Histories

Hopefully those of you living in New York City were able to participate in Primary Day; if you haven’t, it’s not too late. Registered voters have until 9:00 this evening. Of course, we all care about our city and want to take part in electing our public officials. Perhaps this morning you were overwhelmed by the number of candidates to research and decide between. According to the New York City Campaign Finance Board, as of September 10, 2009 there were a total of 374 candidates running for election!

Still, New Yorkers have been given materials to be informed: The New York City Campaign Finance Board (CFB) reported that more than 2.7 million households will receive the official New York City Voter Guide for the 2009 Primary elections in various languages. Perhaps you received one by mail recently. If you haven’t looked it over yet, it is very helpful.

For the increasing number of voters seeking voting information online, the CFB posts an interactive voter guide on its website. Voters can enter their address to view a guide tailored to their home district, or simply browse candidate profiles by name or office. Links allow visitors to e-mail campaigns and view PDFs of the guide in Spanish, Chinese, and Korean as well as other sites of interest.

The Milstein Division is presently collecting campaign ads and brochures from all parties, candidates, and offices, especially for the upcoming November 3rd Election. This will be added to our ephemera collection, useful for present day and future researchers. Most of what we have so far for the 2009 elections is, understandably, material from Democrats running in the primaries.

As the November 3rd Election moves near, anyone who wishes to contribute material, please send to:

Milstein Division of United States History, Local History & Genealogy
Stephen A. Schwarzman Bldg. – Rm 121
New York Public Library
Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street
New York, NY 10018

This post was contributed by Jim Falconi of the Milstein Division.

When reading family histories, as I often find myself doing in the Milstein Division, I frequently come across glowing depictions of people’s ancestors, of the grandmother who made the best peach cobbler this side of the Mississippi, or the aunt who was adored by all the neighborhood children and stray cats. For obvious reasons, less favorable descriptions of one’s family are not as common. Rarely do we come across stories of the egotistical great-grandfather or the lay-about uncle. Even rarer are those condemnations of whole branches of one’s family tree, as if one’s family passed down undesirable habits and traits generation after generation. Yet these are exactly the judgments that are transcribed in the research notes, or ‘Family Trait Files’, that were compiled for the Eugenics Records Office during the early decades of the last century.

Many months ago, I posted a piece about the valuable, but underused, collection of genealogical material in our division known as the Family Files. Among the myriad research notes, family newsletters, photographs, and miscellaneous material are a small number of files compiled by genealogists for submission to the Eugenics Records Office at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island. It is in these files that, alongside notes on mother’s exceptional musical talent, we find accounts of the uncultivated, the “general no-counts” and various feeble-minded ancestors.

Eugenics, the theory that it is possible and desirable to improve future generations through selective breeding, gained its foothold in the United States at the laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor. The driving force behind the lab was Charles Davenport, one of the first and foremost proponents of the American eugenics movement. Davenport’s first studies dealt with physical traits like hair and eye color, yet his interests later shifted to the genetics of human traits that were not so easily quantifiable; for example, musical skill, sexual predilection and social behavior. This shift of focus was in part a response to similar studies going on in other countries. But it was also a direct reaction to the increasing concern of some segments of American society to the waves of immigration from Europe, and the shifts in the social and economic environment in the years leading up to World War II. Davenport tapped into the growing hysteria over the ‘foreign element’ and race relations to drum up support and funds for the creation of the Eugenics Records Office in hopes that in-depth study of the population would put the study of human traits on a firm, quantitative basis. He developed questionnaires that were taken from door-to-door by trained workers who recorded the characteristics of individuals from the interviewed family, a few of which made it into our family files at the library.  read more »

Have you visited the High Line yet? I haven’t but I am looking forward to making the trip in the near future. The High Line is an elevated train track which fell out of use during the 1950s due to the increased use of interstate highways for freight deliveries. In the late nineties, two New Yorkers came together to start Friends of the High Line, a group whose mission was to keep the historic structure from being demolished. Ultimately, the group partnered with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation to reinvent the High Line as a public space. Just a couple of weeks ago the first section of the High Line opened up to the public and the city's response has been very positive.

