NYT, 19 June 1903. Click to enlarge.

Three days later, on 22 June, the paper printed the shorter follow-up below. Note the circled paragraph: this is the Times quietly sneaking in a correction, clarifying that its breathless account of the incident had been wrong on some crucial points. No kidnap took place at the pier that day, after all, and there had never been any plan for the little girl to travel with her mother and stepfather on their honeymoon trip. However, Louise’s ex-husband Alexander C. Young did have form for this sort of thing, and did go on to snatch their daughter from her grandmother’s care in a separate incident very soon afterwards.

NYT, 22 June 1903.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I’d hit a startlingly productive seam of sensational stories relating to this branch of the family. They’re such very distant connections – Louise was my 2nd cousin 3 times removed – that I hardly think of them as relatives at all, but they’re no less interesting to me for that. Alexander Young is a particularly colourful figure about whom I’d like to write more (probably not here, though. He was many things, but he wasn’t a woman).

Quantities of newly digitized historical newspapers are becoming available online all the time, and it can be interesting to look at the varying ways in which different papers cover an incident. I recently found another version of this story in the St Louis Republic, dated 21 June 1903 – after the first NYT report, but before the correction. The Republic takes a very different approach to the initial (incorrect) story of the kidnap attempt at the pier, putting a kind of proto-Daily Mail/Fathers4Justice-style spin on it.

St Louis Republic, 21 June 1903 (enlarge it to read).

Observe the contrasting perspectives at work: while the Times casts Louise and her new husband as relatively dignified victims of Young’s shouty, uncouth behaviour during what, we are told, was his fourth (!) attempt to kidnap his daughter, the Republic does everything it possibly can to make Young into a wronged hero. So the Times has “Snatched Baby at Pier: Alexander C. Young Took His Child From Its Mother”, while the Republic chooses to run with “Regained Child at Ship’s Pier: Recently Divorced Woman About to Take Little Girl Away With New Husband”. Damn those divorced women with legal custody! What’ll they try next?

The Republic‘s account opens with a description of Louise walking up the gangplank in front of a hissing crowd, “leaving behind her 3-year-old daughter, who had been taken from her on habeas corpus proceedings”. The implications that the crowd disapproved of Louise, that she was calmly abandoning her child at the last moment after having planned to travel with her, and that Young’s service of a writ had achieved a legitimate goal, are clear (and, it seems, completely invented). Next, the paper snidely suggests that Louise has “figured prominently” in the divorce courts “during the last ten years”, making no mention of the fact that her only divorce – from Young, who’d himself had two divorces, though this too is left out – was granted on grounds of his adultery and misbehaviour.

Then there’s the explanation that Louise has married again. To an artist, no less. And he’s French. Both papers give most of this information, but it’s only in the Republic‘s version that you get the feeling some eyebrow-waggling is being conveyed between the lines. And let’s not overlook the disorderly conduct, ascribed by the Republic to Louise and her husband rather than to Young: “So violent were the protests of Jongers and his wife that the uproar attracted the attention of the crowd on the pier, and the police were obliged to step in and restore order.”

The battle for little Louise rolled on for quite a while after this mostly-imaginary incident hit the headlines. It was widely reported, and most of the coverage that I’ve read tends towards either condemning Young’s behaviour, or describing events in a way that flatters neither parent. Sometimes there’s a bit of a sardonic “see how the rich live!” tone. But the attitude that colours this Republic piece, so keen to present Louise in the worst possible light, is rarely seen and does set it somewhat apart from the rest. Whether the paper’s editorial stance was a little backward-looking on this point, more than usually attached to a disapproving view of divorced women that was gradually being left behind by many people, I don’t know.

This page has a useful, brief account of changing laws and trends in US divorce and child custody disputes over the years. William O’Neill’s 1965 article “Divorce in the Progressive Era” from American Quarterly is worth reading as well if you’re researching the issue. No doubt there’s other, newer research to be found as well, and I’d be glad to hear from anyone who can point me towards it.

Header image: View to the south from Christopher Street Pier c.2008, sourced from Wikipedia (public domain).

Despite my tendency to let wibbling uncertainty dominate my thinking on contentious feminist issues, this one seems pretty black and white to me. It’s easy enough to have a knee-jerk “that’s unfair!” response despite knowing nothing of the context, and that is what I did, but then I spent a bit of time reading about the reasons behind the policy, just to try and understand why on earth a group of feminists would arrive at such a weirdly wrong-headed decision. This morning I took a sort-of-half-day-off and sat on the sofa doing some more reading. And, yep, still think it’s unfair. Misguided, troubling, hypocritical, callous. Here’s a really good, clear piece about the wider issue that I saw linked earlier, though it dates from 2011.

