Typically, curators purchase collection material from dealers, auctions, and bookfairs. Less common is the unsolicited offer from someone who found something in their house. Early this past summer [2024], a woman from West Virginia called AAS – on the recommendation of a dealer she had consulted – about a newspaper she found among other old ...
This account book, kept on an unidentified Georgia plantation in the mid-1860s, features accounts for over fifty Black sharecroppers. Sharecropping families were frequently trapped in a cycle of debt due to laws restricting sale of sharecropped goods on former plantations and unethical practices by southern planters. On this specific Georgia plantation, Black laborers are recorded ...
In January 2025, staff at the American Antiquarian Society attended a workshop on African American print culture taught by Dr. Derrick Spires, associate professor of English at the University of Delaware (and an AAS member and councilor), generously sponsored by the Nadia Sophie Seiler Family Fund. Dr. Spires shared how Black people used African American ...
Benjamin Lundy was a prominent abolitionist in the 1820’s and 1830’s. Brought up as a Quaker in what is now West Virginia, he saw the iniquity of slavery. In 1821 he started the Genius of Universal Emancipation in Mount Pleasant, Ohio. From there the periodical moved several times, being published in Greenville, TN; Baltimore, MD; Washington, ...
Newspapers are a huge and important part of our collection here at the American Antiquarian Society. They take up over five miles of shelving here. From establishment papers like the New York Times to amateur prints, preserving newspapers gives readers a glimpse into the mundane and day-to-day, as well as insight on relevant social issues ...
In April, we published an article in honor of National Poetry Month, entitled "Poets in the AAS Archive." In this same thread, we are pleased to share our plans now to create a new series on Past is Present dedicated to our artist fellows. This new series will spotlight the work of current and past fellows ...
My latest volunteer project, to quote Winston Churchill, was “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." I was handed twenty-eight legal depositions, tucked in a manila folder, with a notation that simply said: “The depositions were part of a suit by multiple claimants for the $500 reward.” First, the riddle: Who offered the $500 reward? ...
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 ...
AAS member Jane K. Dewey has volunteered in the manuscripts department for almost 30 years and processed forty large collections. Jane most recently organized, housed, and wrote about some of the manuscripts from the Pike-Wright Family papers, a recent donation from Susan Pike Corcoran. Even though the donation includes a substantial collection of ambrotypes, daguerreotypes, and photographs and a ...
Linford Fisher is associate professor of history at Brown University, where he studies and teaches the religious history of colonial America and the history of Indian and African slavery and servitude. His first book, The Indian Great Awakening: Religion and the Shaping of Native Cultures in Early America, was published by Oxford University Press in ...
Sean Moore is Associate Professor of English at the University of New Hampshire and recently completed an American Antiquarian Society-National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship at the Society. His work has received support from a variety of institutions, including the John Carter Brown Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Fulbright program, and he has just ...
I can speak of Slavery only so far as it came under my own observation – only so far as I have known and experienced it in my own person. (p. 17-8) So Solomon Northup begins his harrowing account of slavery from the inside. In Twelve Years a Slave, Northup, a free black man from upstate ...
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 ...
The American Antiquarian Society has a large number of periodicals and newspapers of which only a single issue was printed before they folded. There are a variety of reasons for why this might be. Sometimes issue no. 1 is really a prospectus trying to generate interest and subscribers, but failing in this mission. Often it ...
On Friday, April 5th from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m., the American Antiquarian Society will be hosting our 6th Annual Adopt-A-Book event. This event is an important fundraiser for the curatorial team at the Society, and monies raised will go towards future acquisitions of books, prints, newspapers, manuscripts, and children’s literature. Below are examples of two ...
