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

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

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

Back in May, I gave a lecture on collections emergency preparedness at the New York Archives Conference. It was supposed to be a...

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

On a Sunday afternoon in 1992, I was collecting fallen autumn leaves along Chapel Road outside Havre de Grace, Maryland where my...

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

Just barely. RL Fifield 2013. Dr. V. indulged my whim to visit the assemblage of historic trains at New York’s Grand Central Terminal...

Hello Readers of The Still Room! I’ve missed writing posts for the blog, but have been putting my energies into some projects that may be...

I recently visited my great uncle, Uncle B, in Arizona. Having left our ancestral seat for a life of western adventure in 1947, we don’t...

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

The stepped structure of the Maryland State Archives on Rowe Blvd, Annapolis. For a building built in 1984, I think the Maryland State...

The house on Paradise Road, Aberdeen, Maryland. My grandfather, S. Lee Bowman, returned from World War II in 1946 to marry Gurnice...

What is Westminster, Maryland’s claim to fame? Westminster, Maryland’s RFD Historical Marker. Besides being my childhood hometown, it was...

Commuters rush through the LIRR entrance corridor past artwork that evokes the original and only Pennsylvania Station. Andrew Leicester....

Rock Run United Methodist Church. Harford County was a site of early Methodist activity in America. Rock Run, Harford County, Maryland....

New York City’s subway opened in 1904. During an era of competing private lines that radiated from the heart of Manhattan into the...

At this point during the winter, I start to get the itch for digging in the dirt. Alas, it’s a rather pointless itch as I must confine my...

After a boozy brunch with Dr. V’s cousins, we wandered up the sunny side of the street to Grand Central Terminal, celebrating its 100th...

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