotton Mill Village and Its People, 1890-1945 (Mercer University Press). Following a path blazed by Dr. Wayne Flynt and others, this work will provide “an in-depth-examination of life, loss, and work in a self-contained Southern cotton mill village.” Such studies are necessary if we are to understand the legacies—cultural, political, and religious—left to us by “ordinary” Alabamians. We asked David to give us some background on Jessie Parish, who after all was a member of Alabama’s first generation of women voters. Here is what he said:

Photograph of Jessie, Mallie, and Oma Parish
Jessie, Mallie, and Oma Parish, c. 1909

Although Jessie Parish’s voter registration certificate indicates that she was born on August 18, 1872, this date probably is incorrect.  Her tombstone in Eufaula’s Fairview Cemetery records her date of birth as 1871.  However, U.S. Census records for Barbour County reveal that she was born in 1869, in Glennville, Alabama, a few miles north of Eufaula.  Her parents were Malcolm D. Gillis and Queen Ann Stephenson, who had three other children born between 1873 and 1881.  Malcolm Gillis was a Confederate veteran and a cotton overseer in Glennville.  Jessie married Thomas Mallie Parish in Eufaula in 1898. They had a daughter, Oma Parish Alsobrook (1899-1969), my grandmother.  Jessie, Mallie, and Oma all worked at Donald Comer’s Cowikee Mills in Eufaula.  The accompanying photo of the Parishes was taken around 1909.  The Parishes were typical of the families who eked out a subsistence living in the cotton mills and lived in the village known as “Southside.”  Jessie Parish probably was the first woman in her family to cast a ballot in Alabama. 

Jessie Parish died in Eufaula on October 19, 1939. I only knew her from my grandmother’s occasional comments. However, her mother, Queen Anne Gillis, lived for many years afterward, and my grandmother remembers her well.  I suspect that Jessie probably met her future husband, Thomas Mallie Parish, on the job in old Eufaula Cotton Mill, owned by Capt. John Tullis.  

Jessie was a straight-laced Baptist her entire life, and her husband Mallie was a Methodist.  At her funeral, the ministers from the two Southside “mission” churches officiated–Washington Street Methodist and Second Baptist.  After Donald Comer acquired the “busted” Eufaula Cotton Mill in 1909 and changed its name to Cowikee Mill, Jessie and Mallie continued to work together there or possibly later at Cowikee Mill No. 3 in Eufaula.  These are the only basic details I know involving Jessie Gillis Parish.  She and Mallie were typical mill operatives–they worked hard all of their lives, and the debilitating nature of the work took a toll on their bodies, and their daughter Oma eventually joined them in the mill.

Like so many other mill families in Eufaula, the Parishes are rather invisible and anonymous in historical annals.  As you’ll see in the pages of Southside, my grandmother Oma told me a lot about her father Mallie and the other Parishes, but for whatever reason, she seldom talked about her mother.

Ephemera from an 1898 Congressional Campaign

Editors’ Note

This post represents the second installment in a new category that we hope will be an occasional feature of our blog. Posts in this category will feature materials that are unique in some way, perhaps through ownership, creative attachment or insertion of documents, or other unusual items. Our previous post, “Next to His Bible”: John Randolph Griffin’s copy of the Louisiana Civil Code was the inspiration for this category that we have titled, Preserved in Amber. Our current post features an interesting small collection that is described by Hudson Cheshire, a 2017 J.D. candidate at the University of Alabama School of Law.

