The Acquisitions Table: My Lady’s Casket of Jewels and Flower for Her Adorning

Lady

My Lady's Casket of Jewels and Flowers for Her Adorning. Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1885. This book was made for gift-giving, and we at AAS were thrilled to have received such a stunning color plate book as a gift ourselves – along with many similarly gorgeous volumes – from Joanne Gill. An excellent example of the ...

Read all about it! The Conservation of a Racy Newspaper

This issue of the Subterranean before treatment.

This issue of the Subterranean (“Independent in everything, Neutral in nothing”), dated August 26, 1843, was acquired by AAS circa 2001 as part of a generous donation of Racy newspapers from Leo Hershkowitz.  Published in New York City and reaching their peak in the 1840s, the contents of these papers are full of colorful stories ...

Moses Paul to Samson Occom: Rediscovering a Treasure

Occom_0002

Libraries like the American Antiquarian Society exist not just to preserve material, but also to help people find it. Detailed descriptions of items in our catalog records and thoughtfully designed systems of organization ensure that items in our collection can be located. But AAS also relies to a great extent on institutional memory—the knowledge of ...

The Acquisitions Table: A Proclamation for the Encouragement of Piety and Virtue

Province of Massachusetts

Province of Massachusetts-Bay. By the Governor. A Proclamation for the Encouragement of Piety and Virtue… Boston: Margaret Draper, July 23, 1774. This important broadside was printed in Boston by Margaret Draper, a loyalist printer who enjoyed the support of Province of Massachusetts Royal Governor Thomas Gage.  Gage had been appointed by King George in the spring ...

The Asylum Journal Presents Presidential Candidates

AsylumJournal_0001

Asylum Journal  (Brattleboro, VT)  November 22, 1842 Published every Tuesday, By the inmates of the Vermont Asylum. The Asylum Journal was published at the Vermont Asylum for the Insane, a private institution founded in 1834 by Anna Hunt Marshall.  It used a humane form of treatment on its patients, based on the theories of William Tuke ...

Spreading the News of the Declaration of Independence

Declar of Indep - Salem-Charlton

As the United States is gearing up to celebrate its independence for the 239th time, here in the Outreach Department at AAS we’re also gearing up for another kind of event, taking place for the first time: hosting an NEH Institute for K-12 Teachers. Among the many sessions in this institute, titled The News Media and ...