Alexander Ramsey House

Coal scuttle.

Like most urban families, by the 1870s the Ramseys had switched from wood to coal as their primary fuel source for both cooking and heat.

Porcelain meat platter with draining dish.

Today’s (actually, four related artifacts) is a collection of portraits showing the family of Alexander Ramsey. They were painted in 1820, when Alex was five years old. Young Alex is in the lower right corner, next to his older sister Elizabeth, and below his parents, Elizabeth Kelker Ramsey and Thomas Ramsey.

It is possible that these portraits are by German-American folk artist Jacob Maentel (1763-1863). If they are not by Maentel himself, they certainly bear his influence. Maentel's whimsical and untrained style launched a popular school of 19th century portraiture unique to Pennsylvania Dutch communities such as the one where Ramsey grew up, in Hummelstown, PA. Itinerant artists of this school usually had a portfolio of bodies already painted, and merely added the heads on for a modest price. This type of portraiture was affordable for people like Alex’s father, who was a blacksmith.

Today’s is a whale’s tooth in a decorative stand.

The commercial whaling industry peaked in the mid 1800s, and whale’s teeth became popular decorations. S***m whales (such as the whale that provided this tooth) were hunted for their oil, used in lighting and as a lubricant. Other species were hunted for their baleen (commonly called whalebone in the 1800s), used in corsets and other garments requiring lightweight and flexible supports.

Renaissance revival chair with crushed velvet upholstery.

Butternut bookcase.

Low stool.

Oil lamp (now converted to electricity) with green lamp shade.

Optometrists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries believed that green was the color that was the easiest on the eyes (this has since been called into question), and recommended green shades to lessen eye strain from the harshness of bright oil or incandescent lights. Following this advice, green lampshades became particularly popular with accountants, telegraphers, copy editors, and others engaged in vision-intensive, detail-oriented occupations. The phrase "green eyeshade" came to be used as a nickname for individuals who are excessively concerned with financial matters or small and insignificant details.

College yearbook photo of Charles Eliot Furness (Harvard, Class of 1863).

Charles Eliot Furness (1844-1909) came from a prominent Philadelphia family. He started his career as a commission merchant for the sale of woolen yarn carpet but spent most of his career working for various railroad companies. In 1870, his work brought him to St. Paul, where he began courting Marion Ramsey, whom he married in 1875. The couple moved to Philadelphia, where they had four children.

From 1880 onward, Charles lived with periodic bouts of mental illness. The exact nature of his condition is not known. From 1883 onward, Charles was mostly confined to hospitals, first in Pennsylvania, and later in Rochester, Minnesota.

‘The Red Fairy Book’ by Andrew Lang, featuring illustrations by Henry Justice Ford.

Andrew Lang (1844 – 1912) was a Scottish historian, poet, novelist, literary critic, anthropologist, and collector of folk and fairy tales. A prolific scholar and writer, he was best known for his twelve “Coloured Fairy Books,' which collected folk and fairy tales from around the world and re-told them for children, beginning with ‘The Blue Fairy Book’ (1889). Many of the stories in these collections represent the first time these particular tales were published in English. ‘The Red Fairy Book’ (1890), the second in the series, features folk tales from France, Russia, Denmark, and Romania, as well as tales adapted from Norse mythology.

Like other 19th century compilers of fairy tales, Lang took many stories from oral tradition (including many tales originally intended for an adult audience) and retold them in a literary manner, censoring any content that was deemed inappropriate for children. While professional folklorists have criticized Lang for altering the original tales (and not always taking careful notes on his sources), Lang’s books are credited with revolutionizing children’s literature by rejecting the realistic settings and heavy-handed moralizing that educators of the time felt was best for children. J.R.R. Tolkien, Walt Disney, C.S. Lewis, Edith Nesbit, Robert Graves, Roger Lancelyn Green, Wanda Gag, and Ray Bradbury are among the many authors and artists who have credited Lang’s collections as influencing and inspiring their work.

Cosmetics containers.

Dog statuette.

Book and music stand.

Porcelain figures.

Glass Christmas tree ornament.

