Autograph albums are important primary documents that give us insights into women’s history, social classes, and insights into social networks prior to more recent technological revolutions. Previous researchers have used autograph albums to examine social movements, and broader social structures such as class and race. Despite their popularity throughout the 19th century, the historical significance of autograph albums is commonly overlooked. “Autographed by Kansas” is a project that focuses on women in Kansas, analyzing fifteen albums that were donated to the Chapman Center by Rosalea Carter, all dating from the 1880s to early 1900s. During this time period, women were winning the right to vote, going on political tours, and attending college for the first time. For this project, I transcribed and digitized each of the inscriptions in the books, conducted research on the time period in which they were maintained, and investigated the history of the women who wrote in the autograph albums.
Primarily child-bearers and homemakers in the 19th century, women were discouraged from entering the workforce or political office. Strict gender roles maintained the cultural status quo in middle class and wealthy families. This began to change in the latter part of the 19th century; with the Progressive Era right around the corner, shifts in gender roles were well on the way. Loralee MacPike emphasizes this in her article “The New Woman, Childbearing, and Reconstruction of Gender, 1880-1900,” by describing the transformations women went through during this time. MacPike affirms the identity of the “New Woman:” “The needs of single women were increasingly being met, on many socioeconomic levels, by opportunities for training and by some increase in both scope and number of jobs; these opportunities placed women in the world, not in the home, and made independence as visible a possibility as motherhood.”
Womanhood began to change during the Civil War, a time when women took care of everything back home, leading to the eventual change from true womanhood to real womanhood. In her article “Changing Ideal of Womanhood During the Nineteenth-Century Woman Movement," Susan M. Cruea discusses this: “Real womanhood encouraged strenuous exercise and activities. Instead of remaining docile, as the conventions of True Womanhood dictated, girls and young women who adopted the tenets of Real Womanhood were encouraged to participate in sports activities such as archery, gymnastics, rowing, skating, and horseback riding.”
This transition surrounding womanhood led to a difference in relationship dynamics between women. Since women were able to leave their homesteads for school and coed colleges, many women moved away from family and close friends. This is where the autograph albums come into prominence as a tool for friendship maintenance. In “Eternal Perspectives in Nineteenth-Century Friendship Albums," scholar Jenifer Blouin analyzes the importance of women’s friendships and how the “friendship albums” allowed for their affections for one another to be preserved within the albums: “Work like this encompasses how important autograph albums truly are and their significance within history, as they give intimate details into the world of women and their relationships.”
Autograph albums were a critical component of women’s rhetorical and literary genres during the late 19th century. By studying the materiality of these objects, Todd Steven Gernes shows how women created a literary genre, using clippings, stickers, and popular literature written throughout the pages to track their societal developments. These “friendship albums” were among the most popular genres of writing for middle class white women during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And while all the autograph albums donated to the Chapman Center were owned by women within these racial and class demographics, it is important to note that Black women of the era also kept up autograph albums to maintain relationships with those in their friendship and family circles as well.
Album Spotlights
