On July 3, 1776, the Continental Congress authorized privateering on the high seas. Essentially, any private citizen who obtained a Commission of Marque and Reprisal would be permitted to capture British ships. A common warfare tactic since the Middle Ages, the intent of the act was to weaken the enemy at sea while trading confiscated…

This post is by Anne Boissonnault, Archives Intern August 2nd marks a particularly lofty day in New York’s history of aeronautics. On that date in 1819, Louis Charles Guillé ascended in a balloon full of hydrogen gas over Vauxhall Gardens in Manhattan (a pleasure garden and theater near present day Astor Place) and descended using a parachute….

This posting was written by Catherine McNeur, a Bernard & Irene Schwartz Postdoctoral Fellow at the New-York Historical Society.  In the spring of 1855 Charles Loring Brace, who had recently started running the Children’s Aid Society, ventured into a neighborhood on the edge of the city called Dutch Hill. Located near East 41st Street and the…