Suggestions for interesting & useful collection materials
While most library collections are printed or written on paper, hundreds of historic objects at the American Antiquarian Society -- including broadsides, children's books, and ribbon badges -- were printed onto cloth. Often produced as keepsakes, souvenirs, commemorative objects, or teaching tools, cloth printings in the AAS collection include texts and images printed onto silk, ...
Rachel Wall (née Schmidt) was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, on October 1, 1760. She was 29 years old on October 8, 1789, when she was executed by hanging on the Boston Common. According to some accounts, Wall may have been America’s first female pirate; it is certain that she was the last woman to be ...
Last year, the American Antiquarian Society received a grant from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation to support the reorganization, rehousing, and digitization of 655 pages of letters, notebooks, and photographs created by formerly enslaved people. The new digital resource Letters from Freedom provides additional context to the materials and to the stories of the people ...
As a cataloger at the American Antiquarian Society, one of my current projects involves updating bibliographic catalog records for American women of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. AAS prioritizes cataloging for marginalized groups through the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access (IDEA) initiative, and I find it rewarding to contribute to a more inclusive and diverse ...
Publishers of amateur newspapers devoted a significant amount of their limited space to critiquing other amateur papers -- sometimes constructively, but often not. Two amateur publishers from Dassel, Minnesota, Allison C. Brokaw and Reno L. Hayford, grew tired of the critical nature of amateur journalism and wanted publishers to focus their efforts on literary pursuits. ...
Thanks to a generous grant from the Pine Tree Foundation of New York, newly digitized Hawaiian-language materials are now available through Printing in the Hawaiian Language, a digital resource on the American Antiquarian Society website. The resource contains a digital library of 115 digitized Hawaiian materials, as well as background information on the Hawaiian collection ...
Recently, I had the privilege of making a display that is now exhibited in the American Antiquarian Society reading room, as you enter through the main glass doors of Antiquarian Hall. My exhibit focuses on manumissions in 1800s America. Originally, I planned to highlight the freedom suit as a legal means of resistance to slavery. ...
During my residency at the American Antiquarian Society as a National Endowment for the Humanities Long-Term Fellow in the fall of 2021, the AAS acquired a letterbook from the New England Type and Stereotype Foundry. The letterbook is now transcribed and available for AAS researchers, offering much for scholars of nineteenth-century print culture, especially those ...
Tom Thumb takes center stage as both a sword-wielding hero and object of royal curiosity in this early nineteenth-century picture book. Although this rhymed tale is set in the early Medieval court of King Arthur, the ladies and gentlemen of the court are dressed in Regency Era attire that would have been familiar to the ...
This summer, I had the pleasure of curating a reading room display on the language of flowers. As a cataloger, much of my recent work has been focused on enhancing bibliographic records, but with spring and summer in full bloom outside my window, I found myself captivated by the beautiful illustrations featured in many books ...
At least these two issues of the Roll Call newspaper from the Civil War were edited by “Three Ladies. Two of the War, and One of the Treasury Departments.” There is only one other known issue of this title, which may have begun in February 1864. It was apparently published during one of the many ...
As I work through cataloging the American Antiquarian Society’s collection of amateur newspapers, I’m often amused by both the content of the material and the stories of the people who published them. The Acorn (Catalog Record), published in North Attleboro, Massachusetts, by Fannie Hamilton, delights on both accounts. Hamilton published the first issue of the Acorn ...
Almanacs, pregnancy, and dodging fines are all contained in this one-page testimony to the Court of General Sessions of Massachusetts from 1710. Unmarried Ruth Copeland became pregnant with a child by a man named Samuel Hayden, who promised to marry her after finding out she was to have his child. Samuel subsequently rescinded his offer after ...
Although Ann Taylor's poem begins with the line, "Who fed me from her gentle breast …," very few American illustrated editions show a mother actually breastfeeding her child, due to modesty concerns, making this image published in an edition issued by New York publisher Solomon King (1791-1832) a great find. Several scholars have recently used the ...
In the summer of 2024, I spent eight weeks at the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) for my first paper conservation internship as part of my master’s program in conservation at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Under the guidance of Chief Conservator Babette Gehnrich — who has dedicated over 35 years to stewarding ...
