Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it snow!

John Wright Stanly House, original site at the southwest corner of Middle and New streets, ca. 1910.

by John B. Green III

With the local temperatures in the seventies, it's probably unrealistic to dream of a "White Christmas" this year.  We can always hope though, and think cool, frosty thoughts by looking at old photos of winters past.  Here are some snowy views of New Bern we acquired a few years ago. The photos date from about 1900 to 1910 and this is the first time we have made them available.

300 block Johnson Street, looking west, ca.1900.

Daniel Stimson House, 600 block East Front Street, west side, ca. 1900.

Academy Green, northwest corner of Hancock and New streets, ca. 1900.

..

 

Cedar Grove Cemetery fountain, ca. 1910.

Bringing in the Sheaves

 Two New Bern photographs illustrate an old harvest tradition

Christ Episcopal Church, interior decorated for a harvest or thanksgiving festival, ca.1920-1930.

by John B. Green III

Since ancient times many cultures around the world have developed rituals to observe the turning of the seasons, the times of planting and reaping, and the storing away of the harvest to sustain the community until the time of planting would come again.  The Anglican Church tradition of the harvest festival was transported to the English colonies at an early date. The basic harvest festival was a religious service of thanksgiving for the bounty of the harvest in a church decorated with samples of the local crops. Following the service, the edible decorations along with other donated provisions would be distributed to the poor. 

Two photographs found in our collection illustrate the decoration of New Bern's Christ Episcopal Church for harvest or thanksgiving festivals in the early twentieth century.  A close examination of the offerings reveals sheaves of wheat, stalks of corn and cotton, potatoes, collards, apples, and many other items of local produce.

The Daily Journal (New Bern), Wednesday, 29 Nov 1905.

Christ Episcopal Church, interior decorated for a harvest or thanksgiving festival, ca.1900.

Nearly Forgotten

 

The Custis Family of New Bern

Custis Family tomb, main avenue, Cedar Grove Cemetery.

by John B. Green III

The family name Custis is usually associated with the state of Virginia. Planters and government officials, they were prominent in the affairs of that colony and state for generations.  Yet a branch of the Custis family was a vital part of New Bern's life for more than a century. 

Custis Family Bible, printed in Oxford by Thomas Baskett, Printer to the University, 1753. New Bern-Craven County Public Library.

The founder of the New Bern family was Dr. Peter Custis, born in Accomack County, Virginia, about 1780. Custis received his medical training at the University of Pennsylvania. He also excelled in botany and natural history while at the University. It was this training that led to his involvement in an expedition to explore the Red River which flows through Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, before joining the Mississippi in Louisiana.  The Red River Expedition, also known as the Freeman-Custis Expedition, was dispatched by President Thomas Jefferson as a part of his efforts to explore the regions west of the Mississippi.  The expedition is little remembered today because it took place at roughly the same time as the more famous Lewis and Clark Expedition and because it was not as successful in its mission.  After exploring more than 600 miles of the Red River during May to August 1806, the Freeman-Custis expedition was intercepted and turned back by the Spanish military who contested the expedition's right to enter the region.  Although Custis recorded and described the flora and fauna of the area, his efforts were only preserved in a poorly-edited government publication which received scant notice and was quickly forgotten. 

Peter Custis returned to the University of Pennsylvania to complete his medical studies, and, by 1808, he had established himself as a physician in New Bern.  He married Mary Ann Pasteur of New Bern in 1809.  Together they had at least three children. Mary Pasteur Custis died sometime between 1815 and 1818. Custis married Catherine E. Carthy in June 1818 and together they had at least eight children.  Dr. Peter Custis spent the rest of his life in New Bern and died here in 1842.  He was buried in the family tomb in Cedar Grove Cemetery.

Custis Family tomb, detail.