I was reading that piece when I got distracted by this item on BBC Breakfast about Harper Robertson, a young transgender man whose parents are musician Thomas Dolby & actress Kathleen Beller. Dolby’s written a song referencing Harper’s experience, so they were all featured on the programme discussing some aspects of that.

It’s a pre-recorded package (is that the word I want?) rather than a live studio interview, and essentially warm and fuzzy rather than starkly hard-hitting. I’m not sure to what extent it’s simply a promotional exercise for Dolby’s album, but I wasn’t inclined to be cynical about it because the family presented such a welcome contrast to some of the transphobia I’d been reading about immediately beforehand. It struck me as I watched Harper talk about growing up, and Dolby and Beller give the parents’ perspective, how much happier people generally seem to be when they aren’t pouring their energy into fearful, oppressive control-freakery. That, I suppose, is worth bearing in mind no matter what you get up to in life, whether or not you raise children; but still easily forgotten, as illustrated by the many folk who cling stubbornly on to suspicion and dislike as armour against the world, and apparently perceive transgender individuals as just one type of threat among many in a world seething with terrifying Otherness.

I know it is tiresome when people say “as a parent”, but since I am a parent and my children are still little, any discussion that highlights how badly it is possible to fail them in ways I haven’t previously considered is guaranteed to catch my attention. And anyone modelling a better approach in the mainstream media, like Beller and Dolby, is reassuring to see, celebs or not. They’re a welcome example of an alternative to a parenting style that acknowledges no conflict inherent in trying to raise beloved human beings to be happy and sorted, whilst vigorously objecting to a series of random things that are offensive and threatening about the lives, circumstances and choices of other people. Those who take this approach and also identify as feminists – e.g. the hypothetical Radfem2012 attendees, and some tweeters I was following last night (sample view: “As a feminist I find it insulting that men want to identify as women”) – add a whole other layer of oddness. Apart from anything else, how are they so blind to the possibility that their determined transphobia might one day backfire on their own families?

Whilst the Radfem organizers prepare to vigorously see off trans invaders from the high walls of their City of Womanhood, there’s another conference coming up called Intersect: it’s actually tomorrow (19 May 2012). I am not going (I cannot pretend that I ever go to these things), but it does sound good, and even if you’re not going either it’s worth taking a look at their programme because they will be streaming events live. The emphasis is on inclusivity. Info here.

It’s the final bit of material I have to add about Augusta’s life, at least for now – but I still hope, one of these days, to find out more about the story of her childhood homestead surviving within the grounds of Malmö Airport. If anyone reading this knows any more about that, do please get in touch!

Augusta Parsons Hylander (1873–1965)

Mother Hylander brightened every life she touched. There was a glow, an enthusiasm, an inextinguishable optimism, a contagious good spirits, a vitality that won her friendships everywhere she went. She loved people, especially young people, for she was eternally young in her attitudes and interests. Independent and strong-minded, she always lived for others, investing her unceasing love and devotion, first in her own family and then on her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, all of whom adored her and have been inspired by her.

She expected the best of others, took them for what they were and found them good. Nothing got her down, dampened her spirits, though she had known hardships. She always looked on the bright side of things, expected the best, was not disheartened by the worst, and, therefore, enjoyed living. Endowed with a real pride in being, based on mature self-confidence, she looked back with genuine satisfaction upon 93 years lived with joy and to the full.

Her life was a monument to what it means to be a human being, an object lesson in graceful living. The contagion of her spirit will long survive her. The world is a better place because she lived.

The cutaway shoes of the woman on the left and the rather lovely three-piece suit and striped sock ensemble of the gentleman in the centre deserve a mention as well. Click the photos to enlarge.

The guests wait for things to get started

I love the concentration on my grandmother’s face in the next photo.

(My guess is that poodle dress girl’s mother is standing beside her here, wouldn’t you say? At least, they look alike to me. But as we have recently learned, I’m prone to imagining resemblances in old photos.)

The vows

The poodles take centre stage

Cake

Throwing the bouquet

Confetti for the bride

I’m now in touch with some relatives and fellow family historians, connected via the Lindsley branch of the family. They’ve clarified which sister is which in the later photo: my speculation was wrong, so it’s Lucy on the left, and Alice on the right. This means the woman I thought was the subject of our mystery photo is in fact Lucy Merrill Lindsley (1884–1969). So far, so good.

