[1920s FRIESTEDT FAMILY HOME MOVIES BATTLEFIELDS LA JOLLA PHILADELPHIA HAVANA, CUBA R2 ]

Genre: home movie

Year Published: 1920s

Description: These silent black and white home movies dated 1928-1930 from Arthur A. Friestedt and family open with a visit to Southern California (continued from Reel 1), then proceed to a history buff’s tour of the United States’ Civil War battlefields and national landmarks. The film concludes in Havana, Cuba (TRT: 57:22). Friestedt was the owner of the United States Music Company, a leading publisher of piano roll music for player pianos. His father Luther Friestedt was a member of the Sons of the American Revolution and an inventor who held patents for steel sheet pilings, among other things. A U.S. destroyer, the USS Mervine (DD-322), the scout cruiser USS Omaha entering San Diego Bay. Submarines in the channel. Rockwell Field (0:09). La Jolla, CA. A panorama reveals a garden, palm trees, the family automobile, coastal shoreline. A Pacific vista (1:21). Mission San Luis Rey de Francia near Oceanside (2:45). Mission San Juan Capistrano. Brick arches, tiled clay roofs, a garden courtyard. A Spanish style belltower. Arthur Friestedt in a bowler hat (3:12). Road trip: Cisco Lake and Williamson Dam in Texas, here credited to relative H.J. Friestedt, and surrounding environs (6:19). Barren desert road (8:03). “Waiting for the ferry to cross the swollen Tennessee River at Trotter Landing, East of Memphis.” Automobiles queue at the crossing (8:15). A truck tows stalled automobiles through flood waters. A Mississippi detour (8:41). Battlefields: Shiloh Battlefield in Tennessee near Pittsburgh Landing. A monument with Civil War cannons and a cemetery (10:05). A memorial to the 1st Illinois Light Artillery Battery, a statue for the 2nd Illinois Regiment (12:01). Spangler’s Spring and Culp’s Hill on the Gettysburg Battlefield in Pennsylvania. Monument to the 78th and 102nd New York Infantry (14:20). A monument to General Henry Slocum. Steven’s Knoll (15:40). Union Cemetery at Gettysburg and the site of the Gettysburg Address. Gravestones. The George Gordon Meade Memorial (16:20). Monument to the 42nd New York Regiment (18:40). Mr. Felix, a Gettysburg tour guide and survivor of the 184th Pennsylvania Regiment, stands before Union Battery on Little Round Top. Devil’s Den. The Bloody Wheatfield and Peach Orchard (20:20). Big Round Top (22:35). Trip continues: Independence Hall. A statue of Commodore Barry (22:55). The Assembly Room of Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed (23:52). The Liberty Bell on display (24:58). Congress Hall exterior, passing trucks. The Betsy Ross House. Pennsbury Manor in Fairmount Park (25:19). Telephoto view of New Delaware River Bridge, connecting Camden New Jersey and Philadelphia, taken from the Benjamin Franklin Hotel (25:46). New York’s Brooklyn Navy Yard. Bear Mountain Bridge Road over the Hudson River. A steam ship named the Dewitt Clinton (27:31). Florence, Alabama’s Wilson Dam (29:00). Asheville, North Carolina’s Sunset Mountain, Grove Park Inn, golf course (30:18). Richmond Virginia Confederate equestrian monuments to Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson (31:05). Battle Abbey. Hollywood cemetery. St. John’s Episcopal Church (32:12). The White House of the Confederacy. Capitol buildings (35:30). Fredericksburg National Cemetery at Marye’s Heights (37:25). The Mary Ball Washington House. Ford’s Theatre, pre-restoration (39:05). The Pan American Union Building, White House, Corcoran Gallery of Art seen from atop the Washington Monument (40:23). Alexandria, Virginia: Christ Episcopal Church. Carlyle House and gardens (40:51). Mount Vernon (42:42). Cuba, 1929-1930: Havana Bay and the SS Belgenland “on the first leg of its world cruise” and other ships at harbor (45:37). A panorama of Mariel Bay, near the Cuban Naval Academy. American destroyers, a plane-tender, U.S. Navy seaplanes in the distance (47:24). Batabanó on the Carribean Sea. Surgidero de Batabanó Lighthouse. Two women in cloche hats on a dock. A U.S. Navy seaplane (48:47). The Canadian destroyer “Champlain.” The RMS Mauretania (49:42). Havana’s Monument to the Victims of the USS Maine during a 32nd anniversary ceremony (51:26). Aboard a Benitoa family yacht with friends, a fish (52:34). Yumurí Valley, seen from a monastery. Matanzas. Mr. and Mrs. Friestedt with a Cuban chauffeur (53:03). The Dutch ocean liner Statendam. Havana yacht club and La Playa. Beachgoing bathers (55:19). “Aboard Cunard Liner SS Caronia, New York to Havana” circa 1929 (56:53).