The next generation of the family included Peter Barton Custis [1823-1863], physician and Confederate medical officer who, like his father, received his training at the University of Pennsylvania, and Peter Barton Custis' half-sister, Linnaeus F.B. Custis [1813-1907], long-time school teacher and apparently the last member of the family to bear the Custis name in New Bern.

There are few traces of the Custis family to be seen in New Bern today. No house associated with the family is known to survive, although the Gothic-revival Custis tomb in Cedar Grove Cemetery can still be seen.  The family bible can be found among the collections of the Kellenberger Room of the New Bern-Craven County Public Library, and a walnut cradle with a Custis family history is held by Tryon Palace. 

 

Sometimes a doorstep isn't just a doorstep . . .

 It's a tombstone!

Slate tombstone of Christopher Neale, 1784. Photo by author, 1980.

by John B. Green III

When I was a kid, my grandmother had a neighbor and friend named Mrs. J.S. Miller. Mrs. Miller lived in a large two-story house that stood across Neuse Boulevard from my grandmother's home. Although I didn't know it at the time, Mrs. Miller's home had replaced an earlier house that had been the center of a large plantation that had existed from the late 18th century through the mid-19th century. 

J.S. Miller House, formerly located at 1813 Neuse Blvd. Photo c. 1980.

My grandmother would sometimes take me along on her visits to see Mrs. Miller.  On one such visit, we followed Mrs. Miller through her kitchen and out the back door to see a  prized flower growing in the yard.  When we turned to go back into the house, Mrs. Miller cautioned me to step very carefully and respectfully on the large stone doorstep.  She explained that her late husband had salvaged the stone from an old cemetery that had once existed on the farm.  He had placed it face down to  hide the inscription.  It had served as the kitchen doorstep for many years.  My thoughts at this moment ran something like this: A tombstone? You mean, like dead people have? Is it haunted?  Is there a ghost? 

When we got back to my grandmother's house, I peppered her with questions.  She said that Mrs. Miller was telling the truth.  My grandmother remembered an old family graveyard that had stood near Mrs. Miller's house, and that it had been destroyed when the road had been widened. Wow!

Time passed. My grandmother died in 1973, and Mrs. Miller died in 1979, leaving the property empty and for sale.  By this time, I had graduated from college, worked as an archaeologist in Georgia, as an archivist and microfilm camera operator for the State Archives, and was working on a book about New Bern's history.  The property eventually was sold to a billboard company who, in 1980, offered all the buildings on the property to the New Bern Preservation Foundation.  I had never forgotten the story of the doorstep/tombstone and knew that the heavy equipment that would be used to move the buildings would damage or destroy it.  I couldn't let that happen.

 Christopher Neale tombstone. The inscription reads as follows: In Memory of/ Christopher Neale Esqr./ who departed this life/ Novr. [5], 1784, aged 47 years,/4 months and 27 days./ If you knew t[    ]an, remember.

Late one afternoon, I drove into Mrs. Miller's backyard and around to the kitchen door.  There was the doorstep just as I had remembered it.  Now, bear in mind that I was trespassing, and contemplating, for the noblest of historical and preservation purposes, making off with that stone.  The large stone was made of a thick slab of gray slate. I managed to lever it onto its edge long enough to see the name Christopher Neale and the date 1784. 

I knew that Neale had held a number of public offices in New Bern and Craven County, including assemblyman, militia captain at the Battle of Alamance, town treasurer, member of North Carolina's Fifth Provincial Congress, and Craven County Clerk of Court. His tombstone ought to be preserved, but it was too heavy for me to move by myself.  I needed an accomplice.  Naturally, I called Miss Gertrude.

Warrant signed  in 1784 by Christopher Neale as Clerk of Court of Craven County. Author's collection.

