The Hoover Institution Library & Archives flour sack collection

On May 19th, 2022, I left Amsterdam Airport Schiphol to go to the United States for my six-week American sack trip. First stop was Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, to do research at the Hoover Institution Library and Archives (HILA).

Exactly one year later, on social media, I reported daily on my journey via retrospectives and updates on my Instagram account @floursacksww1 en Facebook pagina Annelien van Kempen.

My wish was to examine all decorated flour sacks from WWI on site. But would that work? What would it result in?
Since 2019 I have been in contact with the archivists to discover which collection HILA is keeping. One thing became clear to me: there were no exact data. The online archive information was limited, but they sent me some photographs.
Through contact with Evelyn McMillan, expert in war lace and great connoisseur of the decorated flour sacks, retired staff member at Stanford University, I received extremely detailed and useful information.
In collaboration with Evelyn, I prepared my American Sack Trip, specifically the research in HILA.

New constructions and Covid in Palo Alto

The problem for the HILA employees, working at the Stanford University campus in Palo Alto, was that part of their archives had been temporarily moved to large warehouses across the San Francisco Bay due to reconstruction. Trucks with trailers drove up and down daily to deliver archive boxes to researchers in the HILA Reading Room. Decorated flour sacks would only be brought with the trucks if the archive boxes were requested in good time.
And due to Covid, the Reading Room was still closed to outside researchers at the time I submitted my research request.
In addition, the Herbert Hoover Subject Collection, Box 392, which houses the decorated flour sacks, was and is closed to researchers. Fortunately, the HILA staff were willing to make an exception for me, a researcher from the Netherlands. However, it was uncertain whether there would be enough staff available to give me the necessary assistance in examining the flour sacks, I would probably only have access to three or four boxes.
I decided to take the risk and went to California.

My motivation for researching all flour sacks
Once in the Reading Room of the Hoover Institution, the HILA staff invited me to present my project. I motivated my request to examine all flour sacks in the HILA collection:

*) in my research I consider both the HILA flour sack collection and the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum (HHPLM) flour sack collection to be one large American “Hoover collection”. HHPLM has invited me to examine their entire collection, I had been awarded with a Travel Grant from the Hoover Presidential Foundation. The large “Hoover Collection” originated in HILA around 1920 when the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) archives were formed. Before traveling to HHPLM I wanted to research the HILA collection, where it all started, then take the results with me to Iowa.

*) In four years of research I have mapped all Belgian public collections in my Register of Flour Sacks. The purpose of my American Sack Trip is to add the American collections to this Register. They are a special part of the collection, as they consist of the sacks that have returned to North America, the continent from which they were initially shipped, filled with flour. My offer to HILA was to use my expertise to contribute to the knowledge about the collection, to make an inventory of the HILA collection and to put the data in a spreadsheet for various statistics.

*) With my research I want to highlight the importance of the role of girls and women in food aid for the Belgian population in 1914-1918. In the HILA collection, each decorated flour sack is handmade, a unique, individual piece of work by Belgian girls and young women. I want to know the names of the embroiderers; I work with Hubert Bovens in Wilsele, Belgium, to determine their identity based on their biographical data. If I only examine a few sacks, then I am missing out on all those Belgian girls who have worked to decorate the sacks.

 

A day and a half of flour sack research
My plea was successful. Rayan Ghazal, head of the Preservation Lab, invited me to start my research of the decorated flour sacks in the HILA collection in the Preservation Lab, the workshop under the Hoover Tower.

Together with two experienced and skilled staff members, Laurent Cruveillier, book and paper curator, and Kurtis Kekkonen, restoration specialist, we photographed forty flour sacks in one afternoon!
And I was invited to come back the next day.

On day two we continued our work. We wanted to study all the boxes of decorated flour sacks, but we didn’t know how many sacks they contained.