According to oral histories, this ornament had been given as a gift from Alexander Ramsey to Alexander Pommer– the young son of two people employed by the Ramsey family as domestic servants, John Pommer, and Ellen Anderson Pommer. Each Christmas season the Ramsey’s invited the servants and their families to view the large, decorated tree in the Parlor. At one of these “viewings” Mr. Ramsey took an ornament from the tree and presented it to the little boy.

According to his grandson, John Pommer made sure the ornament was always on the family tree until he died in 1904. After John’s death, his son and then eventually his grandson took the responsibility of making sure the ornament was part of the Pommer family Christmas tradition. The Pommer family donated the ornament back to the Minnesota Historical Society in 1985 so that it could be shared with the public.

Animal-shaped Christmas ornaments.

If you’re looking to celebrate Christmas Eve in the Victorian, might we recommend telling a good ghost story?

Tonight is Christmas Eve, a perfect night for. . . telling ghost stories?

While many today prefer to keep this season “merry and bright,” for the Victorians, Christmas Eve was considered the best night of the year to share a spine-chilling tale. “Whenever five or six English-speaking people meet round a fire on Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories,” observed writer Jerome K. Jerome in 1891. “Nothing satisfies us on Christmas Eve but to hear each other tell authentic anecdotes about spectres. It is a genial, festive season, and we love to muse upon graves, and dead bodies, and murders, and blood.”

In her 1904 ‘Book of Indoor and Outdoor Games,’ domestic advice writer Florence Kinglsand explained: “The veil that separates the realm of spirits from that of mortals has always been held by reverent tradition…to be thinner on Christmas Eve than at any other time of the year. Ghosts are said to revisit their old haunts and homes; hence the Christmas custom of relating stories of spectral visitants.”

Telling ghost stories was a Christmas Eve mainstay throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. If people didn’t know any frightening tales of their own, they had plenty of literature to read from: every year, magazines published large “Christmas Annuals” that were invariably packed with ghost stories. It is no coincidence that the most famous 19th century Christmas story of all– Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’-- is also a ghost story.

Christmas ghost stories belong to a long lineage of frightening wintertime folk traditions found across the Northern hemisphere. In many areas of Europe, Christmas was viewed as a time when terrifying entities would visit, including the demonic Krampus (central Europe), Grýla the Christmas Witch and her henchmen the Yule Lads (Iceland), the shapeshifter Perchta (the Alpine regions), and the mischievous rhyming horse skull known as Mari Lwyd (Wales). In a way, both the season’s merry festivals and these more frightening customs can be seen as different responses to a season when nights are long and the weather cold.

Christmas Eve ghost stories declined in popularity around the same time as Halloween, brought to America by Irish immigrants, grew in prominence. In many ways, Halloween as it exists today has taken on many of the creepier elements formerly associated with Christmas.



Image: “Marley’s Ghost,” illustration by Charles Green, 1912.

Musical instruments were another popular subject of Victorian Christmas ornaments. These are just a few from the Ramsey collections.

Glass and metal Christmas tree ornaments.

Ornaments such as these were prized for the way that the flickering light of candles would glint off them. Victorian Christmas trees were also commonly draped in long metallic strands of tinsel, which produced a similar effect.

Gilt paper Christmas ornaments (Dresdens) owned by the Ramsey Family.

Dresdens are a type of German Christmas ornament (named after the city in which many were manufactured) which were very popular in the Victorian era. Made out of silver and gold embossed cardboard, the ornaments came in a variety of shapes. Dogs, cats, seashells, frogs, turtles, fish, and even alligators were bought by consumers to liven up their Christmas tree.

Dresden ornaments are highly sought after by collectors today. Millions of the ornaments were manufactured, however, due to their fragile nature most did not stand up very well to the test of time. (Note the burn marks on the fish in the second picture, attesting to a close call with one of the lit candles on the tree, as well as the quick reflexes of the servant assigned to watch the tree with a bucket of water and sponge.)

Candle holders.

