Mahlon Day was a Quaker, publisher of children’s books, printer, and bookseller who resided in New York City. He was born in Morristown, New Jersey on August 27, 1790. By the age of 26, he owned a printing shop at 35 Beaver Street. Mahlon Day was one of two printers who dominated the New York…

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 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…

Joshua Brookes arrived in the United States in 1798 at just twenty-five years of age. It was to be a 5-year tour, which he would document in a journal that now resides in the New-York Historical Society’s collection. Though he sailed back to his native England in 1803, Brookes did not stay away long, coming…

This post was written by Mariam Touba, Reference Librarian for Printed Collections. Popular culture now makes it known how much Aaron Burr believed in the education of women, endorsing “with avidity and prepossession” what he would read in Mary Wollstonecraft’s 1792 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.  He applied these principles to the upbringing…

Americans have spilled quite a lot of ink discussing the Declaration of Independence’s five words “all Men are created equal.” As with any historical text, their meaning in eighteenth century America is important to avoid drawing anachronistic conclusions. In particular, many would point out that many contemporaries commonly wouldn’t have regarded African Americans as commensurate with “all Men.” This underscores slavery’s denial of…

This post was written by Joseph Ditta, Reference Librarian for Printed Collections. In her 1945 book Old Dutch Houses of Brooklyn Maud Esther Dilliard (1888-1977) recorded the stories of “all the ancient dwellings” which were then in existence around the borough so “that their early owners, the founders of Kings County, [would] not be forgotten in the…

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…

Through March, the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library at the New-York Historical Society is displaying a number of documents reflecting the long history of African Americans in North America. These complement a particularly important new acquisition, an original letter from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to publisher Henry Luce, that came to N-YHS as part of the recent…