New-York Historical Society

We are upon a new year and a new political season, as recently-elected governors and legislators take their oaths and move into their offices. Hiring staff is always the first task at hand.  Does one “clean house” of the holdovers or retain them? This question may have had its most relevance in the early American…

Have you mailed your holiday cards yet? The United States Postal Service lists December 20th as the last day to post letters for arrival by Christmas! In the early 20th century, artsy students at the Ethical Culture School in Manhattan printed Christmas festival programs on the school’s own press. Most of the illustrations feature motifs you might…

A handwritten circa 1721 Navigation Notebook currently featured in our exhibition Harry Potter: A History of Magic, on view until January 27, 2019, contains all sorts of information that may be helpful in determining one’s location at sea, including descriptions of the constellations, tables, charts, and two volvelles. A volvelle is a paper chart with movable…

Given its links to Massachusetts, it may come as a surprise to many that the earliest surviving text of “Christian Charitie. A Modell hereof” (more commonly called “A Model of Christian Charity”) resides in New York.  A lay sermon attributed to the Puritan John Winthrop, the once unheralded manuscript came to the New-York Historical Society from Francis…

From the horrors of Malleus Maleficarum (1486) to the fervor of the Salem Witch Trials (1692), many women were accused of and persecuted for witchcraft. These women (and some men) were often poor, middle-aged, and considered to have abrasive personalities. These personalities disrupted the sensibilities of the rigid and religiously devout communities of New England….

You’ve probably heard of a “gaggle of geese.” Maybe even a “murder of crows.” But did you know that a group of November gobblers is called a “rafter of turkeys”? Here are some early 20th-century images (from the New-York Historical Society Postcard Collection) of the runner-up for America’s national bird. Not quite enough feathers to reach the rafters,…

The genealogy of America’s earliest Jews can be traced through multiple veins of the Nathan family, including the Hendricks branch, the Seixas branch, and the Mendes branch. However, perhaps no part of the Nathan bloodline is as historically rich and prestigious as their connection to the Gomez family, through which Edgar J. Nathan, Jr.–whose papers have…

This Sunday will be the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I, a war that remains etched in the collective memory for the physical and psychological toll wrought on those who lived through it. With that in mind, it seems fitting to mark this occasion through the words of a soldier who…

Modern library conservation was born in the aftermath of a catastrophic flood in Florence, Italy on November 4, 1966. Water from the Arno River devastated the collections of the National Central Library of Florence. An international team of bookbinders and restorers was assembled to save what they could; however in many cases the damage was irreversible. Many lessons were…