Gertrude Sprague Carraway, New Bern historian, journalist, author, former President General of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and first director of the Tryon Palace restoration effort, knew exactly what to do.  The next day, a Tryon Palace truck and two Tryon Palace groundsmen met me at Mrs. Miller's old home.  In short order, they had Christopher Neale's tombstone loaded into the truck and on its way to Tryon Palace. There it would be placed on a new brick foundation in the "Wilderness" area of the river-side gardens of the Palace.  Although the stone had been saved, its presence in the gardens never really made much interpretive sense and was difficult to explain to the average visitor. There it remained, however, for more than ten years, before being uprooted, for the third time in its history, and moved to storage. 

And so, dear readers, I will close with this question: When was the last time you took a good, hard look at your back doorstep?  It might not be what it seems.

The Things that Walk in the Door!

 Recent donations to the Kellenberger Room

Photograph, 300 block of Pollock Street,  looking west, ca.1900. Photographer unknown.

by John B. Green III

The Kellenberger Room is both a local history room and a family-history research center.  We are always on the lookout for appropriate materials to add to our collections and are always delighted when such items walk in the door in the hands of generous donors.  Here is a selection of recent donations.

"An act for granting further aid to his Majesty, to repel the French, and Indians in their alliance, from their encroachment on his Majesty's territories in America and other purposes." North Carolina Assembly, Session of November 1754, New Bern, NC.

We start with the oldest item: nine dis-bound leaves, pages 113-132, of the Acts of the North Carolina Assembly that cover the years 1754 to 1760.  There were several collections of the laws of North Carolina published in the 18th and early 19th centuries.  These pages are possibly from one of the collections of the laws compiled in the first decade of the 19th century and published in New Bern by Francois Xavier Martin.  Martin, a native of  Marseille, France, and later a resident of Martinique, moved to New Bern in the 1780s.  He taught French and learned the printing trade before studying law. He later moved to Louisiana where he served as that state's first Attorney General. The page shown contains a 1754 act to provide money to help fight the French and Indian War.

Engraved portrait of William H. Washington, ca.1855.

The next item is a pamphlet made by binding, in plain paper, six dis-bound pages of a biographical sketch of William H. Washington (1813-1860), New Bern attorney and member of Congress.  Shown here is the engraved portrait of Washington, which serves as a frontispiece for the article. The article may have been removed from one of the biographical works compiled by John Livingston and published in New York in the 1850s.

Photograph of the 200 block of  Middle Street, looking south, ca. 1900. Photographer unknown.

 

The third donation consists of two photographs. The first, seen at the beginning of this post, is of the 300 block of Pollock Street, looking west, ca. 1900.  The second, seen here, is a photograph of the 200 block of  Middle Street, looking south, ca. 1900. The photographer, in both instances,  is unknown.

New Bern, North Carolina, Founded by De Graffenried in 1710, Colonial New Bern, New Bern of Today, by Emma H. Powell, 1905. 

The fourth item is a booklet entitled New Bern, North Carolina, Founded by De Graffenried in 1710, Colonial New Bern, New Bern of Today, by Emma H. Powell and published in 1905.  The booklet is both a history of the town as well as a promotional item displaying the modern amenities of New Bern. Seen here is a page from the historical section.  The top photograph shows a table, clock, and teapot which  survived in New Bern and had traditions of having been part of the original furnishings of Tryon Palace.  The bottom photograph shows the 18th century communion silver of Christ Episcopal Church.

The Athenian, November 1911.

The last item is the November 1911 edition of The Athenian, the student literary publication of New Bern High School.  The lead article is by future New Bern historian, Gertrude S. Carraway, entitled "Some Unmarked Historic Spots in New Bern and Vicinity," and is probably the first published article by Miss Carraway.

New Bern's harbor in 1864

 Voltaire Combe's remarkable wartime lithograph

New Berne, N.C., Voltaire Combe, artist, Major & Knapp, New York,
lithographers, 1864.

By John B. Green III

The September 11, 1865 edition of the New Berne Daily Times, bears the first notice, seen below, of the existence of a large and handsome lithograph of New Bern which could be "obtained from Mr. V. Combe, or at the stores of E. Young and J.E. West, on Pollock street."  Voltaire Combe was the artist responsible for the creation of this lithograph, and, aside from being an artist, he was also a Union soldier stationed in New Bern.

