Online at cspan. Org history. This is what democracy looks like. Good evening and hello. Is everyone good tonight . I am the marketing director here and curious, how many peoplee haveom gone, got caught and we l know it is glorious so is the secret. But before we getea to the meatf the evening, i want to do some housekeeping, this is where i tell you to turn off your phone. We have shes been a we are happy to have them and Live Streaming on youtube which is why we have a microphone and i have some other housekeeping things. If you are here tonight, we are so happy youre here in the storee so we have a counter her, it is womens historyry month. If you other housekeeping things, i am just going to introduce a few minutes, why to talk for a good 20, 30 minutes, the book and afterwards we going to ask if you have any questions, theres aho microphoe and we ask you to come up and ask the question to the mike for a couple of reasons. First of all, so you can be heard and also so it can be heard on video with the audience. You have to buy the book. After we do the q a thats critical. This is one of the few inperson events shes doing so get it while you can. Im very excited about the Cherry Blossom which i never do but this felt more blossom me but i do know 111 years ago firstll lady nelly and a small delegation with their shovels planting the trees we now see rising and that was the beginning of what became the. This was the name on everyone but we dont know her now im not so im excited to hear about. This is what happened but she was prolific beyond belief and was in newspapers and magazines and also is on National Geographic and i dont understand how she did and i dont understand why we dont know more about her now. Diana is a former journalist who worked at National Geographic and was at the National Institutes of health and americant association and Washington Post and lives here in town and we are happy to have her tonight. [applause] it is a delight to be here. This is special to any offer and we all know that so i felt honored to be here tonight. Windy stoma introduction a little bit because i wanted to start by telling you today is a special day because it was exactly 111 years ago today the first trees were planted out of a batch of 3000 trees donated from japan and i will tell you that story but i want to again reiterate what she told you. Thisst is the most amazing woman youve never heard of. If we read, ive been living almost ten years, why havent we known more about her . A critical figure bringing the cherry trees to washington and she had a remarkable career apart not and then essentially disappeared so why has that happened . D it wasnt your in washington, i was working in indonesia 15 years ago and i brought a reprint of 1897 travelogue the garden of the east by someone named e are sick more and i read this and was impressed how it held up. A lot of the things i read, i had seen myself, the descriptions were vivid and informed and i found the voice engaging so i naturally wondered, who was the sky and what took him to java 100 years ago . I went to wikipedia and did a blown and was totally away. There were not many details about her but tells me the author was an american woman. The first person elected toeo te board of National Geographic in 1892 and then i read she is widely credited and introduced the idea of washington. So i was naturally curious. One thing about her involvement, what inspired her and how it came about but it was her story is a woman that intrigued me, how did a woman of her era managed to achieve all the things she did . When i set out to find more, it was personal curiosity, i did not have in mind the time writing a book, i had never written a book but it was a story and i was astonished about the information i found. At first it was slow going. She appeared in biographical index, about two dozen which told me she was an important personn in her day. Im copies of the book, the original copy. I found her journalism but there is nothing on her personal life and no biography so i started piecing clues together and following that seeing where that would take me. I started to go down to the Library Conference three days a week and just going. I didnt find a lot but then a huge breakthrough. One day, i dont know how, i was a couple of years into the research but i discovered she had her journalism under a pen name so ive beenth doing these are just and it eludes me because of the name. Once i discovered she wrote into her middle name, her middle name and grandmothers name once i started searching, i found a lot of material. 800 newspapers and magazinear articles in her lifetime. Two things in particular that i found surprising and the first one was a record as a journalist. She became a journalist at the age of 19 in 1876, think about that. 1876 and this was well before women started going to work for newspapers like the 1880s when they began hired in significant numbers. It was interesting to find it was a vibrant group of women correspondents in washington d. C. During the gilded age. One of the things they were doing was run more news but thec wanted women correspondents because you know from the gilded age thought was extravagant in washington, a lot of entertaining and all of these billionaire politicians trying to outdo one another so entertaining was launched and felt we need women can describe that and who knew these social protocols of entertaining in washington so there were a couple dozen women in washington writing for newspapers around the country and we are not talking philadelphia or new york, they were from sacramento and albany and syracuse so a couple dozen and some were actually credential to the galleries on capitol hill. I had never heard any