McComas Collection, 1955-2013 | McDaniel College

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Administrative Information

Box and Folder Listing

Accession 2005.50: McComas Collection at McDaniel College

Records include gift letter from McCommas to Western Maryland College and the explanation of how the original collection was split between Western Maryland College and the Smithsonian.

Item 1: Booklet, "Actual Faces", 1940s

Booklet produced by Henry McComas to promote his collection of life and death masks of famous persons.

Item 2: Letter, March 15, 1965

Lettter from Philip Myers to Nancy Sellman explaining the donation of the McComas collection to Western Maryland College.

Series 1: Beverly Wilson's Research on the McComas Collection, 1976

Project by Berverly I. Wilson for Special Studies 03 452 using the McComas Collection.

Item 1: Photographs of masks, 1976

Sixty- seven black and white photographs of masks.  Includes negatives

Item 2: Transparancies, 1976

Sixty- seven transparencies of individual masks, three transparencies of masks on shelves and two transparencies of masks in boxes (copies).

Item 3: Index card list of masks, 1976

Item 4: Portraits in Plaster, 1976

Report including:

special Studies Statement

statement of expenses for the project

retyped Fact Sheet about the collection

list of the Documented Masks, number, description, life span

list of undocumented copies

historical significance summary for each documented mask

Series 2: List of masks in Collection, undated

List of masks and the number of each mask, includes some information about the identities and the masks' origins.

Accession 2013.13: Copies of Smithsonian accession and condemnation records for the McComas Collection., 1955-1975 and 2013

Includes notes on life and death mask records that explain how the McComas Collection that was at the Smithsonian came to Western maryland College, now McDaniel College.  These copies were attachments to emails between a student researching the collection for her senior project and the Smithsonian.

Accession 2013.57: McComas Life and Death Masks

Box B00661: Aaron Burr, Jr.

Vice President of the United States under Thomas Jefferson.

Box B00662: John C. Calhoun

Nineteenth century American politician and theorist from South Carolina.

Box B00663: Charles Carroll

Signer of the Declaration of Independence as a delegate to the Continental Congress from Maryland.  After the revolution Carroll became Maryland's first United States Senator.

Box B00664: Henry Clay, Jr.

Nineteenth century lawyer and politician who represented Kentucky in both houses of the United States Congress.

Box B00665: Ulysses S. Grant

Served as a Union general during the United States Civil War and received the surrender of  General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virgina at Appomattox, Virginia April 9, 1965.  Following the War Grant became the 18th President of the United States.

Box B00666: Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch  Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette

French aristocrat who served as a general under George Washington in the American Revolutionary War.  On his return to France at the National Assembly he was appointed Commander-in-chief  of the Paris militia of  Garde nationale.  The Garde national, a reaction to the violence leading up to the French Revolution, was militia set up in many French towns whose members came from the middle class and was separate from the French Army.  As the French revolution spun out of control, Lafayette, who presented the first draft of the  "Declaration of the Rights of Man" at the National Assembly backed away.  Declared an enemy of the state by France, he tried to return to the United States.  Captured by the Austrians he spent five years in jail.

Toward the end of the French Revolution Lafayette's wife was imprisoned in France.  Adrienne de Lafayette was released in January, 1795 with the aid of James Monroe's wife Elizabeth.

Box B00667: Robert E. Lee

General and commander of the Confederate States Army of Northern Virginia during the United States Civil War.  Lee began his career in the military when he entered the United States Military Academy.  He graduated second in his class. When war broke out with Mexico, Lee was attached to General Winfield Scott. During his tour in Mexico he met Longstreet, Jackson, and Pickett who he would fight with in the Civil War  and Grant who he would surrender to at Appomattox, Virginia.

After the Civil War Lee became president of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia.  The College changed its name to Washington and Lee University in 1870.

Box B00668: Abraham Lincoln

Lawyer, politician, and sixteenth president of the United States.  Abraham Lincoln began his political career when he ran for the Illinois Assembly in 1832.  In 1846 was elected to the State Legislature.  He declared in 1854 his hatred of slavery because of its monstrous injustice and it deprived the American Republic of being an example to the world.  This was the year he also first ran for United States Senator from Illinois.  Though he lost he cobbled together what was left of the Wig party, those disenchanted with the Free Soil and Liberty parties, and anti slavery Democrats and influenced a new Republican party.  This party nominated him in 1858 as their candidate for United States Senator from Illinois.  His opponent was incumbent Steven Douglas. Their seven debates were widely covered and Lincoln became nationally known.  Lincoln won the 1860 election for the presidency of the United States. By the time of  Lincoln's inauguration seven Southern States had seceded from the Union.

Lincoln was assassinated April 15, 1865 - 42 days after his second inauguration and six days after General Lee surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox.

Box B00669: Thomas Paine

English-American political activist, author, political theorist, and revolutionary.  Thomas Paine wrote "Common Sense" which attacked authority of the English Crown over the American Colonies.

Box B00670: William Tecumseh Sherman

American soldier, businessman, educator and author.  Sherman served as a General in the Union Army during the Civil War.

Box B00671: George Washington

A "Founding Father" of the United States and the first President under the Constitution of the United States.  Washington served as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.

Box B00672: Walt Whitman

Nineteenth century American poet, essayist, and journalist.

