National Grandparents Day is celebrated annually on September 13. To celebrate the Dawes Year of History, The Dawes Arboretum’s archival team has been working hard to digitize a special collection of photographs and manuscripts from the grandparents of Beman Dawes, one of The Arboretum’s co-founders!
This new collection includes over 200 photographs and manuscripts that illustrate the childhood of Beman Dawes, giving us a new perspective on his history.
Betsey Shipman Gates and Beman Gates are the maternal grandparents of Beman Dawes and were influential community members in Marietta, Ohio. They married each other on Oct. 20, 1841.
Although the archival materials give insights into Beman Dawes’ childhood, it also provided some interesting gossip through the eyes of the influential community members. Read through a select quote from a few materials to see what you’re interested in learning more about in Marietta at the time!
- A letter from Betsey evaluates church leaders. She writes that the choir is full of? bad singers and lists them out by name!
- A letter from Betsey to her granddaughter for her twelfth birthday lists out rules for being a lady. The rules included not being rude, obliging to everybody whether they have claims on you or not and being obedient to your father and mother.
- A letter shares a lot of opinions on neighbor’s lives and relationships. Betsey thinks two people are in a relationship of some kind...but someone else is involved.
Find all this and more in the new collection on the Digital Archive.
To find the collection of newsletters, type the keywords “The Dawes Arboretum Newsletter Collection” in the Digital Archive’s keyword search using quotations.
If you have any questions about how to use the Digital Archive, please reach out to our History Department through email at daweshistory@dawesarb.org, or use our History Request form, which you can find here.
Special recognition to Bailey Barclay, a volunteer for Dawes who processed the majority of these materials!