Last year on Past is Present we featured a series of interviews with American Antiquarian Society fellows in order to showcase their thoughts about writing history and work with the Society's collections. This year we’ve decided that, instead of transcribing those interviews, we will make them available as podcasts. This will let our readers (and ...
Category: Good Sources
Suggestions for interesting & useful collection materials
Hanukkah and American Judaism, 1841-1876
‘Tis the season for holiday traditions and rituals – and for social media posts like this one that try to give some historical perspective to why we celebrate the way we do. So many holidays cluster around the winter solstice, such as Christmas and Hanukkah and New Year’s Eve (or Saturnalia or your basic pagan ...
Database Reveals a Soldier’s Unexpected Past
Online searching has undoubtedly revolutionized information gathering. Census rolls, vital records, family trees, and genealogies are among the familiar, much-used digital resources at our fingertips free of charge in the Society’s reading room. A lesser utilized treasure trove of information is held in the Society’s collection of printed college and school catalogs. These “catalogs,” issued ...
Show the Love: McLoughlin Christmas Books
One year from now AAS will be opening the exhibition Radiant with Color and Light: McLoughlin Brothers and the Business of Picture Books, 1858-1920 at the Grolier Club in New York. The show will feature nearly two hundred books, games, watercolors, toys, and ephemera, all produced by the McLoughlin Bros. firm and their contemporaries. The ...
“I Buy My Own Diamonds and I Buy My Own Rings” (And Then Father Will Settle the Bill)
Every year during the rush of holiday shopping, laments can be heard about the commercialization of Christmas and the overt consumerism visible everywhere. But as we’ve posted before, this trend is not really as new as many people might think. The second half of the nineteenth century was bursting with ads, images, and even games ...
Halfway across the world and back again
Kathleen Major has been volunteering in the Manuscripts Department at AAS for several years and just recently processed the diaries of nineteenth-century serviceman, adventurer, and housekeeper Frank Nash. Kathy worked at AAS from 1976 to 1984 and was Keeper of Manuscripts for a portion of that time. After leaving the Society to care for her ...
The Story of a Sword: Fitz-John Winthrop and King William’s War, Part II
Last week, Dan Boudreau posted about a sword held in the AAS collections that belonged to Fitz-John Winthrop, an early governor of Connecticut and the grandson of the famous John Winthrop—the influential Puritan leader of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This week, Dan continues the story, focusing on Winthrop’s participation in King William’s War and his ...
The Story of a Sword: Fitz-John Winthrop and King William’s War, Part I
You never know what you’ll find while browsing the stacks at AAS. A few years back, when I had just started working at the Society, I stumbled across something unusual in the library basement: a pair of ornate swords, one from the early nineteenth century and the other from the seventeenth century. It was this ...
Get thee to the waters
In the mid-nineteenth century, “taking the waters,” or hydropathy, became a fashionable so-called natural therapy. It was first promoted in Europe by Austrian Vincenz Priessnitz after he claimed to have mended his broken ribs in the spring waters of Grafenberg, Silesia. His spa attracted crowds, including royalty. Joel Shew, a physician from New York, became ...
Reading the Apocalypse
Claire Jones, a summer intern from Princeton University, has previously posted about her project centered on Judaica at AAS. This is the next installment in her findings. When I started working on the Judaica collection, I’ll admit I didn’t exactly have a clear idea of what I was expecting to find. I think I was envisioning a lot ...
An Odd Fellow
Claire Jones, a summer intern from Princeton University, has previously posted about her project centered on Judaica at AAS. This is the next installment in her findings. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve made plenty of mistakes while searching AAS’s online catalog, especially during my first few weeks here, when I was checking dozens or hundreds of ...
Now In Print from the AAS Community
Every quarter at AAS we release a list of recent publications by those who have researched at the library as fellows, members, or readers. To see this list please visit our recent scholarship page on the AAS website. If your book, article, or other achievement is not included, just let us know if you’d like to see it there! BOOKS Clapp, Elizabeth ...
New Illustrated Inventory: B. T. Hill’s Photographs of the New England Fair
As we draw towards the end of summer, we can now look forward to fair season! Town, county, and state fairs are happening around the country and are filled with plenty of food and entertainment. Luckily, our newest illustrated inventory looks at the New England Fair here in Worcester during the early 1920s through the ...
Duval and the Dime Novel; or, Adventures of a Gentleman Highwayman
I have spent just about two years working with our dime novel collection and bringing it under some semblance of bibliographic control. I have encountered poor writing, improbable plots, novels without covers, novels without title pages, and all manner of literary and bibliographic eccentricities and annoyances. But as I reach the end of my work ...
Perfect Shadows: An Illustrated Inventory of AAS Silhouettes
The American Antiquarian Society’s collection of just over two hundred American silhouettes has recently been cataloged and photographed and an inventory of these profile portraits is now available via a new digital resource. Silhouettes were popular in the United States starting at the end of the eighteenth century. Profile drawings, profile miniatures, and silhouettes all benefited ...