Brooks, Noah. Abraham Lincoln: The Nation’s Leader in the Great Struggle through Which Was Maintained the Existence of the United States. Washington, D.C.: National Tribune, [1909, copyright 1888]. This is marginalia at its finest. Found in a remarkable collection of twenty-seven books published between 1859 and 1916, the marginalia displayed here recalls the moment when an ...
The Pike and Wright Collection, donated by Susan Pike Corcoran, has brought to AAS more than the typical materials of photographs, diaries, books, and letters. Along with the genealogical material, a collection of medical instruments used by Dr. Nathan Staples Pike (1819-1857) is now housed within the Graphic Arts Department. You might remember seeing Dr. ...
Recently AAS was delighted to receive as a gift a large collection of nineteenth-century manuscripts from the Pike and Wright families of northeastern Connecticut. The collection came in two segments, both the gift of Susan Pike Corcoran in honor of her Pike and Wright ancestors. Caches of family records are rich resources for scholars working ...
We recently announced a new web resource consisting of four journals kept by Edmund Quincy Sewall Jr. between 1837 and 1840, when Sewall was between nine and twelve years old. Of particular interest is a journal kept in March and April 1840, when the boy was a student at John and Henry David Thoreau’s Concord Academy ...
Last week we announced a new AAS web resource consisting of four journals kept by Edmund Quincy Sewall Jr. between 1837 and 1840, plus an introductory essay. The journals include a description of Edmund’s life in Concord, Massachusetts, in the spring of 1840 while he was attending John and Henry David Thoreau’s Concord Academy and ...
Thoreau scholars have long been aware of the journal kept in Concord, Massachusetts, during a period of seven weeks in 1840 when twelve-year-old Edmund Quincy Sewall Jr. was attending John and Henry David Thoreau’s Concord Academy and boarding in the Thoreau household. One reason Edmund’s journal is of interest is that it contains one of ...
William H. Bryant, Letter, 1858. This entertaining letter between friends was written from Boston by William H. Bryant to his friend Nathaniel in 1858. The letter is self-confessed by the author to be of little significance: “As I have a little spare time I thought I would improve it by writing you. Do be sure news ...
As visions of baked goods dance through the pages of holiday Instagram, we bloggers at Past is Present have decided to take a look at some of our historical manuscript cookbooks to see what early American bakers were cooking up instead. Like our fellow bloggers at Cooking in the Archives and the experts at Colonial Williamsburg, ...
By the mid-eighteenth century, a common rite of passage for many young people in Colonial America was to attend a local singing school conducted by some itinerant music-master. There they learned the names of the notes, time signatures, rudimentary music theory, and how to sing harmony in four parts. For the young, singing schools were ...
Burnell, Barker. School Exercise Book, 1813. Barker Burnell (1798-1843) lived in Nantucket, Massachusetts. He served as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1821-1822, and as a member of the Massachusetts Senate in 1823, 1825-1833, and 1838. This schoolbook was kept by Burnell in 1813 when he was fifteen years old. The book opens ...
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 ...
Curtis House Inn (South Woodbury, Connecticut). Daybook, 1814-1815. The Curtis House Inn, in the prosperous town of South Woodbury, Connecticut, was built in 1735 by Anthony Stoddard, and is still in operation today. The business changed ownership within the family many times, and was sold outside of the family in 1799. When this daybook was recorded ...
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 ...
Keeler Tavern (Ridgefield, Connecticut) , Daybook, 1807-1808. The Keeler Tavern was built as a residence by Benjamin Hoyt in 1713, and was converted into an inn and tavern by Hoyt’s grandson, Timothy Keeler, in 1772. The Tavern itself has a very interesting history, having been fired upon by the British during the Revolution when they learned ...
Although we’re not often thought of as a legal repository, we do have a few famous firsts to claim in the realm of legal research. In our manuscript collection lives the notebook of Thomas Lechford, 1638-1641, the first lawyer in Boston. AAS was also the first government documents repository. In 1814, in an effort to ...
