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Pond family drawings, [ca. 1880s]

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Summary

Creator:
Pond family
Abstract:
The collection consists of hand-made sketchbooks and loose sheets of paper featuring drawings likely made by children Edith, Jennie, and Theodore Pond while residing in Syria (present-day Lebanon) with their missionary parents, Theodore S. Pond and Julia Pond. Prominent imagery depicted includes domestic scenes, women and children at work and play, and women tending to the sick. The Ponds rarely specified locations in their drawings, and while they may have been generic or imagined scenes some may have been made to reflect the Pond family's residence or experience while in Syria (present-day Lebanon).
Extent:
0.25 linear feet
Language:
English
Authors:
Collection processed and finding aid created by Jayne Ptolemy, August 2022

Background

Scope and Content:

The collection consists of hand-made sketchbooks and loose sheets of paper featuring drawings likely made by children Edith, Jennie, and Theodore Pond while residing in Syria (present-day Lebanon) with their missionary parents, Theodore S. Pond and Julia Pond. Prominent imagery depicted includes domestic scenes, women and children at work and play, and women tending to the sick. The Ponds rarely specified locations in their drawings, and while they may have been generic or imagined scenes some may have been made to reflect the Pond family's residence or experience while in Syria (present-day Lebanon).

The bulk of the drawings were done in pencil, but several were made using pen and ink, pen and wash, and pastels. A large portion of the images depict interior domestic scenes of women and young girls reading, sewing, dining, visiting, sleeping, and at play with toys in parlors, living rooms, and bedrooms. These drawings include details like clothing, accessories, furniture, and decorations. Several show women wearing the Christian cross as jewelry, head coverings or veils, and chopines (a platformed shoe), possibly representing adherents of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Several of the drawings feature women at work doing tasks like cooking, sewing, washing dishes or floors, sweeping, gardening, tending to the ill, or bathing children. Older women are represented alongside middle-aged women, young girls, and infants. Adult men and young boys appear occasionally in the scenes.

Several illustrations appear to show women laboring as domestic servants, and at least four of these images represent dark-skinned women. One additional drawing shows a family scene with three dark-skinned women knitting or resting in a hammock.

Outdoor scenes are also represented, showing women and children walking and travelling in the streets, playing games, visiting the beach, riding horses, shopping, sleighing, or picking fruit. One drawing depicts a family standing beside a sphinx with pyramids in the background. Other locales outside of the home are also featured, including a store, a church, a theater, a photographer's studio, and possibly a school.

Miscellaneous other topics were drawn, such as angels, Grecian women, a dream, a centaur statue, a shield with an American crest, and two singing girls who appear to be impoverished.

Only two of the drawings were signed, both landscapes by Theodore H. Pond, one dated 1882 shows a building in the countryside and the other depicts a village street scene leading towards a church. Two other unsigned landscapes are also present, one labelled "St. Augustines Canterbury." Two other illustrations -- one a portrait of a young woman and the other an interior scene with four children blowing bubbles-- have the name "Edith" inscribed with ink on the verso. Several of the drawings were labelled by a child in block letters. One of the drawings was made on a sheet of paper that had previously been used to write notes on the Letters of Paul.

The drawings were enclosed in an Upsala College envelope labeled: "'Drawings of Edith & Elsie Pond when they were little girls in Syria.' (Be Sure To Save These)"

Biographical / Historical:

Theodore Strong Pond (1838-1923) was an evangelistic missionary who graduated from Hamilton College in 1860 and Andover Seminary in 1863. In 1866 he married Julia Ida Hanford (1846-1922), an 1864 graduate of the Rutgers Institute, and together they worked as missionaries with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Mardin, Turkey, from 1868 to 1873. From 1873 to 1890 they worked with the Syria Mission of the Presbyterian Church in Sidon and Abeih (Abey), Syria (current-day Lebanon). From 1883 to 1889 Theodore Pond operated a boys' boarding school in Sūq al Gharb. From 1891 to 1897, Theodore and Julia Pond served at a mission in Barranquilla, Colombia, and from 1897 to 1921 in Caracas, Venezuela.

They had at least three children: Jennie Chester Pond (1872-1921; m. Arthur H. Simpson), Theodore Hanford Pond (1873-1933; m. Marian G. Goff), and Edith Mary Pond (1877-1935; m. Manuel Ferrando).

Acquisition Information:
2022. M-7524.3 .
Arrangement:

Because the collection is largely undated and unsigned, the materials have been arranged by paper size and weight to group items together that may have been produced at roughly the same time.

Rules or Conventions:
Finding aid prepared using Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS)

Contents

Using These Materials

Info for Visitors

How to Request

Ordering Reproductions

Download PDF Finding Aid
RESTRICTIONS:

The collection is open for research.

USE & PERMISSIONS:

Copyright status is unknown

PREFERRED CITATION:

Pond Family Drawings, William L. Clements Library, The University of Michigan

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Collection

Pond family drawings, [ca. 1880s]
Total components 1
Last indexed 2025-02-09