Archives Puzzles: Nineteenth-Century Ads

Each Monday, sit back, relax, and ease into the work week with puzzles created from images in our collections that have been designated as open access. Anyone can now download, transform, share, and reuse these images as part of Smithsonian Open Access, launched in 2020.

Way before the age of photoshop, advertisements looked like the image below. In 1868, the American Literary Bureau, based in New York, published this ad for their upcoming lecture series, which included well-known, white speakers such as Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Susan B. Anthony, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

During the Civil War, Emerson was one of twenty-two speakers to participate in a new lecture series at the Smithsonian from 1861 to 1862. Twenty of those speakers, including Emerson, spoke on the topic of abolitionism, much to Secretary Joseph Henry’s dismay. 

The Original

The Puzzle