A side quest for an historian who has gotten sucked into Historical Fiction – again. I admit – I wrote the title for this newsletter first, and as a result I am imaging something out of Jasper Fford’s Thursday Next series or out of Kate Quinn’s new book, The Astral Library. And considering that I was just listening to the most recent episode of What Should I Read Next? where Anne and her guest were talking about The Astral Library and the point in the book in which Anne of Green Gables comes up, I’m not really surprised. But I digress. I have been […]
Boston 1776
A Reflection on the 256th Anniversary of the Boston Massacre It is that unhappy anniversary of the Boston Massacre today. Perhaps that is why I found myself picking up Serena Zabin’s The Boston Massacre: A Family History (2020) at the bookshop on Monday. My intent had been to do some digging into the local town history, but while that is still on the top of my to-do list, it is March, and I often find myself coming back here. Why? I can have my guesses. The first being that I spent so much time working just outside […]
“First of May, sir! Out of the Way!”
It being a fine, bright, mild morning, I got up early, to take a walk on the Battery, the most glorious place for a morning or evening stroll, to be found in the world. Coming down into the entry, I found it cluttered up with a specimen of almost every thing that goes to the composition of house keeping, and three or four sturdy fellows with hand barrows, on which they were piling Ossa upon Pelion. I asked what the matter was, but all I could get out of them was, “First of May, sir—please […]
Concord in the Mid to Late 19th Century
Concord in the Mid to Late 19th Century Home of Transcendentalist Writers, but also my Great-Great Grandfather “At the end of [the Milldam Street’s] short length, Walden Street branches abruptly to the left. Speedily quitting the clustered buildings of the town, this street leads across a mile of Concord’s level meadows until it begins to climb a wooded slope. […] In the woods to the left lies ‘Fairyland’ with its pond, beloved in Concord for its natural beauty and its earliest skating.”1 Sometimes the best entry points into history are the places it touches you […]
“Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story”
My entry point for history was my own family. I grew up visiting graveyards regularly, whether it was planting flowers on relatives graves (some of whom I don’t remember exactly where they fit in the family tree) or trying to find other branches on the family tree generations back, so far back that the graves were often not visited anymore. I can still find baby Daisy because she’s buried so close to Author’s Ridge in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord. To put things into even further perspective was thinking about my great-aunt. Born at […]
Using Fiction to Understand the Past
There is something about reading a book that has familiar landmarks. Not even necessarily places that you’ve actually been to (though being able to actually visualize where you are in the book is fun), but places that you’re actively interested in, time periods you’ve spent scads of time researching. I’m currently reading The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry, and while I love my ability to mentally follow Towner down Derby Street, up Hawthorne past the hotel and up to the Common, well… It reminded me of yet another book where it wasn’t quite the same, […]
The Spirit of Historical Inquiry
I was listening to TED Radio Hour last month for a re-airing of an episode entitled, “The Spirit of Inquiry”. What fascinated me was how science-based the episode was. And yes, to a certain extent I could understand why it was so science-based. But here is where I would like to take that thought and bring it even further: Most of us were taught in school that the reason we should believe in science is because of the scientific method. Scientists follow a method and this method guarantees the truth of their claims. […] The […]
History Chat: The Earliest Constitutions
Most of the questions I have involving history are because I heard someone say something that didn’t quite line up with my existing knowledge. Either that or someone posed a question I didn’t know the answer to and had to look it up. Since I spend most of my time either in a classroom or a museum, this happens quite a lot. Today’s inquiry came from a simple statement. John Adams wrote the Massachusetts Constitution in 1780, the oldest Constitution in the country. So, I will start with the part that is the easiest to […]