Category Archives: Newspapers
The Cherokee Nation and the Birth of a New Script
Written by Geraldine Granahan, CLIR project cataloger The Patricia D. Klingenstein Library of The New-York Historical Society has several items in its collections that were printed in the Cherokee language. One example is the above almanac, Cherokee Almanac 1861, which is written in Cherokee (or Tsalagi), an Iroquoian language used by the Cherokee people. The [...]
Free of an Empire, by Way of an Empress
This posting was written by Dael Norwood, a Bernard & Irene Schwartz Postdoctoral Fellow at the New-York Historical Society. On February 22, 1784, a small ship with big ambitions weighed anchor, and sailed down the East River. Commanded by John Green, the Empress of China left New York on George Washington’s birthday aiming to be [...]
Before Rosa Parks: Taking on New York’s Segregated Street Car Companies
Post written by Eric Robinson So much has been written about the struggle against slavery and segregation in the American south that it is easy to forget that race relations in the north have been just as knotty. It is comparatively unknown that nineteenth-century New York City’s public transportation systems were racially segregated: African-Americans were [...]
The Serious Side of Drinking: Political Toasts
Tippling is mainly a recreational sport today, but beer was an important source of nutrition in colonial New York. And alcohol also played a role in early American politics, through the time-honored ritual of drinking toasts. In 18th century America, nearly every public occasion ended with a score of ceremonial drinks and toasts. Verbatim transcripts [...]
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 [...]
Daniel E. Sickles: The Rotten Apple from the Big Apple
Far be it from us to dwell on the negatives of history, but there’s no denying that New York has produced its share of heels. High on anyone’s list should be Daniel Sickles. On a Sunday morning in February of 1859, the New York born and bred Sickles shot the un-armed Philip Barton Key (the son of [...]
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 [...]
An Occasion for a Rare “Screaming” Headline
Written by Mariam Touba, N-YHS Reference Librarian Even as we are told that newspapers are a dying medium, each of us can remember their banner headlines announcing momentous events. Such headlines, however, did not always come with newspapers. How then did early newspapers alert their readers to important occurrences? The answer is, “very subtly,” at [...]
