“Janderized” — The Story of the Markings and Maimings of an Austin “Mister” in the GLO Archives
By: Texas General Land Office
Tags: History, Archive, Preservation, Texas

Beginning in the 1930s, the United States began to reckon with the large-scale threat that age presented to the voluminous historical record created by governments and agencies at the federal, state, and local levels. Competing remedies and innovations arose to counteract this threat. One approach, known as the Barrow Method, sandwiched documents between two pieces of cellulose acetate (a plastic-like substrate similar to camera film) by using heat and pressure to bind the parts together.[1] Texas was slow to adopt the Barrow Method, however, and it didn’t become widespread in the state until the 1950s. In the meantime, the GLO hired an elderly retiree who had a reputation in Austin as an authority on rare fabrics and textiles. His name was Harry G. Jander, and as the GLO came to find out, he was not all that he claimed to be.

Harry G. Jander in his home at 2400 Sabine. (Nolan Borden, Austin American-Statesman. March 3, 1959). AS-59–22006, Austin History Center, Austin Public Library.

Not much information is known as to how Jander came to work at the agency, but his role was intended to include the preservation of historical maps and documents in the GLO’s Archives. During his seven years working at the GLO, Jander treated an unknown number of maps and documents using a self-devised method. A small write-up on the wire service which resulted in statewide coverage of his method noted that “He has concocted a glue-like mixture which experts at the U.S. Bureau of Standards have tested and found very effective in preserving paper.”[2]

A subsequent profile of his work in the journal, Under Texas Skies, stated:

“The main part of Mr. Jander’s work is with old documents, letters, newspapers, maps, photographs, and parchment. The finest grade of nylon gauze is applied on one side to give body and strength to the old paper and then the formula is applied on both sides.[3] Ink or oil may even be poured on the treated article and washed off readily with soap and water. Mr. Jander, who has a Doctor’s degree but who says he is just a plain ‘mister’, has preserved thousands of documents, maps, books, … Much of Jander’s work has been done in The General Land Office, where, for seven years, he repaired and preserved thousands of old Spanish land grants, ancient field notes, maps drawn by O. Henry …, the Texas Muster Roll a 500 page Volume[4] … and many other valuable books in that department.”[5]

At this same time, Jander had an exhibition of his collection of rare fabrics at the Texas Memorial Museum, about which the Austin-American Statesman claimed, “There is a breathless quality to silks, satins and linens worked by nameless artisans of the past some of the pieces shimmering with threads of 24-carat gold, and the artistry of color and design is entrancing.”[6]

Regarding Jander himself, the newspaper described him thusly:

“As a University of London graduate, Jander went into a shop to serve his apprenticeship in decorating. The work took him into Buckingham Palace now and then and led not only to the Queen’s gift [of a diamond ring] but something as enduring as the diamond itself — the memory of a gracious woman.” According to Jander, “Her majesty once asked me where I was from, and when I said ‘Texas,’ she inquired, ‘Cowboy?’ I explained about that and then she said, ‘Ah, yes, the Republic of Texas.’ I explained that Texas was a state now, and she listened with great interest.”

This anecdote immediately raises questions, mostly because it sounds like humbug. The final paragraph of his profile in Under Texas Skies, which was removed from a later version in a subsequent issue, makes some truly incredible claims:

“Articles treated with this special formula have been subjected to labortory [sic] tests of 185° heat and light fifteen times the power of sunlight, two hours of such accelerated aging being the equivalent of one year of actual time. A one thousand hour test, or 500 years of actual time, has been used on paper treated with Jander’s special formula for preservation and the papers so treated have suffered no sign of deterioration or change in legibility. The application of the formula to printed or written material actually increased legibility by from 25 to 50 percent. The formula, a clear liquid, is really Jander’s secret since three labratories [sic] have failed to analyze it properly. However, since Mr. Jander has used it for more than ten years and upon thousands of old and deteriorating paper documents, thereby putting new legilibity [sic] and pliability into the paper as well as preserving them for all time, it is considered by those acquainted with this highly specialized type of work to be one of the best paper preservatives now in use. Papers treated with Jander’s formula can be folded or rolled, and, if framed, do not need a glass covering for protection.”[7]

To modern archivists and conservationists, this description of his formula would raise eyebrows, to say the least, and the claims put forward for its efficacy would be met with outright derision.

Closeup of Jander’s calling card on the verso of a map before conservation at NEDCC. Byrd Lockhart, Connected Map of DeWitt’s Colony compiled from the surveys of Byrd Lockhart, ca. 1831–1836, Map #1942, Map Collection, Archives and Records Program, Texas General Land Office, Austin, TX.

It should come as no surprise that the documents that Jander preserved with his “formula” suffered greatly. Over the years, they have cost the GLO tens of thousands of dollars in conservation treatments to undo the damage that was done. These “Janderized” documents, a term popularized at the GLO by Director of Technical Services, Susan Dorsey, are to this day easily spotted among the 45,000 maps in the GLO’s collection. Their trademark features include:

● The protective coating designed so that “silver fish, roaches, mice and all paper destroying insects or rodents shun paper treated with the formula as they would poison” had darkened to a rich brown color and become rigid and brittle.[8]

● Janderized maps bore a crisscross imprint of the nylon backing on the margins of the map and, in some cases, throughout.

● Jander used pinking shears to cut around the margins of maps and documents as seen on Lynn County Sketch File 12 below. Pinking shears are used, in appropriate circumstances, to prevent cut fabric from fraying.

● He affixed a pinking sheared note to the back or, if the document was small-format, occasionally wrote his name on it.

● A smell reminiscent of must, old wood, and chemicals.

[detail] W.E. Porterfield, Lynn County Sketch File 12, Map #30480, Map Collection, Archives and Records Program, Texas General Land Office, Austin, TX.