The High Line website offers excellent historical images of the structure and of the surrounding area as it was before the High Line was built. Looking through these great images, I started wondering what kinds of photographs we had in our Digital Gallery of the High Line. Surprisingly, I didn't find anything when searching by its name. There were images from the West Side Improvement Project but all were of locations above 34th Street, which meant, none of the tracks were the High Line. I then remembered that most of our street scene photographs are indexed by cross street. Searching for “Tenth Ave and 15th” I found some Wurts Brother's photographs. Here's the High Line taking its course through the national biscuit company:

This serves as a good reminder to researchers looking for street views of New York City or photographs of New York City buildings in our Digital Gallery. Most often you will not find anything under street addresses or building names (unless they are landmarked or famous). If you don't happen to find photographs for a particular structure you are researching, try searching its cross streets.

But avoid doing too much research this weekend. Go out and visit the High Line if you can!

As I have mentioned in the past, part of my work entails handling some wonderful photographs. One collection I processed last year was the Photographic Views of the United States, comprised of photographs from locations across the continental U.S., Hawaii and Alaska. While its layout is intuitively alphabetized by state, Matt Knutzen, from the Map Division decided to provide an alternative visual interface, connecting the images with their locations on a map of the United States. To view open the attachment below in Google Earth. Pretty cool, huh? We’re hoping this is just the beginning of our collaboration. I’ll write again about any new ideas or developments.

Just last week, the New York Public Library updated their Flickr Commons photostream. The newest images are from the Milstein Division and include construction photographs of the Woolworth Building as well as block by block street views of both Fifth Avenue (1911) and Broadway (1899).

Not only are these images aesthetically beautiful, they are also valuable historical objects which are useful for historians and genealogists alike. The latter two collections allow detailed study of the storefronts that peppered the sidewalks of Broadway and Fifth Avenue. Chances are you may also spot an ancestor’s shop if they conducted business there during the turn of the century.

Since joining the Commons late last year the New York Public Library has been met with an enthusiastic response from the Flickr community. Additionally some of the comments we have received have enriched our understanding of our collections. Having our items within Flickr Commons also makes them available for other creative purposes. We look forward to viewing future comments and innovative reuse of our collections!

Who exactly were the Queens of Finance? The New York Herald reserved this title for Victoria Claflin Woodhull and her sister Tennessee Claflin (or Tennie C Claflin). These sisters surmounted incredible odds by establishing a highly lucrative brokerage business on Wall Street in 1869. Born in Homer, Ohio they were not privy to the comforts and education afforded by wealth or high social stature. In fact, their childhood was quite a tumultuous one. Born to an alcoholic father, the sisters took charge of providing for the family while Tennessee was still an adolescent. Victoria and Tennessee moved to New York with their family and manage their combined living expenses with money earned from the brokerage business and profits made from their publication the Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly. Not only are they were they successful in finance but later both become involved in politics. Victoria actually ran for president in the 1872 election, before women even had the right to vote!

As I researched them I began to wonder how these tenacious women achieved so much during the period of time in which they lived. Here’s what I gathered from what I’ve read about them:  read more »

As one would guess, Roosevelt Island was not always known as Roosevelt Island. In fact over the past four hundred years it has gone through six name changes. From the Native American Minnahanonck, or “nice island,” to the Dutch name Varckens Island (meaning hogs island) to the English name Manning Island which became Blackwell Island, to American, Welfare Island and finally to the present, Roosevelt Island. Most of these names changes came as ownership was transferred from one party to the next, marking very distinct periods of history for the island which we now know as Roosevelt. Some of these names are descriptive; during the Dutch period, for example, the island was used to raise hogs. The period during which the island was called Blackwell seems coincidentally appropriate as it was certainly the bleakest.

