Category Archives: Collections
Johnny Reb in the Big Apple: The Confederate Veteran Camp of New York
This post was written by N-YHS intern Rachel Schimke, a graduate student in the Archives and Public History program at NYU, who processed the Alexander Robert Chisolm Papers. Though most war-weary Confederate soldiers returned home following Lee’s surrender, not all had the ability or interest to recover their lives in the South. Founded in 1890, [...]
Clarke and Rapuano, Landscape Architects
April — better known as the month of showers, Frederick Law Olmsted’s birthday, and Earth Day — has also been designated National Landscape Architect month. Aside from Olmsted, however, landscape architects continue to fly largely under the radar. A case in point: Clarke and Rapuano, a firm with enormous impact on New York City’s urban [...]
“Aliens” in America: British Citizens during the War of 1812
Post written by Rachel Schimke, a spring intern at N-YHS who processed the Peter Curtenius Papers. This year marks the bicentennial of the War of 1812, a conflict that is often overshadowed by the more celebrated wars in our nation’s history. The newly processed Peter Curtenius Papers offer invaluable information for researchers interested in this [...]
American Eagle and Irish Harp: The Story of the New-York Hibernian Volunteers
A great deal of the work done on the Irish immigrant experience focuses on the refugees of Ireland’s potato blight in the late 1840s. However, the epic story of the Irish in America, and the challenges it encountered, did not begin there. One obscure chapter of this story is captured in the tale of the [...]
Happy Birthday Yellowstone!
Last Thursday (March 1), Yellowstone National Park marked its 140th year of existence. It’s also a perfect excuse to remind everyone that, despite our name, the New-York Historical Society’s collections document the history of the entire United States, not just of New York and its neighbors. In his 2008 television series documenting his tour of [...]
A Christmas Carol: One of those quaint, simple, affecting, humoursome things
Holidays evolve — for better or worse. And while there is reason to bemoan the creep of commercialism into every niche of the holiday season, such disappointment is not necessarily as recent as one might think. Charles Dickens’ iconic work, A Christmas Carol: In Prose: Being a ghost story of Christmas arrived in America at a time when contemporaries [...]