of this and this was and she got a job working in society and wrote for about ten years and its a little different and it was rage from around december 1 when congress started meeting. Several times she would report on destinations that most americans never see in their lifetime so by doing this, combining recordings and travel writings, she ended up making more money than some men in washington. It was an indication of enterprise and her hard work ethics. So in one of the trips she took, she left california and went there several times and went to alaska in 1883. Alaska had onlyof been part of e United States 16 years. People in america knew nothing about alaska. An interesting glazier and so 1879 and 1880 made trips to alaska to study glaciers. He traveled around the area and a canoe with the assistancest of half a dozen native americans and native alaskans so elijah read about his troubles so decides shes going to alaska so she goes to alaska and that was the only way to get through alaska, go up the thousand mile passagey all the way up to the panhandle so she did that and that turned out to be short because her captain decided to take the detour. That detour went up to glacier bay. They had never carried tours on before so she was one of the first people ever step foot on a glacier. She went back the following summer and repeated that trip and then turned dispatchers into the first travelogue on alaska so that was 1885 and went on to write about alaska about 15 years so together with these books these were the people who promote tourism for the first time in the late 1990s so this is part of the legacy and its a pretty big one. Now we get to the next milestone in her story, she goes to japan for the first time. That happens in 1885, the same year her alaska book came out so why japan . Spent most of his 39 career in asia and most of the time in japan and 1885, elijah and her mother went up to visit george and it became lifechanging for both of them. Decides to live in japan with her son this gives eliza parttime in japan. She started writing about japan and wrote an influential book on japan published in 1891 and she became recognized in america as an authority on japan, something people in america knew almost nothing about at the time. Psychologist, she traveled around berkshire asia so she wrote books on japan, china, india. She wrote for many major magazines of the day so she had an extraordinary record and one hunting in the book is an episode where she can suck in the philippines after the spanishamerican war in 1899 and today she arrives as an introduction and it cant be true because this is why i have compared her, she rubbed elbows with a lot of famous people and eyewitness to many historicto events so she became an expert on pan and that is where she got the idea. A couple of other things about her gosh she became the first woman elected to the board of National Geographic and was founded in 1888 and joined around 1890 and i was so impressed by her reporting on alaska that they elected her secretary of the society which made her first woman ever to serve on the board. Kodak just invented the box camera in 1888 so the first evidence i found was 1890 on a trip toas alaska taking photographs of John M Mueller at his cabin he built. Not only did she photograph them, she developed friendship with him andsh his wife and she even stayed in his cabin with a group of friends so this woman, she didnt waste any opportunity so she went on and wrote about a dozen articles contributed many photographs over the years and some of them were hers and others were collected in her travel. The most important female figure in the early history of National Geographic. She became an activist in the Early Conservation Movement and this grew out of her relationship with john mueller emerging as a figurehead of the u. S. Conservation movement and wrote a couple of influential articles on preservation. She was an activist in the national park. Finally, this is another thing in and my discovery of her, i came to find out a number of scholars credited her as one of a handful of writers who opened china to mass tourism of the 19th century so any she wrote a book on china and i could wrap that up in a page and a half but as i started finding these letters shes writing to her editor, it was amazing because she went to china probably a dozen times and she had her finger onal the full of all kins of turmoil happening in china at the time so wrote her book on china and it was published summer of 1900 at the same time the rebellion was happening so this was a woman so on top of things so part of the had to be a whole chapter because there is so much the so astounded me i think as you can tell and it ended up taking me ten years to write her story and part of that was constant discovery and i know this is only the beginning of the story. It is heavily footnoted because of the obligation to document my sources because other scholars and researchers can now take those sources and take the story further and a lot of questions of course i can answer about her, did she have romantic relationships . I cant answer the. If not, i look forward to somebody coming up with more enlightening answers to that question. So how did this involvement of the cherry trees come about . A lot of people were involved in the and the story has gotten muddied over the years because it is a complicated story so with people involved, it happened over many years and more than one batch of trees so its been kind of confusing so part of what i do in the book was sort out events the best i could based on Available Evidence to find out the origin of the cherry tree. One interesting thing i discovered is Eliza Skidmore journalistic career was very