A hundred years ago Henry Heathcote Statham (1839-1924) and his wife, Florence Dicken Statham (1856-1938), sent this New Year’s card to their friends and family. The Dicken-Statham Family Papers have recently come to us, and so we share their New Year’s greeting with our readers.
The lines at the bottom of the card are from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Builders.”
Statham, or “H.H.S.,” as he appears in some publications, was an architect, author, and musician. He edited the journal “The Builder” for 20 years and was the author of several books, including a long-used textbook about architecture. Florence Dicken Statham was born in India to William Stephens Dicken, Deputy General Inspector of Hospitals for the East India Company in the middle of the 19th century. She raised a family of six children and wrote her own children’s book, “Flix and Flox,” a copy of which is in the collection.
The Dicken-Statham Family Papers document four generations in the the life of the family, covering topics such as the British Raj, World War I (the Stathams lost two sons, Arthur and Noel, in the war), family life in 19th-century England, and many other subjects. The collection contains correspondence, photographs, journals, and other unique documents that illustrate the family’s history. A future blog post will provide additional details.