American Historical Ephemera & Photography, including African Americana

8 x 9 in. album with black leather-wrapped boards with silver lettering reading, "Grenville Parker, 1898" on front cover and "322" on back cover. Album contains 19 cabinet cards, including 15 portraits of members, 13 of which are signed on the album page below, a German illustration depicting four skulls centered around a globe, book, crown, and other items, a view of the ivy-covered entrance to the society's "tomb," a portrait of an older African American gentleman wearing a skull and bones pin on his tie knot, and a portrait of a possibly mixed-race gentleman wearing the same pin.

Names of members include: Henry B. Wright, Herbert D. Gallaudet, Eugene Hale Jr., Clifford D. Cheney, Frank Hunter Simmons, David F. Rogers, J. W. Wadsworth Jr. (US Congressman), Frederic Kernochan (Chief Justice of Court of Special Sessions), (William) Payne Whitney, Grenville Parker, Morton L. Fearey, Forsyth Wickes, and Frank A. Lord.

The older African American gentleman featured in the album is pictured in other such albums that have come to market, including an example included in an archive offered at Bonham's/Skinner in 2019, wherein the African American man is presented with the name "Williams" written beneath his portrait. That album is dated 1883, and "Williams" is also pictured in an album dated as late as 1910. Most of these albums have included 15 "members" of the society along with 2 African American "stewards" or "attendants." It was a known tradition to include such portraits in these "yearbook" albums. A very early example from ca 1863, housed at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, includes a CDV of an African American man identified on the page as "Old Creed, janitor. It is known that he became a steward of the Skull and Bones society near the end of his career at the university, and he was an important leader in New Haven's antislavery movement.