However, my cousin Ken (second cousin, once removed, to be precise) is also pretty certain that Lucy could not have been the young woman in the early, unlabelled photograph. He knew Lucy – who died before I was born – and simply doesn’t see a resemblance. He’s also checked with another cousin, Stuart (first cousin, twice removed), who also knew Lucy and who supports Ken’s view.

I’m delighted to be in touch with Ken, and this is all extremely helpful, if a tiny bit disappointing in photo-detective terms. It would be great to learn who the woman in the early photo was, but I’ve no wish to insist on a misidentification.

I do find it interesting that my cousins and I see the images so differently, though. Even taking on board their opinions re Lucy, I can’t help seeing a general resemblance between the mystery photo and our photos of Lindsley/Merrill relatives. That family had such a distinctive look. Ken and Stuart, on the other hand, don’t believe the  woman is a Lindsley/Merrill relative at all, and suggested I consider other possibilities (including Laura Sandford Webb, stepmother to the Lindsley siblings, who would have been in her early sixties around the time the early photo was supposedly taken. It’s possible that suggestion was only half-serious).

Below: the two images that initially made me think there was a resemblance, followed by two more photographs of Lucy that Ken has been kind enough to share.

Mystery woman, c.1910-14

Girard, Horace, Lucy, Stuart and Alice Lindsley, 1939

Lucy M Lindsley wedding photo, 1918

Lucy (undated)

I’m in the middle of a big proofreading job, one with myriad tiny abbreviations and awkward XML issues. It isn’t exactly difficult, just s-l-o-w, and lots of it has to be squeezed in around the edges of the rest of life, with extensive use of evenings and weekends and snatched hours of extra childcare on days I don’t officially work. It has followed hard on the heels of another long job, so things have been a bit pushed for a while now.

This is all good; I wouldn’t dream of complaining that work’s coming in. However, tonight I just can’t face doing any more of it so thought I would pop in here, remind myself I have a blog, and note a few things for the record.

• A quick look at the stats just now suggests that a decent quantity of readers are clicking through from here to various feminist blogs. This is a fairly recent development, and I’m really happy to see it. My visitor numbers are pretty modest overall, but that’s fine as long as people are finding useful links.
• Some relatives, connected by way of the Lindsley family, have been in touch, which is great – especially as they’re also researching their family history. (I owe them an email in thanks for some documents they’ve sent over from the States, which have considerably brightened my week.) Interestingly, they seem certain that the mystery woman in this photograph is definitely not the person I’d concluded she might be – nor indeed any other Lindsley relative. If they are right, not only have I been barking up the wrong tree, but in completely the wrong bit of the forest. While it’s a shame to hear this (and I guess we may never know for certain), I’m intrigued by the fact that we see the images so differently. I’ll try to put up a separate short post about it all soon, with some further photos that they’ve been kind enough to share.
• Another lovely person has been in touch via Ancestry about Augusta Parsons Hylander. I owe her a message, too.
• I’m trying to read Carol Berkin’s Revolutionary Mothers, but not finding it quite as compelling as some of the other books I’ve posted about. Good Wives and The Name of War were pretty hard acts to follow, admittedly. I’ll press on, and maybe it’ll pick up.
• The 1940 US Census is out! Not indexed yet, but searchable. I took ten minutes to look for someone the other day and completely failed to find him, but it was a long shot to start with, as he had a history of moving around a lot. It’ll be fun to work on searching others out, when I can find enough time to do it properly.
• I’m thinking about posting more here about my Scottish research in the future. I haven’t as many family photos from that side, which has held me back a bit before now. On the other hand, living in Edinburgh it’s easier to access a range of Scottish records directly, which is fun in itself.

More soon, I hope.

Mumsnet, the enormous UK parenting website on whose talkboards topics far removed from parenting are routinely tackled with fearlessness and humour, has launched a major campaign to raise awareness of rape and sexual assault and to tackle rape myths. It’s called “We Believe You”. On Twitter, it has inspired the #webelieveyou and #ididnotreport hashtags.*

It’s important to note, if only to forestall the inevitable objections, that this is not a campaign to overturn the legal presumption of innocence. Rather, it is about tackling the climate of skepticism and outright hostility that routinely surrounds those who report rape or assault. An unprecedentedly large-scale survey on the topic, conducted by MN earlier this year, gave disturbing results:

The survey (completed by over 1,600 women) shows that, of respondents:

