Historian Michael Kammen leads readers, students on 'a little journey'

By Linda Grace-Kobas

History became personal for Cornell historian Michael Kammen when he was asked to contribute an essay for a book to be published in honor of Sheldon Meyer, who had edited two of his books on American culture. The assignment was to write about a place that had intrigued him on a personal level, as well as historically.

Kammen had a wealth of choices. After all, he's written or edited more than 20 books and is considered one of America's most distinguished and prolific cultural historians. He won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1973 for People of Paradox and the Francis Parkman Prize in 1987 for A Machine that Would Go of Itself. One of his most recent books, American Culture, American Tastes (1999), examines popular culture from 1880 to 1980 and explores topics ranging from the Sears catalog to MTV.

So why did he choose to write about East Aurora, a quiet, picturesque village in western New York that most of his undergraduate students have never heard of before? And why does he organize class trips to take his students there?

"From the perspective of someone who teaches American history, East Aurora offers a kind of scriptural opportunity that can transport students from genesis to revelation," Kammen writes in American Places: Encounters with History (Oxford University Press, 2000). The book is a collection of 28 personal essays by eminent scholars who describe the inspiration and meaning they have found in places ranging from the Gettysburg battlefields and Monticello to Graceland and cyberspace.

Edited by William E. Leuchtenburg, a 1943 graduate of Cornell, the volume celebrates Meyer, who served as history editor at Oxford University Press for more than 40 years. Meyer not only published and edited many distinguished books on American history, he also encouraged young academics and actively sought out new areas of investigation, such as black history, women's history, jazz and popular music. Authors who worked with Meyer and contributed to American Places, in addition to Leuchtenburg and Kammen, include James M. McPherson, C. Vann Woodward, David M. Kennedy, David Brion Davis and Edward L. Ayers.

Meyer edited Kammen's 1996 book, The Lively Arts: Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism in the United States. One of Meyer's last books before retiring was Kammen's In the Past Lane, published in 1997.

"His passion was American history and studies, particularly American culture," Kammen said. "Today those books flow out, but 25 years ago they were considered not respectable. When Sheldon started publishing them, it was considered a breakthrough. I was delighted to do the essay."

Elm trees on South Grove St. in East Aurora, N.Y., shade the Roycroft Inn on the Roycroft Campus, circa 1909. Courtesy of Kitty Turgeon, from The Roycroft Campus

Kammen's contribution to the celebratory edition is titled "A Little Journey: Elbert Hubbard and the Roycroft Community at East Aurora, New York." It is as much about the towering personality of the man who established the most renowned arts and crafts community in America as it is about the place where they built their homes, a famous inn and campus of buildings for printing, binding, crafts and making furniture.

East Aurora would have remained an obscure village known only as the place where future president Millard Fillmore practiced law in the 1820s had Elbert Hubbard not established the Roycrofters there, Kammen writes.

Hubbard became prosperous marketing soap during the 1870s and built a home there, 16 miles southeast of Buffalo. He wanted to be a writer and was inspired by visiting the homes of famous authors in England and Ireland. He began producing a series of Little Journeys booklets, "a mix of sentimental moralism and nostalgia at a time when the Chautauqua experience had aroused a hunger for knowledge that might uplift the spirit," Kammen writes. The rest is, well, history. Hubbard became famous and rich, the "Sage of East Aurora," whose artisans created beautiful objects sold by direct mail, an innovation at that time. In 1915 he died as dramatically as he lived, going down on the Lusitania with his wife and 1,196 other souls.

Alice and Elbert Hubbard pose on the pier awaiting the fatal sailing of the S.S. Lusitania on May 1, 1915, in New York City, in this photograph by Henry Lee. From The Roycroft Campus

Kammen devotes a week to the arts and crafts movement in his undergraduate class on American culture from 1880 to 1980. Since 1994 he has led his students to East Aurora so they can see for themselves the idealized community the Roycrofters built.

"For the most part, they know zero about it," he said. "No Cornell undergraduate has ever heard of Elbert Hubbard. Then we go out there, and he comes alive in three dimensions."

While touring the campus, they visit the historic Roycroft Inn, restored by Cornell alumna Kitty Turgeon (see story). In the raftered dining hall, Kammen describes the typical American diet of the late 19th century -- grease (from fatty meat) and starch. At a time when fresh lettuce was a luxury, the Roycrofters practiced a healthy lifestyle to prevent what Kammen says was the "single biggest American ailment" of the time -- dyspepsia or, as we know it, constipation.

The voluntary field trips are a big hit with students, Kammen said, especially those from out of state and international students who "regard this as a wonderful opportunity to see parts of the country they hadn't seen before."

Jeffrey Hyson was a graduate student who served as Kammen's teaching assistant during the first class trip to East Aurora. Now an assistant professor of history at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia, he said, "What struck me was the sense that this was a real community. We got an understanding of the artistic mission, which is very difficult to preserve."

Growing up in the Philadelphia area, "Valley Forge was sort of my backyard," Hyson said. As a teen-ager, he spent summers working as a National Park Service ranger there and came across Kammen's historical writings. After receiving his undergraduate degree from Yale, he said, "I came to Cornell to work with Michael. His writings were inspiring to me."

Hyson led historical field trips for seminars in the freshman Knight Writing Program, taking undergraduates to Cooperstown, Seneca Falls and the Strong Museum in Rochester. He won a teaching award for his work in the Knight Program and continues to take his current students to sites.

Both professors see many benefits in visiting the places where history happened.

"It's astonishing how you get to know the undergraduates, their nonacademic interests," Kammen said.

"This generation has such a need for visual stimulation," Hyson observed. "For some students, one 19th-century home is the same as another. You need to prepare them so they understand what happened there before. What makes a place meaningful is not just its oldness, not only who lived there, but the associations it makes for you, the connections between you and that person."