Skip to main content

Wendell S. Hadlock Collection of Edwin Tappan Adney's Research, 1941-1952

 Collection
Identifier: MSS 876

Scope and Contents

The Wendell S. Hadlock Collection of Edwin Tappan Adney Research contains some of Adney’s research about First Nations that was removed from his home, by Hadlock, after his death. Hadlock and Adney appear to have been friends or colleagues, with shared research interests. This collection has been divided into two series.

Series I. Edwin Tappan Adney Research contains research materials and correspondence that belonged to Adney. The research materials include notes, sketches, and a samples of dyes on wood and cotton.

Series II. Wendell S. Hadlock Papers contains correspondence, directions for handling Adney’s estate, and newspaper clippings. The newspaper clippings have been photocopied, and the originals are restricted due to fragility. The later correspondence, 1950 to 1952, between Hadlock and Glen Adney (Edwin’s son), document how Adney’s research was divided up after his death, and how Hadlock and the Peabody Museum of Salem came to have the First Nations’ materials.

Dates

  • Creation: 1941-1952

Creator

Language of Materials

The materials are in English.

Conditions Governing Access

Box 1 folder 13 is restricted due to fragility, copies of the material are available in box 1 folder 12, and box 2 folder 2. The rest of the collection is open for research use.

Biographical / Historical

Edwin Tappan Adney was born on July 13, 1868, in Athens, Ohio, to William Harvey Glen Adney (1834-1885) and Ruth Clementine Shaw Adney (1845-1911). William Adney was a natural history professor at Ohio University and a Civil War veteran. When William retired from teaching, the family moved to a tobacco farm in Pittsboro, North Carolina. Tappan was 13 when he entered the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he studied classical literature, Greek, and Latin for two years. A few years after moving to North Carolina, the Adneys divorced, and Ruth took the children to New York City where she opened a boarding house. In 1883, Tappan enrolled in the New York Art Students’ League. He worked in a law office during the day, and studied art under William Merritt Chase and Kenyon Cox for the next three years. Tappan produced 110 line drawings for The Handbook of the Birds of Eastern North America (Gates).

Tappan met his future wife, one of his mother’s boarders, Minnie Bell Sharp, during this time. Sharp, originally from Woodstock, New Brunswick, was the daughter of the well-known Canadian horticulturist, Francis Peabody Sharp. In June 1887, Tappan and his sister Mary visited the Sharps in Woodstock. It was during this trip that Tappan met Peter Jo, one of the last of the Maliseet canoe builders on the Saint John River. Peter Jo introduced Tappan to native canoe building and to the Maliseet culture, both of which would become lifelong passions. Tappan stayed in New Brunswick until February 1889, living with Peter Jo and his family for an extended period of time in order to learn the Maliseet language, and to record and sketch the building of birch bark canoes. Under Peter Jo’s instruction, Tappan built his first birch bark canoe and bark canoe models. In 1890, Tappan published a detailed description and sketches of a Maliseet birch bark canoe in Harper’s Young People Supplement. This was important because until then, historical descriptions of Native canoes were vague, with no one having described or illustrated the building process in detail (Jennings 11-13).

In 1897, Tappan worked as a special correspondent for Harper’s Weekly and the London Chronicle, observing, sketching, and photographing the Klondike Gold Rush in the Canadian Yukon. He published his first-hand account of the gold rush, along with photographs and illustrations, in his book The Klondike Stampede (Gates). He also covered the continuation of the gold rush in Nome, Alaska. Tappan was mustered into the Canadian Expeditionary Force at Valcatier, Quebec, on May 10, 1916. The next three years were spent mostly at Canada’s Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, as a lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Engineers. Tappan was assigned to construct models of trench warfare for troop training, which were used at training depots across Canada. In May 1917, Tappan became a Canadian citizen, and after the war he moved to Montreal, where he worked as a commercial artist specializing in works such as murals and heraldry. To support his canoe work, Tappan accepted commercial art contracts of various sorts (Jennings 15-16). He apparently became well known throughout Canada for this knowledge of decorative historical heraldry, even hoping his design for the Canadian flag would be adopted—it was not (Gates).