• One in 10 (10%) had been raped
• Over one-third (35%) had been sexually assaulted
• One in four (23%) of those who reported being raped or sexually assaulted had been so four or more times
• In two-thirds (66%) of cases the women knew the person responsible
  

Many women felt unable to report rape or sexual assault:

• Over four-fifths (83%) of respondents who had been raped or sexually assaulted did not make a report to the police
• Over one-quarter (29%) didn’t tell anyone at all, including friends or family, about the assault/rape
• Over two-thirds (68%) said they would hesitate reporting to the police due to low conviction rates
• And over half (53%) would not report due to embarrassment or shame

The results also reveal that most women feel that rape victims are treated poorly:

• Nearly three-quarters (70%) of respondents feel the media is unsympathetic to women who report rape
• Over half (53%) feel the legal system is unsympathetic
• And over half (55%) feel society at large is unsympathetic

And here is the campaign’s page on rape myths – an important read.

You couldn’t be a US college student and a woman in the early 90s and not be superficially aware of some of the myths detailed in that link. Back then, I picked up the absolute basics via print media and information disseminated by campus sexual health networks. This was pre-widespread-internet-access; there were flyers, posters, books lying around on the coffee table in the Women’s Center.

But as I soon learned, a nodding acquaintance with some soundbites about rape culture is not enough to help you respond with meaningful support when the issue rears its head in real life. To provide that, you need more than good intentions; you need some genuine insight into the huge obstacles that victims typically face. Lately, I’ve been preoccupied with an uncomfortable truth: back in those days, when close friends confided in me about their then-recent experiences of rape (as happened twice during my student days), the support I gave them was not what it should have been – not even close.

I can vaguely recall conversations in which I made hesitant, well-meant but limp responses to their stories. I absolutely believed them and did not in any way blame them, but I’m not sure I even realized they might need extra reassurance about this. I was pretty poorly informed, and worried about making things worse by saying the wrong thing. In short, what I failed to do was get over myself and provide some actual help.

Quite obviously, my friends deserved better than hand-wringing. Anyone, not only women but anyone who’s been raped or assaulted, deserves better: love and empathy, yes, but also a clear, unequivocal and sensitively supportive response – and not just from friends and family, but from police and the courts.

It rarely plays out that way, though, and victims know it, which is one reason so many rapes go unreported. Looking now at the statistics in the Mumsnet survey results, my heart sinks. All those people staying silent out of shame, embarrassment, intimidation, or simple hopelessness. It’s troubling to contemplate, but entirely unsurprising when you consider a random selection of news stories from recent years (hover to see where links lead):

Attitudes to rape in the UK, as polled by Haven in 2010 (‘Wake Up to Rape’)

Campus rape ‘banter’ (UK, 2012)

More campus rape ‘banter’ (Vermont, 2011)

The channeling of reported rapes into the category of “no crime” (UK, 2012)

A victim-blaming cop (Toronto, 2011)

A victim-blaming judge (Ireland, 2012)

Another victim-blaming judge (South Korea, 2011)

Victim-blaming journalism (New York, 2011)

Victim-mocking journalism (New York, 2012)

There are endless such stories out there. You barely even have to look for them; I could go on listing them all day. And that’s without even starting on the topic of how government spending cuts are already affecting, and will continue to devastate, existing services for the support and protection of victims in the UK. Noise must be made about this, too, and the MN campaign does not neglect this angle, calling for central funding of the National Sexual Violence Helpline.

There is much more information on Mumsnet’s main campaign page (that link again), and the #ididnotreport tweets are archived here by Mark Malone (@soundmigration) – that link via Cath Elliott’s blog. Or try a direct Twitter search on the hashtag.

Rape and sexual assault are daunting, complex, upsetting topics, and I know that they are not what people come to this blog to read about (I regularly lose genealogy-focused followers on Twitter when I tweet about feminism, I’m sorry to say); but a push to increase genuine, widespread awareness is badly needed. Believing victims is a good start, but We Believe You is fighting for so much more than that, for ongoing work to challenge rape myths and ensure victims get the support they need. None of us can afford to assume we will never be affected by these issues; the MN statistics make that painfully clear.

From the #ididnotreport hashtag

#ididnotreport because someone who should have helped said, “it happens to everyone.”

Showed my 53yr old mother the #ididnotreport feed she said that nearly every adult women she knows has a story of rape or attempted rape…

#ididnotreport because of a rape culture which automatically assumes women lie

I wish #ididnotreport because when I did was told to “keep better company.” Thanks, Nassau County Police Dept.

