Don’t let the utilitarian title fool you! In this case, it is not what was printed but what a former owner drew on a flyleaf that is the book’s true treasure. Mimicking a popular political cartoon of the time, a Union soldier chases a cross-dressing Jefferson Davis—giving us a rare glimpse into the intersection between ...
The Amateur Ohion, published in Cincinnati, in January of 1878, like many amateur newspapers, contains a short humor column. This little column contains a very odd little joke. It begins: Why is an elephant like a steamboat? We'd love to hear your guesses for the punchline! Send us your comments and we'll reveal the "correct" ...
Over the winter, AAS reader Jeanne McDougall spent some time with our Isaiah Thomas manuscript collection. While searching through the correspondence, she stumbled upon a letter from Hannah Weld to her daughter Mary Weld, who married Isaiah Thomas Jr. Below, Jeanne describes her encounter with Hannah and Mary. Jeanne's experience certainly demonstrates the serendipitous nature ...
This post has been long delayed (sorry Nicolas!), and although he has now returned to his native France, here is some information about the project Nicolas Barreyre worked on during his month in residence at AAS. Nicolas Barreyre, Assistant Professor in American History, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre and École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, ...
At 6:30 PM on Friday, September 23, the American Antiquarian Society will take visitors back to the late 1840s, as Jay DiPrima recreates Henry David Thoreau's lecture "Economy." Thoreau originally delivered his lecture, drawn from his early writings on his year at Walden Pond, on Friday, April 20, 1849 at Worcester City Hall. A review ...
Ever wonder if you were born in the wrong century? If so, imagine it is still those halcyon early days when AAS was a new institution. A time when lyceums were considered viable forms of entertainment. When you could subscribe to attend a series of lectures on a topic and feel your ...
...a young man named Henry L. Joslin, from Fitchburg, Massachusetts, was writing home to his mother on September 24th. Henry, born in 1843, was serving in the Civil War and was working picket duty in Poolsville. In his letter he describes his camp, what guard duty was like, and gives updates about his health, and other young ...
Appeal to the Democracy (Augusta, ME). Oct. 10, 1840. Over the past few years AAS has acquired a number of campaign newspapers. These are always desirable due to their short existence, rarity, and political content. The Whig Battering-Ram was a revival of a campaign paper with a similar title from the 1840 election. It supported Henry ...
One way we add to our manuscript collection is through what staff and readers find within other collections at AAS. Often we will find letters, notes, or other ephemera interfiled in books, periodicals and newspapers, and often it is deemed best to move this material into the manuscript collection. These items are fun because, while ...
As the Prints in the Parlor (PIP) Project begins its last leg of digitization and access to images generated, those of us involved with it find ourselves itching to pull together some of the results into conversation with one another. The reason for this is to show how these book illustrations, sometimes independent of the ...
Charles Eastman & Co. Letterbook, 1828 – 1834 The South Hadley (Massachusetts) Canal opened in 1795 to bypass waterfalls on the Connecticut River and it was one of the earliest canals in the United States. Steamboat traffic on the canal began in 1828. This letter book was kept by Charles Eastman (1803 – 1884) and contains ...
Although the majority of AAS’s manuscript collection is focused on New England, we do have collections that cover other parts of the country. Our Book Trades Collection and Slavery in the US Collection, for example, have a national scope, and collections such as the Louisiana Collection and the California Papers are focused outside of New ...
