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…

Harry Potter may have come and gone here at the New-York Historical Society but it turns out that the interplay of magic and science that enlivens the Potter series can still be found in the Historical Society’s collections. On this occasion, it emerges from an unidentified colonial physician’s account book. Although it’s generally written in legible scripts, the…

This post is by Ted O’Reilly, Curator & Head of the Manuscript Department While watching his dream of establishing a university become reality, Thomas Jefferson put pen to paper assembling estimates of both university income and expenditures for 1825-1827. The surviving document contains many elements of interest (e.g. salaries of professors, the military instructor and librarian, as well as…

This post was written by Marybeth Kavanagh, Reference Archivist On July 26, 1788 New York, by a vote of 30-27, became the 11th state to ratify the Constitution. The New York Ratifying Convention, having approved the Constitution, also voted unanimously to prepare a circular letter to the other states, asking them to support a second general…

Iceland is a nation rich in both history and culture but it’s unlikely to rank very highly among nations you’d expect to find ordering Steinway pianos in the 1940s. Yet it’s curiously well-represented in two account books from the Historical Society’s collections kept by longtime Steinway employee Ralph Tapp. In one example,  Asta Helgadotter [sic] of the Icelandic consulate…

This post was written by Julita Braxton, AHMC Cataloger. One collection within the American Historical Manuscript Collection (AHMC) is composed of four birth certificates for children born to enslaved mothers, following the passage of “An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery” in New York in July, 1799. This is a birth certificate for a…

This post was written by Maureen Maryanski, Reference Librarian for Printed Collections. As Women’s History Month draws to a close, let’s focus on one of the founding documents of American feminism: the Declaration of Sentiments. Drafted, debated, and signed during the first women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York in July 1848, the Declaration…

In conjunction with the success of the Broadway musical Hamilton, the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library at the New-York Historical Society is exhibiting a selection of original manuscript documents and contemporary printed works in the library reading room evoking the remarkable life of America’s first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton (1757?-1804). Like a great number…

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,…