New Berne Daily Times, September 11, 1865.

The Union Army occupied many areas of North Carolina during the Civil War including New Bern. The town was captured March 14, 1862, during the Burnside Expedition and remained under Union Army control and governance until well past the end of the war.  Among the thousands of Union soldiers stationed, at one time or another, in New Bern, was a 25-year-old artist from New York state named Voltaire Combe.  He was born in 1837 and originally named William Combs. He had changed his name by the time of his enlistment in the Third New York Calvary in July 1861.  As Voltaire Combe, he served as a private and bugler, then for a few months as a sergeant, before being "returned to ranks" and mustered out on July 29, 1864.  Voltaire Combe would be known in later life as a painter of romantic images of women and landscapes and as a firm traditionalist who railed against the more modern artistic movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Detail of left-hand side of lithograph.

When Voltaire Combe wasn't participating in the activities of his regiment, he must have been busily sketching scenes of interest in and around New Bern.  Combe produced at least two lithographs of New Bern: the large view of the town and harbor seen here and a smaller print of Camp Oliver of the Twenty-fifth Massachusetts Regiment.  In both instances he turned to the firm of Major & Knapp of New York to transform his art into a colored lithograph that he might sell.

Detail of right-hand side of lithograph.

Voltaire Combe's rendering of New Bern exhibits considerable detail, mostly accurate.  The layout of the town is shown with its streets, public buildings, churches, wharves, and some individual houses. The harbor, though more crowded than it probably ever was on any given day, displays the wide variety of ships which the Union Army and Navy used in the shallow waters of eastern North Carolina.

Only a few copies of Voltaire Combe's great lithograph of New Bern survive and ours is, doubtless, the worst of the bunch.  It has been trimmed to fit an inappropriate frame, losing in the process, more than a foot of sky as well as some of its side and bottom margins.  It is acid-browned from the wooden backing in the frame, water-stained, scraped, gouged, torn, and bug-bitten. Yet, for all that, the most important parts of the image survive along with the title and publication information.  It's ours, and we like it. 

When New Bern got sidewalks

 with a little help from Thomas Edison

Sidewalk construction, 200 block Middle Street, looking north, Summer 1908.

by John B. Green III

Sidewalks of some sort, made of various materials, had existed in parts of New Bern at different times in the town's history. Whether made of hard-packed earth, planks, or bricks, they were haphazard affairs which seldom lasted long. The town commissioners were occasionally involved in their construction or maintenance, but they were just as likely to represent the efforts of individual property owners. No uniform, durable sidewalk system for the entire town existed.

Bronze plaque set in sidewalk, northeast corner of New and Metcalf streets.  Photograph taken in 1986 by the author

All this changed in  1908.  The New Bern Board of Aldermen, at their meeting of April 7, accepted bids for the construction of concrete sidewalks with granite curbing for most of downtown New Bern.  Alsop & Peirce, Contractors of Newport News, Virginia, would construct the concrete sidewalks, and Peeler Bane Fisher Company of Faith, North Carolina,  would supply the granite curbing. The project would be supervised by the firm of Colvin and Henry, Civil Engineers.

The photograph seen at the top is of the 200 block of Middle Street looking north and shows the construction of sidewalks in summer of 1908.  The number of signs for Alsop &  Peirce, Contractors and New Bern Building Supply Company indicate that the scene is a slightly posed publicity photograph.  New Bern Building Supply Company proudly supplied the cement used in the sidewalk construction, and that cement was Edison Cement, as the numerous signs proclaim.  This brings us to Thomas Edison and his role, however distant, in the construction of New Bern's sidewalks.

Detail showing Edison Cement signs.

