The Grace F. Thorpe Collection (1900-2008) includes documents, photographic prints, slides, negatives and other materials that encapsulate the breadth of Grace Thorpe's life and work as a WWII veteran, Native rights activist, and dedicated daughter, mother and family member. This includes material from her personal, military and professional life. Series 1: Early Life and Family History (1921-1940) includes materials related to the Thorpe family including photographs of Grace's parents, Jim and Iva at the Carlisle Indian School as well as letters and photographs from Grace as a young girl. Series 2: Military Career and Life in Japan (1943-1950) includes documents, photographic prints and negatives from Grace's time as a Corporal in the Women's Army Corps and her life as a wife and mother in Japan following the war. This series also includes the medals Grace received for her service in WWII. Series 3: Pearl River, New York and Business (1950-1967) contains documents and photographs from Grace's time as a mother and business woman in Pearl River, New York. Series 4: Working on Behalf of Native Americans and Activism (1968-1977) includes documents, photographic prints and negatives from Grace's work with various Native American organizations on economic and civil rights issues following her move to Arizona in 1967. Series 5: Jim Thorpe and His Legacy (1912-1984) includes documents, photographic prints and negatives regarding Jim Thorpe and the work by the Thorpe family to restore Jim's Olympic record and keep his legacy alive. Series 6: Later Years (1979-2007) includes documents, photographic prints and negatives from Grace's life in Oklahoma, her work as an environmental activist, and other activities later in her life.
Arrangement:
This collection has been arranged in six series chronologically based on how the collection was received with minor changes. The Series' include--Series 1: Early Life and Family History (1921-1940), Series 2: Military Career and Life in Japan (1943-1950), Series 3: Pearl River, New York and Business (1950-1967), Series 4: Working on Behalf of Native Americans and Activism (1968-1977), Series 5: Jim Thorpe and His Legacy (1912-1984), and Series 6: Later Years (1979-2007). There is some chronological crossover between Series 5: Jim Thorpe and His Legacy and the rest of the collection.
The physical arrangement of the materials was determined by storage needs.
Biographical / Historical:
Grace Frances Thorpe was born in Yale, Oklahoma on December 10, 1921 to parents James (Jim) Francis Thorpe (Sac and Fox (Sauk)) and Iva Margaret Miller Thorpe. Jim, already a famed athelete and olympic medalist, had met Iva as students at Carlisle Indian School and were married in 1913. Grace was the youngest of four, Gail Margaret, James and Charlotte Marie though her brother James died from polio at a young age. When Iva and Jim divorced in 1923, Iva and the girls moved to Chicago while Jim moved to California to pursue work in the movies. For school, Grace attended St. Mary's Academy, Sacred Heart, in Oklahoma and Haskell Institute in Kansas, which was where her father had attended school.
In 1943 Grace worked briefly at the Ford Motor Company before enlisting in the Women's Army Corps (WAC) during WWII. After attending training and graduating from the WAAC Training Center in Ft. Oglethorpe, Georgia, Thorpe attained the rank of Corporal, and served as a Recruiter for the Women's Army Corps stationed in Tucson and Camp White in Oregon before being assigned overseas to the New Guinea Campaign. From 1944-1945 Corporal Thorpe was stationed in New Guinea, Philippines and Japan. Following an Honorable Discharge in 1945, Grace remained in Japan during the occupation with her husband Lieutenant Fred W. Seely (1918-2008) whom she married in June 1946. She became employed at General MacArthur Headquarters as Chief of the Recruitment Section, Department of Army Civilians, Tokyo, Japan. Both of her children, Dagmar (1946-) and Paul Thorpe (1948-1964) were born during this time in Japan.
Grace and her children left Japan and arrived in San Francisco on April 20, 1950. They lived in Pearl River, New York from late 1950 to the mid 1960s. She first became employed as a Hostess with Welcome Wagon upon completing training in July of 1951 and later became a supervisor, business machine salesperson, and territorial account executive for the Yellow Pages with the Reuben H. Donnelly Corp. earning recognition in Distinguished Sales Performance. She completed a course in effective speaking and human relations conducted by the Dale Carnegie Institute and won a Best Speech Award. In 1967, Grace moved to Arizona where she became involved with American Indian tribes. Grace was appointed Economic Development Conference Coordinator for the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI)'s 1968 and 1969 conferences. In 1969-1970, Grace joined Native American Activists at the occupation of Alcatraz Island for three months and managed their publicity. She then served as a Congressional Intern from 1974-1975 for Senator James Abourezk. Grace was later appointed Legislative Assistant with the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs and as a Task Force Program and Planning Analyst for the American Indian Policy Review Commission. During this time period she attended—The Antioch School of Law, Washington DC; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Research Fellow), Boston, Massachusetts; University of Tennessee, Knoxville and Northeastern University, Tahlequah, Oklahoma. During this time she also began working on the restoration of her father's 1912 Olympic titles as well as other projects to recognize and honor her father.
