Uncovering Stories of Migration at the Mitchell Library

The Mitchell Library contains many stories of migration, refuge and movement of people, ranging from remarkable individuals such as Dr. James McCune Smith to whole communities of Irish, Italian and Jewish origins, to name but a few. Many of the stories treasured by the library celebrate resilience and cultural fusion, all enhanced by an unmistakably Glaswegian spirit. Others unveil much darker chapters in the city’s history, from newspaper adverts hunting down escaped enslaved people to records of segregation, mistrust of newcomers and racialised abuse. This short guide is created to highlight not only some of the individual stories accessible in the library, but to also suggest some of the ways in which you, the reader, can find stories of migration in the library’s Special Collections. Often it is not enough to type ‘migration’, ‘refugee’ or ‘migrant’ into a search bar and expect stories to appear before your eyes. Whilst not hidden, these stories can be obscured by search systems, cataloguing and indexing practices over centuries and the limits of just how much metadata can be provided for any specific item in the collection. Today we will try to present some of the ways in which you can think creatively about searching for migration stories, and to signpost specific resources that might help you find them.

There are several different ways of approaching stories of migration. One of them is zooming in on specific individuals who experienced migration and refuge, and tracing their presence in library collections and archives. An early example in the Mitchell Library’s collection is a copy of the Collections of travels through Turkey into Persia, and the East-Indies, Jean Baptiste Tavernier. Jean Baptiste Tavernier (1605–1689), French merchant and traveller, is best known for his six journeys to Persia and India, conducted between 1630 and 1668. Persia was a lucrative destination for European merchants and scholars in the early modern period. In England, the Shirley (Sherley) brothers were active in promoting Persia as a trading destination (and themselves as experts on it). Tavernier was born in Paris of a French or Flemish Huguenot family that had emigrated to Antwerp to escape persecution; they subsequently returned to Paris after the publication of the Edict of Nantes, which promised protection for French Protestants. Tavernier took various employment in Hungary, Mantua, Regensburg and other locations throughout the Holy Roman Empire in the 1620s, before travelling to the Levant in 1630. His farthest point in this first journey was the Persian city of Isfahan. His subsequent journeys took him as far as Pegu, in modern-day Myanmar. These last voyages secured for him a large fortune and great reputation at home. He was presented to the King of France, Louis XIV, and received patents of nobility on 16 February 1669. He was a European celebrity due to his travels and books. His last years were marred by the increasingly difficult position of Protestants in France, culminating in the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. In 1687, despite an edict prohibiting Protestants from leaving France, Tavernier left Paris and travelled to Switzerland. In 1689, he passed through Berlin and Copenhagen and entered Russia on a passport issued by the king of Sweden. Tavernier died in Moscow in 1689, at the age of eighty-four. Tavernier’s story shows that fame, money and high social status cannot fully shield people from religious or political persecution, and that refugees can come from all walks of life. Tavernier is one of the many individuals whose biographies reflect experiences of migration, and tracing such individuals who wrote and published books is one of many ways of uncovering migration stories in libraries.

Another way of looking for individuals is to adapt a thematic approach. In other words, think of a particular context in which people who crossed borders might have found themselves in any given historical period, and start searching for those people. Moving forward in time from the 17th to the 18th centuries and focusing on stories set closer to home, we can find examples of people whose migration to Glasgow was necessarily not out of their own volition. In cases like these, the library’s own search systems can be supplemented by external resources. For instance, a project helmed by the University of Glasgow did tremendous work on uncovering stories of escaped enslaved people, and the collections of the Mitchell Library formed a nucleus of that research (learn more here https://www.runaways.gla.ac.uk/database/). Although the 18th century newspapers where these stories appear are physically in the library, and the library search catalogue and collection aid will help you find that certain issues are available for consultation, they will not always have a breakdown of all the information contained in those papers. Using an external finding aid, you can discover stories such as that of a ‘North American Indian Boy, about 4 feet high, looking to be about 14 years of age, of a very tawny complexion [...] dressed in a hat, a red vest, and red under vest, black stocking breeches, bare footed’ and who ‘speaks English imperfectly’. He ‘strayed from his master's house in Glasgow’ on the 11th of August 1766, and that is the only time he appeared in historical records. In another example, a Black man called Thomas Diddy ‘ran off’ in April 1773, and the enslaver John Alton threatened all those who would aid him, stating that ‘shipmasters are hereby cautioned against carrying the said Negro abroad; and if any person harbours him, or assists him in making his escape, they will be prosecute therefor’. The existence of these people, and that of dozens others like them, demonstrates both the diversity of the population of 18th century Glasgow and the dark circumstances under which these people were brought into the city and were treated by their ‘masters’.

Some stories of Black Glasgow can uncover horrors of enslavement, and others demonstrate the city’s quest for justice for all. James McCune Smith (1813 – 1865), an American medical doctor, apothecary, abolitionist and author, was the first African American to earn a medical degree. He earned this at the University of Glasgow, as racial segregation prevented him from obtaining a degree following his studies at Columbia University and Geneva Medical College in New York. Whilst in Glasgow, McCune Smith was deeply involved in local abolitionist networks. The only item related to McCune Smith in the Mitchell’s collections is a printed copy of his ‘A lecture on the Haytien revolution’, delivered at the Stuyvesant Institute on the 26th of February 1841. In this case, it is not only the identity of the author, but the circumstances of the item’s donation that uncover the depth of the story of migration. The copy of the lecture was donated by the nephew of William Smeal (1792–1877), a Quaker, grocer and abolitionist from Glasgow who personally knew and supported McCune Smith. The lecture was donated as a part of a larger volume of bound essays, pamphlets and other texts about mid-19th century American politics, history and culture. This shows that migration stories can be teased out of provenance and donation histories, not just the texts themselves or stories of their authors.

