Collection relating to Iowan African American printer, photographer, and entrepreneur Robert E. Patten
Overview
Pamphlets and other ephemera printed by and for Iowan African American entrepreneur, Robert E. Patten.
Dates
- Creation: circa 1939-1948
Creator
- Patten, Robert E., 1883-1968 (Person)
Condition Description
In good condition.
Conditions Governing Access
Open for research.
This collection is shelved offsite. Retrieval requires advance notice. Readers should check with Houghton Public Services staff to determine retrieval policies and times.
Extent
.08 linear feet (1 volume)Examples of items printed by or for Patten, including pamphlets, handbills, anatomical "manikins" (paper models), and an engraver's maquette for tickets.
Biographical / Historical
Robert E. Patten Patten was born in rural Georgia in 1883 of African-American and Native American lineage. He relocated to Iowa around 1900, settling in the coal mining town of Buxton, an integrated community where Blacks and immigrants enjoyed equal opportunities in lifestyle and professional pursuits. He worked as a job printer, photographer, and itinerant seller of books and prints.
He moved in 1909 to Des Moines where he lived and ran his business in the city's segregated, but thriving, Center Street community. In 1910, he met teacher Margaret Mitchell, and they married. Their children helped in Patten's print shop located in the front of their Des Moines home.
Patten died in 1968.
(Source: Lufkin, J., (1996) “Patten's Neighborhood: The Center Street Community and the African-American Printer Who Preserved It”, Iowa Heritage Illustrated 77(3), 122-145)
Arrangement
Arranged as received.
Physical Location
Harvard Depository
Custodial History
Ownership prior to this acquisition is unknown.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
2023MH-16. Purchased from Between the Covers with the Bentinck-Smith Fund, 2023 March 21.
Processing Information
This collection was processed to a basic level with minimal rehousing, organization, and preservation. (Melanie Wisner, 2023)
Creator
- Patten, Robert E., 1883-1968 (Person)
- Title
- Collection Relating to Iowan African American Printer, Photographer, and Entrepreneur Robert E. Patten, circa 1939-1948 (MS Typ 1344): Guide
- Status
- completed
- Author
- Houghton Library, Harvard University
- Date
- 2023 April 10
- Description rules
- dacs
- Language of description
- eng
- EAD ID
- hou03549
Repository Details
Part of the Houghton Library Repository
Houghton Library is Harvard College's principal repository for rare books and manuscripts, archives, and more. Houghton Library's collections represent the scope of human experience from ancient Egypt to twenty-first century Cambridge. With strengths primarily in North American and European history, literature, and culture, collections range in media from printed books and handwritten manuscripts to maps, drawings and paintings, prints, posters, photographs, film and audio recordings, and digital media, as well as costumes, theater props, and a wide range of other objects. Houghton Library has historically focused on collecting the written record of European and Eurocentric North American culture, yet it holds a large and diverse number of primary sources valuable for research on the languages, culture and history of indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
Houghton Library’s Reading Room is free and open to all who wish to use the library’s collections.
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