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George Catlin's Indian Museum, Brightside, 1842


AdrianM

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I am trying to find any information I can about an 'American Indian Museum/Gallery/Exhibition' that was opened in Brightside in 1842. It was run by a George Catlin, an American painter and explorer, and was in a building built for the purpose by the Sheffield and Rotherham Railway company. Attached are a few snippets about the opening from the Sheffield and Rotherham Independent of December 1842.

Catlin went on to lecture in Sheffield in 1850 on behalf of the Universal Emigration and Colonization Company and to sign up potential settlers to go out to Northern Texas. He died in 1873.

Does anybody have ANY info, particularly any idea where the museum was located?

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Can't help with the venue I'm afraid but I notice there are 2 copies of Vol 1 of his book still available in the Central Library.

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I note that the advert, bottom left, says "the room and the station will be brilliantly illuminated with gas".

This note on his death in 1873 also mentions a railway connection:

14 Jan 1873 (Sheffield and Rotherham Independent)

So it looks as though it must have been adjacent to the station.

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Here's the details of the new exhibition room at Brightside Station being agreed by the Directors of the Sheffield and Rotherham Railway in 1842 (to generate passenger travel to the station). The Catlin exhibition commenced on 29th November 1842, having spent two and a half years in London. It also appeared in Liverpool and Manchester.

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Thanks for all the replies. The notice of Catlin's death was my main direct link to the railway company, and the notes about the new exhibition hall and the glee club add an interesing slant to the story.

"Drake's Road Book for the Sheffield and Rotherham Railway" (1840) (http://archive.org/details/drakesroadbookof00drakiala) has an interesting section of the attractions of Brightside to the pleasure seekers! ...

The pleasantness of its situation has caused Brightside to be much frequented by pleasure parties from Sheffield. On every fine Sabbath especially, the sallow artizan may be seen wending his way thither, to inhale the freshness of the country air, and enjoy the beautiful and extensive prospect which the hill affords. The opening of the railway has not been productive of much benefit to it in this respect. Those who, when performing their peregrinations on foot, were compelled to confine them within a circuit of a mile or two round Sheffield, can now ride to Rotherham for sixpence; and the consequence is, that the publicans of Brightside have the mortification of beholding their quondam customers gliding past their very doors to consign to the pockets of the more fortunate retailers of spirits in a more distant town, those gains which they had been accustomed to calculate upon as theirs. That the respectable inhabitants of Rotherham are satisfied with this state of things is more than we should like to assert. Some of them we know had much rather that the draff of the Sheffield pot-houses were emptied into any other place than their once quiet and moral town. Nay, some have ventured to malign even the railway company, and to charge them with breaking the laws of God in opening their railway on the Sabbath as a channel for this polluting stream to pass through. We would ask such objectors what they suppose the consequence would be were all the common sewers in Sheffield closed on the Sunday?

I'll post anything else I come across that may be of interest.

A

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