While Mark Twain’s book The Innocents Abroad is the most famous record of the tourist cruise in 1867 on the Quaker City paddle steamer, it wasn’t the only one. Many passengers on the ship, like Twain, corresponded with newspapers across the United States. One other passenger, Mrs. Louisa Griswold, also published a book of the journey, and some of the other letters and journals were in some form put into print. One journal, written by Mrs. Emily Severance, was published by her daughter many years later, as a record of the journey for her children and grandchildren. Printed in 1938 in a small edition, some copies made it out into libraries. Severance writes about the very fact that so many passengers were writing about the trip:
The Western Reserve Historical Society has a collection of items from the Severance Family, including a journal that covers the first few months of the trip on the Quaker City. Here is the above passage in the original:
You can see when comparing the two that in the printed version they expanded some abbreviations, such as Philad. to Philadelphia, and added some clarifications like Mr. before Beach, etc.
Consider that the printed version was done in 1938, over 60 years after the journal was written, and almost 20 years after its author had died (Emily Severance died in 1921). Emily’s daughter Julia Millikin writes in the introduction that she worked over a summer transcribing the journal, which was in poor shape, with someone named Robert Peck. She says they tried to verify every name, every questionable spelling, and every historical allusion. It doesn’t describe how they went about doing that, however. Obviously they had no Internet then, and probably limited local resources for researching the Quaker City journey.
Here’s an example a few pages after the above:
Severance is writing about a group of passengers that departed Gibraltar on a different ship to Cadiz in Spain, where they would continue on land via train through Spain, and eventually arrive in Paris, France. I like the plural of Mr. being used (Messrs. is plural for Mr., and Mmes. is plural for Mrs., although these would only be used in very formal situations today), but the more important point is the name of the first people mentioned, Mr. and Mrs. Bush. That jumped out because there was no one named Bush on the Quaker City. So what does the original show?
It’s easy to see how the name was thought to be Bush. It seems that Julia Milliken and Robert Peck were not working from a passenger list when they transcribed the journal. So even though they properly transcribed Beach in the first passage above, they missed that this was also Beach. Another mistake is that it clearly reads Mr. & Miss Beach, because Moses Beach was traveling with his daughter Emeline, not his wife.
When confirming these kinds of things, it’s always helpful to have other sources for the information. It turns out that Charles Duncan, the captain of the ship, also recorded who left for Cadiz on the steamer. His journal is held in the Patten Free Library in Bath, Maine, and volunteers there transcribed the journal. He wrote:
Mr & Mrs Beach Mssrs Beckwith Sanford Bullard and Langdon took Steamer yesterday for Cadiz
Was Mssrs really Messrs? That’s not so important. Was Mrs actually Miss in the original? That would be more important to know. What is notable is that Duncan lists the same people, Mr. and Miss Beach, Mr. Beckwith, Mr. Sanford, Mr. Bullard, and adds one, Mr. Langdon (Twain’s future brother-in-law). I haven’t seen Duncan’s original handwritten journal, but perhaps similar transcription issues exist with his as well. His at least, was transcribed more recently, and the transcribers would have been able to research the names more easily.
Transcripts of handwritten documents usually make it much easier to read and utilize documents, but you always need to consider who did the transcribing, and what knowledge they had of the source material. Even in the scenario where a person has infinite knowledge of a document, transcription errors occur. So keep that in mind when relying on transcripts of handwritten documents.
Leave a Reply