Did a bit of Hartshead, Sheffield, end up in Washington DC?

Did an American Journalist make a pilgrimage to Sheffield (UK) in 1868 to find the shop where his old employer was born amid the radical ferment of the late 18th century?

Did he buy the old frontage of the shop, have it made into a couple of boxes, and donate one to the National Museum in Washington DC (as in USA)?

It's a great story, and it has been interesting trying to follow the trail.  Here is what I think I know about the story ..... (spoiler! I still don't know the answer to all of the above questions!)



In the dim and distant past (in December 2015) I was researching the background stories relating to a picture of the old 'Montgomery Tavern' in Hartshead, Sheffield, UK, shown here on the right.

The Montgomery Tavern,
Hartshead, Sheffield,
by an unknown artist, 1856.
(© Museums Sheffield VIS.1899)

In the late 18th century, the building had been the home of the 'Sheffield Register', a radical newspaper started and managed by Joseph Gales.  When Gales fled the country in 1794 to avoid arrest for his radical views, his old assistant James Montgomery continued the paper under a new name, the 'Sheffield Iris'.  Montgomery then went on to be as famous for his poetry and hymn writing as for his involvement in the history of his adopted town.

The building became the subject of many drawings, paintings, and later photographs, not so much for its own beauty (though it could be considered quite picturesque), but for the story of the newspapers and their proprietors.  That story deserves a whole book or several, and it is not my aim here to cover any of the details.

The key point is that Joseph Gales (1761-1841) finally crossed the Atlantic to America where, rather than being a 'dangerous radical', he became part of the establishment, proprietor of a succession of newspapers, and the official reporter of the proceedings of the US Congress.

His son, Joseph Gales junior (1786-1860), continued in the newspaper business and went on to run the 'National Intelligencer' newspaper in Washington which brings me to the story of the story of the shop frontage, the supposed box, and the National Museum.

(The stories of Joseph Gales (senior and junior) can be found at http://ncpedia.org/biography/gales-joseph and http://ncpedia.org/biography/gales-joseph-jr )

During my research I found the story of an incident noted in R.E. Leader’s ‘Sheffield in the Eighteenth Century’ (1901), p300 {notes in { } are my annotations} …

In the autumn of 1868, a Transatlantic pilgrim, who had known the Gales family in America, penetrated the recesses of the Hartshead {the location of Gales’ old offices}.  The building had been turned into a beer-shop, and joiners were in the act of removing the quaintly-carved door case already described.  The stranger, more reverent than Montgomery's own townsman, saved it from destruction.  He carried it off, and had it made into a number of boxes, one of which is placed in the National Museum of Washington, suitably inscribed, and bearing a photograph of the premises rendered famous by the memory of Gales and Montgomery.

{Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/sheffieldineigh00leadgoog )

Detail of the frontage of the old 'Iris' office,
by then called the 'Montgomery Tavern'.
from a wood engraving in
'Illustrated Guide to Sheffield', 1862, p104.

I assumed that what was the ‘National Museum in Washington’ in 1868 (or 1901) became part of the Smithsonian, and set about trying to establish whether the box mentioned above was still in the collection, possible with a view to obtaining a photograph, or simply any supporting information that was readily available.

Other versions of the same story, all from the pen of R E Leader or from his newspaper, the 'Sheffield Independent', give more or less the same details – the earliest I found being in the ’Sheffield & Rotherham Independent’, Saturday, July 31, 1869; p6.  It was repeated in almost the same words in Leader’s ‘Reminiscences of Old Sheffield’ published in 1875.  I quote …

In the autumn of 1868 an old contributor to the Intelligencer {the ’National Intelligencer’ the newspaper edited by Joseph Gales junior} visited Sheffield, and being curious — as so many Americans are — to see the place from which his former employer went forth {Gales junior was born here in Sheffield}, visited the antique shop in the Hartshead where Gales {senior} commenced and Montgomery continued the then dangerous trade of editor and publisher.  The poetic nine {? i.e. the muses} have long deserted the narrow alley.  Where flowers of Parnassus once bloomed, the votaries of Bacchus then revelled.  In short, the building had been turned into a beershop {the 'Montgomery Tavern}.  Joiners were removing the quaintly-carved door-case with the ancient fan-light, to replace them with some more convenient structure in plain and vulgar deal.  The stranger was horrified at the desecration, and, inquiring, found that the old wood was being removed, with some lumber, for lighting fires.  His plea for mercy was admitted; triumphant, he carried off the old door-case, and out of it had constructed a number of boxes, one of which is placed in the National Museum at Washington, suitably inscribed, and bearing a photograph of the premises rendered sacred by the memory of Gales and Montgomery.

That was all the information I had been able to find at the time, but I emailed the Smithsonian in Washington and received a reply from Ellen Alers, a Reference Archivist at the Smithsonian Archives.  Though she were very encouraging and helpful, without a name for the 'transatlantic pilgrim' she were unable to find any useful information, and I left it at that in order to complete my other research about the painting and the building.

Time passed and the story still lingered in my mind so recently I decided to have another dig into the old newspaper archives.

In the 'Sheffield Daily Telegraph', 14th September, 1868, p3, I found confirmation for the alterations to the frontage of the shop, and possibly for the visiting American  ...

