Share in our discoveries across three projects as we work to provide the first intellectual access to our hidden treasures relating to work and labor in early 20th Century New England, the 1939-1940 New York World's Fair and its period, and Boston local TV news.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

"This is a part of America"

Ordinarily, Northeast Historic Film has little to do with Calvin Coolidge, our 30th president, despite his Vermont roots and strong Massachusetts connections. This week, however, he arose in the Charles B. Hinds Collection several times. The Hinds family, founder of the A.S. Hinds Laboratory in Portland, Maine, donated 40 reels of film that includes documentation of the manufacture of A.S. Hinds famous almond and honey hand cream.

The family was strongly connected to the Boy Scouts, donating 300 acres on Panther Pond in Raymond, Maine, to found the William Hinds Camp in 1927. Charles B. Hinds shot scouts on Coolidge's White House grounds, May 1, 1927, with delightful coverage of Olave and Robert Baden-Powell, founders of the scouting movement.

The previous year, Hinds had an excellent viewpoint to film Calvin Coolidge arriving to lay the cornerstone for the National Press Club building.

This project provides the essential opportunity to connect New England creators, distant researchers, and NHF staff with our collections and those elsewhere. Calvin Coolidge's speech at the National Press Club ceremony on April 8, 1926
includes this excerpt:
We are all one people. While a proper pride in our own individual locality is both justifiable and helpful, it ought to be remembered that each individual locality is what it is mainly because it is an integral part of the whole Nation. But however great may be the accomplishments of that section in which we happen to live, they can never be great enough to warrant any disparagement of any other section. No part of our Nation is so perfect that it can look with any disdain on the imperfections of any other part, and, conversely, all of our different areas each have sufficient advantages to commend them to respect. It is enough to know that all can say "This is a part of America," and "We are Americans." Under our institutions all are equal.


Charles B. Hinds Collection. April 8, 1926. Ceremony for laying of the cornerstone of National Press Club building in Washington, D.C.

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