The Lives Behind the Mesoamerican Archaeology Collection at the Museum of Vancouver

S. J. Emanuels

When the AHSA published their catalog in 1915 they listed “Aztec Household Gods” in the Ethnology category, located in case 41. The first donor of Mexican material was S. J. Emanuels, who is recorded as donating six “household god, Aztec” in 1909 in the MOV accession records. However, the museum’s catalog lists only three objects as being donated by Emanuels and another three as possibly donated by him (see Table 1), revealing that somewhere between 4 percent and 8 percent of the collection’s final size was established through this inaugural donation. The six objects are all fairly small ceramic items including figurine heads, applique feet from the base of ceramic vessels, and one female figure.

Research reveals there was an S. J. Emanuels present in the city by 1889, who appeared to have a range of occupations including auctioneer, appraiser, insurance agent, and realtor. ⁴⁰ The following year the Vancouver City Electoral District (1890) published their voters’ list and there is a Samuel John Emanuels, Insurance Agent, listed. British Columbia Legislative Assembly (1890) Records show he was a member of the Vancouver Pioneers’ Association, which had been founded in 1893 initially as a social organization for those who arrived in the city before the Great Fire of 1886 (Smith 2014) but later included residents of the city before 1892. ⁴¹ In 1915 Emanuels was appointed as the Brazilian vice-counsul for British Columbia, and a subsequent news article stated that his parentage was Brazilian. ⁴² That same article explained that after arriving in Vancouver he spent four years traveling in Mexico and Central America. This is likely to have been from 1900 to 1904, based on the disappearance of Emanuels’ auction notices and the absence of his name from local news during this time, followed by news in 1905 that he was in the city after having lived in Mexico. ⁴³

News articles from the 1890s report that Emanuels was involved with various associations such as St. John’s Ambulance Corps and the Christ Church Young Men’s Society—the latter also one in which Captain Mellon was involved. Articles from the same time also report that Mellon and Emanuels attended the same local events. Thus, it is highly likely Emanuels was aware of the AHSA because of his relationship with Mellon, and because he appeared to be an active member of associations in Vancouver at the time. It is possible that during his travels in Mexico, Emanuels collected items with the intent to donate them to the AHSA on his return. This may have been to help increase the quantity of the AHSA collection, its geographic scope, or both. Emanuels passed away in 1929 at the age of seventy-nine and his obituary stated that he was born in London, settled in Saskatchewan in 1883, and came to Vancouver in 1888. ⁴⁴

Mrs. C. Gardner-Johnson, Mr. D. S. MacLaughlin

In August 1910 the Vancouver Daily World reported that “Mrs. A. Bethune, Mrs. C. Gardner-Johnson, and Mr. D. S. MacLaughlin have each presented interesting specimens of work by Mexicans.” ⁴⁵ Interestingly, another local newspaper published announcements five months earlier reporting “Mr. and Mrs. C. Gardner Johnson. . .have been on a holiday trip to Mexico for the past two or three months,” thus indicating that their donation may have resulted from their earlier travels. ⁴⁶ While there are no MOV database records that show these individuals as donors of Mesoamerican material, it is possible that the collection continued to grow a year after the initial donation of Mexican objects by Emanuels.

The MOV database records show that Mr and Mrs. A. Bethune donated one historic item from China and several ethnological items to the museum, including objects from Nicaragua, the Bahamas, Peru, and Mexico. Alexander Bethune became the twelfth Mayor of Vancouver in 1907 and served until 1908. ⁴⁷ While the Bethune donation was clearly ethnological items from Mexico, the MOV records do not show archaeological or ethnographic items associated with Gardner-Johnson or MacLaughlin (see Table 1). ⁴⁸ Potentially, some of the items in the Mesoamerican archaeology collection without a secure donor association could have been donated by these individuals. There are no records available for MacLaughlin in the B.C. digital archives, nor from newspaper articles of the time.

Fortunately, records for the Gardner-Johnson (sometimes spelled Gardiner-Johnson) family are abundant because they were prominent in early Vancouver due to their shipping business, which earned Charles Gardner-Johnson the title “father of Vancouver’s shipping industry” (Smith 2014, 217). Charles was originally from Scotland and arrived with his wife Minnie (née Boultbee) in Vancouver in 1886, later opening the first shipping and insurance agency in the city. ⁴⁹ Like Emanuels, Charles was also a member of the Vancouver Pioneer Association and is known for his experience surviving the Great Fire, recalling that in trying to escape it “our clothes commenced to burn and our handkerchiefs dried like chips.” ⁵⁰ He died in 1926 at the age of sixty-nine and two years later his wife was named a life member of the museum association, in recognition of the “substantial” donations she made. ⁵¹ Minnie died at the age of ninety-two in 1953 and her estate was said to total $113,000 (in excess of $1 million in 2020). ⁵²