THE OLD "IRIS" OFFICE - A correspondent says :- "Among the older buildings in Sheffield which have acquired celebrity from the names or reputations of their occupants, there is not one that has attracted the attention of strangers more than that in which Mr Gales lived, originally published the Sheffield Register, and where for so many years resided James Montgomery, the "Christian poet", and published the Iris.  For half a century I have known the shop in question, and have always felt glad, as well on account of my own 'pleasant memories', as for the sake of curious visitors, that the venerable front remained unaltered.  But a change has come at last!  The building indeed remains unaltered; the sitting-room in which I have spent so many hours with the venerable poet is intact; but the fine, old-fashioned bow-window - the admiration of a past generation of Sheffielders - has given place to one of modern construction.  Sic transit!  The American gentleman who was anxious to get a photograph of the Iris office, as it was in Montgomery's time, was just too late!"

In the ‘Sheffield and Rotherham Independent’, 30th September, 1868, p4 – i.e. about the date quoted in the original note - there is a copy of a 'Letter from an American in England’ quoted from the ‘National Intelligencer’ in Washington.  The letter was written on August 25th (presumably in 1868) from Norton, near Sheffield, by ‘Mr. Kingman, one of the oldest journalists in the United States’.  All of which fits with the suggested date (Autumn 1868) and the description of the ‘transatlantic pilgrim’ as ‘an old contributor to the Intelligencer’.  It goes on to describe his visits to several places including Buxton and Chatsworth House, and to Hartshead ...

"I visited the the old building where Gales and Montgomery edited and published their newspapers.  It is an antique and quaint house in the Hartshead, now occupied, as a sign imports, for ‘ale and porter vaults’.”

... but he does not mention the story of the door-case and the boxes.

I set about searching for any more information on 'Mr Kingman' and found a possible candidate in an A. W. Kingman.  Sadly I could not tie him down to an individual who might fit the description.  There were several references to an A.W. Kingman in ship's passenger lists, but none seemed likely to be our Mr Kingman.

I then came across a more likely alternative in Eliab Kingman who was mentioned in the New York Times (27th July 1860), in a report on the funeral of Joseph Gales junior as a correspondent on the Intelligencer.

The USA census for 1880 gave Eliab Kingman, aged 83, as a Journalist (retired), resident in Washington.  I found that his date of birth was 24th May 1797, and that he died on 1st February 1883.  He and his wife are buried in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, and it appears that he was a well-known and respected journalist in the city.

The ‘Evening Star’, a Washington DC paper, on 25th July 1868 (front page) had a note wishing Bon Voyage to ‘E. Kingman, for nearly half a century correspondent for the press at Washington’, on his departure for Europe'.  He is therefore a definite possibility for our Mr Kingman and the ‘transatlantic pilgrim’.

With this new information I got back to Ellen Alers in Washington ...

In summary, the object in question is a box of unknown size made from the carved door-case of a building in Hartshead, Sheffield (Hartshead being the street name) which was the shop and offices of Joseph Gales.  This was where he published the ‘Sheffield Register’ until he fled to Europe in 1794 and then to America in 1795.  Gales and his son (also Joseph) went on to publish several newspapers in the USA including the National Intelligencer.  They were also the official printers for Congress.   The box is thought to have been made in 1868 (the Autumn of 1868), though it may have been donated to the ‘National Museum’ in 1869 (the first mention being in July 1869).  The box was said to bee inscribed, and supposedly donated along with a photograph of the building in Hartshead.  The donor was an American, a correspondent of the ‘Intelligencer’, and the most likely candidate seems to be Eliab Kingman, though as an outside chance it could be A.W. Kingman.

After some fairly thorough searching of old annual reports, accession record indexes, and the correspondence index, sadly Ellen was unable to cast any light on the elusive box.

And that is where the story ended .... for a while!

It could be that the box never existed and that the original story was a misunderstanding or a fabrication.  It could be that it wasn't actually donated to the predecessor of the Smithsonian - it could have been donated to some other institution.
Perhaps more information could be found in other newspapers in the vaults of the Library of Congress or in some other archive.  The 'National Intelligencer', which seems central to the story, was published until 1870 (though under various names) and the online Library of Congress database only seems to include pages up to about 1809.  Their web-site (www.loc.gov/ff/news/ftext.html) does however specifically note that 'National Intelligencer' is available for 1800-1870 through Gale (the same portal that I regularly use for UK newspapers) but access requires an appropriate log-in.  Perhaps that was a way forward if I can get access.  

I contacted the Library of Congress asking about the Intelligencer which in 1868-9 was called the Daily National Intelligencer  and received an encouraging reply from Amber Paranick, a Research Librarian, saying that they had on-site access and would be happy to make some searches if I could provide details.

At first Amber only managed to find an entry in the Daily National Intelligencer dated 29th July 1868 confirming the departure of Mr. Kingman, but later she managed to dig out the Mr. Kingman's original letter from Sheffield published on 15th September 1868 - and only attributed to 'Editorial Correspondent'.  Sadly it provided no new information, other than to confirm the Sheffield Independent's accuracy in transcribing the text (and 'correcting' the spelling for an English audience!).

So we still have a mystery, but there is always hope of some new lead - ever the optimist!