heavy influential shaping her vision of the trees as we know today. A party told you she went to japan in 1885 for the first time so sometime in the 1880s she got this idea washington should have terry trees. She loved them and called them the most beautiful thing in the world and said why dont we have these in American Cities and parks . We need to introduce americans and what better place than the Nations Capital which has growing tourism . Its interesting what happened when i was researching the book reading about career as a correspondent and it came upon one of her columns and it was published in november, 1883 and this was before shed gone to japan so described for the readers in st. Louis is writing for, she went off to the national law to report on this project the army corps of engineers just t started to turn this swampy area down by the Washington Monument into a public park. It was the wasteland, a river would come almost a two the bay of Washington Monument. People complained for years, it was nasty and smelly so they finally said we are going to fill in the land and create a public park. She goes to the National Mall in november, 1883 and rise to the top of the Washington Monument which is still under construction and asked to ride the elevator which the workmen used to carry the material and was an elevator that had a cage, open sided case which swing out and drop these stones into place so she rides to the top and describes that. She gets to the top and looks down s and sees this area thats just the beginning and said in her column, one day this is going to be the largest most beautiful park in the city, a place of magnificent administration so is tells us by the time she went to japan a few years later she alreadyea had in the back of her mind, idea of a place in washington that would be perfect for the trees so that forced me to rewrite a portion of because the book will be about cherry trees but this pushes that story because then we see the evolution of her vision so she came back to washington and goes to the men in charge of the park and suggests they should plant cherry trees and they listened to her and heard her out and then ignored her. These were army corps of engineers officials trained at west point, they were very conventional in their ideas on what the landscaping should be it didnt include cherry trees. They were exotic, you know . She tried probably at least three over the years and finally it came in 1909 when she came to the white house so William Howard taft, they were interested in the development. The land had been building and they were advocates of the project because they believed in the idea of having a large beautiful park for Public Recreation so shed been trained a musician, she decided she would build the stand along the river and a place for public and people from all walks of life could come enjoy the t music. This sounded along like that wah already proposed terms of creating Cherry Tree Park along the river so what she heard, she sent a note seeking encouragement to include cherry trees and she lived in japan for a while, great appreciation of Japanese Culture just on the idea so suddenly they are partnered in this project so it was very exciting for me to find some documents in my research i havent seen published anywhere else but told me eliza was the intermediary between missus taft and the japanese who offered to donate several thousand trees so there were letters thatrs showed elizas writing to the japanese counsel and new york city and say i just came from a meeting with missus taft and she would love to accept your offer of the trees. If you know the story, you know treesy came and were found to be invested and they destroyed the entire batch. They have storehouses but they came back and said we will send a replacement back which they did, grown under pristine conditions and it took another year end a half or two years so finally in the spring of 1912 and this is how it arrived in washington. 111 years ago today organizing a little dedication ceremony and the planting of the first of the trees she invited the japanese ambassador and his wife and eliza. She was in her 50s when she finally saw the realization of the dream she had and time for almost 30 years. Im going to stop there and i think ive given you the basics and we want to have time for questions and a reading from the book but i hope you enjoy the book. An amazing person and this enabled me to live with her for ten years with a constant process of discovery and keep finding out these things about her and i cant wait until i learned more once people have the beginnings of the records that lead us into Greater Knowledge so thank you. [applause] thank you so much. I am curious the history of the Foreign Correspondent in china and indonesia and all of these places. At the time does a lot of attitudes from the west toward these places so im wondering to what extent you buy into those. She was quite a humanitarian in the outlook and i do see that in a lot of her writings but she was a product of her day so she did also at times have the materialistic attitude so i do address that in the book, she uses language and expresses attitude that would be considered racist but at the same time, there are situations you can see she was very much humanitarian. As an example, early in her career there was criticism of chinese laborers on the west coast and she was appalled by the. These are hardworking people and on and on but she went to china and was appalled of the conditions in china so one of the bigs distinctions is she ws a egalitarian when itt came to individuals but as was appalled by regional, Institutions Holding back. So it was based on the situation. I didnt hear from her but i