Guide to the Anthony W. Pendergast Collection

Scope and Contents

The collection documents Dr. Pendergast's interest in and work with cigar store figures as well as some of his other folk art collections. Included among the materials are correspondence, photographs of cigar store figures, and books on the subject. There are also articles and clippings about Dr. Pendergast and his collections and about cigar store figures in general, a scrapbook of photographs of figures, miscellaneous clippings, advertisements, business cards, postcards, and an inventory list.

Arrangement

Collection is arranged into one series.

Biographical / Historical

A Fairbury, Illinois, optometrist, Dr. Anthony W. Pendergast, (1879-?) was a collector, author, antiquarian, dealer, and authority on the subject of cigar store figures. As a newsboy in his youth, Pendergast was fascinated by the cigar store "Indians" he saw all around the streets of his home town. In their book on the cigar store figure, Dr. Pendergast and co-author W. Porter Ware state that the earliest evidence of cigar store figures dates them to as early as 1600 in the city of Amsterdam, where a tobacconist's shop had a figure of an American black slave as his sign, because of the association between slaves and tobacco. The tradition was continued in England and the figures began to look more like American Indians, usually with feathered headdresses, often holding a pipe or a roll of tobacco leaves. Not all the figures were of Indians or of slaves. As their popularity spread, "Turks," "Moors," Scotsmen, jockeys, Roman figures, mythological figures, and others were used. Antiquarian John L. Morrison, cited by Mr. Pendergast in his 1953 book Cigar Store Figures, states that the first appearance of a cigar store "Indian" in America was in 1770 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. By the latter half of the nineteenth century the cigar store figure (usually an Indian) was as much a symbol of the tobacco trade as the barber pole was of barber shops. Mr. Pendergast owned at least two hundred figures during his lifetime and was a noted expert on the genre. He sold many figures to other collectors and had a workshop where he repaired and reconditioned the figures.