Sarah Gooll Putnam and her diary

Born 19 March 1851 into a well-connected Boston family, Sarah Gooll Putnam showed an early interest in and aptitude for art. In a note appended to the first volume of Putnam's diary, 她的母亲, 哈丽雅特·普特南, 写, "She was very happy always, 自娱自乐. A great part of her time was spent in imagining herself a horse, and prancing around the shrubbery, 在努力成为一个 艺术家."

Sally Putnam fulfilled this early promise, becoming a respected portrait painter and watercolorist at a time when few women were able to pursue an artistic career. After studying art in 纽约, 慕尼黑, 和荷兰, Putnam painted many oil portraits of family members, 朋友, and other prominent Bostonians. Putnam's work was successfully exhibited in Boston, 纽约, 和芝加哥, including two shows at Boston's St. Botolph俱乐部, a Boston social club founded in 1880 that was the preeminent venue in Boston for exhibitions featuring both established and emerging artists.

Putnam was nine years old in November 1860 when she began her diary, which she kept until near her death at age sixty-one in 1912. In chronicling her daily life and extensive travels (including vacations at her family's summer homes in Andover and Nahant, 麻萨诸塞州, as well as several trips to Europe), Putnam illustrated her diary with numerous sketches and watercolors, beginning with her expressive childhood drawings and including copies of and sketches for her professional work. She also pasted photographs, postcards, and letters written while traveling into her diary.

What were the Aquarial花园?

After observing aquarial exhibitions during his travels in England in the 1850s, famed showman Phineas T. Barnum devised plans to offer similar entertainments in the United States. Barnum's American Museum in 纽约 featured aquarial exhibits as early as 1856, 1859年, 亨利·D. 巴特勒, one of Barnum's partners in the museum, joined with Boston inventor and aquarist James Ambrose Cutting to open the Boston Aquarial花园 on Bromfield Street. The first recorded aquarium that was not part of a larger institution, the Boston Aquarial花园 aimed to educate and entertain the public with displays of exotic marine life.

1860年10月, the renamed and expanded Boston Aquarial and Zoological Gardens moved to Central Court, 华盛顿街外. 一个巨大的中央水箱, twenty-five feet in diameter, ringed by fifty-six smaller tanks, dominated the street level of the hall, while the zoological department occupied the lower level. 典型的巴纳姆票价, including performing elephants, 训练有素的熊, 算命先生, and the white beluga whale described by Sally Putnam soon joined the educational exhibits of marine animals.

P. T. Barnum himself assumed ownership of the Gardens (renaming them "Barnum's Aquarial花园") in 1862. This new incarnation relied less on the aquarial attractions, featuring instead a "Great National Dog Show," followed by a Baby Show, visits from Barnum performers, 包括大拇指汤姆, and theatrical entertainments. Despite this diversification--or perhaps because of it--Barnum's Aquarial花园 closed in February 1863, possibly due to competition from the nearby Boston Museum and Gardens on Tremont Street. Barnum removed himself and the contents of the Aquarial花园 to his American Museum in 纽约, where the majority of the exhibits were destroyed in a fire in 1865.