Last week, former AAS intern Lucia Ferguson brought us through some of Henry Martin's (a previously unidentified diarist) daily routines. Read on to learn about his experience as a soldier in the Civil War, and a miner in a goldmine. After working as a farmhand in his teenage years, Henry served in the Civil War. He ...
Ballou, Levi, Commonplace Book, 1831-1840. Levi Ballou (1806-1865) was born in Halifax, Vermont. After studying theology with his brother William S. Ballou, Levi became a minister in Orange, Massachusetts in 1843. These fascicles contain poems and prose extracts, almost all of which appear to have been copied by Levi Ballou from a variety of sources. The majority ...
Last week we featured a post by former AAS intern Lucia Ferguson (Smith College) about her journey into an unidentified diary. Read on to learn more about the diarist's day to day life as he recorded it in his diary. During 1867, when he kept this diary, Henry made his living by selling pictures and books, ...
Former AAS intern Lucia Ferguson (Smith College) worked with a manuscript collection of unidentified diaries. Her charge? Identify the diarist. Lucia was very successful with one particular volume, which she discovered belonged to a young man named Henry Martin. Although no last name was listed anywhere in the volume, a poem from the diarist’s sweetheart ...
It is often hard to find diaries written by young men and boys. So today I’d like to highlight a great diary kept by a young man, Thomas Whitaker, of Waltham, Massachusetts. Thomas began recording daily entries in 1874, when he was 17 years old, and the volume continues through 1878. He filled the entire ...
Browne, Samuel and J. W. S. Browne, Account Book, 1844-1846. J. W. S. Browne was the son of Samuel J Browne, a printer who published the Liberty Hall newspaper in Cincinnati and later the Cincinnati Gazette. J.W.S. Browne and his brother –in-law L.S. Curtiss began publication of the Weekly Commercial in 1843. This account book contains ...
Although now a full-time employee of AAS, my love for the Society began years before I started working here when it first introduced me to the thrill of researching in an archive. As a senior History major at the College of the Holy Cross, I was introduced to AAS by my thesis advisor, who suggested ...
Leicester Academy, List of Students, 1812-1817. Leicester Academy was founded in 1784 in Leicester, Massachusetts, and functioned as a private, co-educational institution until 1921, when it was leased to the town to be used as a public high school. This volume, containing a list of students, will be added to the already substantial collection of school ...
For the first time ever, the extensive 1880s-era correspondence between Helen Keller, her teacher Anne Sullivan and Sullivan’s mentor at Perkins School for the Blind, Michael Anagnos, are available online. An unusual collaboration between the American Antiquarian Society and Perkins (www.perkinsarchives.org) harnesses the power of social media to create a revealing new online exhibit that ...
Huse, Jonathan, Papers, 1795-1842. Jonathan Huse (1767-1853) was born in Methuen, Massachusetts and was graduated from Dartmouth College in 1788. In 1795 he became minister of the Congregational church in Warren, Maine. In the late 1820s a growing number of members of his congregation became interested in Hopkinsianism and a movement began to form a second ...
The town of Oakham had a rich theater scene in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It seemed that every week there was a theater or musical piece being presented in the Oakham Memorial Town Hall. In organizing the 250th anniversary celebrations of Oakham in 2012 I was given the responsibility to find ...
Fitch’s Geography for Beginners, ca. 1850-1858. This handwritten textbook of geography is something of a mystery. Heavily illustrated with original drawings and images clipped from publications, the text is divided into lessons with topics such as “About Travelling,” “About the Surface of the Earth,” “About Animals,” and “About Trees and Plants.” The title, Fitch’s Geography… suggests ...
Winsor, George Jr., Ledger, 1845-1868 George Winsor, Jr. (1790-1880) lived in Duxbury, Massachusetts, and married Hannah Delano in 1817. Winsor was a captain of merchant vessels, including the Delano and the brig United States. This ledger begins in 1845 with the accounts of Enoch Train & Co. and Augustus Hemenway. These pages show entries such ...
Apothecary and General Merchandise Ledger, 1859-1863 This ledger belonged to an unknown apothecary and general store owner in Vermont. The volume is arranged chronologically and lists daily notes and transactions for the business. A very active business is illustrated in this volume, with many transactions happening each day. Entries include items sold and prices, including ...
Parsons, Aaron. Daybook, 1848-1851. Aaron Parsons was a blacksmith and tinsmith in Stafford Springs, CT. His daybook chronologically records his business transactions from February 1848 through November 1851. Most concern the repair and restoration of metal ware, including items such as tea kettles, coffee pots, lead pipes, pumps, cylinders, milk pans, lamps, oven, and boilers, to ...