After returning to her tribal homeland in Oklahoma she became active in tribal affairs and in 1983 successfully restored her father's Olympic record. She also conducted genealogical research on the Thorpe family. Her article "The Jim Thorpe Family' was published as a two-part series in the Chronicles of Oklahoma in 1981. In later years, Grace served her tribe as a tribal judge, health commissioner, and became an environmental activist opposing nuclear waste on tribal lands. She remained active in Native American issues, a matriarch of the Thorpe family, and involved with her granddaughter, Tena Malotte, and her great-grandchildren, Aspen and Huna.
Biographical note provided by Dagmar Seely, daughter to Grace Thorpe, with additions by Rachel Menyuk, Processing Archivist.
Separated Materials:
27 nitrate negatives have been moved offsite and are being housed at the National Anthropological Archives.
Provenance:
Donated by Dr. Dagmar Seely and Tena Malotte, 2015.
Restrictions:
Access to NMAI Archive Center collections is by appointment only, Monday - Friday, 9:30 am - 4:30 pm. Please contact the archives to make an appointment (phone: 301-238-1400, email: nmaiarchives@si.edu).
Rights:
Permission to publish materials from the collection must be requested from National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center. Please submit a written request to nmaiphotos@si.edu. For personal or classroom use, users are invited users to download, print, photocopy, and distribute the images that are available online without prior written permission, provided that the files are not changed, the Smithsonian Institution copyright notice (where applicable) is included, and the source of the image is identified as the National Museum of the American Indian.
Alcatraz Island (Calif.) -- History -- Indian occupation, 1969-1971. Search this
Citation:
Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Grace F. Thorpe Collection, Box and Folder Number; National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center, Smithsonian Institution.
A New York bookseller, Warshaw assembled this collection over nearly fifty years. The Warshaw Collection of Business Americana: Accounting and Bookkeeping forms part of the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, Subseries 1.1: Subject Categories. The Subject Categories subseries is divided into 470 subject categories based on those created by Mr. Warshaw. These subject categories include topical subjects, types or forms of material, people, organizations, historical events, and other categories. An overview to the entire Warshaw collection is available here: Warshaw Collection of Business Americana
Scope and Contents:
Minimally covers the terminus of the wind-powered (sail) era and more fully documents the peak of the engine (steam) era of commercial cargo and passenger vesselsk, including freight and dockage services, maintenance and provisioning, ferry service, navigation (tug and tow) assistance, plus leisure cruising and touring. There is not a significant amount of material on battle or war ships. Includes both short distance routes such as lakes, rivers, and islets, and longer trans-oceanic crossings.
Documents within the collection consist of handbills, broadsides, leaflets, books, business cards, advertisements, insurance forms, wreck reports, passenger lists, baggage tags, freight manifests, rate cards, correspondence on letterhead stationery, booklets, newspaper clippings, postcards, menus, periodicals, manuals, photographs, engravings, woodcuts, sketches, bills of lading, receipts, catalogues, ledgers, journals, purchase orders, broadsides, brochures, custom forms, schedules, shipping and receiving documents, early steam guides, timetables, lithographs, announcements, etc. There are no navigational nautical maps. There is very little in the way of international import/export records. However, domestic and North American freight services are well-covered through invoices, bills of lading, manifests, and receipts for goods and services.
Some materials cover the history and development of steamships, particularly in the latter half of the nineteenth century with the iron screw replacing the wooden paddle steamer in the 1850s. The late 1860s brought the compound engine, which led to the steamship, previously used for the conveyance of mails and passengers, to compete with the sailing vessel in the carriage of cargo for long voyages. The 1870s brought improvements in accommodation for the passenger, with the midship saloon, conveniences in state-rooms, and covered access to smoke rooms and ladies cabins.
Ownership of specific lines and vessels was very fluid throughout shipping history, including the renaming of vessels. Mergers, dissolution, and absorption of fleets were frequent. Thus, researchers should independently seek out a more detailed history for any entity of particular interest.
