Suggestions for interesting & useful collection materials
The collection of election ballots at the American Antiquarian Society is an impressive group of 952 items spanning the nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries. Several of these are individual ballots for specific elections, others are completely uncut; some are annotated, others are marked-up canvassing sheets (with sample tickets) or are comprised of paste downs. ...
For those that are sad to see the holiday pass, here's one last dose of Halloween for you. Today we are featuring a letter found by one of our volunteers while processing a new manuscript collection, the White Family Papers. John White, the patriarch of the wealthy West Boylston family, was a pioneer in textile ...
Nothing is hair-raising quite like a chilling photograph. This month, when the occult is most heavily sought after in popular culture, we made a small collection accessible which examines death, the afterlife, photography, technology, and (naturally) print culture. AAS’s impressive collection of stereocard views includes a subset categorized as “Ghost” images. This includes approximately 31 images ...
Editor's note: In this week's recommended reading for "fiction published before 1900," AAS member and Councilor Chuck Arning, park ranger and AV specialist at the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, talks about a nineteenth-century book that was passed down through his family. Unlike all of the other books in this series (see Philip Gura's ...
Editor's note: In the most recent issue of the Almanac, we asked members of the AAS community to give us their choice of recommended reading for "fiction published before 1900," a series we are continuing here on Past is Present. Last week we heard from AAS member Philip Gura. This week, Jackie Penny, AAS's image ...
Editor's note: In the most recent issue of the Almanac, we asked members of the AAS community to give us their choice of recommended reading for "fiction published before 1900." We are continuing those recommendation in this series on Past is Present. This first post is written by AAS member Philip F. Gura, who is ...
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 ...
We are very excited that an article about the inspiration for Uncle Tom's Cabin by Susanna Ashton that appeared in the most recent issue of Common-place was picked up by the Associated Press and is getting some national circulation, including in the New York Times over the past weekend. If you haven't yet ...
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 ...
This fall, the American Antiquarian Society, with the generous support of the Terra Foundation, is sending an important exhibition of American lithographs to the Musée Goupil in Bordeaux, France. The exhibition, À la mode francaise: La lithographie aux États-Unis 1820 to 1860, will be opening on September 6 and closing on November 10, 2013. The ...
Dan Boudreau is a summer page at AAS and a rising senior at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), located directly across the street from AAS. A few months ago we had posted about the work of two WPI students with the “A New Nation Votes” project. In this current post, Dan, one of those two students, ...
Camille Dupuis is a summer page at AAS and a rising senior at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York. In this post she shares how her time at AAS and her interaction with programs and fellows has piqued her research interests. At AAS there are thousands of different materials at your disposal ...
On the evening of June 26, 1799, a major summer thunderstorm passed through Worcester. One result was that a warehouse that Isaiah Thomas used to store printing materials was struck by lightning, causing damage. Of course something like that was newsworthy and a detailed report appeared in the next issue of Thomas’s paper, the Massachusetts ...
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 ...
At the July 4, 1818, anniversary of its founding the New York Typographical Society celebrated with one of its typical ceremonies. Since its establishment in 1809, the Society had commemorated its anniversary every year with an evening of toasts and odes dedicated to the art of printing. Those in attendance at ...