Thomas Alva Edison was one of the United States' most energetic inventors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is chiefly remembered for his work with electricity and sound recording but he also dabbled in many areas of science and industry as the mood struck him.  Edison was involved in improving the milling of iron ore in the 1880s.  His company's process produced, as a byproduct, a fine sand which found a market with the makers of cement.  Edison decided to form his own cement business and improve the manufacturing process. The Edison Portland Cement Company was established in 1899, and by 1908 its product was successful enough to be known and used in New Bern.

Traces of the Occupation

 

Not all Civil War relics are buttons or bayonets.

Root Hog or Die. No. 5. (excerpt). New York: H. De Marsan, c.1862.

by John B. Green III

The Union Army, in its more than four-year-long occupation of New Bern, created tens of thousands of printed documents.  These documents were almost exclusively military in nature: printed orders, reports, and forms for every conceivable purpose. There was another category of printed items, however, which were privately produced: programs for plays and concerts put on by the soldiers, handbills of humorous or patriotic poetry, and memorial volumes for individual soldiers who had died in the line of duty.  What follows is a selection of such items from the collections of the Kellenberger Room.

Root Hog or Die. No. 5. New York: H. De Marsan, c.1862.  Comic poem, "By a Blue-Jacket," concerning the capture of eastern North Carolina.

Root Hog or Die (enlargment)

Genl. Burnside's Victory March, Boston: Oliver Ditson & Co., 1862.  Sheet music celebrating Burnside's victory at New Bern.

Vincent Colyer, Report of the Services rendered by the Freed People to the United States Army, in North Carolina, in the Spring of 1862.  New York: author, 1864.  Account by Vincent Colyer, Superintendent of the Poor, concerning his work with the freed slaves of New Bern and vicinity.

G.H. Sutherland, There is no Place like Home, n.p., 1862.  Sentimental poem about the author's home in the North.

 .

William A. Stearns, Adjutant Stearns, Boston: Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, 1862. Memorial volume for First Lieutenant Frazar A. Stearns, Company I, Twenty-first Massachusetts Infantry. Stearns, the son of the president of Amherst College,  was killed during the Battle of New Bern, March 14, 1862.

Rufus Morgan, New Bern photographer

 

The recent acquisition of three early stereographs of New Bern provides an opportunity to remember an artist whose career was tragically cut short.

Stereograph of Christ Episcopal Church, New Bern, by Rufus Morgan, c.1869-1870.

by John B. Green III

Of all the photographers who have called  New Bern home since the 1850s, one of the more interesting and unusual, was a young Virginian named Rufus Morgan.  Just twenty-three years old when he opened his gallery in New Bern, he soon came to specialize in stereographs of local scenery.  Stereographs were made by a camera with two lenses  which simultaneously took two photographs of the subject from slightly different angles.  The resulting double image, when observed through a special viewer called a stereoscope, caused the observer's left and right eyes to resolve the double image into a single image which appeared to be three-dimensional.  Stereographs were extremely popular from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century, with many homes having sets of stereo cards depicting world events, exotic locales, and natural wonders.

Rufus Morgan produced a set of thirteen views of New Bern and traveled about the state producing sets for Raleigh, Wilmington, Goldsboro, and western North Carolina. He also photographed in Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, and California.

Rufus Morgan advertisement, The Republic and Courier, New Bern, NC, 8 November 1873.

Morgan married Mary D. Clarke, daughter of Mary Devereux Clarke and W.J. Clarke of New Bern, in 1873.  With a daughter born in 1875 and a son in 1879, Morgan apparently came to the conclusion that his photography did not provide sufficient income for his growing family.  He determined to go west to California and operate an apiary, a long time interest of his and a business in which he had previously engaged.  Morgan planned to send for his wife and children once he was established in California.  Unfortunately, on April 3, 1880, he prepared a meal of wild mushrooms, some of which were thought to have been poisonous, became very ill, and died two days later.

Rufus Morgan's five-year old daughter, Mary Bayard Morgan, would grow up to pursue her own career in photography.  As Bayard Wootten, she would become one of North Carolina's most talented photographers of the 20th century.

