Guide to Alice Marshall Women's History Collection

93 Pages·2017·0.86 MB·English

by  University Libraries

Guide to the
Alice Marshall
Women’s History Collection,
ca. 1546-1997.

The Pennsylvania State University
Penn State Harrisburg Library
Archives and Special Collections

Contact Information:
Heidi Abbey Moyer
Archivist and Humanities Reference Librarian
Coordinator of Archives and Special Collections
Penn State Harrisburg Library
Archives and Special Collections
351 Olmsted Drive, Room 303
Middletown, PA 17057-4850
Tel.: [phone]
E-mail: [email protected]
Web: https://libraries.psu.edu/about/libraries/
penn-state-harrisburg-library/alice-marshall-womens-history-collection

Date Completed: August 2010; Last Revised: 25 May 2017

© 2007-2017 The Pennsylvania State University. All rights reserved.
Descriptive Summary
Creator: Marshall, Alice Kahler.
Title: Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection.
Dates: ca. 1546-1997, bulk 1840-1950.
Accession No.: AKM 91/1 – AKM 91/95.
Language: Bulk of materials in English; some French.
Extent: 238 cubic feet.
Repository: Archives and Special Collections, Penn State Harrisburg Library, University
Libraries, Pennsylvania State University.

Administrative Information
Access
This collection is open for research. There are no access restrictions on this collection. Permission
is required to quote from or duplicate materials in this collection.
Usage Restrictions
Use of audiotapes may require reformatting and/or production of listening copies.
Acquisitions Information
Gift and purchase of Alice K. Marshall of Camp Hill, Pa., in 1991.
Processing Information
Processed by: Heidi Abbey Moyer, Archivist and Humanities Reference Librarian and Coordinator
of Archives and Special Collections (2006-Present), and Martha Sachs, Former Curator of the Alice
Marshall Collection; in collaboration with Katie Barrett, Public Services Assistant (2014-Present),
Lynne Calamia, American Studies Graduate Student (2007-2008); Jessica Charlton, Humanities
Graduate Student (2008); Danielle K. Pfeffer, Humanities Graduate Student (2008-2010); Jennifer
Dutch, American Studies Ph.D. Candidate (2010), Katherine A. Gorrell, American Studies Graduate
Student (2012) and Archives and Public Services Assistant (2013-Present); and Megan Bennett,
American Studies Graduate Student (2013-2014), Ashlee Vandewater, American Studies Graduate
Student (2014-2015).
Edited by: Susan Hamburger, Manuscripts Cataloging Librarian, and Jackie R. Esposito, University

Archivist, 2011, and by Heidi Abbey Moyer (2007-2016).

Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection (May 2017) P age| 2
Preferred Citation
Courtesy of the Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection, [Insert appropriate series number
and/or accession number for the entire collection, i.e., AKM 91/1], Archives and Special
Collections, Penn State Harrisburg Library, University Libraries, Pennsylvania State University.

Arrangement
The collection consists of 18 series, which are arranged by format. Within some series, the
collection is further divided into subseries by genre and/or topic.
I. Catalogued and Uncatalogued Books
II. Catalogued and Uncatalogued Pamphlets
III. Magazines and Serials
IV. Newspapers
V. Sheet Music
VI. Ephemera and Artifacts
VII. Postcards
VIII. Posters
IX. Photographs
X. Valentines
XI. Graphics
XII. Family and Personal Papers
XIII. Women’s Organization Records
XIV. Business, Government, and School Records
XV. Albums/Scrapbooks
XVI. Historical Manuscripts and Printed Works
XVII. Vertical Files
XVIII. Alice K. Marshall Papers

Biographical Note
Alice Kahler Marshall (1923-1997) was a Harrisburg-area journalist, magazine editor, speechwriter,
researcher, compiler, and avid collector who devoted more than fifty years to collecting materials
related to all aspects of women's lives, ranging from family and health to law and politics.

Born in Ithaca, New York, she attended George Washington University and worked briefly as a
reporter for the Washington Post. During World War II, Mrs. Marshall served in the Women's Army
Corps for one year. Following service with the Corps, she developed her initial fascination with the
contradictions between the realities of women's lives and the stereotypes of women's behavior,

Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection (May 2017) P age| 3
particularly as revealed in popular culture. This led Mrs. Marshall to extensively collect materials on
women's history for the rest of her life.

