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…

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…

This post was written by Matthew Murphy, Head of Cataloging and Metadata One of the jewels of our American Historical Manuscript Collection (which is a “collection of collections” consisting of 12,000 small and unique manuscript collections) is the Frederick Douglass letters, which consists of ten letters sent and received by Frederick Douglass between 1851 and 1894. In…

This post was written by Julita Braxton, AHMC Cataloger. In the United States, the second Monday of October is a federal holiday commemorating the landing of Christopher Columbus in the Americas, but it is also an opportunity to honor the people native to this land. This Indigenous Peoples’ Day, we will recognize one such person,…

This post is by cataloger Catherine Falzone. Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), New England preacher and theologian, is perhaps most famous for the 1741 sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” and for being a central figure in the religious revival known as the First Great Awakening. If you know him just from that sermon,…

This post was written by Julita Braxton, AHMC Cataloger. On June 19, 1865, two and a half years after Lincoln granted freedom to all persons enslaved within rebellious states through the issue of the Emancipation Proclamation, word finally reached Galveston, Texas. It was on this date that Union soldiers brought news that the war had…

This post was written by Julita Braxton, EBSCO Project Cataloger Challenges to the legality of bondage, shown in acclaimed director Steve McQueen’s film 12 Years a Slave—which won the Best Picture for Drama at the Golden Globes on Sunday night—are not without precedence, as evidenced by a document held in the manuscript collections of the…