Mrs. Charles Jackson

It was more than a decade after the initial Mexican material entered the AHSA collection that the next recorded donation occurred (see Table 1). The paper records in the MOV source files reveal that from 1922 to 1924 Mrs. Charles Jackson, of Harrison Lake, B.C., donated thirty-one objects to the museum. Notable items, highlighting the varied nature of the AHSA collecting strategy of the time, include a “young crocodile” and a Kwakwaka’wakw canoe. Another item was a zoomorphic bird vessel, which the MOV database notes as being acquired in 1923 and is perhaps from Mexico. However, the acquisition sheet in the museum source files lists a donation of a “jug. Mexican” in 1922. No other items in the 1923 donation list match the description of the sole Mesoamerican donation from Jackson, so it is probable that the acquisition year in the database is slightly incorrect.

“Notes on Indian Canoe,” published in The Totem Poles in Stanley Park by the AHSA (Goodfellow 1923), which details information about the canoe donated to the museum by Jackson, does not provide any information other than her residence near the Harrison River (roughly 80 miles east of Vancouver). Research of the Harrison area revealed that after Mr. Jackson passed away, the executor of his will sold a 160-acre parcel of land to the Pretty family (who were involved in the lumber industry). The family allowed Mrs. Jackson to live on the land for as long as she wanted and Betty-Anne Faulker, whose parents purchased the land in 1924, believes Mrs. Jackson likely stayed on the land for a year or two after the sale and then moved to Vancouver. ⁵³ Today, the land encompasses a golf course and bed and breakfast known as Rowena’s Inn on the River—originally the Pretty family home. ⁵⁴ Just as Mrs. Jackson remained on the land after the sale, Betty-Anne sold the land in 2016 but continues to reside in her family home—reportedly built on the same spot where Mrs. Jackson originally lived. ⁵⁵

Sleigh’s (1990) research on the history of the Harrison region reveals that Mrs. Jackson’s maiden name was Lucretia Martin and she was the daughter of Joseph Martin, who owned a sawmill and hundreds of acres of land in the region. Joseph was from Milton, Ontario, but reportedly spent some time gold mining in Australia—where his daughter was born (Sleigh 1990, 85). After he died in 1900, his sons moved back to Milton but Lucretia stayed on the family property with her husband (Sleigh 1990, 88). She passed away in 1933 at the age of seventy and was buried beside her husband in Agassiz, in the Harrison region. ⁵⁶

J. C. Hinton

Almost another decade passed before the next donation of Mexican material entered the collection in 1932, but it was the most sizeable donation yet—constituting a little more than a quarter of the collection’s final size (see Table 1). The acquisition sheet for J. C. Hinton’s donation to the museum simply lists “heads, pottery, Teotihuacan” and “molds, pottery, fragments.” Notes on the sheet in pencil, added at some unknown later date, list all the items associated with Hinton in Table 1 except for QB 2 and QBA 8. The notes also have two additional items listed, QBA 48 and QBA 49, with two question marks after each. Clearly at some point after these notes were written, the two aforementioned items were instead associated to S. J. Emanuels.

In addition to the acquisition sheet, the MOV source files contain a handwritten note with rough illustrations of three of the items donated by Hinton. The note reads that they were “Presented to City by J. C. Hinton,” and also lists the “Sun Pyramid in Teotihuacan,” “Dist of Temascaltepec State of Mexico,” and “Cuernavaca State of Morelos Mexico” (Figure 4). One of these items (QBA 40) has “Sun Pyramid Mexico J. C. Hinton” written in ink on its non-applique side (Figure 4). Three other items (QBA 35, QBA 36, QBA 39) have the same text on their reverse but the writing has largely worn off. A fourth (QBA 47) simply has “J. C. Hinton” on its reverse.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 4.

Object QBA 40 front (left) and back (right), with illustration of artefact at leftmost of note in MOV source files for J.C. Hinton (below).

