With its Bain Collection uploads to Flickr Commons, the Library of Congress continues to remind us that some news is perennial. Meet Bond, Minnie Bond:

Portrait of young woman with a large plumed hat

Striking, beplumed Minnie E. Bond was in the news in early 1914, because she accused Thomas Pryor Gore, U.S. senator from Oklahoma, of attempted assault in a hotel room in Washington. She sued for $50,000, and the newspapers eagerly covered every aspect of the scandal.

Said Minnie, “When Senator Gore became unduly familiar, I told him I wasn’t the kind of woman he was seeking to associate with, and that if he had no respect for me he should have for his wife and children. Then he attacked me. In response to my screams, Mr. [James R.] Jacobs entered the room, accompaned by TE Roberts of Oklahoma and Kirby Fitzpatrick.” [New York Times, 13 February 1914] The apartment belonged to Jacobs, who happened to be a former Democratic National Committee member.

Gore’s version of events pointed to a set-up: Minnie’s husband, Julian, was hoping for a political appointment as a tax collector, and Gore assured him there was no chance of that happening. Minnie convinced Gore to stop by her hotel to discuss the matter further; then she led him up the elevator and into a room. Gore was blind, and had never been to this hotel before. He said that he did not realize Minnie Bond was taking him into a private apartment, nor did he realize that several political opponents were waiting nearby to catch him there. When Bond screamed, Gore understood that the situation looked bad.

Gore’s attorney, Moman Pruiett, claimed that Robertson had earlier asked for $25,000 in hush money. Pruiett also played up the senator’s blindness in his closing argument. Gore was exonerated by the jury after just ten minutes’ deliberation, and he stayed in the Senate until he was defeated at the polls in 1920. (He later served another six-year term, 1930-1936.)

And what became of Minnie Bond? Does anyone out there know the rest of her story?

David Bransby
Woman aircraft worker, Vega Aircraft Corporation, Burbank, Calif. Shown checking electrical assemblies, June 1942
Library of Congress: LC-USW36-273

As the last roll of Kodachrome is processed by Dwayne’s in Kansas, we bring you the glories of Kodachrome in the Commons.

Because history was also recorded in glorious colour …

Dorothea Lange would have been 105 today. We’re delighted to be able to celebrate this great and important photographer with photographs from the Commons. Though she died only 45 years ago, the work Lange did for the U.S. Government is in the public domain now, and you’ll find some of it in the Commons on Flickr. Here’s a selection from three different Commons institutions that hold some of her government work:

Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California (National Media Museum, UK)

Two Children of the Mochida Family, with Their Parents, Awaiting Evacuation Bus (U.S. National Archives)

Fourth of July, near Chapel Hill, North Carolina … They are Called the Cedargrove Team (Library of Congress)

What, you didn’t get out to see a museum today? But you still can! Treat yourself to a museum visit, Commons style …

Smithsonian Institution: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Daguerreotype Equipment

Brooklyn Museum: Anonymous Man Re-Wrapping

Powerhouse Museum: Koala

Field Museum: Stanley Field Hall

National Maritime Museum: Turmoil & Tranquility framing

Australian National Maritime Museum: Model of RMS Britannic

Polluted Area on Gulf Coast: Mustang Island, 100 Miles South of Houston.

In 1972, Marc St. Gil photographed the evidence and effects of industrial pollution in Louisiana, as part of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Documerica project. Several of St. Gil’s Louisiana photographs are available in Flickr’s Commons from the U.S. National Archives, including some that suggest just how new and incomplete our awareness of environmental pollutants was—and some that are achingly familiar today.

Sunny weekends are here (or on their way, anyway), and they bring the return of the Indicommons Craft Cabin–fun stuff to do with the images in Flickr Commons. Today, chalk art! It’s fun, it’s public, and it’s not all that hard to get an image that’ll bring a smile to passersby–at least until the next rain shower.

1. Start by choosing an image you’d like to chalk. Don’t expect to be able to get an exact image–chalk isn’t very precise–but look for something fun to spend time with. A black and white image is okay–you can add colors as you please. I’m going to start with this one: silent film comedians Billy Quirk and Josie Sadler, from the New York Public Library uploads:

2. Now use tracing paper to make a sketch of the image’s main elements, and draw a grid over the image:

Tracing paper, pencil, marker

3. Draw the grid on the sidewalk (sufficiently multiplied for a larger space) with chalk, and sketch in the major elements according to your diagram:

4. Color in large areas with fat “sidewalk chalk” to get a nice base layer down:

5. Then go back in and add details and shading and fine-tune the colors with denser chalk pastels:

That’s it! Chalk art can take a while–this was about 150 minutes from start to finish–but it’s fun to be outside and creating. What Flickr Commons image will you chalk?