While Christmas tree ornaments are largely an invention of the 19th century, the practice of adding lighted candles to a tree goes back centuries. One of the most common ways to affix the candles was to use melted wax to attach the candles directly to the branches. By the 1800s, a wide variety of metal clip-on candle holders were available for purchase. The candle holders shown here, which are just a few out of the many in the Ramsey House collections, are designed with counterweights to keep the candles upright.

For safety reasons, Christmas trees were usually only lit for brief periods of time, and always closely attended. In an era in which most middle and upper class families employed at least one domestic servant, standing by the lit tree with a bucket of water was a common duty assigned to servants.

Original Ramsey family Christmas ornaments.

Cardboard ballerina Christmas ornaments.

These simple cardboard ornaments are typical of many Victorian Christmas ornaments. While it is possible that these were store-bought, with their simple construction it is just as likely that they may have been homemade. The faces appear to have been cut from fashion plates or magazines, while the body is a simple cardboard shape adorned with tule and tinsel.

Various Ramsey family glass ornaments (kugels).

Many of the Christmas tree ornaments owned by the Ramsey family were originally manufactured in Germany. Among the most prized were German glass ornaments called Kugels (or ”ball” in German, although the ornaments were not always spherical). Kugels were originally created to hang from ceilings, and early kugels were very large and made out of very heavy glass. This changed around the 1840s, when kugels began to be produced that were much lighter and smaller, designed to hang on Christmas trees.

After the American Civil War, kugels started being imported into the United States. The first kugels in the U.S. were quite expensive. As glass manufacturing became easier and cheaper the cost of the ornaments came down in price. It was in the 1880s that glass kugels really became popular with Americans, and it was all due to a store owner named F.W. Woolworth. He began stocking them in his ”five and dime” stores and sold millions of the ornaments.

The Christmas tree originated in central Europe during the Middle Ages, with possible roots in older, pre-Christian traditions. For centuries, decorating a tree was a regional custom found mostly in Germany, Estonia, and Livonia.

The first recorded Christmas tree in North America was put up by Hessian soldiers stationed in Quebec in 1781. For the next sixty years, Americans would occasionally make references to Christmas trees, usually seen as a peculiar custom unique to German-speaking immigrants.

In the 1800s, the custom became fashionable among nobility across Europe. In 1841, Britain’s Queen Victoria placed a Christmas tree in Windsor Castle. The custom had first been brought to Britain by the German-born Queen Charlotte in 1800, and was enthusiastically adopted by Queen Victoria and her husband, the German-born Prince Albert. In 1848, an engraving of the royal family around their Christmas tree published in the Illustrated London News caused a sudden craze for Christmas trees in households across Britain.

In 1850, in the US, Godey’s Lady’s Book editor Sarah Josepha Hale published the same engraving of the British royal family, but altered it to remove Queen Victoria’s crown and Prince Albert’s sash and mustache. This image (pictured here) turned the royal family into a generic American family. As it had in Britain, the Christmas tree surged in popularity in the US following the publication of this image.

By the 1870s, Christmas trees were fast becoming an ubiquitous symbol of the season, no longer just the practice of German Americans. Popular decorations included candles, strips of tinsel, popcorn strings, and homemade paper ornaments. In 1880, Woolworth's became the first major store to sell mass-produced glass Christmas ornaments, imported from Germany. By 1900, Woolworth's alone was selling over 200,000 ornaments each year.

Among the 14,000 original historic artifacts in the Alexander Ramsey House collections are dozens of original Ramsey family Christmas tree ornaments. Follow along with the hashtag as we'll be posting pictures of some of our favorites over the next couple of days!

Copy of ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ by Lewis Caroll, given as a Christmas gift to Alexander Ramsey’s granddaughter Anita Furness (then age 6) from her father, Charles E. Furness.

Small painting (artist and date unknown).

Cut glass perfume bottles.

Marble fireplace.

The seven marble fireplaces in the Alexander Ramsey house were carved from Vermont White Marble by J.F. Toestevin of St. Paul, at a total cost of $1,225. This fireplace and its companion in the Parlor doesn’t appear to have ever been connected to the chimney, meaning they were purely decorative. Heat for the room was provided by steam radiators.

Japanese bowl with samurai.