The largest collection of Rufus Morgan's photographs survives at the North Carolina Collection of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  We at the Kellenberger Room are pleased to add three of his New Bern views to our collection.

Stereograph of entrance gate to Cedar Grove Cemetery, New Bern, by Rufus Morgan, c. 1869-1870.

Stereograph of the main avenue, Cedar Grove Cemetery, New Bern, by Rufus Morgan, c.1869-1870.

Reverse of stereograph listing New Bern views available, c.1869-1870.

The Presidential visit few remember

James Monroe comes to New Bern in 1819

Portrait of James Monroe, by Gilbert Stuart, 1817. National Gallery of Art.

by John B. Green III

New Bern has experienced four presidential visits in its long history.  The visits of George Washington in 1791 and Harry S. Truman in 1948 have long been celebrated and have entered the folklore of the town.  For some reason, though, the visit of President James Monroe in 1819 is little remembered or celebrated.  Yet President Monroe, like Washington twenty-eight years earlier, included New Bern in his southern tour of the United States, and his visit was as elaborate and festive as Washington's.

Carolina Centinel (New Bern), 17 April 1819.

New Bernians followed the progress of President Monroe's journey through Virginia and then into North Carolina through newspaper accounts.  As his party neared New Bern, the local preparations began to be made.  Monroe was a Freemason like Washington, and so New Bern's St. John's Lodge No. 3 prepared a welcoming address to deliver to Monroe just as they had for Washington.  The leaders of the town likewise prepared addresses and special events for the President's visit.

Carolina Centinel (New Bern), 3 April 1819.

Monroe and his party, which included Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, arrived at the outskirts of town on Saturday, April 10, 1819.   They were met by a welcoming committee and escorted to their lodgings through streets thronged with citizens. The Coor-Bishop Home, at that time the town-house of planter George Pollock, was placed at Monroe's disposal for the length of his stay.  Once the president was settled in the waterfront home, the local U.S. Revenue Service cutter fired a national salute from just off-shore.  

Coor-Bishop House, 500 block East Front Street. New Bern-Craven County Public Library.

Later that evening Lucas J. Benners, Master of St. John's Masonic Lodge, visited the president and delivered the Lodge's welcoming address.

James Monroe's reply to the Lodge, Minute Book 3, St. John's Lodge No. 3, New Bern, NC.

The following day, Sunday, was spent quietly with  Monroe and his aides, and Calhoun and his wife attending Christ Episcopal Church.

Christ Church, from the Price-Fitch Map, c. 1822-1824. N.C. Division of Archives and History.

Monday, April 12th, was the president's last full day in New Bern.  The main event was a dinner at St. John's Lodge in the afternoon.  On the way to the Lodge, the president and his party stopped at the nearby New Bern Academy where they were welcomed by the 225-member student body, all dressed in their finest.

New Bern Academy, from the Price-Fitch Map, c. 1822-1824. N.C. Division of Archives and History.

The dinner at the Lodge was a grand and lengthy affair with twenty-two toasts offered on patriotic themes.  After Monroe and his party retired for the evening, a further five toasts were offered honoring Monroe, Calhoun, Andrew Jackson, "The Star-Spangled Banner," and John Louis Taylor, Chief Justice of North Carolina and Past Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of North Carolina.

St. John's Lodge No. 3, photo c. 1862. U.S. Military History Institute.

President James Monroe left New Bern on the morning of April 13th, 1819, bound for points south.  A small group of town officials and citizens accompanied the President for a short distance before bidding him farewell.  Thus ended the presidential visit that few New Bernians today remember.

Where did these come from?

or, a mystery from the Kellenberger storage room.

