Continued from Part 1 of "The Embezzler Redeemed" A report that Benjamin Brower had been apprehended at Albany was refuted almost immediately as being “wholly without foundation.” But on October 25, 1803, the New England Palladium (Boston) briefly reported he had been captured. On the 29th the New York Morning Chronicle expanded upon the news of ...
People tend to treat catalog records a lot like refrigerators: open it, grab what you need, and close it up again. At AAS, the milk, eggs, and butter of the record are the author, title, and call number. Locate those three and the rest can stay a black and white blur. But know that ...
One of the great joys of cataloging is figuring out who the folks were who wrote, edited, illustrated, printed, published, or owned the books that cross our desks. In most cases we don’t have time to delve into the lives of these people, and wistfully think that someone ought to write a dissertation on this ...
In the October 1813 Report of the Committee, Isaiah Thomas justified the choice of Worcester for the home of the American Antiquarian Society. He maintained that an “inland situation” offered the best protection against, the destruction so often experienced in large towns and cities by fire, as well as from the ravages of an enemy, ...
This one's for the history geeks among us (and I include myself in this): You will not want to miss a truly unique historical reenactment taking place tomorrow night Defending John Brown: Henry David Thoreau and Worcester's Reform Tradition on Tuesday, November 3, 2009 at 7:30 p.m. at Mechanics' Hall, Main Street, Worcester.Witness Henry David ...
In the mid 1800s, people began appearing with eyes so clear they were nearly invisible. The ghostly faces stared straight ahead without a hint of shame in their alien faces. They haunt us still, following us from countless daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and cartes-de-visite, warning us of a different time. A fearful era when to be photogenic ...
An online fad became a journalistic obsession with a late-winter craze known as “25 Random Things.” Members of the social networking site Facebook began crafting lists about themselves: personal histories, likes, and dislikes -- self-identified quirks describable in a sentence they then displayed for others to see. The only thing that seemed to equal the number ...
Have you heard the one about the balloon boy? No, not that balloon boy. On April 13, 1844, the New York Sun printed an extra edition reporting that man had finally flown across the Atlantic. In a balloon. A postscript in the April 13th morning edition of the Sun taunted readers, We stop the press at a late hour, to ...
AAS invites you to join us in Antiquarian Hall at 7:30pm on Thursday, October 22nd for the 6th Annual Baron Lecture. William W. Freehling, the Singletary Professor of the Humanities Emeritus at the University of Kentucky and Senior Fellow at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, will be discussing his 1965 work Prelude to Civil ...
What’s the world coming to? John Quincy Adams is tweeting from 1808 and our own anonymous blacksmith’s apprentice is blogging away right above these very words. Following Adams’ debut on Twitter, one of the librarians from the Massachusetts Historical Society explained that, “We want to get it out there to the technophile generation ... We ...
At parties, when people discover I work at the American Antiquarian Society, they often ask: what’s your favorite item in the collections? To my mind, this is akin to asking a parent to choose his or her favorite child. I’ve heard curators answer this impossible dilemma simply: whatever I received ...
If one thing connects Americans over the centuries, it’s dessert. Vanilla may have replaced rose water, the electric mixer (even the egg beater) may be heavenly gifts from a sympathetic large-bicepped ancestor, but the recipes (and the tastes) are remarkably similar. The first cookbook published in America, Amelia Simmons’ 1796 American Cookery, offers recipes for ...
In 1952 the renowned chef Julia Child joined a book project to bring French cuisine into North American homes. As many movie-goers now know, she spent the next nine years working on the “dog-eared, note-filled, butter-and-food-stained manuscript” (My Life in France, 207) that would become the seminal Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The wearisome demands ...
Since the early 1970s, the American Antiquarian Society has been awarding fellowships to enable scholars to come to Worcester and spend anywhere from a month to a year in residence at the Society, immersing themselves in our collections. Many fellows over the years have raved about the richness of the research experience, which is borne ...
One of the great joys of working on the far side of the reference desk is hearing the words we all love to hear from our researchers: “Look at what I found.” We always know we’re in for a surprise, and we plan to use this site to share these treats with you. (Be sure to read this one through to the end … it’s hilarious!)