Ephemera from an 1898 Congressional Campaign

The topic of this post is a recently acquired collection that offers a glimpse into the life of a small town politician in early 20th century Alabama. The collection includes a copy of Alabama Reports Volume XXVII (the Alabama Supreme Court cases argued in the June term of 1855), and three documents that were laid within its pages. Two of the documents are laundry receipts for one Samuel Blackwell. The third is a notice for a series of events where Blackwell would be speaking in his 1898 campaign for Congress.Blackwell 01

Samuel Blackwell, the subject of the laundry receipts and political flyer, lived from 1848 to 1918 and is buried in the Decatur City Cemetery. While history has relegated Blackwell to obscurity, the sparse documents that remain suggest a man of relative political success in his place and time.Blackwell 02

Blackwell began his career in public service early, enlisting in the Confederate Army at fourteen years old. By his fifteenth birthday, he was a prisoner of war in Camp Douglass, a large Union prisoner camp in Chicago. Years later, as the Morgan County delegate for the Constitutional Convention of 1901, Blackwell recounted a comrade’s sardonic description of the conditions at Camp Douglass: “We slept until after breakfast, skipped dinner, and went to bed before supper.” [Journal of the Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Alabama, 1901, 3025].

A document from 1903 indicates that Blackwell served at least one term as mayor of New Decatur in the early twentieth century and in the 1910-1912 Biennial Report of the Attorney General of Alabama, Samuel Blackwell is listed as the Blackwell 03Solicitor for the Morgan County Law and Equity Court. Perhaps the only lasting glimpse into Blackwell’s perspective comes from his words at the 1901 Constitutional Convention, preserved in the Official Proceedings. Describing the Convention’s atmosphere of pessimism regarding the voting capacity of the general population, historian Sheldon Hackney quotes Blackwell saying, “nature has marked the weak and incompetent to be protected by Government, rather than to be the directors of the Government.” [Populism to Progressivism in Alabama, 196].

Had Blackwell been successful in his 1898 campaign for Congress, he would have been better remembered in Alabama history. Nevertheless, available records merit the assumption that Blackwell was an influential political figure at the turn of the century, if only in his own small corner of the world.

Hudson Cheshire, Research Assistant, Bounds Law Library

 

“Next to His Bible”: John Randolph Griffin’s copy of the Louisiana Civil Code

Starting with this post, Litera Scripta will occasionally display images of some of the Bounds Law Library’s more unusual books. Several of these will be chosen for the revealing or insightful inscriptions they bear. These inscriptions may have been written to increase the book’s usefulness, or to complete some thought called forth, or in one case, to predict the inscriber’s future while playing a joke on future readers. Other posts will feature notable bindings, illustrations, interleavings, or insertions.

Title Page, Civil Code of the State of Louisiana, 1857
Title Page

Certainly this post displays unusual elements of binding. The book is Thomas Gibbes Morgan, editor and compiler, Civil Code of the State of Louisiana: With the Statutory Amendments, from 1825 to 1853, Inclusive. . . (New Orleans: J.B. Steel, 1857). Bounds’ copy contains many annotations, some in pencil and some in an ink that has turned brown and in some instances has deteriorated on the page. The rear pastedown contains the following inscription: “John Randolph Griffin-Esq. Bellevue, La. He carried this through the war with him. Claimed this to be next to his Bible.”

Rear pastedown inscription, Civil Code of the State of Louisiana, 1857
Rear Pastedown Inscription

According to one source, Griffin was born in Georgia in 1835, graduated from the University of Alabama in 1858 (second in his class), and moved to Bossier Parish, Louisiana, in 1859. He was elected to the Louisiana State Legislature in time to serve as chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs during the war. He died in San Antonio, Texas, in 1873. See  Joiner, No Pardons to Ask, No Apologies to Make: The Journal of William Henry King, Gray’s 28th Louisiana Infantry Regiment (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006), 262 n. 5.

Annotated page, Civil Code of the State of Louisiana, 1857
Annotated Page

Interesting as these features are, this book’s obvious point of interest is the slip cover that has been fashioned to cover the original calf boards and spine. At some point, the front board became detached, and some innovative person made a slip cover from bed ticking material, complete with ties that very much appear to have been intended as mattress straps.

Civil Code of the State of Louisiana (New Orleans: J.B. Steel, 1857)
Civil Code of the State of Louisiana (New Orleans: J.B. Steel, 1857)

The covering fabric is faded and dirty, and the stitching is crude but effective. The quality of the work may indicate some facility with sewing or upholstering, but it is impossible to say when the work was done.