She married in 1944 and raised four children. The Marshall family moved in 1948 to the Harrisburg
area where Mrs. Marshall spent 20 years working in various capacities for the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania. She served as the first public relations officer for the Department of State. Her other
positions included that of deputy press secretary, chief speechwriter for the Department of
Commerce, and senior research analyst for the House of Representatives. She retired from the
Commonwealth in 1981, at which time she increased her collecting efforts. When illness caused her
to be housebound in her later years, she became an avid computer user, cataloging her enormous
collection on her home computer, and enthusiastically browsing the Internet.

Mrs. Marshall is the author of the reference book Pen Names of Women Writers from 1600 to the Present:
A Compendium of the Literary Identities of 2650 Women Novelists, Playwrights, Poets, Diarists, Journalists and
Miscellaneous Writers (1985). She also wrote numerous articles on women’s history. In 1987, she won
Pennsylvania’s Award for Service to Women.

Scope and Content
The Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection (AMC) is the most extensive collection in Penn
State Harrisburg’s Archives and Special Collections, and is considered by several scholars to be one
of the largest, privately-compiled research collections on women’s history in the United States.
Acquired by the Pennsylvania State University Libraries in 1991, the AMC was collected by Alice
Kahler Marshall (1923-1997) over a period of 50 years. Items in this collection are an extremely
eclectic compilation of approximately 11,000 visual, literary, and manuscript materials that reflect
more than 300 years of women's history from the mid-sixteenth century through the mid-twentieth
century. Represented in the AMC are advertising trade cards, broadsides, hand-colored fashion
plates, journals, letters, manuscripts, newspapers, photographs, valentines, 105 posters, over 7,000
pieces of sheet music, more than 6,000 early 20th-century picture postcards, and 7,000 books and
pamphlets. A detailed description of the collection’s components is as follows:
Books and Pamphlets: This portion of the AMC includes rare works by English and American
authors from the eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. The work of early women printers is
well-represented, as are early Quaker and abolitionist tracts, accounts of criminal and divorce trials,
works by 19th-century women travel writers, propaganda on both sides of the suffrage issue,
including Women's Rights Convention programs, and materials on women as both victims and
perpetrators of crime. While the collection is currently being cataloged according to the Library of
Congress’ classification system for improved accessibility, the books were originally collected by
Alice Marshall according to the following broad categories: abolition, artists, biographies (individual
and collective), bigotry, birth control, bloomer, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, captivity, Civil War, crime,
Dorothy Dix, divorce, doctors, education, expositions, fashion, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, health,
hoboes, homemakers, housewives, Indian schools, journalism, law, Lowell, medicine, Mormons,
novels and novelists, old women, pacifists, Pennsylvania, playwrights, poetry, politics, Queen
Caroline, radicals, reform, religion, Salvation Army, Sanitary Commission, science, service

Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection (May 2017) P age| 4
organizations, servants, sexual harassment, sexuality, social work, sports, spouse abuse, suffrage,
temperance, travel, vice, war, women in the American West, woman, Victoria Woodhull, Women's
Movement, Virginia Woolf, workers, and working women.
Buttons, Badges, and Pins: The collection includes a wide variety of pins and buttons, many of
which are related to social issues like abortion, birth control, war, political campaigns, and suffrage.
Graphics: This segment of the AMC is composed of engravings, aquatints, lithographs, hand-
colored fashion plates, cartoons, and advertisements, largely dating from the mid-1800s through the
1930s.
Manuscripts: Among the manuscripts in the AMC are letters (including those of notable
nineteenth-century literary women), autograph books, travel journals, and legal documents.
Newspapers: The AMC includes limited runs and single issues of a wide variety of eighteenth-
through early twentieth-century American titles (including numerous Pennsylvania titles), as well as
some English publications.
Magazines and Serials: Among the many journals in the AMC are The Free Enquirer, The Lowell
Offering, The Women's Journal, The Revolution, The Forerunner, The Woman Citizen, The Anglo-Saxon Review,
Mother Earth, The Suffragist, Godey's, and a complete run of Joanna Brome's The Observator (1681-1684).
On the lighter side are early twentieth-century comic books, including a set of Arietta and the Cowgirls,
and also a series of assorted romance comic books from the mid-twentieth century.
Postcards: This very large collection of 6,131 postcards illustrates Mrs. Marshall's interests in the
stereotyping of women.
Posters: The AMC includes approximately 105 varied posters, such as large recruiting and home-
front posters from World Wars I and II, and decorative advertisements for a nineteenth-century
New York City newspaper.
Sheet Music: Spanning 1790 through the mid-twentieth century, this collection consists of more
than 7,000 titles, including music about women, and by women composers and lyricists. The sheet
music covers provide stereotypical visual evidence of, among many other subjects, suffragettes,
immigrants, saintly mothers, bloomer girls, girls gone bad, working girls, and women suffering from
the vagaries of love.
Valentines: This portion of the collection contains approximately 180 valentines. The majority of
the items are comic or vinegar valentines that were also known as "Penny Dreadfuls" when they
were originally published. Vinegar valentines lampoon women and their physical attributes, habits,
styles of dress and behaviors. Among the ephemera are comic valentine sheets (ca. 1870-1920),
sentimental valentines from World War II (ca. 1939-1945), and suffrage valentines (ca. 1915-1920).
There are many unique and rare items in the AMC which continue to be discovered on a daily basis.
The collection contains many “firsts,” including the first printing of the first American literary work
to advocate rights for women in The Weekly Magazine (March 17 through April 7, 1798), the earliest
argument for women’s rights ever published by an American woman, Judith Sargent Murray, in The

Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection (May 2017) P age| 5
Massachusetts Magazine (March and April 1790), and the first printing of the first women’s rights song
published in America, “Rights of Women, by a Lady,” in the Philadelphia Minerva (October 17, 1795).

Related Archival Material

Archives and Special Collections at the Penn State Harrisburg Library owns the Lena A. Girolami
Collection, which contains clothing and other memorabilia owned by Lena Girolami during her
service as a member of the 110th Women’s Army Corps (WAC).

Bibliography
The following is a list of books, newspaper and magazine articles, scholarly journal articles, as well as
various online content (blog postings, websites, etc.) that include either a citation to or information
about Alice Marshall or the Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection. Copies of selected items
from the list below are housed in the Donor Control Files for the Collection.

Allen, Pauline. “Display to Portray Women’s History.” Sunday Patriot-News. March 22, 1987.

Baker, Deborah. “Woman’s Collection Fills a Historic-Female-Gap.” Philadelphia Inquirer. March 27,
1987.

Bradley, Mary O. “Collection Shines Light on Women’s History.” The Patriot-News. March 14, 2003.

Green, Midori V. “Visual Fictions and the U.S. Treasury Courtesans: Images of 19th-Century
Female Clerks in the Illustrated Press.” Belphégor. July 2015. http://belphegor.revues.org/593

Kitch, Carolyn L. The Girl on the Magazine Cover: The Origins of Visual Stereotypes in American Mass
Media. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.

Krebs, Jeanette. “Women-history expert’s home in paper flood.” (Harrisburg Evening News)
Patriot-News. March 30, 1990: B1. B3.

Moyer, Heidi Abbey. “A History of Women’s Lives.” American Libraries. June 2015: 72.

Wilson, Sarah Ruth. “’Proud—I’ll Say!’: Images of Patriotic Service and Domestic Responsibility in
World War II.” The Americanist Diversion. June 27, 2015.
http://theamericanistdiversion.com/2015/06/27/proud-ill-say-images-of-patriotic-service-and-
domestic-responsibility-in-world-war-ii/#menuopen

Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection (May 2017) P age| 6
Index Terms
Note to researchers: The following organizations, subjects, and genres are a sampling of available
topics in the collection. These lists are not exhaustive. For more information, conduct a search
using the Library’s online catalog, the CAT. Please consult with faculty or staff in the archives if you
need additional assistance.
Organizations:
Advent Christian Denomination Church. Woman's Home and Foreign Mission Society
American Association of University Women. Harrisburg Branch
Camp Hill Civic Club
Century Club of Pottstown (Pa.)
Civic Club of Harrisburg (Pa.)
Florentine Literary Society (Lancaster, Pa.)
Greater Nursing Association of Pennsylvania
Harrisburg Storytellers League
Home Missionary Society (Philadelphia, Pa.)
Medical Society of Franklin County (Pa.). Woman's Auxiliary
Philomusian Club (Philadelphia, Pa.)
St. Joseph's Hospital (Lancaster, Pa.). Woman's Auxiliary
Salvation Army
Society of Friends
Union of Practical Suffragists
Visiting Nurse Association of Harrisburg
Wednesday Club (Harrisburg, Pa.)
Woman's Christian Association (Hartford, Conn.)
Woman's Christian Temperance Union
Woman's Club of Mercersburg (Mercersburg, Pa.)
Woman’s Relief Corps (U.S.). Dept. of Pennsylvania. Milesburg Post
Subjects:
Businesswomen
History of woman suffrage
Suffrage
Women--Societies and clubs
Women--Suffrage
Women air pilots--Portraits
Women authors
Women athletes
Women athletes--Portraits
Women composers
Women employees--Portraits
Women in advertising
Women on bank notes--Pictorial works

Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection (May 2017) P age| 7
Women on postage stamps
Women photographers
Women political activists
Women politicians

Women's rights
Genres:
Advertisements
Advertising cards
Albums
Black-and-white photographs
Broadsides
Bumper stickers
Caricatures
Cartes-de-visite
Cartoons (humorous images)
Cigarette cards
Comic valentines
Engravings
Ephemera
First day covers
Invitations
Letters
Lithographs
Matchbooks
Negatives
Paper money
Passports
Petitions
Photographs
Playing cards
Postage stamps
Posters
Programs
Scrapbooks
Seals
Sheet music
Signatures (Names)
Stereoscopic photographs
Tickets
Trade cards
Visas
Watercolors
Yearbooks

Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection (May 2017) P age| 8
Container List
Series I: Catalogued and Uncatalogued Books, ca. 1650-1997.
Books have been cataloged and added to the Library’s online catalog, the CAT. Please consult the
CAT to identify and locate these items using the following search strategy:
1. Use the “Advanced Search” option located in the “Catalog Searches” box.
2. Find the “Material type” option, and select “Book” from the drop-down menu.
3. Find the “Location” option, and select “Penn State Harrisburg – Alice Marshall – Spec Coll
– 3Fl.”
4. To further narrow your search, add keywords such as a topic, subject, publication date, or
author’s name.
5. Hit the “Search” button.
Please consult with faculty or staff in the archives if you need additional assistance.

Series II: Catalogued and Uncatalogued Pamphlets, [ca. 1852- ].
There are 50 pamphlet boxes in this series, and the materials are arranged in boxes according to their
physical size. As of fall 2016, some boxes are temporarily housed at the University Park campus,
where they are being cataloged. Approximately 80% of the collection has been cataloged already
and is available for use in the archives. Individual items are searchable via the CAT. Please consult
the CAT to identify and locate these items using the following search strategy:
1. Use the “Advanced Search” option located in the “Catalog Searches” box.
2. Find the “Material type” option, and select “Book” from the drop-down menu.
3. Find the “Location” option, and select “Penn State Harrisburg – Alice Marshall – Spec Coll
– 3Fl.”
4. To further narrow your search, add keywords such as a topic, subject, publication date, or
author’s name.
5. Hit the “Search” button.
Please also note that pamphlets, as well as books, will appear in your search results. If you are
interested in visiting the archives to view a pamphlet in person, please record the pamphlet box
number that is adjacent to the call number of the item in the CAT. Staff in Archives and Special
Collections will need this information to determine whether or not the materials are located at
University Park or in the archives.
Please consult with faculty or staff in the archives if you need additional assistance.

Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection (May 2017) P age| 9
Note to researchers: Originally, pamphlets in this series were organized in boxes according to
broad topics. All of the materials have been rehoused according to size, the following list of
categories is illustrative of the content that may be found in the series:

Abolition
Adultery
American Indians
Art catalogs
Birth control
Bishop Onderdonk
Charitable organizations and reports
Child health
Cooking
Crime
Divorce
Education
Expositions
Fashion
Feminism
Fictional works
Fitness
Food
Health
Homemakers: Women’s Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences (see also “Inspiration Magazines”)
Homemaking
International Sanitary Commission
Literature
Maria Montessori
Marriage and married women
Missions philanthropy and reports
Mormons
Needlework and fashion catalogues
Needlework patterns
Nurses
Pennsylvania
Politics
Poor-relief in Pennsylvania
Prisons
Public school reports from 1837
Rare items
Religion
Religious charities
Sermons
Sexual harassment
Social problems
Social work
Sports

Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection (May 2017) P age| 10