Your Move!

Many magazines of the nineteenth century were published with paper wrappers, the purpose of which were to protect the issue as it went through the mail on its way to the subscriber’s home.  These wrappers (often on colored paper) would identify the name of the periodical.  Sometimes they would just reproduce the title page, but ...

Benjamin T. Hill Goes to the Fair

I recently scanned a few boxes of glass negatives from the collection, all made by one Benjamin T. Hill, an amateur photographer and local historian elected to the Antiquarian Society in 1901 who also served as an auditor for the Society for twenty-three years. These negatives were all made at a fair in Worcester in ...

Of Royal Interest

With all eyes in the media directed towards the new addition to the royal family, we’ve taken a look back to seek out evidence in the historical record of this subject’s proportional popularity. Unsurprisingly, American buzz on the most recent princes and princesses is anything but new. Indeed, everything about Queen Victoria’s life was reported in ...

Tracking down a Big Thing on Ice

Here in Central Massachusetts in July, readers and staff at AAS are experiencing our third heat wave of the summer.  Mind you, heat waves here in New England cannot compete with those that build in the American Southwest, Texas, or the Deep South, but we suffer all the same.  To counter the heat, I decided ...

National Nurses Week – a Trip in the Archive

March 2013 cover of AJN: The American Journal of Nursing

The March 2013 issue of AJN: The American Journal of Nursing featured on its cover a well-known AAS collection item – A Map of the Open country of a Woman’s Heart by “A Lady” published by Kellogg c. 1833–1842. Throughout the month of April, we received queries about this image from nurses around the country. We ...

Leaves among the Leaves

Shortly after their arrival, new AAS fellows give a talk to the staff about their project and the sorts of sources they’re hoping to find. In her talk, current fellow Jessica Linker, who is working on her Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut, mentioned that as part of her work on women and science she ...

When is a Valentine a Newton?

Attribution is something libraries and museums struggle with every day.  Who is the sitter in this portrait?  Who is the author of this pamphlet?  Often the objects give us clues, but not always.  Sometimes they even lead us astray.  This is the story of a pair of daguerreotypes at the American Antiquarian Society and how ...

Christmas and New Year Musical Souvenir, Richmond ca. 1863

musical souvenir cover detail

This piece of sheet music in the Society’s collection represents a handful of Confederate imprints published by George Dunn and Company (printer) and written or edited by F.W. (Fitz William) Rosier. Even before official secession, and certainly after, the Confederate States produced their own government documents and publications; there were also religious pieces and education ...

New Use of Collections: Dorothee Kocks on Rich-Media eBooks

When I got my PhD, I never pictured myself calling Jaclyn Penny at the American Antiquarian Society and saying, essentially, “You got any smutty stuff?”  The result of my inquiries at AAS and other archives is now out: Such Were My Temptations: Bawdy Americans, 1760-1830. I’m writing about it here, on the AAS blog, because ...

Santa, photographed

Some children would do just about anything to catch a glimpse of the gift-giving St. Nick on Christmas Eve – others have parents who would set up a camera and create a stereographic photograph to capture the whole visit. This image, titled “Santa Claus loaded for business” illustrates just such a scene. A bearded and ...

Something Fun for the Weekend

Barber

NPR had a piece this morning on an exhibit that just opened at the Smithsonian called Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell from the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.  If you are in the D.C. area, the exhibit is running until January. It sounds like they are making some interesting connections between the American ...

Goodbye Blacksmith, Hello Schoolmarm!

school

When Diann Benti, former AAS assistant reference librarian, created our now (nearly) complete anonymous blacksmith blog, she was inspired to do so by the Massachusetts Historical Society’s tweeting John Quincy Adams. Past is Present would never have a tweeting blacksmith, Diann informed us in her blog post when the blacksmith initially forged his way ...

Antiquarian Oscars

“Yes, I broke my slate, and I’ll break the next one too–I want an iPhone like all the other kids have!”

All the votes have been counted and the winner is.... Penny! Penny's caption won our hearts and received the most thumbs up in Past is Present's first humorous what-caption-would-you-write contest. Her submission had the added bonus of connecting to the original post on Slate, before the hype by AAS's curator of Graphic Arts, Lauren Hewes.  ...