While the island was known as Blackwell it was the site of asylums and a penitentiary. The conditions were inhumane as was noted by English Writer, Charles Dickens. During his circuit through the United States Dickens visited the island in 1842 describing it, in a work known as American notes, as having a “lounging, listless, madhouse air.” Nelly Bly, one of America’s first female journalists, worked under cover at the lunatic asylum as a patient to report on its atrocious treatment of inmates.  read more »

The photograph above is of High Island, an 8 acre spit of land between the Pelham Bay and the Long Island Sound, as seen from its more well-known neighbor, City Island. After researching High Island it remains somewhat of a mystery to me. Artifacts have been found on its shores, alluding to a time prior to the arrival of Europeans, but its Siwanoy name is still unknown. Even the origin of its present day name is uncertain. Some would guess that its name describes its physical location in the Northern reach of the city, or perhaps describing the profile of the island which is comparatively high. John McNamara, in History in Asphalt, states that it could be a Dutch name, Haai Eylgant, meaning shark island, due to the warm shallow waters of the Pelham Bay which tend to attract sharks.  read more »

The watery barriers of islands often prevent the infiltration of outside influences, as seen in the history of Broad Channel. For Hoffman and Swinburne Islands, however, these barriers were intended to keep potentially harmful change from spreading outward.

Ellis Island is rightly considered the gateway to New York City during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While this is the case, some immigrants took a detour through Hoffman Island or Swinburne Island. The two man-made islands, designated as quarantines for arriving immigrants, were created in the 1870’s in an area of the Lower New York Bay referred to as Orchard Shoals. Hoffman, the larger of the two, detained passengers exposed to contagious diseases while the sick and visibly infected passengers were hospitalized on Swinburne.  read more »

Believe it or not, all of these names at one point referred to the same place: the only inhabited island in the Jamaica Bay, now known as Broad Channel. Have you ever been to Broad Channel? If you have, then you know that it looks nothing like the rest of New York City. Having spent half of my youth in Queens and the other half on the east end of Long Island, I can say that the Jamaica Bay area looks far more like the latter than the former. How did this happen?  read more »

Sometimes, from beyond the skyscrapers, the cry of a tugboat finds you in your insomnia, and you remember that this desert of iron and cement is an island
-Albert Camus; American Journals (April/May 1946 entry)

In the quote above, Camus reminds us that this skinny piece of land, on which are built so many buildings and skyscrapers, is in fact, an island. What struck me about this quote today weren't its emotional implications but rather the fact that "Island" is not the immediate impression one gets of Manhattan. New York City, however, is actually comprised of many islands - all of which have interesting stories of their own. I enjoy islands for the peculiarities they tend to develop so I decided to take some of the next few weeks to highlight a few lesser known islands which make up this great city.

The image above is from 1889, taken during the centennial celebration of George Washington's inauguration. I wonder what kind of celebration there will be 100 years from tomorrow . . .

To be sure, one will not need to wait 100 years to see a celebration. Washington, D.C. is gearing up for the largest crowd it has ever seen. I won't be there on Tuesday, but I will be watching. In fact, if you want to join me, stop by the Humanities and Social Sciences Building. We'll be watching inaugural festivities in the South Court classrooms.

This Friday, the Milstein Division will be offering a free class on the best online resources to use in researching New York City’s history. I invite all students, history buffs and library lovers to come to the Humanities and Social Sciences Library to find out more about all the databases and websites used to research the people and the events that contributed to our city’s history. For this month’s class, I’ll be focusing on the history of this library’s immediate neighborhood – from the Crystal Palace and the Croton Reservoir to the wealthy inhabitants of swanky Fifth Avenue. We’ll be looking at census records, old photographs and postcards, maps, and newspapers to search for the stories, records and documents the neighborhood and its residents have left behind.

Here are the details:
Class: Digital Gotham
When: Friday, December 19th; 3:15-4:15
Where: South Court classrooms (1st Floor)
Humanities & Social Sciences Library
42nd Street & Fifth Avenue

I'm looking forward to seeing you there.

