Part seven: Augusta falls in love, gets married and goes to Coney Island
Splash: Coney Island, 1905. From Shorpy Historic Photo Archive, http://www.shorpy.com
Posts from the ‘America’ Category
Aug 9
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Malmö to Ellis Island: part five of Augusta Parsons Hylander’s account
A shorter extract now, wherein seventeen-year-old Augusta studies dressmaking in Malmö so that she’ll have a marketable skill before embarking on her solo journey to America. Read more
“Women’s history and feminist history are often used interchangeably but this serves to play down the specific approach of feminist historians.”
Just found this piece by academic June Hannam on the Making History website, and thought I’d link it here. Among other things, she clarifies how the feminist approach to history in general is distinct from the subject of women’s history. Read more
What I’m reading next (mostly about war and witch trials)
Just a quick little update here, in case anyone is puzzled about the focus of the blog shifting away from colonial America over the past week or two without explanation. Read more
Today, new mothers get feeding guidelines and post-natal depression questionnaires. In 1918, they got this.
I mean, holy crap, right? Where to start?
Lucy Parsons 1 — Stuart Lindsley 0
It would, of course, be exciting to discover a woman in my family tree with a traceable record of something newsworthy and positive; political campaigning or activism, for instance. I don’t need an “extraordinary” hook in order to find someone’s life interesting – if anything, the opposite is true – but just once, it would be nice to find a woman who generated press coverage without having to be murdered, or embroiled in a custody battle with a toddler-kidnapping ex-husband. Read more
Eveline Allen, 1815–1899
I discovered A Narrative History of Remsen, New York, 1789–1898 while researching my 3 x great-grandmother, Eveline Allen. As the title suggests, it’s a local history book, self-published in 1914 by one Millard Fillmore Roberts; only 250 copies were printed at the time, but as with many such volumes, it’s been rescued from obscurity in the digital age and granted a new life online. Read more
More by Jill Lepore
I thought it might be worth looking up Jill Lepore, the Harvard professor who wrote the NYT op-ed piece I linked to here yesterday; and lo, I now have several more items on my reading list. Read more
Jane Franklin Mecom: “I Read as much as I Dare”
Erin, of the excellent Alice Martin Bishop blog, has started me off on a good, brain-awakening note on this sunny Edinburgh morning by posting a link to this NYT op-ed piece by Harvard professor Jill Lepore. It contrasts the fortunes of Benjamin Franklin with those of his sister Jane. Read more