Box B00673: Daniel Webster

American statesman and Senator from Massachusetts during the Antebellum period.  Finished, face only.

Box B00674: Daniel Webster

American statesman and Senator from Massachusetts during the Antebellum period.  Full head, makers mark.

Box B00675: John L. Sullivan

American, bare-knuckle boxer.  Sullivan is recognized as the last heavyweight champion of bare-knuckle boxing under London Prize Ring Rules.  He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990.  Plaster mask is broken and  in several pieces.

Box B00676: Celia Thaxter

Nineteenth century American poet from Maine.

Box B00677: Jeremy Bentham

Late eighteenth early nineteenth century British philosopher, jurist, and social reformer.

Box B00678: Henry Peter Brougham. 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux

Nineteenth century British statesman and Lord Chancellor of Great Britain 1834.

Box B00679: Sir Marc Isambard Brunel

Born in France in 1769, Brunel escaped to America during the French Revolution.  In the United States he was involved in linking the Hudson River with lake Champlain, a scheme that never happened.  He submitted plans for the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.  They were not selected.  In 1796 he became an American citizen and was appointed as chief engineer of New York City.

Brunel designed a way to manufacture pulley blocks used on sailing vessels.  He sailed to England to present his design to the British Admiralty.  He was made a fellow in the Royal Society and in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.  He was knighted in 1841 by Queen Victoria for his work on the Thames Tunnel.  The Thames Tunnel is in use to day as part of London's Underground system.

Box B00680: Charles XII

Box B00681: Oliver Cromwell

Box B00682: Durante Degli Alighieri "Dante"

Upper face.

Box B00683: David Garrick

Box B00684: J.W. Von Goethe

Box B00685: Thomas Lawrence

Box B00686: Franz Lizst

Box B00687: Duchess Louise of Mecklenburg

Box B00688: Maria Malibran

Box B00689: Jean-Paul Marat

Box B00690: Felix Mendelssohn

Box B00691: Thomas Moore

Box B00692: Isaac Newton

Box B00693: Maximilien Francois Marie Isidore De Robespierre

Box B00694: Johann Christof Freedrich Von Schiller

Box B00695: Sir Walter Scott

Box B00696: Alois Senefelder

Box B00697: Laurence Sterne

Box B00698: Beethoven

Eyes sculpted in. Original to McComas Collection at Western Maryland College

Box B00699: Beethoven

Death Mask.  Original to the McComas collection donated to Western Maryland College

Box B00700: Beethoven

McComas Collection originally at the Smithsonian

Box B00701: Richard Sheridan

Box B00702: Napoleon Bonapart

Box B00703: Richard Owen

Box B00704: Toquato Tasso

Box B00705: John Keats

McComas Collection from the Smithsonian

Box B00706: John Keats

Original to the Western Maryland College McComas Collection

Box B00707: Antonio Canova

Box B00708: Edmund Burke

Original to the McComas Collection at Western Maryland College.

Box B00709: Edmund Kean

McComas Collection originally at the Smithsonian.  Irish statesman and theorist.  (1729-1797)

Box B00710: William Wordsworth

English poet. (1770-1850)

Box B00711: Thomas Chalmers

Scottish Minister. (1780-1847)

Box B00712: Dante Gabriel Rosetti

English poet, painter, and illustrator.(1828-1882)

Box B00713: Henry John Temple 3rd Viscount Palmerston

Palmerston (1784-1865) English statesman. Served twice as the Prime Minister in the early 19th century.

Box B00714: Henry the IV of France

(1553-1610)

Box B00715: Robert Burns

Half skull cast.  Scottish poet.  (1759-1796)

Box B00716: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

English poet and critic. (1772-1834)

Box B00717: Lawrence Barrett

American Actor (b. 1838-d. 1891)

Box B00718: William Tecumseh Sherman

Bust

Accession 2014.22: McComas Life and Death Masks

Life and death masks from the McComas Collection that were brought from the Art Studio to the Archives on July 3, 2014.

Box B00800: Wilhelm Richard Wagner

Composer.

Box B00801: Pope Pius IX

Box B00802: Frederick II, The Great of Prussia

Box B00803: Ben Caunt

Nineteenth century English bare-knuckle boxer.

Box B00804: Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeaû

French revolutionary, writer, diplomat, journalist, and French Politician.

Box B00805: Giacomo Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardi

Early nineteenth century Italian poet, essayist, philosopher, and philologist.

Box B00806: Jonathan Swift

Irish author and satirist.

Box 600200: Benjamin Disraeli

British Prime Minister  1874-1880. (b 1804-d. 1881)

Box 600440: Napoleon III

Louis Napoleon, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, elected president of the 2nd Republic of France in 1850 and was made Emperor in 1852.  He was deposed in 1870 and sent to England where he died in 1873. (b 1805)

Box 600101: John Calhoun

Box 600110: John Calhoun

Bust.

Box 600130: Count Camillo Cavour

Italian Statesman (b. 1810- d.1861)

Box 600245: Girl from the River  Seine

Mask from the body of a young woman who was pulled from the Seine circa 1900.  This mask is not listed as part of the collection donated to the College in 1955 from Henry McComas.  The mask may be part of the McComas Collection that was transferred to the College in 1973, however there is not a list of the masks from this collection.

Box 600370: John McCullah

American actor (b.1837-d. 1885)