Histories

Recently the Milstein Division of U.S. History, Local History and Genealogy has acquired close to fifty books of historical photographs from locations across the United States. Photographic books are not uncommon but generally focus on large cities like Chicago, New York or Los Angeles. This series, however focuses on smaller cities like Omaha, Nebraska and Knoxville, Tennessee. Come visit us and take a look!

With all of our concrete and asphalt spaces, it is sometimes very difficult to find refuge from the summer heat in New York City. As a child I envied my neighbors in the apartment building across the street which had a pool. It was surrounded by a fence high enough so that you could only see swimmers plunge off the diving board. If only I had known then of the free public swimming pools scattered through all of the five boroughs!

What makes stretching out on the Bryant Park Lawn irresistible? This photograph taken in 1925 could easily be a scene of the park today. The similarities, however, would end there considering the Bryant Park depicted in the above photo and the Bryant Park of today. Those of you familiar with the park's evolution know that its history is dappled with periods of renovation and dereliction.

Have you lived in New York City long enough to remember when it used to be dangerous? Even the Worst Case Scenario Handbook:Travel has a section on how to handle riding the subway here! While this city is now arguably a safe place to live it certainly has a history marked with violence.

Take riots for example. New York City has had many of them; in fact the anniversary of a bloody and misguided riot is upon us. On May 10, 1849 violence erupted, due not to a draft, or a food shortage, or low wages. The Astor Place Riot ensued over a petty dispute between two actors, Edwin Forest, an American and William Macready, an Englishman. The deeper issue, however, was one of nationalism and classism as expressed in this surviving broadside. You can read a very dramatic account of the riot and the events leading to it in The Great Riots of New York City, by J.T. Headley. The event was so dramatic that it actually inspired Richard Nelson's play Two Shakespearean Actors.

Can you think of a present day equivalent to the Astor Place Riot? The closest I came was a fight between the Blue Man Group of Berlin and the one working at Astor Theater over which city has the hippest art scene. But that wouldn't be dangerous, that would just be bizarre.

For the past few months I have been working with a collection of photographs of various locations in the United States from the late nineteenth century to the mid twentieth century. The collection will be available on our wonderful digital gallery in the future and I’m looking forward to seeing these images uploaded – some of them are really amazing.

I wrote a while ago about Hilah Paulmier and of the trail of documents that led me to verifying her identity. Recently I discovered another photographer who sparked my interest: William M. Van Der Weyde who captured the above image which is part of the Photographic Views of New York City Collection. While working on the images from the rest of New York I found some amazing photographs from Camp Black, a recruitment center for the Spanish-American War, also by Van Der Weyde. I will write again when these are available digitally.

In light of Monday’s announcement of the Pulitzer Prizes in journalism I wanted to highlight the birth of the New York Tribune on April 10, 1841, and the paper’s first editor, Horace Greeley. Greeley was a highly opinionated man not afraid to print his views on temperance, worker’s rights, women’s suffrage, socialism and even vegetarianism. The newspaper, shaped by Mr. Greeley's views, was highly influential and was even called by some the “political bible,” of its time. You can take a look at issues from 1900-1910 through the Library of Congress's website Chronicling America, but by this time the paper had changed a great deal. For other years you'll have to refer to the microfilm.

Want to see some amazing photographs of New York City in the 1940’s and 1950’s? We recently acquired Vivian Cherry’s Helluva Town, a book of black and white photographs with images of New Yorkers at street corners and fruit auctions, on the el train and on bocce ball courts. The photographs capture the kind of New York that always seems damp and chilly, kind of like today.

I know its awfully unseasonable to post a wintry scene but I wanted to point something out to you in this image. It is the cover of a holiday card depicting the Humanities and Social Sciences Library on a very snowy day. You'll also notice two flags on the card. When my uncle received it last Christmas he asked me why the library would fly a French flag. I thought to myself "that's a good question."

This is a picture of Algot Lange. Do you know who he is? I had not heard about him until last week when a patron approached the General Research Division reference desk asking about him. Mr. Lange was a Swedish explorer who wrote two books about his adventures in the Amazon during the early twentieth century. He’s an interesting fellow and a reminder that not all of history has been told: there is not a single entry for Algot Lange in any of our biographical databases nor is he the subject of any book. I decided that was reason enough to trace his story by means of historical documents.

Through a database called Ancestry Library Edition, I was able to find passenger lists recording Algot’s return trips to New York, passport applications, and a WWI draft registration card. I discovered that he was born in 1844 in Sweden but migrated to New York in 1904 and became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1915. His naturalization papers are on file in the National Archive Records Administration. There are also 22 newspaper articles in the New York Times advertising his books and lectures as well documenting his trips to the Amazon. If anyone’s interested in writing about him, I have plenty of sources to direct you to.

The image shown above is a check written for seven million two thousand dollars for the purchase of the territory of Alaska in August 1, 1868. It is one of thousands of historical documents available in Footnote, a database recently acquired by the New York Public Library. Footnote is doing some interesting work in partnership with NARA (National Archives and Records Administration) digitizing and indexing many of their collections, making them searchable and available online. The collections are diverse and include the Constitutional Convention Records, Investigative Case Files of the Bureau of Investigation 1908-1922 (presently known as the FBI), the Pennsylvania Archives and Project Blue Book, UFO investigations from 1947-1969, to name a few. This is an excellent database for primary source documents.

