We All Got History : The Memory Books of Amos Webber

Rating:
Summary: The significance of fraternal organizations
Review: Amos Webber maintained a chronicle, a history. He belonged to the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows. Membership in this organization provided historian Mick Salvatore with a clue to assess the "Thermometer Book" of Amos Webber, a detailed impersonal chronicle, and to find the history of the man, Amos Webber, a light-skinned African American, a soldier in the 5th Cavalry. Webber was born in 1826 in a small town in Bucks County Pennsylvania. He moved to Philadelphia when a young man and attended the Presbyterian Church. Webber's political activism was nurtured by the organizations to which he belonged. One black Presbyterian minister declared that he would preach the Declaration of Independence until it began to be put into practice. Salvatore writes of abolitionist activities in Philadelphia and festivals, such as the one held to celebrate the abolition of slavery in the West Indies in 1838. Webber underscored the significance of John Brown's activities. Webber enjoyed a niche in society akin to that occupied by the white middle class.

There was a popular interest in meteorology. By the 1830's there were a series of civilian observers organized by leading scientific investigators. Amos Webber had little formal education. His weather book served multiple purposes of weather journal, commentary on natural patterns, and a way to record his observations of the world around him. His weather books included press clippings. Webber's employer went bankrupt and the business closed in 1860. The Webber family moved to Worcester, Massachusetts. The first volume of his chronicle concluded in October 1860. The start of the second volume is a decade later. Webber was employed in a wire mill. Black collective life appeared thin in comparison to Philadelphia. In Worcester the fall of Sumter caused general excitement. In January 1864 Amos Webber reported to Camp Meigs at Readville, Massachusetts for service in Company D, Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry. Webber was rapidly elevated from private to sergeant. In the 1870's Masonic and Odd Fellow Lodges for African Americans were established in Worcester. Webber participated in these in leadership positions. After the Hayes compromise in 1876 Webber never mentioned reconstruction or its demise in his chronicles. Amos Webber died in 1904. His death was reported to the weekly meeting of Post 10 Grand Army of the Republic. Black fraternal organizations sent wreaths. Webber had intense political and moral views. He had been married for fifty two years. His chronicle was largely silent about women. He had inhabited a male world. He understood racism. His beliefs and actions included a persistent demonstration of equality.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting - but boring...
Review: It is very interesting to get an insight into a life of a single black man around the turn of the century. But it sure was boring to read. I you are interested in the topic, read it - but make sure you have a pillow near by becuase you will be snoring.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful, Engaging, Informative
Review: Sometimes one learns more about history by accident, and it tells its own tale reluctantly if we are receptive to listening. Essentially, that is what happened to Dr. Nick Salvatore one day while digging in the archives of the Harvard Library. What he uncovered led him on a journey of discovery that he had not anticipated, but by which he became completely engaged for the next several years. Salvatore, a professor at Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, offers us a biography of a rather reluctant and seemingly unlikely subject, Amos Webber, a free African-American man who lived, worked, and journalled in 19th century New England.
Webber was a keen observer of people, politics, and the African American condition before, during, and after the American Civil War right up until his death in 1904. His penned thoughts on the Reconstruction era offer an important insight into the African American point of view during a seminal period in their journey towards freedom and equality. Through Amos Webber's writings one can sense the optimism, feel the despair and disappointment, and his continued commitment to furthering the causes of personal agency, self-determination, suffrage, equality, and the nurturing of a strong African-American Community. These are the very currents which resonate so strongly throughout his journals and which allow the reader to obtain a more insightful glimpse into the world of Amos Webber and his worldview throughout his life.
Historical biography is a difficult subject to master when the author does not have the benefit of previous scholars' interpretations as a foundation to build upon; much less when the subject of that biography has been dead for over ninety years, has no known family members or contemporaries to interview, and who's only personal affects extant are a sparsely personal, albeit meticulously kept, series of journals with which to begin working. That is precisely what Salvatore accomplished with this work. Because of his background as a social historian Salvatore was predisposed to looking at what lay between the lines; what was unsaid, and adding sufficient social context to make it an important work in the fields of: African American History, Political History, Labor History, and Urban History of the 19th century.
Salvatore succeeds in this endeavor in a way that is both historically informative and personally poignant by offering a thematic continuity to Webber's life, speaking specifically to his life, and on a larger scale to the free, northern, urban, African-American experience en mass. To illustrate his thesis, Salvatore explores such themes as: the individual as a part of the community; urban space and identity in the 19th century; the vantage of a free African-American on the issue of slavery and self-determination; and the role of Institutions and social movements in the African-American community in the 19th century. These thematic vehicles enable the reader to consider the richness and depth of the subject and elicit empathy for what so often has gone unrecognized in the general understanding of 19th century African American history.
To illustrate these varying themes, bringing to life Webber's career as a soldier, citizen and "activist," Salvatore enlists a mélange of additional outside sources such as: census records, demographic studies, newspaper extracts, the discussion of the Abolition movement; regimental histories from the Civil War, church records, and minutes from the meetings of fraternal organizations. All work in concert to aide him in contextualizing the life of his subject in a way that makes Webber's individual journal entries even more poignant than they might otherwise seem. As readers, we are offered an intimate picture of Webber's life and the African American community of Worchester, Massachusetts during the 19th century, by examining the social and political interests of the man and of his community.
Salvatore's style, while at times tersely laden with discussion of the social climate and interests of Amos Webber, none-the-less, offers a very thoroughly constructed, eloquently written, and sensitively handled biography. However, one area of weakness in Salvatore's work, whether it was due to a lack of source material, a lack of interest, or a deliberate oversight, is that there is little discussion devoted to Amos Webber's family relationships, or lack thereof. While Webber did not write about his family in his own journals, neither did Salvatore make an effort to go beyond that to investigate the matter. This reviewer finds that, while every other aspect of Webber's life was given due and thorough attention, the author would have better served his reader by giving some additional information about Webber's extended family. In the 19th century one's relationship with his or her family was a primary focus for every American.
"We've All Got History. ...It's there. You just got to look for it," a quote which Salvatore attributes to Ellen L. Hazard, a descendant of a friend and compatriot of Amos Webber's, is a hauntingly prophetic and poignant comment that encapsulates the very process by which Nick Salvatore approached Amos Webber's life. He took the skeleton of Webber's personal journal and successfully fleshed it out to encompass an entire social-cultural movement, allowing the reader to see the world as Webber himself saw it and adding a background to help better understand the importance of the role of individuals, great and small, during a time that was formative for the African-American community. We've All Got History... is very rich in detail and life, a biography that will stand as an important work in the genre of historical biography.