Cabinet card featuring the John Brown bust owned by Mary E. Stearns. The photograph used for the card was printed by W. Shaw Warren of Cambridgeport, Cambridge, MA.
Attribution:
Warren, W. Shaw
Attribution Statement:
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection, The New York Public Library
Ballou's Pictorial, printed by M. M. Ballou in Boston, Saturday, October 11, 1856 (Vol. XI, No. 15). The front page article shows a sketch of Tufts College (Ballou Hall) and a short article about the first anniversary of the Universalist Tufts College, quoting Dr. Edwin H. Chapin.
Marble bust of Robert Gould Shaw sculpted by Edmonia Lewis, 1864. On the base it reads "Martyr for Freedom." About a hundred plaster copies of this bust were sold in 1864.
Attribution:
Lewis, Edmonia
Attribution Statement:
Image courtesy of the Museum of African American History, Boston and Nantucket, Massachusetts, USA
Lock of John Brown's hair. The tags read "Hair of John Brown of Ossawatomie, given to me by Mrs. Stearns, 1869 -L. Alexander," "John Brown's hair, cut off of his funeral by his daughter, given by her to Mrs. G.L. Stearns, by Mrs. Stearns to me, L.G.A."
Attribution Statement:
Courtesy of the Medford Historical Society & Museum
Letter from Lydia Maria Child in Wayland, MA, to John Brown while in prison, October 26, 1859. (Note: The front and back page of this letter have been placed side by side.) In the letter, she decries Brown's violence, but assures him "that no honest man ever shed his blood for freedom in vain, however much he may be mistaken in his efforts."
Attribution:
Child, Lydia Maria
Attribution Statement:
Image courtesy of kansasmemory.org, Kansas State Historical Society, Copy and Reuse Restrictions Apply
Oil on board painting of College Hill from across the Mystic River in Medford, pictured around 1856. The building on top of the hill is Ballou Hall, the first building of Tufts College. The white house in the foreground is the Paul Curtis House, which is said to be the house mentioned in Lydia Maria Child's poem "Over the River and Through the Woods." The Mystic River is in front of the Curtis house and is home to an old shipyard, possibly the Curtis shipyard.
Attribution:
Champney, Benjamin (attributed)
Attribution Statement:
Image courtesy of Tufts University Permanent Collection, AI 07400
A map of Tufts College about ten years after it opened, from a map drawn by Charles E. Fay, with a key to the buildings given below the map. Note College Hill Station (building W) at the corner of the Boston & Lowell Railroad and College Avenue leading to the Stearns Estate just off the edge of the map. This map appeared on page 148 of The Tuftonian, Vol. 2, No. 4 (May 1942).
Marble bust of George L. Stearns by Samuel Morse prior to its restoration in 2016. This bust was commissioned in 1879 by Mary Stearns, George's widow, to place in their home on their estate in Medford, Massachusetts.
Attribution:
Morse, Samuel
Attribution Statement:
Image courtesy of the Tufts University Permanent Collection
Marble medallion of the abolitionist Wendell Phillips, sculpted by Edmonia Lewis. The John Brown medallions she made some seven years earlier may have appeared similar.
Attribution:
Lewis, Edmonia
Attribution Statement:
Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Card with the A. C. Russell woodcut of the bust of John Brown (by Edward A. Brackett) and a statement by Brown given to George L. Stearns in Medford, 1857: "Mr. Stearns, I consider the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence one and inseparable." On the reverse is a handwritten note that the bust was owned by Mrs. Mary Stearns regarding the bust's creation: Wood- cut of the Bust of John Brown in the possession of Mrs. Stearns - the only one in the world. It was taken by her order while awaiting execution in the Virginia Prison, October 1859."
Attribution Statement:
Image courtesy of the West Virginia State Archives, John Brown/Boyd B. Stutler Collection
Photograph of the view towards Medford from East Hall, Tufts College. The Stearns Estate mansion is located in the trees to the middle right. The caption reads, "View toward Medford from East Hall, 1875. The railroad cut is in front of the stonewall in the foreground. The farm house of the Stearns estate is seen in the lower left corner, and the mansion house in the right center. The end chimneys of the Royall House are seen in the center of the picture and, to the left of the house, the pointed object is the summer house that at one time stood on a mound in the Royall garden."
Oil on canvas painting of John Brown on the way to his execution on December 2, 1859. Brown, still injured from the failed raid at Harpers Ferry, was said to have kissed the head of a black baby on his way to the gallows.
Attribution:
Hovenden, Thomas
Attribution Statement:
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Carl Stoeckel, 1897