The general maritime business series focuses on good and services related to maritime operations such as repair, shipbuilding, parts, ticket agents, chandlers, groceries, coal supply, dockage, wharfs/marinas, etc.
Operation records of named vessels contains primarily bills of lading and similar receipts for the movement of material goods or in-water services such as tow and tug assistance.
The largest series covering shipping lines and conglomerates offers a wide assortment of miscellaneous, nonexhaustive operation records for cargo and passenger lines and corporations, typically those with multiple holdings. These documents may include receipts, bills of lading, correspondence, and financial ledgers, plus promotional material for services and routes offered. Passenger sailings and luxury cruise documentation may contain menus, passenger lists, itineraries, shore excursion information, souveniers such as luggage tags, ticket stubs, and postcards. See also the subject category Menus, for additional examples of passenger and cruise ship menus.
When not associated with any of the above, general examples of materials related to the industry have been by arranged by their material type such as images, reports, and serial publications. More formal documentation, especially legal and reports, can be found here.
Narrative type materials related to lore, history, and building and design specifications have been sorted by subject. A scarce amount of material covers ships used for military service. Likewise, there are a few examples of maritime related material from the art world, mostly in the form of catalogues for exhibits or auction of paintings and scale models.
A note on vessel names: those used as contract carriers of mail and when in service, were entitled to unique prefix designations such as Royal Mail Ship (RMS.), otherwise, the ship name may be preceded by the more generic S.S. for single-screw steamer or steamship, SV for sailing vessel, PS for paddle steamer, RV for research vessel or similar type prefix. USS is the standard for the United States Navy commissioned ships while in commission, with HMS used for His/Her Majesty's Ship of the British Royal Navy.
Some of the major lines/companies represented in the collection include: American Line, American Steamship Company, Anchor Line, Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, Cunard-Anchor Line, Cunard Line, Cunard Steam Ship Company, Limited, Cunard White Star Line, Eastern Steamship Lines, Furness, Withy & Company, Hamburg American Line (HAPAG) / Hamburg Amerika Linie, Holland America Line (N.A.S.M. / HAL), Inman Line, International Mercantile Marine Company (IMM), International Navigation Company, North German Lloyd (Norddeutscher Lloyd Bremen), Panama Pacific Line, Peninsular and Oriental, Red Star Line, Royal Mail Steam Packet, U.S. Mail Steamship Company, United States Lines, White Star Line.
Arrangement:
Ships, Boats, and Vessels is arranged in three subseries.
Business Records and Marketing Material
General Maritime Businesses
Operation Records of Named Vessels
Shipping Lines/Conglomerates
Miscellaneous Business Records and Marketing Material
Genre
Keepsakes
Images
Ledger
Legal
News Clippings
Regulatory
Reports
Serial Publications
Stamps/Cigarette Cards
Associations and Societies
Images, Artwork, Racing, Technical Literature
Subject
Battleships, Warships
Destination Guides
Employment and Licensing
Insurance
Maritime History
Maritime Models and Art
Revue Generale Des Sciences
Warshaw Administrative Records
Related Materials:
Several other Warshaw Subject Categories may have closely related material such as Submarines and Transportation. For casual and recreational boating see Boats and Boating Equipment and Yachts. Other subject categories that may have related materials include: Canals, Dredging, Engines, Menus, Railroads (point of common transportation transfer), and Tours. .
Forms Part Of:
Forms part of the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana.
Missing Title
Series 1: Business Ephemera
Series 2: Other Collection Divisions
Series 3: Isadore Warshaw Personal Papers
Series 4: Photographic Reference Material
Provenance:
Steamboats [Ships, Boats, and Vessels] is a portion of the Business Ephemera Series of the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, Accession AC0060 purchased from Isadore Warshaw in 1967. Warshaw continued to accumulate similar material until his death, which was donated in 1971 by his widow, Augusta. For a period after acquisition, related materials from other sources (of mixed provenance) were added to the collection so there may be content produced or published after Warshaw's death in 1969. This practice has since ceased.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research. Some items may be restricted due to fragile condition.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
Warshaw Collection of Business Americana Subject Categories: Ships, Boats, and Vessels, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
Sponsor:
Funding for partial processing of the collection was supported by a grant from the Smithsonian Institution's Collections Care and Preservation Fund (CCPF).
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