This post is one in a quarterly series in which the New-York Historical Society highlights the collections for which detailed finding aids were published over the prior three months. All collections receive at least a summary description in our catalog, Bobcat.  But many collections have such depth or are simply so large or complex that…

How various and how strange are the events of life. What unexpected changes occur in the course of a few short years, or even months. How little I dreamed one year since, that I should ever make a voyage to China. To China, that far distant land, which so few of my country women, or…

Jessie Tarbox Beals was a woman of many firsts. A pioneer of photography, she was the first published female photojournalist in the United States, the first woman press photographer, and the first female night photographer. The Jessie Tarbox Beals photograph collection, ca. 1905-1940, PR-4, at the New-York Historical Society is available through our Shelby White…

John Anderson, Sr. (1733-1798) had barely published a year’s worth of his paper, The Constitutional Gazette, before he earned the title of “the rebel printer” —effectively opposing James Rivington’s loyalist paper, The Royal Gazette. His reputation was most likely supplemented by printing New York’s first edition of Common Sense by Thomas Paine. Anderson was a…

The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., printed in New York by a C.S. Van Winkle at 101 Greenwich Street, was published in seven serialized installments from 1819 to 1820. The book was also an entirely pseudonymous affair by none other than Washington Irving, the father of American folklore. The Sketch Book, and in particular…

This post is one in a quarterly series in which the New-York Historical Society highlights the collections for which detailed finding aids were published over the prior three months. All collections receive at least a summary description in our catalog, Bobcat. But many collections have such depth or are simply so large or complex that…

Food is a critical part of our daily lives, and of our history. Cuisine is passed down from generation to generation and is an expression of a shared identity. At the most basic level, it reflects ethnicity, but also lifestyle, values, and traditions.  The Duane and Wells family’s recipe book gives us a glimpse into…

When Rose O’Neill’s illustrations appeared in True Magazine on September 19, 1896, she made history by becoming the first female cartoonist to publish a comic strip in America. A self-taught artist, O’Neill (1874-1944) had spent her childhood studying artists and submitting her work to various periodicals around the country. She set out for New York City at…

From the title Scholars and Gentlemen, one of the essential histories written about the New-York Historical Society and that dates from the 1980s, one might get the wrong impression, that only men played a role in the life of the institution over the course of its 216 years. Yet many women have played significant roles…