Evidence of a “J. C. Hinton” in Vancouver at the time of the donation is limited to a High School pass list of 1931, which lists a “J. C. Hinton” among those advancing to Grade 10 (usually equivalent to the ages of 14–16). ⁵⁷ James C. Hinton, son of a well-known botanist (who was born in London but lived and worked in Mexico), was sent to study in Vancouver at the age of fourteen (Hinton and Turner 2007). James was born in Mexico City, not far from the site of Teotihuacan, and after his mother passed away when he was four years old his father moved him and his two brothers to Cuernavaca (Hinton and Turner 2007). It is very likely that the “J. C. Hinton” in the MOV records is the same James Hinton who studied in Vancouver as a teenager. George Hinton is in agreement that his father donated these items:

“If the donations were made by J. C. Hinton and there is a link to Temascaltepec and Cuernavaca, then it must have been my father. His father, George Boole Hinton, was superintendent in the Lane Rincón Mine in Temascaltepec for years before he quit to dedicate himself to botanical explorations. My father lived in Cuernavaca for 30 years before retiring to his ranch in the highlands of Nuevo León, where he dedicated himself to writing and botanical explorations. My father was always interested in collecting things, from beetles, arrowheads, plants to archaeological artifacts.” ⁵⁸

The writing that George refers to includes James’ extensive publication record of short stories and novels, including Juan Caraveo (2004). ⁵⁹ James passed away in 2006 at the age of ninety.

Mrs A. M. Lawton

In the same year as Hinton’s donation, two additional items (small jade beads) entered the collection (see Table 1). Unfortunately, it is unclear whether the donor associated with the items in the MOV database was the true donor because the acquisition sheet in the MOV source files does not indicate the items among those donated by Mrs. A. M. Lawton. The catalog numbers for these two items were added in pencil at a later date—both preceded with question marks—to the list of several items donated by Lawton in 1932. The acquisition sheet indicates that Lawton was a resident of Seattle, not Vancouver. Unfortunately, there is no clear trace of Lawton in either Seattle or Vancouver newspapers from the time. Nor is there a death certificate from Washington state or B.C. for Mrs. Lawton or her husband, hindering any further searches by name. ⁶⁰

John A. Burton

Sixteen years passed before further donations from Mexico were made to the museum, but the seven objects acquired from John A. Burton in 1948 (see Table 1) allowed the collection to increase its representation of Mexican material (Burton’s donation contributed a little under 10 percent of the collection’s final size). The acquisition sheet in the MOV source files indicates that Burton donated a “set of replicas of Aztec images from San Juan Testihuacan” (likely a spelling error of Teotihuacan). This set are the five items without corresponding question marks associated with Burton in Table 1. Two of these items (QBA 59, QBA 60) have “John A. Burton 9-2-48” written in ink on their reverse. The two items with question marks have both been identified as replicas, which is likely why they are also associated with Burton. Information for a John A. Burton from the B.C. digital archives could not be located but the 1948 City Directory listed “John A. Burton, assistant UBC.” The absence of an address on the MOV acquisition sheet hindered verification of this individual as the donor, but based on absence of other individuals with the same name in the Directory it is possible this was indeed the donor.

Since the Directory indicated that Burton worked for the University of British Columbia (UBC), a search of UBC materials from the time was undertaken. A 1944 edition of the student newspaper, the Ubyssey, ⁶¹ listed a “John Burton, Mech. 44” as an Assistant Editor and a 1953 edition of the Alumni Chronicle included a reference to Mr & Mrs. John A. Burton (nee Phyllis Ney). ⁶² Newspaper records reveal that John Albert Burton and Phyllis Ney married in Ontario in 1949, that both the bride and groom were graduates of UBC and former Vancouverites, and that they were to settle in New Hampshire after the wedding. ⁶³

Paul Holdener

The next donation by Paul Holdener, four years later, consisted of only a single object but it was significant because it diversified the Mesoamerican collection outside of Mexico for the first time (see Table 1). The acquisition sheet in the MOV source files reads “mold, Mayan. Ruinas de Copan. Honduras.” Copan is an ancient Maya site located in western Honduras and became well-known in the mid-nineteenth century, due to the travel memoirs of Stephens (1841). Like Teotihuacan, Copan is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. ⁶⁴ Additional documents in the MOV source files list a 1964 donation of a concave plaster cast made by the donor representing a “Mayan goddess.” It is probable that Holdener produced this cast using the very mold that he donated in 1952. Genealogical records reveal that the donor’s full name was Paul Hans Holdener and he passed away in 1993 at the age of eighty-seven. Originally born in Switzerland, his occupation in Vancouver was “printing.” The only local newspaper articles discussing a “Paul Holdener” relate to a 1929 report about “a Swiss” who faced a charge of “attempting to obtain $2 by false pretences.” ⁶⁵ The charges were later dismissed in court.

