This post is by Amanda Bellows, Bernard and Irene Schwartz Fellow. During the nineteenth century, literature became increasingly accessible to Americans thanks to rising literacy rates, decreasing production costs, and advancements in print and distribution technologies. In 1871, Appleton’s Journal of Literature pronounced that recreational reading had become “the most facile distraction, the most available…

This post was written by Jenny LeRoy, a CUNY graduate fellow at the New-York Historical Society who helped to process the James G. Harbord Papers. For General James Harbord, president of the Radio Corporation of America from 1922-1947 and lieutenant to General Pershing during the Philippine-American War, discussing the drama surrounding his servants was a…

Few of us would have the temerity to summarize world history in a single volume but that is what the Swiss educator, cartographer and geographer Henri Venel attempted in the 1840s. We would hardly be aware of his name though were it not for a translation of that work by the English-born American Egyptologist George Gliddon. As it…

To kick off Black History Month, here is a cabinet card that has fascinated me ever since I stumbled across it in our Portrait File. Titled “Little Ethiopians,” it’s a composite of 21 portraits of African-American babies. The cabinet card was issued by Smith’s Studio of Photography in Chicago, Illinois, and bears an 1881 copyright…

On February 25, 1870 Hiram Rhoades Revels, a preacher from Mississippi was sworn into the United States Senate. That occasion marked the first time a man of African descent served in either house of congress. While his service is a landmark in American history, Revels would not seek a second term but did go on…