Ancestry.com, as a genealogical tool, is a start for many doing genealogy. I see it as a way to sketch and share only. There are a lot of...

Teresa Carpenter does not arrange the selected snippets of text in a chronological order. Instead, she starts with January 1, and then...

George Harrison Bowman, child of John Bowman and Ann Baker Both of my great great great grandparents died in 1857, leaving my fifteen...

I was inspired by this salted paper print from the 1850s of people posing for a photograph on a Baltimore and Ohio engine. I thought...

Speaking as a museum professional and a living history practitioner, what a great project. Theatrical designer Thomas John Bernard and...

One of the unexpected gems is the artistic and scientific wonderment that is the first electric street lamp, invented by Charles F. Brush...

Online databases are incredible tools. While my museum career has mostly focused on textiles, dress, and ethnographic materials, I never...

Some old women’s magazines from the 1940s turned up when we emptied my grandparents’ house. You would expect the articles and...

Leaving the historic Ferry Building. RL Fifield 2010. We are off to Governor’s Island at some point this weekend. Whereas tourists seek...

The El still lives on in Chicago – I’m not sure that they could live without it. But the El once was a vital part of New York...

Lewis Hine’s photographs will always remind us of the successes of the Labor Movement. The title of this image is Addie Card, 12 years....

I’ll have the Scollop of Oysters, hartychokes, cold lobster, and olive pudding! Winterthur has in their collections the Dinner Book of...

Lecturing at the Bergen County Historical Society, March 2011. I’m a Collections Manager in a large New York City institution. My first...

This  finger-wag at women about appropriately dividing their time between pleasure and work is fun to sing. Interesting that work is...

Hallo Dusseldorf! Near the Kunstpalace. Last week found me in Germany and Luxembourg. Dusseldorf, like many cities affected by World War...

Swank at The Green Mill. RL Fifield 2012. During our recent trip to see Jeremy W.(of Le Cafe Witteveen) and Tina S. in their Chicago...

Cold Spring. RL Fifield 2012. Dr. V and I took the week off a couple of weeks ago, and finally followed through on a plan to go hiking....

This post is not about servants. So much of the time when I refer to runaways, it’s in relation to indentured and enslaved women....

In researching the lives of indentured and enslaved women during the 18th century, I’m trying to rebuild their communities, to better...

With all the cocktail goings-on currently, it’s worth a look back toward the 18th century processes being rediscovered and further riffed...