In 1898, Henry Chauncey Cryder journeyed with two friends into the wilds of Canada’s Klondike region. There, like tens of thousands of others between 1896 and 1899, they hoped to discover gold. Cryder chronicled this trip in a diary that he gave to the New-York Historical Society in 1946 along with several photos and a…

In 1735, Fort Hunter, today just a half hour ride from Schenectady, was an outpost of colonial settlement. There Queen Anne had ordered the erection of the fort in 1711 at the behest of neighboring Mohawks. Included was a chapel that became a hub for various missionaries to the local Indigenous and European inhabitants. Among…

For an institution that’s been growing since 1804, the odd outlier is hardly a surprise. A rather remarkable one is a set of original manuscripts and fair copies of the work of eighteenth century British historian, Catharine Macaulay. Not only did Macaulay never did live here but the work that minted her status as England’s…

Dorothy B. Porter (later Wesley) was a librarian, curator and bibliographer. These aren’t roles that attract heaps of popular interest, so odds are you haven’t heard of her before this. Regardless, she made important contributions to advance the study of Black history and culture during her long tenure at Howard University. There she played a…

A few months ago I came across an 1862 letter from William Cooper Nell, one of the nation’s earliest Black historians, an educator, and abolitionist. In it he discusses work on a second edition of The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution, originally published in 1855. It was something of a revelation since I had…

By now most of us no longer passively accept the popularized First Thanksgiving narrative. After all, despite its kernels of truth, the story is infused with a mixture of myth and, well, outright fabrication (as we’ve previously seen). Many elements of the story only emerged in the last century too. In fact, historian James Baker…

One could be excused for thinking that a document certifying a Black man’s freedom in 1811 was a sign of the slow march of racial progress in the United States. Yet, given the elusiveness of true equality, it shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that looks can be deceiving. In reality, the certificate of freedom shown…

Ordinarily, a postcard from a prehistoric site among the papers of the Osborn family would be curious but somewhat unremarkable. After all, the collection’s main protagonist, Henry Fairfield Osborn, was a well-known paleontologist who by its August 1923 postmark had been at the helm of the American Museum of Natural History for 15 years. Closer…

The census originated with the very birth of the nation, being incorporated into the United States Constitution for the purpose of determining representation in the House of Representatives, levying taxes, and assessing the nation’s prospective war-time mobilization. But while today we can expect that answers are confidential, this was not assumed for much of its…