An interesting dimension to this project is Footnote's use of social networking to enrich the collections. Users are allowed to upload their own content, whether photographs, newspaper articles or other kinds of historical documents. They can also annotate or describe documents within the database or create story pages on items they find particularly meaningful or interesting.

They are are still working out their search functions and I have yet to understand their relevancy ranking. Still, the more you work with the database the more you will find. In fact the collection is growing everyday. With all that it has to offer, I think Footnote is beneficial to genealogist and to historians alike.

Sometimes there are actually reasons for wanting a television. I wish I could have caught this show last week. African American Lives is a PBS series in which African American celebrities are presented with stories from their own family history. Here's a clip of an interview with comedian Chris Rock during which he learns about his great-great grandfather Julius Caesar Tingman.

I actually found Julius C. Tingman's Civil War pension record in a database we recently acquired called Footnote, which contains thousands of scanned historical documents. I'll be writing more about it soon. In honor of Black History Month, other databases have added more resources specific to African American genealogy like Ancestry which now contains Freedman Marriage Records and Southern Claims Commission Records, valuable resources for genealogical research of a population which was very under-represented.

The above photograph is part of the "By Popular Demand: Votes for Women," a digitized collection in the Library of Congress' American Memory Project. I love the details of this one: the ink well in the bottom left hand corner, the wooden ballot box, the look on the face of the voter to the right and how the photograph was taken just as the women in the middle is tearing her ballot.

Details like these are exactly what the Polling Places Photo Project are hoping to archive and share. "Polling Places" is a collaboration between the New York Times and AIGA. It is described as a "nationwide experiment in citizen journalism that encourages voters to capture, post and share photographs of this year’s primaries, caucuses and general election." I really like this one - A campaigner devoted enough to run into moving traffic.

So, don't forget to vote tomorrow and if you think to, bring your camera!

We all like a good challenge sometimes and one presented itself to me in these three images:

The Astor Library was opened to the public almost 150 years ago. One reason it was not viewed as a success is expressed in the illustration below:

Most of us, I think, would agree that democratization of information is a good thing. Making books, art, music freely available to more people can only bring about societal enrichment. The New York Public Library has a history of doing just that.

Working with the idea of social collective knowledge, libraries seem to be pushing the boundaries further. Even the Library of Congress is considering the benefits of allowing patrons to manipulate and create content. Recently the LOC collaborated with Flickr, uploading two collections of photographs with no applicable copyright restrictions, and allowing other Flickr users to tag the photos with their own descriptions. It is an interesting idea and many of the photographs are great, especially the color transparencies.

Happy Holidays from the Milstein Division

Have any of you wondered what will become of governor’s island? It was the subject of an entry on this blog a couple of months ago while the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation were discussing five different proposals for the island’s future. Well, you may have caught it in the news yesterday that a plan was approved to create a lush, green park, which may include amenities such as bicycles to use free of charge and perhaps building space for future cultural or academic institutions. What do you think of this decision? I have to say, I’m thrilled they didn’t choose to make it a golf course.
Sachi

On December 13, 1931 Winston Churchill, during a lecture tour through the United States, sustained significant injury from an automobile accident which occurred as he was crossing Fifth Avenue. Apparently he was looking for traffic in the wrong direction, accustomed to British traffic rules.It took a week for Churchill to recover, after which point he was able to return to England, a fortunate thing not only for his family but also for the rest of the world a decade later in the throes of the second world war.

This week we wanted to feature a book that is not found in many library collections. Brooklyn’s Williamsburgh is a labor of love to which author Brian Merlis dedicated about half of his life. It is a compilation of newspaper clippings, old advertisements, photographs, drawings and maps, all pertaining to Williamsburg history. While the documentation of this book is not the best, (there are no footnotes and or references for images) it has a very intimate feeling and is very image rich.

The Fraunces Tavern Museum is the oldest building standing in New York City. It has a very rich political history, as the meeting place for the Son’s of Liberty and later as the birthplace of various United States government agencies.
The event for which the building is most famous occurred two hundred and twenty-four years ago today. After reaching the end of the Revolutionary War, General Washington, on December 4, 1783, gave an emotional farewell address to his men just prior to resigning from military service. The picture below is a depiction of this scene which took place in the Long Room.

The Fraunce Tavern Museum gives an account of the meeting which can also be read in the Memoirs of Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge.
Sachi

Every week we receive new books on subjects related to United States history and genealogy. Recently we’ve decided to create a “New Books” shelf to allow patrons to browse the new additions. We also decided to feature one of these books on this weblog every week.
This week’s pick, 33 Questions about American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask, tackles controversial questions such as “How does Social Security really work?” or “Was the US Constitution meant to be a ‘living, breathing’ document?” While the author’s opinions can be considered unorthodox, the book provides interesting perspective on issues still relevant in the current state of the economy and politics.