New-York Historical Society

This post was written by Luis Rodriguez, Collections Management Specialist The holidays are full of traditions, and more often than not those traditions revolve around eating. In New Year celebrations, menus often contain foods meant to symbolize or even bring about good fortune. Lentils, for instance, are said to represent prosperity, and if you happen…

With Christmas just two days away, it seems a good time to post this little bit of history. In one sense it’s self-explanatory, a poem written out by hand and signed by John Remsen on Christmas Day, 1803. But it’s also a perfect example of a slightly more obscure practice. It is precisely what the Encyclopedia of Ephemera describes…

This post was written by Julita Braxton, AHMC Cataloger.   Laura Dewey Bridgman was the first person with deafblindness to learn to read and write. Half a century before the more well-known Helen Keller, Bridgman communicated using a tactile sign language, read using a form of Braille, and wrote using the alphabet created by Samuel…

Few would argue that the events of December 8, 1941 match in significance the catastrophic events of the previous day but it’s worth recalling that this was the day Congress actually voted to declare war on Japan. Though the vote was all but a foregone conclusion, there was yet a lone voice of dissent to which Milton Halsey Thomas, then curator of…

This post was written by Marybeth Kavanagh, Reference Librarian On December 4, 1875, William Magear “Boss” Tweed, notorious grand sachem of New York City’s Democratic political machine Tammany Hall, escaped from the Ludlow Street jail where he was being held on charges of stealing somewhere between $20 and $300 million from the city treasury.  While awaiting trial, Tweed was granted special privileges not…

This post was written by Larry Weimer, Project Archivist for the N-YHS Institutional Archives. Lectures and other presentations have been a staple of New-York Historical Society’s programs for virtually all of its history. Although the historical past has been the focus of many of these programs, N-YHS has long recognized that the present is history in…

This post was written by Mariam Touba, Reference Librarian for Printed Collections. With colleges deep into their semesters, we continue to hear of controversies regarding academic freedom, sometimes in the manner of faculty who express sympathy with those deemed to be enemies of the United States.  In that light, we take a moment to ponder…

This post was written by cataloger Catherine Falzone. The American Historical Manuscript Collection (AHMC) contains seven letters by Susan B. Anthony, American feminist and campaigner for women’s suffrage. The letters mostly concern various speaking engagements—both her own and those of Frederick Douglass, Julia Ward Howe, Theodore Tilton, and Mary L. Booth. The following letter is from Anthony…

This post was written by Julita Braxton, AHMC Cataloger. This Veterans Day, with a focus on an item from the American Historical Manuscript Collection, we have the privilege of seeing the Second World War through the eyes of one soldier: Charles Murray Foster of the 1st Battalion of the 114th Infantry Regiment, United States Army, deployed to…