did read the correspondence on both sides and these have to be destroyed, a threat to u. S. Agriculture so it went back and forth and in the end, the japanese were gracious and we understand the need to do this so we wouldnt have wanted to create any problem we know it is difficult but appreciate the situation. It is great to be part of this culmination, both members of the roundtable and people talking about women who need to be discovered and i know when you explore this topic, it was the 100th anniversary and found many things interesting to the extent in which you are comfortable. The use ofd, getting this published. The thing was sarah and i were in a womans history discussion book so when i went there and started researching, why are the records so scared . And they were not worthy of being documented and i said a lot of womens history turns up in the papers of the men in the lives will be filed away in a filed older and in my case ien ended up finding records about her and two dozen Institutions School of them happened and journalism was overlooked because Research Methods have changed over the years, we are more digitized. People think you can find on the internet but what the internet can do, you can use these techniques to find records in the newspaper record, she written this newspaper 100 years ago, they existed and they were not coming jetblue phone them. They was a collection of techniques but this is a huge problem in researching womens lives. Congratulations on that but one question i have talking about how it fits into cherry tree journey. Because its comes up was a child of the u. S. Department of agriculture, he made his name by becoming a planned explorer so this meant he would travel around the world looking for nonnative varieties that could be imported to the United States to expand the agricultural crop and horticultural crops so he knew him, hes gone, a year or so after she did and wrote in 189712 for it was very knowledgeablee and arranged to have her appointed, an official collaborator collection in china and japan and wrote in the letter and said nobody, more people in china and japan but he around 19 or two or so independently, cherry trees and was taken. He brought them to the home and have 100 or so important to study and see how they would do in the washington area. He and his wife became allies and organize a Publicity Campaign in 1908 i believe it was to try to bring the cherry trees and they pursued this idea of the time and is interesting because found evidence they wrote at the same time the child was sending a letter to the army corps of engineers official and i found out his letter sat on the desk for two weeks and in the meantime missus taft went into the project and runs with it so it was interesting and thing in the if they were in competition, that is an openended question and i had to leave that in the book but this is to the situation. It seems from the records over the years neither one of them refer much to the other contribution, speculating but that is my take. Thank you. On behalf of those of us from the tourism industry, i cant tell you how exciting it is to have a book about eliza and we talked about her as much as we can but this is so great but im curious as the traveler she was about her trip to asia, did you find evidence of her traveling to places like latin america or africa . I did not. I didnt mention she became an art collector, collector of asian arts and ended up having reflection on 250 pieces and some pretty viable. She went to europe another times and early in the career she went to europe several times and later in her life she went to europe and they date back to this and they were in england and they are no longer in the family but there is a picture of it and write and went back after the war and did reporting in the correspondent to work. The japanese were, she was in the civil war and spanish american war and then world war i. She did a lot of reporting in these efforts and they move to europe and part of this came from an act passed in 1824 that excluded the japanese from being allowed citizenry in the United States this exclusion act and she was considered a friend of japan and this gave her a medal, the highest civilian metal for her favorable reporting on the country and was considered a friend so she went to europe and moved and became a fan of the league of nations and died in europe in 1928 and actions were carried to where her mother and brother were buried so this was part of the reason she disappeared. Just kind of disappeared. She was the one who introduced the idea but her old history was overlooked. Other questions . For their single woman traveling, did you encounter evidence of resistance . I couldnt find evidence of resistance, she and i for whatever, shes traveling with. There are times traveling with her mother but other times traveling with a local native and she would hire interpreters and people to accompany her so a little both as usual to travel alone but later in her life she was very established and was less than usual. But she did have help but she spoke the japanese language and her brother being in japan, meant she had access to these privileges though shes collecting, she can take it home cheaper than you or i could. This helps explain some of this situation that enabled her to travel places people in japan would not have gone to. The major secretary of the geographic board, traditional board coming across tension or her role with the leadership . We can say its because she was a woman but what better person to elect an organization . Is also a gogetter and defender, there is an incident in the book where it has to do National Geographic spends this to alaska so she catches wind of this and