Partial set of Francois-Marie De Marsy's Analyse Raisonnee de Bayle.

by John B. Green III

Just off the Kellenberger Room can be found our archival storage room.  Here are kept our manuscript collections, vertical files, photographic archive, and our collection of early New Bern newspapers, among many other items.  Some have likened the appearance of this room and its contents to the government warehouse from the last scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Well, perhaps it does a bit, but while the room is quite full, our collections are properly identified and stored.  I assure you that if we had the Ark of the Covenant, we'd be able to find it after a brief search. 

There are, however, a few items in our collection that are a mystery.  There is no one living who remembers what importance, if any, they may have had to the library or how they came to be here. In most such cases, especially if the items are books, we assume that they came in the back door as anonymous donations for some long-ago library book sale.   Someone on the staff took a look at them and decided that they might be of some importance and shouldn't be sent to the sale like twenty-five cent paperbacks.  We do know that the items I am about to describe have been here for at least thirty years.

Title page, Francois-Marie De Marsy's Analyse Raisonnee de Bayle.

 

The books in question are a partial set of Francois-Marie De Marsy's Analyse Raisonnee de Bayle, a compilation and analysis of the writings of French philosopher Pierre Bayle, an influential free-thinker of the Enlightenment.   Although the title pages indicate the place of publication as London, they were actually published in Paris in 1755 (volumes I-IV) and Holland in 1770 (volumes V-VIII).  What makes these volumes interesting and potentially important is that volumes II, III, and IV bear the bookplate of Nicholas P. Trist, American lawyer and diplomat, and husband of Thomas Jefferson's granddaughter Virginia Jefferson Randolph.

Bookplate of Nicholas P. Trist.

Nicholas Philip Trist (1800-1874) was born in Charlottesville, Virginia.  In 1803, Jefferson offered Trist's father the post of Collector of Customs for Natchez.  The family moved to Louisiana where young Nicholas grew up, eventually graduating from the College of Orleans in 1817.  That same year, Thomas Jefferson invited Nicholas to Monticello.  While there, Trist met and fell in love with Virginia Jefferson Randolph.  Following a stint at West Point and a return to his family in Louisiana, Trist returned to Monticello to study law under Jefferson.  Nicholas Trist and Virginia Randolph were married in 1824, and Trist served as private secretary to Jefferson, eventually becoming an executor of Jefferson's estate. Trist would later serve as private secretary to Andrew Jackson, U.S. Consul at Havana, Cuba, and as the diplomat who negotiated the treaty ending the Mexican-American War.

All of which raises an interesting question.  Did Nicholas Trist, with all of his personal connections to Thomas Jefferson, acquire these books from Jefferson or Jefferson's estate? Did the books that now bear Trist's bookplate once belong to Thomas Jefferson, the Sage of Monticello?  In age, the volumes date to Jefferson's generation not Trist's, and their author and subject matter would have appealed to a free-thinking Francophile like Jefferson. In fact, Jefferson is known to have owned works by Bayle. Surviving catalogs of Jefferson's library, however, do not include Marsy's Analyse Raisonnee de Bayle. 

Bookplate of Nicholas P. Trist.

The only obvious marks of ownership in the books are Trist's bookplate.  Might they still have been Jefferson's?   Jefferson did not use a bookplate, but instead, marked his books in an unusual way. Printers of Jefferson's time identified the various signatures or gatherings of pages with a letter printed on the lower margin of the first page of each signature: A, B, C, D, and so on.  The signatures arranged in alphabetical order would thus be in the correct order for binding.  It is important to remember that the printers used the Latin alphabet for this purpose which did not contain the letters J, U, or W.  To identify his books, Jefferson would turn to the "I" signature and write the letter T in front of the printed "I". On other occasions, he would turn to the "T" signature and write a J after the T.  In both cases he was identifying the books as belonging to TJ - Thomas Jefferson. 

A close examination of the signatures of Trist's books reveals no added T's or J's.  The books are probably not Jefferson's. They are Nicholas Philip Trist's, an interesting character in his own right. We just don't know why they are in the Kellenberger storage room!