Maurice Rulton

Three years later, in 1955, the museum purchased a “collection of Indian artifacts” from Mrs L. Rulton in honor of her husband Maurice, for the sum of $25. ⁶⁶ The collection, which contained two stone points from Mexico (see Table 1), was put on display in the museum and a letter from Mrs. Rulton’s daughter explained that “if my father was alive today we know that nothing would have pleased him more than to have his collection put in a museum.” ⁶⁷ Genealogical records reveal that Laura and Maurice Rulton were both born in England. Maurice died in 1942 at the age of sixty-two, and Laura passed away twenty years later at the age of seventy-six. Newspaper records indicate that Maurice was a cook at B.C. logging camps, while the 1941 City Directory lists him as a baker. ⁶⁸

The items donated by Laura Rulton in honor of her husband included more than 120 stone tool “points”—many from B.C. and the United States, various minerals, and a variety of other items including a Japanese ivory dagger. Several of the items in the collection, including both of those from Mexico, have the donor’s name or initials inscribed on them. Interestingly, the two Mexican stone points have Rulton’s initials, followed by “Mexico” and then designated “Aztec” (QBA 2) and “Mayan” (QBA 3).

G. A. Anderson

One year later, the collection grew by a single item—a replica Aztec “Sun Calendar”—donated by G. A. Anderson (see Table 1). Anderson’s folder in the MOV source files point to an interesting, yet mysterious, history behind his donation. Records show that Anderson obtained the item from local boys who “came upon it accidently while playing around in an old abandoned house.” ⁶⁹ Thomas Ainsworth, the museum’s curator at the time, received this information after requesting that Anderson try to find out more information about the item from the boys. ⁷⁰ Seemingly unaware of its fairly recent manufacture, Ainsworth proceeded to contact the Director of the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico City to ask for information about the object’s age, origin, and function. ⁷¹ The Director of Prehispanic Monuments at the museum in Mexico City replied soon after, explaining that the item was a reproduction of the famous Sun Calendar—the original of which was in Mexico’s National Anthropology Museum—and that many such reproductions of this artefact are made that “no tiene más valor que como una simple curiosidad” (it has no more value than a simple curiosity). ⁷² Lacking a full name in the MOV records, and an address that does not appear to exist anymore, it was not possible to locate any further information about the donor.

R. Hulme

Two years later, in 1958, four objects from Monte Alban in Oaxaca were gifted to the museum by R. Hulme (see Table 1). The documentation in the MOV source files indicate that the initial “R” was for “Reg.” The 1958 City Directory lists a “Regd retired r” at the donor’s address; “Regd.” is used in the Directory as an abbreviation for Reginald and “r” for someone that rents or resides at an address, rather than being the homeowner. A death certificate exists for a Reginald Hulme, who passed away in 1975 at the age of ninety-one, listed at a different address to the Reginald in the 1958 Directory (which makes sense since accommodation can easily change over a twenty year period). The certificate also indicates that Reginald was born in Cornwall, England, was single, but his parents and occupation are not listed. The informant on the certificate was from the Department of Veteran Affairs, indicating that Reginald was a Veteran himself. Local newspaper articles of the time list a “Reg. Hulme” as an executive member of the Canadian Legion, so it is probable that the donor was a military veteran. ⁷³

A. Giroird

Two years following Reg Hulme’s donation, the most sizeable donation to the museum thus far took place: twenty-three objects from Mexico, constituting 32 percent of the collection’s final size (see Table 1). Unfortunately, there are no records for the “A. Giroird” who donated these objects in the City Directories from the time of the donation, nor the year prior or subsequent to the donation. There are also no individuals of a slightly different surname with an “A” as the initial for the first name. Additionally, an individual of an entirely different name is listed as living at the address listed on the MOV paperwork for Giroird. The inability to locate evidence about this donor is very unfortunate considering the substantial size of the donation, mostly ceramic figurines from Teotihuacan. The only information about the donor’s identity from the MOV source files is the use of the title “Mr.”, indicating he was male.

Herbert Marvin

Eight years later, the following donation of two objects by Herbert Marvin was considerably smaller than Giroid’s (see Table 1). The MOV archival file for Marvin is largely limited to confirmation of the two items he donated in 1968, one of which (QBA 68) is said to be from an “excavation at Mexico City.” that same year. Genealogical records for Herbert Arne Marvin, who died in 1986 at the age of seventy-seven, reveal that he was born in Saskatchewan and his occupation was a ceramic tile contractor. The City Directory from the year of his donation also lists him as a tile setter. Local newspaper reports about Marvin could not be located, and the absence of a wife on his death certificate hindered further avenues to discover information about this donor.