Before her death in 1852, Nancy Nicol carefully cut a lock of hair from each of her three young children, her husband and herself, and sat down to make a memento for the family she would be leaving behind. Nancy had drawn out a family register, covered with curlicues and other inky flourishes, listing the milestone dates of births and marriages – there had been no deaths to record, yet. Next to each name, her husband David, her own and the children, George, Catherine and Martha, she fastened the curls of hair to the paper with ribbon and wax.

After Nancy Nicol’s death, the register was handed down through the generations until, at some point, there were no more immediate family members to pass it onto and it came into the holdings of the Genealogy collection of our library. The register, tucked away in series of folders, has sat in a file cabinet along with over 3,000 other genealogical gems, uncatalogued and out of reach of most family historians. This summer, the staff in the Milstein Division began to create records in our online catalog, CATNYP – providing signposts for researchers signifying that is always more material for them to look at before throwing up their arms in exasperation, faced with that looming brick wall.  read more »

Check out more images here.

Happy Thanksgiving!

This certainly is the election of my lifetime. If you’ve already voted today you probably had to wait a while to do so. This morning I’ve been spending time with the Encyclopedia of U.S. campaigns, elections, and electoral behavior. While it was just published in 2008 and is excellent for historical review, so much has changed this election season that I am wondering if an addendum will be published in the near future. I’m looking forward to new studies that will take the innovations used in the 2008 election into account as well as the recent grassroots movements in politics. But for right now, I’m just eager to see who wins.

Writing from the edge of my seat…

For the most part materials at the Milstein Division include print and electronic resources. A particularly unique collection held in our stacks is a seven-volume set of scrapbooks filled with World War I and World War II shoulder patches. Recently, these scrapbooks were treated by the Conservation Lab staff who lovingly restored them, cleaning the patches and encapsulating the pages. Conservation staff enjoyed this project thoroughly and invited Mr. Burger to the lab to view the newly stabilized albums; the meeting was recorded in the above video. The scrapbooks have been returned to the closed stacks of the Milstein Division and are now available for limited and supervised viewing.

The equation above, however overly simplified, represents the foundation of a family history. In this blog post I want to introduce a few guidebooks and indexes in section 15 of our open shelves. Section 15 focuses specifically on vital records of New York City, mainly records produced by places of worship or notices from newspapers. Below are three items from this section:

To start, let’s revisit the Works Progress Administration’s Guide to Church Vital Statistics in the City of New York, which I mentioned in a blog post a couple of weeks ago. This guide outlines the places of worship, churches and synagogues, in the five boroughs and lists the types of records (baptisms, marriages and funerals) held in each. Though the guide was created in 1940, it can still be helpful for locating vital records especially where public records are not available.

For those of you interested in early New York City vital records, it helps if your ancestors were Methodist. In addition to the Methodist Episcopal Church records available in the Manuscripts Division, we also have New York City Methodist marriages: 1785-1893, which is composed of a bride index and a groom index. The indexes refer to other collections within the Family History Library which you can order for use in a Family History Center.

We also have the Index to Marriages and Deaths in the New York Herald from 1835-1876. This is a great resource to use if your ancestors’ marriages of deaths did not make the New York Times which started in 1851. Since the New York Herald is not digitized for this entire period, this index makes marriage and death announcements much more accessible. The index provides you with the date of the event and refers you to the date and issue of the newspaper.

If you’re working on family histories of ancestors from New York City these are just three of the many reasons for you to visit us.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post on dating photographs based on photographic process and contextual clues. If this topic interest you, you may want to visit the Humanities and Social Sciences Library for two classes on dating and preserving photographs.

This Friday, I will be teaching a class called Clues from Family Photographs and next week, Tuesday Erin Murphy, the Associate Conservator for Photographs and Paper, will be offering a class called Caring for Family Photographs. Both of these classes will be held at 3:15-4:30 in the South Court class rooms.