Category Archives: Ephemera
Ladies, Get Ready: Its a Leap Year!
Ever since the idea of an extra day every four years was implemented as a corrective measure for the calendar, it has been filled with traditions and superstitions. One of these is the (shocking!) idea that a woman may propose to a man on February 29th (or anytime during a Leap Month or even the [...]
Currier & Currier & Ives? a tribute to Charles Currier
To most people, Currier & Ives are locked together like love and marriage (in the song, at least) — as Frank Sinatra sings, “you can’t have one, you can’t have none, you can’t have one without the other.” In fact, though, Nathaniel Currier was a successful lithographer long before James Merritt Ives joined the business [...]
Friggatriskaidekaphobes Need Not Apply
Written by Joseph Ditta, Reference Librarian Thirteenth Annual Report of the Thirteen Club, 1895 (cover) Happy Friday the Thirteenth! Are you cowering under the covers, hoping to escape the horrible tragedies that are doomed to hit you should you set foot out of bed? If you answered yes, we are sorry to say your friggatriskaidekaphobia [...]
Carriers’ Addresses: The Holiday Gratuity, With a Little Flair
Written by Mariam Touba, Reference Librarian It still happens at this time of year, a holiday greeting is slipped under the door from a service provider offering good wishes and a subtle hint to be remembered with an end-of-the-year gratuity. The practice is an old one, but was, in the 18th and 19th centuries, carried [...]
Selling for a song
Peace on earth and good will to men may be in short supply, but there is no time like Christmas to appreciate that nowadays advertising is everywhere. Billboards, newspapers, magazines, television, the Internet, cell phones . . . advertisers will try any means available to get consumers to buy their products. So it’s hardly surprising [...]
Early Vampire Celebrations
It appears that New Yorker’s love for vampires began before the rise of gothic rockers or even the publication of Bram Stoker’s book Dracula in 1897. The N-YHS library collection includes invitations and programs for dinner parties from 1892-1893 called a “Death Watch” sponsored by an organization entitled “Order of the Vampires” or sometimes simply called [...]
Laudanum: A Dose of the Nineteenth Century
Coroner’s report for the suicide of Richard D. Hamilton, 18 August, 1822. BV New York City Coroner’s Reports, MS 1957 A great primary source often elicits a visceral sense of what it meant to live in the moment of the document’s creation. It’s difficult not to have this reaction when reading through two manuscript volumes [...]
