The week in images

I thought about doing some short explanatory text, but I'll just let future Papergreat Scholars™ weigh in.

1955 swizzle party

I have zero idea why my grandmother or great-grandmother kept this invitation and pasted it into a scrapbook. It's for a one-hour "Swizzle Party" (there were some issues on the spelling) starting at 6:30 p.m. on May 23, 1955, at Waterloo House. I assume that just means a cocktail party, possibly with a focus on rum. That date was a Monday, which I guess is a little interesting.

On that date, the Page 1 banner two-deck headline in the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal screamed "PENTAGON REPORTED SHOCKED BY ADVANCES IN SOVIET AIR MIGHT." Perhaps a little too alarmist in retrospect?

Much lower on the front page is a one-column article with the headline: "GOV'T AWAITING FRESH ADVICE ON RESUMING SHOTS" This concerns the initial distribution of the polio vaccine. After Jonas Salk’s inactivated polio vaccine was declared safe and effective in April 1955, mass immunization began almost immediately. Several companies were licensed to produce the vaccine. Within weeks, however, cases of paralytic polio began appearing in children who had just been vaccinated. Investigations traced the problem to vaccine lots produced by Cutter Laboratories.  

Michael Fitzpatrick, writing for the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, further explains: "In April 1955 more than 200,000 children in five Western and mid-Western USA states received a polio vaccine in which the process of inactivating the live virus proved to be defective. Within days there were reports of paralysis and within a month the first mass vaccination programme against polio had to be abandoned. Subsequent investigations revealed that the vaccine, manufactured by the California-based family firm of Cutter Laboratories, had caused 40,000 cases of polio, leaving 200 children with varying degrees of paralysis and killing 10."

Tighter federal regulation and oversight soon remedied the situation and safe polio vaccinations resumed. The United States has been polio-free since 1979 and the Americas have been polio-free since 1994.

My family has a coat of arms?

Came across this small piece of paper in one of the endless envelopes...

COAT OF ARMS

The Coat of Arms of this Chandler Family was prepared by Miss Fanny Chandler, from an original cut and obtained, from an original obtained from the Herald's College, London, by the Rev. Thomas Bradbury Chandler, D.D., of Elizabeth Town, N.J., when he was there in 1775.

The crest borne on the closed helmet above the Coat of Arms is that of a Pelican in her nest, wounding her breast to feed her young with her own blood — an emblem of parental affection expressive of the family motto "AD — MORTEM FIDELIS". The mantle cut and jagged hanging from the helmet indicates the faithful service of the wearer; the gauntlet, his prowess.

Heraldic colors on the shield are designated by the direction of the lines.

"HE BEARETH CHECKIE, ARGENT AND AZURE, ON A BEND OF THE FIRST, SA., THREE LYONS PASSANT, GULES,"

BY THE NAME OF CHANDLER

So I'm guessing that my great-grandmother, Greta Miriam Chandler Adams (1894-1988), is related in some tangential way to Rev. Thomas Bradbury Chandler (1726-1790), which I could surely confirm if I took the time to sort through my grandmother Helen's genealogy papers and charts, written in her sometimes-hard-to-decipher cursive.

Corroboration concerning this coat of arms can be found, for now anyway, at this RootsWeb page. (Chandler was a moderately common surname in England, originally describing someone who made and sold candles.)

As far as the pelican feeding her young with her own blood, it's called vulning and it's a symbol with a deep religious history that I'm not nearly qualified enough to explain. Victoria Emily Jones, in a 2025 article on Art & Theology, explains how the pelican was "one of the most popular animal symbols for Christ in the Middle Ages" and that vulning has allegorical parallels to the spilling of Christ's blood on the cross giving life to his children. It's much more complicated than that, though, as Jones explains in the heavily-illustrated article. 

Additional information and artwork can be found at the Anglican Diocese of Canberra & Goulburn, the Center for Humans & Nature, and the Book of Traceable Heraldic Art.

(By the way, in the real world, pelicans do not actually wound themselves to feed blood to their young. They give them fish — sometimes regurgitated — and stuff.)

Sort-of related posts

• Teaser post: 1937's Chandler Pageant
• Historic Montoursville church is closing its doors
• Another day, another mystery ancestor photograph