Well, it's now been four weeks since I was at the White House to accept the National Humanities Medal on behalf of the American Antiquarian Society, and I can't say that I've yet got my feet back on terra firma. And with cards, letters, calls, emails, and Facebook comments continuing to stream in -- from AAS members, ...
This week concludes the story of Nancie Colburn Hartford and her husband, Miles, whom we met in Part I and Part II. Their letters can be found in the Shaw-Webb Family Papers. Although westward expansion and the ensuing spread of slavery is often cited as a leading cause of the Civil War, the experiences of those ...
Just over a year ago, our graphic arts curator, Lauren Hewes, announced that we had completed the photographing of over 600 political cartoons produced in the United States between 1764 and 1876, and that these images were now available in GIGI, our digital image archive. This comprehensive collection includes everything from early cartoons relating to ...
Last week, we met Nancie Colburn Hartford and her mining husband, Miles, and explored their change in attitude toward mining over the course of a couple of years. This week, we’ll look at a different kind of change: those that so often happen in the life of a woman. While Miles was navigating the difficulties of ...
D.C. Fabronious after Trevor McClurg, Home Again, New York: W. Endicott, 1866. This large lithograph was printed a year after the Civil War had ended. Made after a painting by Pittsburgh-area artist Trevor McClurg who had trained with Emmanuel Leutze in Dusseldorf, Germany, the print shows an injured Union veteran returning to his home. The ...
The nineteenth-century gold rushes continue to have a strong hold on the imagination of the American public. Perhaps it’s the promise of wealth or adventure or simply starting a new life. In any case, the gold rushes opened not only new physical and political frontiers for the United States, but also very personal ones for ...
Sarah Harker, AAS media outreach intern this summer, graduated from Clark University last May, where she studied Film and Communications & Culture. She is currently an independent filmmaker while continuing her education at Clark, pursuing her master's degree in Professional Communications. Having grown up in northeastern Massachusetts and living the past four years in Worcester as a ...
Join us here today, at 3 p.m., for a live feed of the 2013 National Humanities Medal ceremony taking place at the White House! AAS president Ellen Dunlap with be accepting the award on behalf of the Society, as well as AAS Council Chair Sid Lapidus and AAS Councilor Bill Reese. We are also following Ellen's ...
AAS is extremely humbled and honored to be a recipient of a 2013 National Humanities Medal. President Barack Obama will present the medal to Ellen S. Dunlap, AAS president, Sid Lapidus, AAS Council Chair, and William S. Reese, AAS Councilor at the White House on Monday, July 28, 2014, at 3 p.m. The citation for ...
Penny Yankee Doodle (New York, NY). November 2, 1850. This is one of a number of illustrated humor newspapers and periodicals that appeared in the 1840s and 1850s. The editor says they are not an imitation of Punch from England, but, “I am myself alone – the original Genius of American Humor.” There are the usual ...
Samantha Cook is a senior at the University of Wyoming where she is majoring in History and Museum Studies. She spent last summer on an archeological dig in Italy, and this summer, she has been with us at AAS as a catalog camper, doing a completely different kind of digging. When I made the bold decision ...
Johnson, Andrew W. The Eclectic Harmony. Revised and improved second edition. Shelbyville, Tenn.: N.O. Wallace & Co., Printers, Shelbyville Free Press Office, 1847. Only one other copy is known of this title, and that was purchased in 2001 by the Center for Popular Music at Middle Tennessee State University. Then just this past year a private ...
Graefenberg Gazette (New York, NY), August 1847. The first thing that should grab your attention about this advertisement sheet is that it is printed in red ink. This was a marketing trick by the Graefenberg Company that put out a wide variety of pills and elixirs. This particular sheet promoted their vegetable pills, sarsaparilla compounds, eye ...
Recently, I had the opportunity to treat a very special item from our Reserve collection as part of our Save America’s Treasures grant. The Protestant Tutor for Children is attributed to Benjamin Harris and was printed by Samuel Green in Boston, 1685. Thought to be a precursor text to the New England Primer, it is ...
Here at AAS, nary a holiday goes by without some reflection on how the same was celebrated in days past. On this Fourth of July we’re going to take a trip back 200 years and check in on how our founder, Isaiah Thomas, celebrated the holiday. In July 1814 the United States was in the midst ...