Followers of the Library of Congress’s Flickr Commons uploads from the Bain Collection know that the news of the 1910s can look very familiar – the same themes turn up in our newspapers today. Crimes, scandals, elections, protests, inventions, sports, performers on tour. But occasionally, a story stands out as unusual, for the 1910s or any other decade. Take the case of Father Hans Schmidt, the only Roman Catholic priest ever executed as a criminal in the US. You can certainly find some awfully sordid tales about clergy misdeeds and the church hierarchy in the news today, but Schmidt’s is still a unique and chilling story, told across the photos in Flickr Commons.

Hans B. Schmidt (TOC)

Hans B. Schmidt was born in Germany in 1881, and trained at a seminary in Mainz, where he was ordained as a priest in 1904. Perhaps in response to the growing demand for Catholic priests in the US, or perhaps because he had been charged with forgery in 1905 and showed other signs of instability, Schmidt was assigned to a parish in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1908. Soon he was transferred again, and finally landed in New York City, where he served at St. Boniface Church. The housekeeper at the rectory there was Anna Aumüller, an Austrian immigrant. Here’s Anna:

Anna Aumueller (LOC)

Schmidt and Aumüller struck up a romantic relationship; it continued even after Schmidt was transferred again, to a parish uptown. Apparently Schmidt even performed a secret marriage ceremony to assure Aumüller that their activities were acceptable. But when 21-year-old Anna became pregnant in 1913, Schmidt killed her in her sleep, and disposed of her body in pieces, in a pillowcase tossed in the Hudson River. It didn’t take long for the evidence to come to light, and for Schmidt to confess to the murder of Anna Aumüller (turns out the priest was a talker, so there are pages and pages of his own ruminations about the crime). The trial was, unsurprisingly, a media event.

Bertha Zech (LOC), a servant, one of the witnesses at Schmidt's trial

Schmidt claimed insanity at his first trial; that resulted in a hung jury. In a second trial, Schmidt was convicted of first degree murder, and sentenced to death. He was executed in 1916, at Sing Sing Prison. But wait, there was even more to the tale: Schmidt was also involved in a counterfeiting scheme, operating out of an apartment he rented. And, in retrospect, he was suspected of at least one other murder (the body of a child was found buried in the basement of his Louisville church).  He also impersonated a physician throughout his life, and collected medical equipment.
Want to dig further into this true crime story? Check out Mark Gado’s Killer Priest: The Crimes, Trial, and Execution of Father Hans Schmidt (Praeger 2006), which is based on the trial transcripts and press coverage of the story.

Calouste Gulbenkian (Wikimedia Commons)

Who?

That’s what I’ve been saying when I saw the name of the Portuguese member of the Commons, Biblioteca de Arte-Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. Calouste Gulbenkian doesn’t sound like a Portuguese name, for starters.

But today that same name turned up in the birthday rolls at Wikipedia. So today is a good day to learn how a Turkish-born British Armenian millionaire’s collection of art landed in Lisbon:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calouste_Gulbenkian

The NHA’s has been a quiet presence in the Commons, but its photographs of Nantucket’s sites and people are still being found by the people closest to them, and we celebrate those today:

“This is my relative. She also went by the name of Flossie. She was Chappaquiddick Wampanoag …” –wealthywamp

Almira West Williams

“This is my husband’s Grandmother … She passed away when my husband was young …” –sewcrazzed

Arline Wilma Preston

“I lived in the apartment just upstairs… just above where she is pointing …” –nippyfish

Mitchell’s Book Corner

“My brother and I worked behind the soda counter for many summers …” –natkg

Congdon’s Pharmacy, c. 1910s

Happy anniversary, Nantucket! And if you, reading this, or yours are from Nantucket or passed through, take a moment to find your history in the Commons!

Ansel Adams
“The Tetons – Snake River,” Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming., circa 1935
U.S. National Archives: 79-AA-G01

Indicommons celebrates Ansel Adams’ birthday today, February 20, with a selection of his images held by the U.S. National Archives. A statement from the National Archive’s website explains,

The original negatives were retained by Ansel Adams. Reproductions of items in this series are made from copy negatives produced by the National Archives. The photographic prints in this series are in the public domain. In correspondence dated August 18, 1942, from Adams to E. K. Burlew, First Assistant Secretary, Department of the Interior, Adams states that the photographs are the property of the U.S. Government. Ansel Adams visited the National Archives in 1979.

Glacier National Park, Montana

Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona

Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

Acoma Pueblo National Historic Landmark, New Mexico

Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico

Taos Pueblo National Historic Landmark, New Mexico<

Canyon de Chelly National Historic Landmark, New Mexico

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming