Der Wöchentliche Pennsylvanische Staatsbote 9/17/1773. RL Fifield Photo. Library of Congress. Many of us choose some aspect of life to...

The Accident in Lombard Street. Charles Wilson Peale. Winterthur Museum. 1962.88. A pie lays broken in the street, a distraught servant...

I spent July at a Research Fellowship at Winterthur Museum, Library, and Garden. This mainly meant identifying manuscripts and object...

Nothing like a little research day on my birthday. Quarter Session Docket, June 1, 1767. Philadelphia City Archives. During my stay at...

My time here at Winterthur is wrapping up. I took yesterday to visit two incredible local institutions, the Friends Historical Library at...

My research on indentured and enslaved servants’ lives has led me to mapping out their existence on historic maps of Philadelphia. I’m...

Read this great book on 18th century commerce in the backwoods of Virginia. Ann Smart Martin’s Buying into the World of Goods: Early...

Eddie Izzard puns on the Church of England: “Cake or Death?” For people found guilty of committing small crimes in England,...

The New Yorker Photo Booth blog highlighted tattoed women and a book about them Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and...

I roll over this analogy in my mind as I work with my study of 1,000 runaway indentured and enslaved women and their 6,000 garments,...

I predicted in this post from April that people would be hot to trot for Downton Abbey influenced costumes this Halloween. True to form,...

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

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

The summer is full of living history events, and moreso, the laundry that follows a hot sweaty weekend out in a field without a shower....

Der Wöchentliche Pennsylvanische Staatsbote 9/17/1773. As part of my research on 18thcentury working class clothing, I have been studying...

Maryland Gazette, August 9, 1787. Library of Congress. RL Fifield photo. The Runaway Clothing Database project uses newspaper runaway...

New: see the full article online here. If it doesn’t come up, go to the home page and search again. Abraham Emmit labeled her “an ill...