Object of the Month June 2020

Helen West Stewart Ridgely's typewriter

NPS

Helen West Stewart Ridgely

NPS

Helen West Stewart Ridgely (1854-1829) of Hampton was eager to except modern technology, except for the introduction of electricity to the mansion. In addition to being a camera bug and owning automobiles, she began using a typewriter by the 1890s. This Underwood Standard No. 5 was probably the second model she acquired. She typed the manuscript to her second major published book, Historic Graves of Maryland and the District of Columbia (1908), on it.

Option to purchase Hampton.

NPS

The typewriter was still in use decades later when, in spring 1946, National Park Service Architect Charles Peterson and Donald Shepard, co-trustee of the Avalon Foundation, visited Hampton. Peterson later recalled that during that visit, the option for the NPS purchase of Hampton was typed “on a very old typewriter...in Mr. Ridgely’s bedroom…and a few minutes later it was signed.”