We were done at five o’clock, we appeared to have seen and photographed over 120 items. That, added to the previous day’s result, gave me a total of 167 decorated flour sacks in the collection of the Hoover Institution Library & Archives. [1]

A unique flour sack survey in a day and a half! Now that these flour sacks have been photographed, I realize that it is unlikely they will reappear at the same time in the near future.

Statistics HILA flour sack collection
With all the data obtained, I set to work creating the HILA Inventory List, a spreadsheet listing all the characteristics of value to my research. The photos I had taken were very helpful. After one Saturday of intense work the spreadsheet was ready to be sent to the HILA archivist.

Conclusion
Some findings about the HILA collection of decorated flour sacks from WWI:

• All flour sacks are processed; I did not register any unprocessed sacks.
• The origin of the flour sacks is printed and traceable on 90% of the sacks, they originate from 22 states, several American relief organizations, and some Canadian provinces.

  

• The HILA collection includes flour sacks decorated in eight of Belgium’s nine provinces. More than 40% come from Brussels – from girls’ schools. The province of Liège is missing from the list, there may be specimens in “Belgium other”.

  

• Nearly 70 flour sacks have been processed in Belgian girls’ schools, mainly in Brussels. The school of the Sœurs de Notre-Dame in Anderlecht takes the crown with 38 sacks, which is 25% of the entire HILA collection.

  

• More than 50 flour sacks were decorated by young, sometimes professional, needleworkers for the benefit of the local relief committee or by order of the committee or the municipality.
• The name of the Belgian maker is mentioned on forty items. That is why I have created the new page ‘Embroiderers’ on my blog website. The names are listed. The biographical data are the result of research by Hubert Bovens in Wilsele, Belgium.

Class photos
The HILA archives revealed envelopes full of class photos of Belgian schoolgirls in 1915. Girls this age spent some of their time at school decorating the flour sacks.
That is why I use the class photos as an illustration to evoke the atmosphere of that time.[2]

Cuvelier, Ecole Morichar, Saint-Gilles. Flour sack American Commission, embroidered, painted, 1915. “L’Union Fait La Force”. With drawn portraits of Queen Elisabeth, King Albert, and the Belgian lion. HILA 62008 box 19.3. Photo: author

Thanks to:
– The HILA staff who made my research of the flour sack collection possible: Rayan Ghazal, Laurent Cruveillier, Kurtis Kekkonen, Jessica Lemieux, Chris Marino, Katherine Ramirez, Linda Bernard, Samira Bozorgi and many others!
– Evelyn McMillan for making my stay possible, her reflections, interventions, and above all her generous hospitality.
– Elena S. Danielson for sharing her expertise and giving moral support.
– Hubert Bovens in Wilsele, Belgium, for his research into the biographical data of the embroiderers.

More blogs on HILA’s flour sack collection
More blogs on the decorated flour sacks at Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California:

De Getelinie op bloemzak in de Warren Gregory collectie  (The Getelinie on flour sacks in the Warren Gregory collection)

Eight students in St-Gilles on American Commission flour sacks

Rassenfosse’s hiercheuse op meelzak in Hoover Institution (The Rassenfosse hiercheuse flour sack in the Hoover Institution)

Beschilderde meelzakken in de Hoover Institution (Painted flour sacks at the Hoover Institution)

De trouwdag van Maria Gauquie en Hector Impe en de kanten bloemzak van Tielt (The wedding day of Maria Gauquie x Hector Impe and the Tielt’s lace flour sack)

Footnotes:
[1] Without doubt, the HILA flour sack collection is larger than the 167 items I have seen and photographed. For instance, there are several very interesting painted flour sacks by Belgian well-known artists; there is the beautiful lace decorated “Zephyr” flour sack from the Belgian town of Tielt; and some more items.

[2] Hoover Institution Library and Archives – consulted archives:
– Frederick H. Chatfield Papers box 53008 envelope mB;
– Herbert Hoover Subject Collection 62008 envelope N;
– Commission for Relief in Belgium 1914-1930 22003-10.A-V box 632 enveloppe KK;
– CRB-records 22003 box 625.