American Historical Ephemera & Photography

5 x 7 1/2 in. leather journal with gilt highlights, marbled page edges and endpapers. (spine worn away), about 20 pages filled in. At the end, in another hand, is “My Uncle Jack’s diary. He and some of the soldiers he served with in the civil war went on the ship Parle (actually SS Saale) around the world in 1895. Marion Hall, 1923.” In Jack Hall’s hand, is 1895. It seems they boarded the SS Saale, a North German Lloyd passenger liner built in 1886, on July 6th. (She burned in the 1900 Hoboken Docks Fire of 1900, but was raised and repaired.) He mentions that some people came down to the steamer as they were boarding (P. Dwight, Birn(?) Roby, H. Barnes, Hickok, Francis Logan), but may not have been going with him. He mentions a few others who do seem to have been passengers (Barclay Cooke, Judge Prendice (?), Pat Pierson). We were unable to identify any of them in the Civil War databases. A few names show up but there are so many, one would need a bit more information than Mr. Hall gives us to be sure which individual this was. We were not even able to identify the state served. 

This journal covers Britain and northern Europe. If they continued traveling after that, he gave up writing it down. He does mention that soon after arriving in London, they ate at a place which was formerly the palace of Richard III. A couple days later they toured Westminster, then the Tower of London (from the Thames), the Houses of Parliament, the National Gallery, Oxford, Shakespeare’s birth place and grave and more. Then they crossed the channel to Brussels, visited Waterloo and a few other battle sites, went to Cologne, visiting the lovely Gothic cathedral there, took a boat tour down the Rhine, went to Frankfort, Heidelberg, Lucern and Chamounix among several other sites. Toward the end, he starts leaving blanks for the names of hotels and towns, appearing that he wrote it down after returning home, but had already forgotten a number of locations. (The hand is dark and bold, but a bit messy and can be difficult to read.)

[With:] 4 photographs, 3 featuring groups of gentlemen with large historical markers, likely taken at Civil War battle sites including Appomattox. One features a pencil inscription "Uncle Jack" identifying one of the subjects. The same African American gentleman appears to be in each photograph including the fourth one, which features him alone sitting outside in a chair. Each 4 x 5 in.