Thomasville History Center’s Cutler Collection now freely available online

The Digital Library of Georgia (DLG) is pleased to announce the availability of the Cutler Collection at https://dlg.usg.edu/collection/tchs_cutcol. These resources belong to the Thomasville History Center and have been made available online thanks in part to the DLG’s Competitive Digitization grant program, a funding opportunity intended to broaden DLG partner participation for statewide historic digitization projects. 

The digitized items from this collection consist primarily of diaries, letters, and family papers dating from 1800-1980 belonging to Hazel Beamer Cutler, a dancer on Broadway who performed in the Ziegfeld Follies in the 1920s, and who resided in Thomasville, Georgia throughout much of her life. Included in the materials is genealogical research on the Quarterman and Baker families, pioneers of South Georgia; correspondence with visual artists Dora Wheeler Keith and Ben Ali Haggin, III, and Vermont banker Henry Miles Cutler. There is also some information about Candace Wheeler, founder of the American Decorative Arts movement. 

These materials are useful to researchers looking into the history of American illustrator, portrait artist, and muralist Dora Wheeler Keith (1856-1940), who was Hazel Beamer Cutler’s guardian in New York City; and portrait painter and stage designer Ben Ali Haggin, III (1882-1951). Some materials in the collection refer to Candace Wheeler (1827-1923), Dora Wheeler Keith’s mother, who founded the Society of Decorative Arts in 1877 and was associated with the Colonial Revival, Aesthetic Movement, and the Arts and Crafts Movement throughout her long career. The Thomasville Baker and Beamer families developed a friendship with the New York Wheelers and Keiths while the Wheelers vacationed in Thomasville, Georgia during the Resort Era of 1875-1905. These items will shed light into the early twentieth century happenings within the field of decorative arts as well as the artistic work of Ben Ali Haggin, III and Dora Wheeler Keith. The Georgia-related materials on the Quarterman, Baker, Mallard, and Schaffer families collected by Hazel Beamer Cutler’s aunt, Sallie Baker (1862-1953), a Thomasville, Georgia educator, will be useful to genealogists. Hazel Beamer Cutler’s diaries provide a rich history of life in New York City and Thomasville, Georgia during the 1920s.

Anne McCudden, executive director of the Thomasville History Center, notes:  “Having these items digitized will allow our staff and outside researchers to more fully engage with the collection. Currently, we only have a cursory knowledge of the content. Being able to access the collection (specifically the diaries) will allow interested parties to see into the daily life and of Hazel Beamer [Cutler] while she was living in New York City in the early 1920s…This collection also documents her time spent with Ben Ali Haggin III, who was from a prominent Kentucky family of artists and authors.”

About the Thomasville History Center

The Thomasville History Center is a non-profit community organization dedicated to ensuring that the appreciation of Thomasville’s unique history remains an intrinsic and unbroken thread connecting the past and future through settings that advance the town’s story. The History Center is supported by approximately 300 personal and business members, hosts approximately 3,000 visitors each year, and engages another 2,000 through community outreach.  Nearly twenty percent of the Thomasville History Center’s audience are students and teachers. Visit the Thomasville History Center at https://www.thomasvillehistory.org/.

About the Digital Library of Georgia

Based at the University of Georgia Libraries, the Digital Library of Georgia https://dlg.usg.edu/   is a GALILEO initiative that collaborates with Georgia’s libraries, archives, museums and other institutions of education and culture to provide access to key information resources on Georgia history, culture, and life. This primary mission is accomplished through the ongoing development, maintenance and preservation of digital collections and online digital library resources.  DLG also serves as Georgia’s service hub for the Digital Public Library of America and as the home of the Georgia Newspaper Project, the state’s historic newspaper microfilming project.

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New Collections from the Middle Georgia Archives

Francis T. Tennille slave medical care accounts, 1859-1860. Middle Georgia Archives.
Francis T. Tennille slave medical care accounts, 1859-1860. Middle Georgia Archives.

We are eager to announce the arrival of four new collections from our longstanding project partner, the Middle Georgia Archives.

 

The Middle Georgia Archives, located in the Genealogy and History Room of Macon’s Washington Memorial Library, serves middle Georgia as a resource center for archival and manuscript collections. Muriel Jackson, the head of the Genealogical and Historical Department at the Middle Georgia Archives, notes that their collections include materials that represent “at least twenty-five Georgia counties.”

 

The new collections that are now available in the DLG include:

 

 

 

  • Francis T. Tennille Slave Medical Care Accounts, 1859-1860  This collection consists of a single journal page of expenses incurred by medical treatment of Francis T. Tennille’s slaves in Calhoun County in southwest Georgia just prior to the Civil War. The page details what medical treatment was given and to whom. The fees were incurred by Dr. Walter T. Murchison mainly for tooth extraction and delivery of children. The entries list the cost of medicine, doctor visits, and treatments.
  • Henry A. Hunt Letters, 1931  This collection contains two letters, with enclosures, concerning Henry A. Hunt, long-time African American educator, agriculturalist, and president of what became Fort Valley State College. The letters concern New Deal farm policies and poetry by a teacher on Hunt’s faculty.
  • Isaac Scott Diary  Diary kept by Isaac Scott of Macon, Georgia. The diary comments on Macon’s economic trends, social life, the weather, and the Scott family. The diary also provides some detail on Scott’s involvement in local banking and railroads. The entries are most heavily concentrated during 1859 to 1861, and taper off between 1862 to 1864.
  • Macon-Knoxville Store Ledger, 1825-1831  Account book of a small general store based in Macon and Knoxville, Georgia covering the period from 1825 to 1831.

 

Jackson hopes to see these collections ignite interest in research projects about Georgia history. She notes that the Isaac Scott Diary “has some very good information on Macon history from a northern businessman who made his home in Macon” and that the Francis T. Tennille Slave Medical Care Accounts are remarkable in that “even though it is only one page it is very rare to locate original documents on slaves let alone medical treatment.”

 

We hope that you get a chance to look through these new resources that are now available from the Middle Georgia Archives.

 

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