“All Americans Must Be Trojans at Heart”: A Volunteer at Assos in 1881 Meets Heinrich Schliemann

Curtis Runnels, From the Archivist's Notebook, 01-07-2015

“He was an American citizen himself – and believed that all Americans must be Trojans at heart.”  The line above describes Heinrich Schliemann and comes from the personal diary of a young American who met Schliemann at Assos in 1881. Boston native Charles Wesley Bradley (1857-1884) graduated from Harvard in 1880, having studied classics and philosophy with Charles Eliot Norton, the founder of the Archaeological Institute of America and the driving force behind the first American excavations in classical lands at the site of Assos in northwestern Turkey. Bradley initially intended to read for the law, but chose instead to be one of the 50 applicants for a volunteer position on the Assos Expedition, leaving Boston in March of 1881 to join the group in Turkey. The project was directed by Joseph Thatcher Clarke, assisted by Francis H. Bacon, and the volunteers included Charles H. Walker, Joseph S. Diller, Edward Robinson, William C. Lawton, John H. Haynes, Maxwell Wrigley, and Norton’s eldest son, Eliot. (On Clarke, Bacon, and Assos, see also Allen 2002, pp. 63-92).

A diary kept by Bradley during his time at Assos has recently come into my possession along with some of his essays and manuscripts. These materials reveal Bradley’s ambitions to work up his archaeological and travel experiences in publishable form. There are well-crafted accounts of Bradley’s travels in Greece and Turkey that include descriptions of daily life, private homes, inns, and cafes, along with costumes, people, and local customs. They are engaging, often humorous, and very well observed. He also penned essays on the excavations at Assos and miscellaneous historical and archaeological sketches. Some of his essays were published in newspapers both before and after his return to Boston, for example his account of a visit to the Iliou Melathron, the Schliemanns’ home in Athens (“Dr. Schliemann at Home”) appeared in The New York Times on April 23, 1882.

More: http://nataliavogeikoff.com