One of the other very useful finding aids is the Glasgow Collections catalogue, exclusively accessible on a computer physically located in the library’s special collections. The catalogue includes detailed metadata on individual entries in the Glasgow scrapbooks - collections of newspaper and magazine snippets and other ephemera. You can find stories such as that of Jimmy Yih, the proprietor of Wah Yen, the very first Chinese eatery in Glasgow in the 1940s located in Govan Road. Using geographical locations or adjectives derived from them yields stories of businesses, diplomatic delegations and, sometimes, much more complex narratives. This search tool is also indexed to enable searches of longer texts. For example, a search for ‘West Indian’ yields the story of George Ross, 'West Indian and former slave', whose son was acquitted of the charge of mutiny 'with the help of Glasgow citizens', as recorded in Old Reminiscences of Glasgow 1868, volume 3. The fascinating story of Reverend George Rose, a Jamaican-born formerly enslaved Black Methodist preacher and former British soldier with 28 years of service, and his son, a sailor, also called George, emphasises the resilience of Glasgow citizenry. The story unfolded in March 1847. In short, the younger George and other sailors set off on the James Campbell, under the captainship of William Graham. The sailors were accused of mutiny and apprehended near Plymouth, to be confined to Exeter Castle, awaiting trial. This spurred a public campaign in Glasgow, aided by Peter McKenzie, the editor of Reformers' Gazette, to bring the sailors home and to alter their public image from that of mutineers to sailors with legitimate grievances against a despotic captain who broke the law in his treatment of his crew. The campaign was actively developed by George Rose/Ross the elder, and eventually managed to secure the sailors’ return and freedom. Rose himself moved to Jamaica, his birthplace, in 1849, and preached there till his death in 1873.

Another way to unlock the archives and special collections is to search materials by language, which often yields traces of migrant communities in the library’s collections. A fascinating example is Biblia, to iest; Wsystko pismo Swiete starego i nowego przymierza, a Polish Bible printed in Berlin in 1810. It is one of the few material remains of the small but influential Polish community in 19th century Glasgow. The collective striving for national freedom following the three partitions of Poland and her loss of statehood was an important part of both the practical activities of this community and its public image. The latter is reflected in the song, The Fair Land of Poland, printed in Glasgow in 1868 as a part of the Poet’s Box. This song demonstrates the utility of library finding aids as a source of information about migration. These aids can often be found on the library catalogue collection pages in the form of auxiliary PDF files. The collection itself might not be labelled as relevant to migration, but a closer look at its contents, often not itemised in the general catalogue, can tell a very different story. Poet’s Box Collection finding aid provides an alphabetical list of all the available songs, providing a snapshot of popular culture of the second half of the 19th century in Glasgow and the place of immigration in it. Many of the songs engage with the Irish community, one of the largest migrant communities in Glasgow which is notoriously difficult to trace in the library’s collections, mostly due to the lack of items produced by the community and donated and/or collected by the Mitchell.

One of the easiest ways to trace migrant communities’ histories in the collections is by exploring special collections items produced by that community, mostly in the form of newspapers and other periodicals by and for the specific community. Glasgow’s Italian and Jewish late 19th and early 20th communities are the most visible in the Mitchell’s collections. La Scozia, the Italian community newspaper, was the more short-lived out of the two. Published in 48 weekly issues in 1908, it showcases the life of the Italian community (in Italian). The Mitchell’s collections can help us contextualise the Italian Glasgowegian experience - many of the more general Glasgow newspapers covered various issues related to the community, from the moral panic regarding Italian ice cream parlours in the late 19th century to the mass deportations of people of Italian origin, including around 100 British citizens, to internment camps on the Isle of Man in the 1940s. Looking at La Scozia in isolation risks presenting a more triumphant narrative of multicultural acceptance and cultural prosperity, whereas contextualising individual sources provides a more three-dimensional picture of immigrant life in Glasgow. The Jewish community newspapers were more long-lived and numerous than the Italian ones. Both local papers, such as The Jewish Echo (1928-1992), and national ones, were in circulation in Glasgow and are preserved in the library. Additionally, the collection of Gorbals library, including hundreds of early 20th century books in Yiddish which circulated in the community, are now deposited in the Mitchell Library and provide a unique window into the cultural life of the community. The example of the Gorbals library demonstrates the utility of checking whole collections donated to or folded into the Mitchell’s depositories. Checking by geographical terms related to historical parts of Glasgow with long-lasting immigrant histories can yield untold treasure troves!

Finally, although the Mitchell Library is primarily a depository of books, newspapers, photographs, ephemera and related manuscript and printed materials, it does also host material culture objects. As an example, the library has a small collection of Islamic tartan. The Scottish academic Dr Azeem Ibrahim, developed the concept of an Islamic Tartan after consulting leading Islamic scholars around the world - Shaikh Humza Yousaf, Imam Zaid Shakir and Dr Umar Abd-Allah. In Scotland, he sought advice from Shaikh Amer Jamil, Scotland's leading Islamic scholar. Dr Ibrahim also engaged the services of top tartan designers in Scotland, including the world's last specialist mill weaving only authentic traditional quality tartans. Using only original production methods on traditional shuttle looms, the weavers maintain the rich heritage of Scottish tartan with integrity and reverence for tradition. (this description is provided by Glasgow Live). This example demonstrates that although most of the full collections in the Mitchell are not directly related to immigration, some are, and it is worth going through all of them to find something that might interest in you in your quest for Glasgow’s migration history (https://libcat.csglasgow.org/web/arena/collections).