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Mary Antin was an author and immigration rights activist. Born to a Jewish family in Polotsk in the Russian Pale of Settlement, she immigrated to the Boston area with her mother and siblings in 1894. Antin was heralded as a success story of what "free education and the European immigrant could make of each other," and in 1899 her letters to an uncle describing this journey were published as From Plotzk to Boston. Proceeds from the book allowed her to attend Girls' Latin School. During a field trip sponsored by Hale House, a settlement house in Boston's South End, she met geologist Amadeus William Grabau, a doctoral student at Harvard, whom she later married. They moved to New York where Grabau joined the faculty at Columbia University and where Antin attended college, at Columbia Teachers College (1901-1902) and at Barnard College (1902-1904). Antin was best known for her autobiography, The Promised Land (1912), for her lectures and writings advocating immigration, and for her support of Theodore Roosevelt and his Progressive Party.
Collection consists of a typed bound volume of 34 pages, entitled My Cuttyhunk Journal, May 27-30, 1899. It is interspersed with blank pages and includes 16 photographs, mostly of scenery (shorelines, boats, cliffs, docks) although several have people in them, including Antin. It is number one of a "Limited Edition of Four Signed copies." The text describes this excursion as "the first trip I took with Mr. Grabau and his class," but there is reference to an encounter with Mr. Grabau five years earlier. They sail from New Bedford and she mentions their study of the flora, fauna, and geology of Cuttyhunk Island; meeting Captain Fred Allen, who was known for inventing a number of life-saving devices for sailors; and sailing to Martha's Vineyard where she meets Native Americans John Vanderhoop and Mr. and Mrs. Cooper. The journal ends with a list of friends from whom she obtained autographs, including Ariel D. Savage, Myron E. Pierce, Frances Zirngiebel, and Helen M. Tower.
Repository: Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America.
Collection: Mary Antin, My Cuttyhunk Journal
Call Number: A/A6315
Catalog Record: http://id.lib.harvard.edu/aleph/012539399/catalog