Orchard workers at Mt. Pleasant Orchard, near Havre de Grace, Maryland, c. 1915. Over the Christmas holiday, I unearthed a small journal...

Chester County Historical Society. In addition to Swarthmore College’s Friends Historical Library, Wednesday also took me to the Chester...

Mourning miniature, 1788. Brooklyn Museum. 21.474. Twinkies. I’ve had a few. I’ve had more pink Snowballs and Suzy-Q’s than Twinkies. I...

Halloween’s passed us by, but here’s a tale of horror from the late eighteenth century: a visit to the drugstore. This advertisement...

People generally know one thing about Johnstown, PA: the flood. The Johnstown Flood National Memorial is located on the rim of the former...

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...

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....

I wrote those words “gridded on my mind” years ago in a short story, the protagonist describing herself as the antagonist’s Eadweard...

Transit and Museums? Two of my loves rolled up into one. Visitors to New York want to see the Empire State Building, Times Square, and...

Balconies of Gustavino tile at The Cherokee Apartments. RL Fifield, 2005. Others have blogged about the Cherokee Apartments before, and I...

Reproductive Control. View the whole text at the U.S. National Library of Medicine website. http://collections.nlm.nih.gov/muradora/objec...

Reproductive Control. View the whole text at the U.S. National Library of Medicine website. http://collections.nlm.nih.gov/muradora/objec...

This post is a continuation of a series chronicling the relocation of my family cemetery, including my 4th Great Grandparents James Cole...

This post is a continuation of a series chronicling the relocation of my family cemetery, including my 4th Great Grandparents James Cole...

Baron Jean Louis Alibert performing the vaccination against smallpox in the Chateau of Liancourt, Constant Desbordes, c. 1820. Musee de...

Baron Jean Louis Alibert performing the vaccination against smallpox in the Chateau of Liancourt, Constant Desbordes, c. 1820. Musee de...