Jander failed to deacidify the maps that he treated with his formula.[9] The result is that they were encased, embalmed if you will, where the acid inherent in the map itself was trapped between the nylon backing and the dried solution. Instead of dissipating, the acid ate away at the paper the maps were printed on.[10] The damage inflicted on these maps and documents negated whatever expertise Jander claimed to have had in the article that he penned in Under Texas Skies.

[detail, before (top) and after (bottom) proper conservation was performed on a GLO map] Tom Green County, Austin: Texas General Land Office, ca. 1888, Map #16901, Map Collection, Archives and Records Program, Texas General Land Office, Austin.]

How Harry Jander was given free rein to work his formula on the historical records of the GLO is a question of credibility. Where did it come from? To answer that, we had to dig into his past and try to fact check his public statements.

One of the most oft-cited claims by Jander was that he was born in Palestine, Texas. In both public statements and in his civilian military file, Jander consistently counts Texas as his birthplace, when he was, in fact, born in Rockville, Indiana in 1882.[11] It is unclear when he and his family moved to Palestine, Texas. He remained in Palestine until his father died, and in 1911 he moved to Galveston where he took a job as a cashier at the Galveston Brewing Company.[12] In 1914, he pops up in Indianapolis as a bookkeeper before settling in his father’s hometown of St. Louis, Missouri in 1915.[13] Through city directories of St. Louis, we can see that Jander bounced around different clerical jobs before finding employment with Scruggs Department Store in 1921.[14]

During the war, while Jander was living at the YMCA, that organization was subsumed into the U.S. Army. Under the command of the Army, the YMCA functioned similarly to the USO by providing similar services such as canteens and recreational activities. In April 1918, Jander volunteered to go overseas with the YMCA. He traveled with the YMCA to France via the port of Liverpool as a civilian in September 1918[15] and returned to the U.S. in January 1919.[16] Though he would later claim to have met Queen Mary as an Army Sergeant, he was not, in fact, ever enlisted in the United States Army. For that matter, he didn’t even finish his assignment with the YMCA. As his YMCA punch card shows, Jander’s performance was deemed “unsatisfactory;” he did not receive a certificate or a “war book.”[17]

YMCA service card. A selection is indicated by the elongated cut between two small holes. For example, where the card reads, “Assn. Service Unsatis [assigned service unsatisfactory],” that designation appears to have been underlined.

His Registration Card dated October 9, 1918, further contradicts future public statements Jander made about his WWI service record throughout his life.[18]

Jander’s Selective Services registration card, dated October 9, 1918.

The third wave of the draft, enacted September 12, 1918, expanded the upper age range of draftees from 30 to 45 and compelled those who were not currently enlisted in the military to register.[19] Jander submitted his registration while active with the YMCA. On his draft card where it asks what, if any, previous military experience he had, he wrote, “none.” He was overseas with the YMCA when the War ended.

Returning to life in St. Louis working at Scruggs, Jander advanced to the position of decorator, the profession under which he was listed in the 1922 St. Louis city directory.[20] In 1931, at the age of 49, his position at Scruggs had changed from decorator to painter. The following year, he was listed as an interior decorator working out of his home.[21]

Auction notice placed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Feb 25, 1940. Mr. Donovan was, in fact, a real auctioneer.

In 1934, Jander moved out of the city and into the suburbs where he had his own interior decorating business. Newspaper articles from the 1930s record that he first lived in Grover, then Des Peres, Missouri, where he seemed to establish a stable life and business. He was active in local society and his business, though lacking a name, was referenced in newspaper articles from the time.[22,23] In 1940, however, the business closed, and Jander placed an advertisement in the local paper selling off all his stock by auction.[24] Later, an informant would claim, unsubstantiated, that Jander had left Missouri owing a year’s back rent on his business.[25]

From back in Palestine, Jander somehow convinced the administration of St. Edward’s University to hire him as an instructor in interior design for their new night school program in 1941. [26, 27] In 1942, he appears in the Austin city directory as a professor at St. Edward’s University and there are many newspaper articles in 1942 citing St. Edwards as Mr. Jander’s employer.[28, 29, 30]

Close up of article, “St. Edward’s Founded in 1871 by Rev. Sorin.” The Austin American, August 10, 1941. Jander could not be found in the “Columbia university alumni register, 1754–1931,” which includes attendees to the school that did not graduate.

However, by the fall semester of 1942, he was no longer employed by St. Edward’s, though he would continue to purport his affiliation with them in newsprint.[31] Jander continued to live on University campus housing throughout 1942 until there was a change in University administration. He was served an eviction letter the following year by new University President William Robinson.[32] Another informant later substantiated the fact that Jander overstayed at his place at St. Edward’s by a full year without paying rent.[33]

By the time he received that eviction notice in September 1943, Jander had already been transferred from Randolph Field in San Antonio to Bergstrom Air Field in Del Valle, just outside of Austin. At Bergstrom, Jander worked as a civilian employee for the military for the duration of the war. He started out as a general mechanic’s helper and was soon promoted to aircraft painter. He received a promotion in pay approximately every six months and on June 1, 1945, Jander was promoted to AC Painter & Doper.[34]

It was while Jander was living this unremarkable life (like most of us) that he created a parallel narrative about his past. Throughout the decades, Jander managed to amass quite a public record through notices in the St. Louis and Austin newspapers. The claims he made in print about his credentials built upon themselves over time. When he arrived in Austin in 1941, he was an educated WWI veteran. Five years passed and he claimed he was a sergeant in the U.S. Army during WWI who had adopted two French refugees as children. He suddenly had a master’s degree from Columbia University[35] and a Ph.D. from the University of London[36] and had worked at the famed Waring & Gillow furniture and decorator company.[37]