The Annals of Volume 68, Number 1 Iowa Winter 2009 A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF HISTORY In This Issue VICTORIA E. M. CAIN, a Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Southern California, recounts the early history (1868–1910) of the Dav- enport Academy of Natural Sciences. She focuses on its transformation from a society devoted to scientific research into a museum dedicated to popular education. PAM STEK, a graduate student in history at the University of Iowa, describes the development in the 1880s and 1890s of a flourishing African American community from the small Iowa coal camp at Muchakinock. She shows how the attitudes and business practices of the coal company executives as well as the presence of strong African American leaders in the community contributed to the formation of an African American community that was not subjected to the enforced segregation, disfranchisement, and racial violence perpetrated against blacks in many other parts of the United States at that time. Front Cover J. H. Paarmann, curator of the Davenport Academy of Natural Sciences, led the institution’s transformation from a society devoted to scientific research into a museum dedicated to popular education. Here, Paarmann is seen leading a group of girls on a field trip along the Mississippi River. For more on Paarmann’s role in transforming the Davenport academy, see Victorian E. M. Cain’s article in this issue. Photo courtesy Putnam Museum of History and Natural Science, Davenport, Iowa. Editorial Consultants Rebecca Conard, Middle Tennessee State R. David Edmunds, University of Texas University at Dallas Kathleen Neils Conzen, University of H. Roger Grant, Clemson University Chicago William C. Pratt, University of Nebraska William Cronon, University of Wisconsin– at Omaha Madison Glenda Riley, Ball State University Robert R. Dykstra, State University of Malcolm J. Rohrbough, University of Iowa New York at Albany Dorothy Schwieder, Iowa State University The Annals of Third Series, Vol. 68, No. 1 Winter 2009 Iowa Marvin Bergman, editor Contents 1 From Specimens to Stereopticons: The Persistence of the Davenport Academy of Natural Sciences and the Emergence of Scientific Education, 1868–1910 Victoria E. M. Cain 36 Muchakinock: African Americans and the Making of an Iowa Coal Town Pam Stek 64 Book Reviews and Notices 95 New on the Shelves A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF HISTORY FOUNDED IN 1863 Copyright 2009 by the State Historical Society of Iowa ISSN 0003-4827 Book Reviews and Notices 64 CORNELIA F. MUTEL, The Emerald Horizon: The History of Nature in Iowa, by Rebecca Conard 66 JOHN P. BOWES, Exiles and Pioneers: Eastern Indians in the Trans-Mississippi West, by Thomas J. Lappas 68 DAVID J. WISHART, ED., Encyclopedia of the Great Plains Indians, by Brad D. Lookingbill 68 DEBORAH A. ROSEN, American Indians and State Laws: Sovereignty, Race and Citizenship, 1790–1880, by Donald L. Fixico 70 DEBORAH LAWRENCE, Writing the Trail: Five Women’s Frontier Narratives, by Gayle R. Davis 72 SCOTT NELSON AND CAROL SHERIFF, A People at War: Civilians and Soldiers in America’s Civil War, 1854–1877, by William Feis 74 MARK L. ELLIS, Law and Order in Buffalo Bill’s Country: Legal Culture and Community on the Great Plains, 1867–1910, by Richard Maxwell Brown 75 KATHLEEN STOKKER, Remedies and Rituals: Folk Medicine in Norway and the New Land, by Peter T. Harstad 76 MARIA ERLING AND MARK GRANQUIST, The Augustana Story: Shaping Lutheran Identity in North America, by L. DeAne Lagerquist 77 PHILIP J. PAULY, Fruits and Plains: The Horticultural Transformation of America, by Lori Vermaas 79 EVERETT W. KUNTZ AND JIM HEYNEN, Sunday Afternoon on the Porch: Reflections of a Small Town in Iowa, 1939–1942, by Terrence J. Lindell 80 R. DOUGLAS HURT, The Great Plains during World War II, by Michael W. Schuyler 82 KATHERINE JELLISON, It’s Our Day: America’s Love Affair with the White Wedding, 1945–2005, by Carole Srole 84 MICHAEL KRAMME, The Schaffner Players, by Richard Poole 85 STEVE GLISCHINSKI, Regional Railroads of the Midwest, by Don L. Hofsommer 86 MARK R. SCHERER, Rights in the Balance: Free Press, Fair Trial, and Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart, by David J. Bodenhamer 88 ANITA CLAIR FELLMAN, Little House, Long Shadow: Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Impact on American Culture, by John J. Fry 89 BILL KAUFFMAN, Ain’t My America: The Long, Noble History of Anti-War Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism, by Bill Douglas 91 NICOLE MELLOW, The State of Disunion: Regional Sources of Modern American Partisanship, by Gregory L. Schneider 93 RICHARD E. WOOD, Survival of Rural America: Small Victories and Bitter Harvests, by Jon Lauck From Specimens to Stereopticons: The Persistence of the Davenport Academy of Natural Sciences and the Emergence of Scientific Education, 1868–1910 VICTORIA E. M. CAIN IN 1868, four men met in a dingy, second-floor real estate office in Davenport, Iowa, a small city on the Mississippi River. En- thusiastic naturalists all, they were eager to shore up their col- lections and meet others who shared their passion for scientific matters. Consequently, they agreed to found an academy of sci- ence to sponsor research on scientific problems, to host lectures, and to publish on their findings.1 The fledgling Davenport Academy of Natural Sciences proved immediately popular with local residents. In its first year of existence, membership grew to 51. Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, the academy held monthly meetings, corre- sponded with an international network of entomologists, ge- ologists, and anthropologists, published scientific papers in the Academy’s Proceedings, and served as a local clearinghouse for 1. Untitled speech, 12/14/1892, folder: Academy Meetings, Notes & Misc. 1892, box 11, Putnam Museum of History and Natural Science Archives (hereafter cited as Putnam Archives). Many thanks to the State Historical Society of Iowa and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The funding these institutions provided allowed me to research and write this article. THE ANNALS OF IOWA 68 (Winter 2009). © The State Historical Society of Iowa, 2009. 1 2 THE ANNALS OF IOWA scientific information.2 By the end of 1880s, however, the acad- emy had begun to flag and struggled to attract people to its meetings and tiny museum. In order to re-establish its status in the community, mem- bers decided to recast the academy as an organization devoted primarily to elementary science education. They overhauled its museum to make it more accessible to non-members and hired a curator who integrated the work of the museum with science instruction in the local public schools. The academy no longer relied on its own members or correspondents to speak on scien- tific matters, but instead hired traveling lecturers who were well known for popularizing science. By 1910, when it pub- lished its last issue of the Proceedings, the academy had given up any pretense of being a place for original scientific research. The academy’s transformation from a society devoted to scientific research to a museum dedicated to popular education illuminates the consequences of scientific professionalization for provincial academies of science. The survival and eventual prom- inence of the academy’s museum in the early twentieth century indicates Americans’ ongoing belief in the worth of lay observa- tion of the natural world, despite the decline in amateur scien- tific research. The transition also illustrates the persistence of traditional practices of naturalists in the midst of the rapidly evolving scientific landscape of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Similar evolutions occurred in the scientific societies of Buf- falo, Boston, and Brooklyn and in Chicago, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia; however, the Davenport Academy of Natural Sci- ences’ transformation is particularly important, for it provides insight into the intellectual and social history of a region largely neglected by historians of science, despite the proliferation of midwestern scientific societies outside of major metropolitan centers throughout the nineteenth century.3 In sum, the history 2. Ibid. 3. Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, “From Learned Society to Public Museum: The Boston Society of Natural History,” in The Organization of Knowledge in Modern America, 1860–1920, ed. Alexandra Oleson and John Voss (Baltimore, 1979), 386. The research of Daniel Goldstein stands as a pronounced exception to the neglect of the region. See, for instance, Daniel Goldstein, “Outposts of Science: Davenport Academy of Natural Sciences 3 of the Davenport Academy of Natural Sciences helps to explain why Iowan—and American—natural history museums contin- ued to thrive long after their scientific star had faded. IN ITS FIRST DECADE, the young academy provided a stimulating intellectual community for Davenport residents. Common pursuit of scientific knowledge served as a source of social pleasure for many Americans, and like-minded folks gathered regularly in fields, farmhouses, and front rooms to discuss intriguing aspects of nature and science. Participating in scientific societies such as the Davenport Academy of Natural Sciences became a popular pastime, especially after the Civil War. About 60 scientific societies had been founded in the United States in the years leading up to the war; the rising in- terest in nature and science led Americans to establish more than 64 scientific societies per decade in the 40 years after the war. There were only 36 active scientific societies in the United States in 1865; by 1878 there were at least 141 local and state so- cieties that concentrated on natural history in one form or an- other. By 1884, that number had grown to more than 200, with the most successful in cities with more than 30,000 inhabitants. Such societies spread throughout the Midwest with the assis- tance of the thousands of German immigrants who had settled there in the 1850s. Transplanting continental traditions of schol- arly Gemeinschafts, they founded or joined dozens of local acad- emies of science, and built up community libraries on scientific topics.4 The Knowledge Trade and the Expansion of Scientific Community in Post– Civil War America,” Isis 99 (2008), 519–46.