these guys come back in north america or whatever and they come back and going back to washington to report the findings. One of the people in the expedition he kind of blows cover and start going in california and a typographer getting credit and was curious about this. Writing in the column and mailing this guy in her column so they are defending and they were defending so they close and says hey, you need to interview this and they did. The scientist who led his expedition so it is clear to them this is a woman who gets things done and when you think about an organization depends on volunteers was the right person at the right time and became an important person over the years. In the Photography Department wasnt she involved in the creation her work with the geographic came after the early 1900s and one reason for that is that t they are and he change te format. They were geologists in the articles. He says we have got to change this magazine and if we attract people to become, weve got to do something about this magazine and this format, he finds this issue coming out and he has these pages and says what am i going to do . He has this photograph that comes across the desk but were these amazing photographs and he runs 11 photographs and this has never been done before and people were so excited the magazine took off overnight so there was this formula thats going to be over the next century. He hes got to fill these pages so traveling in japan and china and korea and got her out there looking for photographs. Have acquired photographs with these sources and a pack of 15 and i love them and want more and having these hand colored in this National Geographic for the first time running color photography and its running into color and this opportunity. The technology and the cost but they did and working closely with him. So i have 20 chapters and is like a not going to cover the in passing and i would get into it and the correspondent ended up, the real value of the record was about 160 letters she wrote to her editor in new york of this magazine became a writer for the magazine and it was considered top magazine of the day. Everybody read on down. It was a lot of her work and all the letters to the editor, they were fun to read. Also gossipy so it was an important source. What kind ofof personality . She actually came to washington as a child and in wisconsin, wonderful gossip in thehe book where it ended up beg interesting and two of them were failed marriages including 1848 and when i found the evidence, it was amazing because i knew there was something questionable about this. The third marriage was elizas father soco mom comes to d. C. Ad eliza close up here so shes raised by her single mother and mom ran a boardinghouse and got a job at the treasury so that was ran for a couple of years and didnt graduate but she was so precocious when she went to the visitation, she was only there like a couple of years and might have gone there longer. The first year she went, there were records that show high marked prizes reading geography. She told an interviewer as a child loved playing with mobs and a global. I was always planning journeys she said. So this was something that was an interest from a young age. Later you can see in these letters i refer to, she is witty, she had a tendency to traumatize things and exaggerate things but i think she mustve been a lot of fun because she seemed to have friends wherever she went. That was the thing about her, she had friends in high places get should be traveling under what we consider extraordinarily primitive conditions so she had this ability to ease her way into the world but seems like a likable person and a moving letter after her death where her friends are saying i cant believe we lost this wonderful sunny, optimistic person so see comments like that, they tell you how admired and well liked she was so a pain in the butt because she was a strong woman but also i think was a likable person. Im curious when she was persuading army guys, there must have been concern there about could the trees survive . When it became clear washington was going to get cherry trees she wrote probably the most important article that hadee ben published at that point, because americans knew nothing about cherry trees and this was l history about the cherry trees and about how, about what talented gardeners, as the japanese were, and how come she called the wizards, that they were wizards who could take something in nature and transform it, and the cherry trees were an example. She picked up her knowledge over the years. But the fact that David Fairchild was even impressed with her knowledge of plants is an indication period it was research. Shes just some but he was curious and she found out things, which became quite clear, and in whatever she wrote she studied it to do after she took up this interesting japanese morning glories, entry ended up writing, she starts rolling them at their house in japan and she ends up writing a 35 page scientific paper that she delivered to the Japan Society in london and then had this published in its journal. So this just goes to show she was like a dog. She would chew on this bone and keep out something, which tells us about her persistence and not quitting that idea on the cherry trees. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you all for coming. [applause] weekends on cspan2 are an intellectual feast. Every saturday american htc documents american stories, and on sundays booktv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. Funding for cspan2 comes from these Television Companies and more including comcast. Are you thinking this is just a Community Center . 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