New Bedford: 1849. Folio (160 x 210 mm), 60 leaves, 58 with specimens mounted on white card with handwritten paper labels slipped into mount below each. Some specimens include multiple species with identifications or have tentative identifications. Full brown calf with gilt title to spine label and raised bands. Double-ruled border with botanical tooling at corners. Slightly bowed and some wear with peeling to calf at edges. In very good condition. Gift inscription, date, and location in a neat calligraphic hand on the ffep. 

A full album containing colourful seaweed specimens collected and mounted with purpose, precision, some decorative flair and interest in science. One specimen is in the shape of a cross, the rest are mounted with care to demonstrate the structure of each example with best effort made to label each specimen with its binomial name in Latin. 

The album was created by Quaker merchant Edward Wing Howland and his second wife Gulielma (Ellison) Howland and sent as a gift to Edward's older sister Susan (Howland) Howland while she was traveling and preaching in Ireland accompanied by her husband George Howland. The Howlands were part of a large, interconnected, and prominent New England family.

Having come over from England, seaweed collecting was becoming more popular by the 1840s in New England. At this time the anti-slavery movement was in full swing and many Quakers were involved in the cause. Seaweed albums and collections were a feature of anti-slavery bazaars organised to raise money for the movement [Jao]. Christine Jao has argued that seaweed albums were used in anti-slavery circles “to shift the Atlantic Ocean from a place of violence and separation into a space of witnessing and connection”, and that mounting seaweed in albums with care and precision emphasised helped illustrate “godly design”.

Although we do not have specific evidence of the Howlands' view of abolition and the anti-slavery movement, George Howland is directly referenced in Frederick Douglass’s memoir as “a man of great industry; a hard driver, but a good pay-master.” Douglass worked on Howland’s whaling ships and he noted that he ”got on well with” Howland [Douglass, p 256]. And the Howland’s house at 245 Walnut Street is now part of New Bedford’s Abolition Row historic district, associated with the Underground Railroad.

It is possible that Edward and Gulielma Howland were inspired to create their album by seeing other sea-weed albums at Anti-Slavery events. Accompanying the album is a letter from Edward and Gulielma to Susan encouraging her to give the album away. Their Quaker linguistic traditions are clearly marked, stating "thee is at liberty to present them [the mosses] from thyself to any one of thy many kind friends, whom thee has met with in that far distant land." 

Edward and Gulielma also describe harvesting the seaweed during winter wanderings on the shore near Bay View, their home at Clarks Point; the letter shows their spiritual association with nature and the sea:

“These winter specimens of Ocean Mosses which we have procured from our own Shore; gathering them from the foaming surge as it came rolling in; their little fibres often stiffened by the floating ice, yet still retaining that delicacy of color + completeness of finish, which pertaining only to the works of an Almighty God, who made all things perfect.”

Susan, a married mother of fourteen children, was a prominent Quaker preacher. She and George sailed for Liverpool, England in August 1848 for a European tour. Her itinerary was noted in the Quaker press; it included attending Yearly Meetings of the British Quakers in London and Ireland. She arrived in Ireland in February 1849. The gift inscription on the flyleaf of the album is to “May Malcomson / From her Attached Friends / George & Susan Howland / New Bedford / Massachusetts / North America.” The date of 1849 has been added in a different ink and different hand, possibly at a later date. Mary “May” (Fennell) Malcomson was part of a wealthy Quaker family in Clonmel, co. Tipperary, Ireland. 

A remarkable survival of amateur science in an anti-slavery era, and a unique early transatlantic example of scientific - and religious - exchange.

Sources:

Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: from 1817 to 1882.

William M. Emery, The Howland Heirs, E. Anthony & Sons, 1919. 

Charline Jao, Flowers of the Sea: https://commonplace.online/article/flowers-of-the-sea/ 

Anne Louro, Preliminary Study Report, Proposed Abolition Row Local Historic District