EXHIBITS

Ada Morrell Scrapbook Collection: History

Jump to...

History of Scrapbooking

An example of a late 19th or early 20th century scrapbook from The Women’s Museum in Dallas, Texas. Contains clippings and cards with religious sayings.

Purpose of Scrapbooks

Scrapbooks have served a variety of purposes over the years. Scrapbooks contribute to communities and provide a public service. They can also document personal lives and events, or serve a broader community such as a church group or school.

Unlike diaries, scrapbooks are not meant to be confessional, instead they preserve memory and appear more anecdotal in style. Rather than attempting to record every fact of a person’s life or closely document what was going on historically at that time, scrapbooks collect personal items such as certificates, announcements, and letters. Such items are often ephemeral, meaning they are meant to exist or be used for only a short time. These items are brought together in some sort of collection to represent the person and time they occupied. [1]

History of Scrapbooks: 15th-17th century

Scrapbooks refer to the collection of personal and family history in a book, box, or other form. Such collections can be traced back to the 15th century as families gathered poems and recipes. In the 16th century people began to have books where they would store names of friends. People would then either gift these books to each other or maintain them like we do modern yearbooks. These books varied in purpose and content and were known as friendship books. [2] A German youth, Joannes Carolus Erlenwein, kept such a book while at school in Fulda, Germany and the clippings and personal entries offer a look into the daily pastimes of a 17th century school boy. These early scrapbooks reflect the personalities and preferences of the owners and reflect the daily lives of men, women and children. The practice of keeping such books would make its way to America as well.

Front cover of a friendship book. This one belonged to Joannes Carolus Erlenwein during his time at school in Fulda. Begun in 1614, bound in 1616.

Hand drawn dedication page for the friendship book.

Friendship Book Coat of Arms Erlenwein .jpg

Erlenwein family coat of arms.

Castle of Erlenwein.

A clipping, pasted into the book.

Activities at the seminary in Fulda.

Achilles slays Hector. Engraving by Crispin de Passe the Elder in Isaac Hillaire’s Speculum Heroicum.

Index of classmates and others who contributed to the book.

An advertisement for Twain’s scrapbook, his only invention to earn a profit. Shows a cherub holding up the new, clean and uniform scrapbook in contrast with the pots of glue and messiness of traditional scrapbooks.

History of Scrapbooks: 18th-21st century

In early America, it was common for people to collect advertisements, poems, and pictures and put them in a book. The pastime was popular enough that Mark Twain marketed an adhesive scrapbook so users could simply wet their item and attach it in their books. Such books were marketed widely and geared toward middle-class American’s, but not necessarily to a specific gender. [3]

Throughout the 19th and 20th century, scrapbooks were compiled for a variety of purposes, with many following in the manner of friendship and memory books including small clippings, pictures, or notes. During this same period, the related field of family history or genealogy was not always prevalent or accepted in the United States. After the Revolutionary War, citizens struggled with the idea of tracing family lines, fearing that a sense of hierarchy or supremacy would come out of it. However, as more time passed, national pride increased and American’s felt a need to learn about their local and national history. As Americans spread out geographically, the physical distance prompted Americans to maintain ties through family records. Along with the growing interest in genealogy came the increased dependence on women as “stewards of family memory.” In Antebellum America, women would collect documents and even maintain genealogical records through paintings or embroidery. [4]

Directions to Mark Twain’s self pasting scrapbook: “After filling the gummed pages, remove the interleaving leaf at the perforated line, allowing the short stub to remain, which will keep the book of uniform thickness.”

A painting and poem from the friendship album of Amy Matilda Cassey. The text reads, "Long, long be my heart with your memory fill’d!— Like the vase in which roses have once been distill’d— You may break, you may ruin the vase if you will; But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.”

Front cover of Ada England Morrell's scrapbook.

Ada Morrell Collection

At the end of the 20th century and exploding into the 21st, scrapbooking became a multimillion dollar industry. Stores such as Hobby Lobby now cater specifically to the craft offering various tools to enhance the compilation of items and their preservations. Many scrapbooks today combine the pastime of friendship and memory books with the desire to maintain family ties through genealogical records, pictures and family documents.

The majority of examples in this digital exhibit come from the scrapbook of Ada England Morrell, a Cache Valley resident during the 20th century. She collected information on over 50 family members with items dating from the mid 1800s and extending to her own children in the 1970s.

[1] Susan Tucker, Katherine Ott, and Patricia P. Buckler, The Scrapbook in American Life (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006), 2-10.

[2] Susan Tucker, Katherine Ott, and Patricia P. Buckler, The Scrapbook in American Life (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006), 4-7.

[3] Susan Tucker, Katherine Ott, and Patricia P. Buckler, The Scrapbook in American Life (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006), 7-8.

[4] Francois Weil, Family Trees: A History of Genealogy in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), 48-54, accessed April 14, 2017, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com.dist.lib.usu.edu/lib/USU/detail.action?docID=3301292.

Created by Jessica Morrill