After moving to Montreal, Tappan’s interest in native bark canoes, and Native canoe culture became more focused. In some cases, his approach involved the reconstruction of canoes based on information he gleaned from a detailed study of native cultures and languages to study crafts that has already disappeared. He was able to track down a few active native bark canoe builders and several retired fur traders for information. In addition to creating precise drawings, notes and photographs, he began to construct exact and consistent one to five scale models of all the important native bark canoe types. By the mid-1920s, he began looking for possible publishers for his proposed manuscript on bark canoes; unfortunately he did not have much luck (Jennings 16). In 1928, Tappan’s model collection was loaned to McGill University’s collection (Jennings 20). In January 1940, Tappan sold his model collection to the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia (Jennings 22).

Tappan became increasingly involved in native advocacy and began work on two other books, one about Native issues with the New Brunswick government, and the other a Maliseet dictionary; his original manuscript still incomplete. Tappan championed the Maliseet’s land claims against the government of Canada (Gates). After his death, his unfinished manuscript, notes, and drawings were turned into The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America, by Howard Chapelle of the Smithsonian (Jennings 22-25).

Tappan married Millie Bell Sharp in Woodstock in 1899. They had one child together, Francis Glenn Adney (1902-1983). Minnie died in 1937, and Tappan died in 1950. He left the disposal of his manuscript materials to his son. Glenn gave most of the materials to the Mariners’ Museum, which later passed on the linguistic material to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Tappan’s Klondike material was given to Vilhjalmur Stefansson, a famous Artic explorer, who passed the materials on to Dartmouth College in New Hampshire (Jennings 25).

Wendell S. Hadlockwas born on May 12, 1911, in Islesford, Maine. He was a historian and anthropologist who worked at the Peabody Museum of Salem, and the Islesford Museum in Maine, before becoming director of the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, from 1951 until 1976. Hadlock married Susan Sadler Hadlock, and they had a least one child, Mrs. Jean Green. He died December 20, 1978.

Extent

1.83 Linear Feet (2 boxes)

Abstract

The Wendell S. Hadlock Collection of Edwin Tappan Adney Research contains some of Adney’s research about First Nations that was removed from his home, by Hadlock, after his death. Hadlock and Adney appear to have been friends or colleagues, with shared research interests. This collection has been divided into two series.

Series List

Series I. Edwin Tappan Adney Research

Series II. Wendell S. Hadlock Papersemph>

Physical Location

Phillips Library Stacks

Immediate Source of Acquisition

This material was donated to the Peabody Museum of Salem by Mrs. Wenedell S. Haddlock on July 28, 1986 (Acc. 24,031). The material was collected from Adney's home by Wendell S. Hadlock after Adney's death in 1950.

Bibliography

Ancestry.com. Canada, Find A Grave Index, 1600s-Current [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.

Gates, Michael. “The Naked Truth About Tappan Adney.” Yukon News, October 2, 2009. Accessed May 4, 2017. http://www.yukon-news.com/letters-opinions/the-naked-truth-about-tappan-adney.

___________. “Tappan Adney and the Klondike Stampede.” Western New York Public Broadcasting, 2014. Accessed May 4, 2017. http://www.pbs.org/wned/klondike-gold-rush/learn-more/tappan-adney-and-klondike-stampede/.

Jennings, John. Bark Canoes: The Art and Obsession of Tappan Adney. Firefly Books Ltd.: Buffalo, NY, 2004.

“Wendell Hadlock, 67; As Museum Director, He Discovered Wyeth.” New York Times, December 21, 1978. Accessed, 28 January, 2020, https://nyti.ms/1OY4G4J.

Copyright

For permission to publish from this collection, please contact research@pem.org.

Processing Information

This material was placed in acid free folders, and items were surface cleaned as needed.

Author
Hilary Streifer
Date
February 2020
Language of description
English
Script of description
Latin

Repository Details

Part of the Phillips Library Repository

Contact:
Peabody Essex Museum
306 Newburyport Turnpike
Rowley MA 01969 USA