Frank Low-Beer

Two years later, in 1990, a single donation to the Mesoamerican collection by Frank Low-Beer began a trajectory of single object donations to the collection that would continue over the next eight years. Frank donated a collection of artifacts to the museum “to be known as Edith Low-Beer collection” in honor of his mother, who passed away at the age of eighty-three in 1988. According to the acquisition report in the MOV source files, the collection consisted of 107 items from places such as China, Japan, South East Asia, and Asia Minor. Within the collection was one item from Mexico, described as a “figure fragment, culture: Maya” (see Table 1).

Edith Low-Beer was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, and came with her husband Max and two children to Canada as political refugees in the late 1930s. ⁷⁴ Frank’s sister Margaret explained that her family were “textile-industrialists” and when Germany invaded Austria in 1938 her mother took her and her brother to England, where her father was working. ⁷⁵ The following year, her father applied for the family to immigrate to Canada and initially they arrived in the east but subsequently travelled by train across the country and arrived in Vancouver in 1940. In the family’s native Brno (in today’s Czech Republic), the Löw-Beer Villa—part of the Museum of the Brno Region—tells the story of her father’s family home. ⁷⁶ The Löw-Beer family were involved in the wool trade, sugar industry, and distilling and are considered to have been “amongst the most important textile companies in the Habsburg Empire” as well as a leading Jewish family “in the development, business and civic life and culture of Brno.” ⁷⁷

Edith chaired the Civic Arts Committee of the Community Arts Council at the time of the Centennial Museum, and her son Frank was later president of the committee. ⁷⁸ Frank was a lawyer and in 1974 the Liberal nominee for the Vancouver-Quadra seat in the federal election, though he did not win the seat (he came close to securing another nomination in 1977). ⁷⁹ The online catalog for the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver indicates that Frank donated thirty objects, among them items from China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and possibly England, in November 1990. According to a 2005 newspaper article, after his death in 1999 his children donated items from his estate, including items from Edith’s collection, to the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. ⁸⁰ The gallery’s online collection reveals more than fifteen objects were donated in Frank’s name, while forty objects were donated in his mother’s name, almost exclusively consisting of items from Asia.

Mavis Crow

The next donation to the Mesoamerican archaeology collection came two years later in May 1992 when the museum accepted a collection of ethnological and archaeological material, and a collection of books from Mrs. Crow. ⁸¹ Within this donation was one item from Costa Rica (see Table 1), purchased in 1988 from Portobello Antiques in Vancouver (no longer in operation). For only the second time in the collection’s history (since Holdener’s donation forty years prior), it was once again culturally diversified and now representative of a third country in addition to Mexico and Honduras. The original receipt for the donation, part of the paperwork in the MOV source files, describes the item as a “Zoomorphic double jaguar effigy vessel, 500-1000 A.D.” The receipt also shows a 40 percent discount from the original price, which indicates that Crow was perhaps a valued or repeat customer at the store. Genealogical records reveal that the donor’s full name was Cora Mavis Aileen McRae Crow and she passed away at the age of seventy, just three months after her donation to the museum. She was born in Saskatchewan and for most of her life did clerical office work.

Local newspaper reports about Crow are limited and do not provide any further information about the donor but the online catalog for the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (AGGV) indicates that, like Frank Low-Beer, Mavis Crow donated to the gallery’s collection. ⁸² Stephen Topfer, manager of collections and exhibits at the AGGV, disclosed that Crow’s donation to the gallery was received in 1993 by a company handling her estate. ⁸³ He suggested that her donations to the MOV and AGGV may have been connected, because at the time the curators of Asian art at both institutions were married. It is possible that at the time, the AAGV collection lacked representation from the region of the world that Crow’s donation represented, so some of the items were suggested for the AAGV instead of the MOV.

Verna Waldridge

The final recorded donor of the MOV Mesoamerican archaeology collection was Verna Waldrige, who gave a single Maya ceramic vessel to the museum in 1998. Unfortunately, the museum do not have any records pertaining to this donation. The City of Vancouver Archives have City Directories available to consult up to 1996—two years prior to Waldridge’s donation—and there is a “Verna retd” listed under the surname Waldridge. A 2006 obituary for a Verna Waldridge lists a different address to that in the 1996 directory, but it is of course possible that same individual moved residence within the space of a decade. ⁸⁴ The obituary explains that Verna was from a pioneer New Westminster family, and she and her husband Rae operated a manufacturing business in Vancouver. ⁸⁵ She passed away at the age of 96 and a death certificate for a Rae Waldrige (listing a Verna Douglas as his wife), who manufactured wooden wares, shows that he passed away in 1961 at the age of 60. Apart from an obituary, local newspaper reports about Waldridge could not be located.