I wrote an #ididnotreport tweet and then I deleted it. Says it all really.

*Update: there is also, now, a route for anonymous contributions to the hashtag. If you want to post to #ididnotreport but cannot do so from fear of reprisal, you may post as this user: @ididnotreport1. Password: ididnotreport.

What’s happened, essentially, is that I’ve learned enough in the past year to get a better handle on exactly how little I know about various current feminist issues. There’s so much good and thought-provoking analysis and comment around (and some not so good, some deeply irritating, some banal). It is exciting to explore it, which I’m doing mainly by way of articles and blogs rather than books just at present, but it’s also somewhat overwhelming in a way that makes me disinclined to shoot my mouth off in blog form – or even very much on Twitter, where I tend to retweet the serious stuff rather than offer my own take.

I keep thinking of the broken eggs/omelette analogy, tediously unoriginal as that may be. It’s like I’ve cracked open a whole lot of topics to see what’s inside, but not yet managed to make of them anything new that feels worth showing you. They’re rich and interesting, messy and slippery: rape culture, pornography, quotas, exclusivity, privilege. As for where the family history side fits in, it’s hard to say exactly. It may not fit in at all, it’s just a thing I like spending time on that I’m trying to handle in a particular way; the extra ingredient I always have such trouble folding in properly without destroying my omelettes. The tomatoes, OK? In blog terms, so far, I have prepared a frankly excessive quantity of tomatoes, but the eggs are all still swirling around in the mixing bowl with not enough happening in the way of integrating them.

Wow, bet you’re glad you read this, right? I know; it doesn’t make much sense. This time, though, I am going to post it regardless, because I’ve trashed too many half-written posts lately and I need to get past the block.

What I think I’ll do is start noting here from time to time the topics I’ve been thinking and reading about that aren’t directly related to family history, or women’s history, or the sort of stuff I usually post about. Even just resolving conflicted thoughts and concerns into words and assembling some links will be good discipline.

The topics mentioned above are probably good ones to begin with – even though I sometimes feel lately, as I did while reading this in-many-other-ways-encouraging piece by Zoe Williams for International Women’s Day yesterday, that to still be struggling with the porn issue from a feminist perspective at all brands me as hopelessly stuck-in-the-mud. However: it has to be done. It’s one of the biggest eggs in the bowl, a double-yolker, even. (I will stop with the egg thing.)

An early clue that this might not have been a good decision  came when I noticed that chapter five was entitled “Indians: 1492–1920”, and ran to fewer than twenty pages (of a seven-hundred-page book). I read out the chapter title to my boyfriend, and we laughed a little at how comically inadequate it sounded. I managed to keep going with the book until around chapter six before admitting defeat: somehow I just couldn’t stay focused on it. It wasn’t speaking to me.

A lot of people like Brogan’s book, if the online reviews are any guide. I can see why it was recommended to me, even though I didn’t get on with it. After a while I gave my copy away; but when I read The Name of War – an entirely different sort of book – a particular quote dimly recalled from the aforementioned ‘‘Indians” chapter came back to niggle at me. Thanks to the magic of the Look Inside feature on Amazon, I can reproduce it for you here:

Few historical themes are of greater fascination than the tale of the North American Indian; but it cannot be told here for its own sake. A history of the United States must be a history of victors; the defeated are relevant chiefly for what they tell us of their conquerors. Sed victa Catoni; the sage Auden, however, tells us that

Few even wish they could read

the lost annals

of a cudgelled people.

Honour to those few; but they must seek satisfaction elsewhere. Let us see what the cudgelled can reveal of their oppressors.

“A history of the United States must be a history of victors”. I was amazed, probably a bit naïvely, by that statement at the time; it just seemed so brazenly wrong to me, having taken the odd single-semester history course at my very right-on liberal arts college. I look at it now, trying not to assume the worst, and wonder: what exactly does it mean? Is Brogan simply saying that because the records of the past were mainly written by conquerors, for practical reasons it’s got to be “their” history? Or is he aiming for a more general truth about what actually counts as significant, in historical terms? I’m not sure; I can’t remember the context, and can’t see enough of the text online to judge. But whichever way he meant it, the follow-up statement, “the defeated are relevant chiefly for what they tell us of their conquerors” is still hard for me to read as anything other than arrogant and ridiculous. Even the word tale earlier on – “the tale of the North American Indian” – contributes to the general impression of head-patting. It doesn’t help that Brogan sounds as if he thinks he’s being tremendously gracious about all of this.

I’m in no position to judge a work I’ve only read part of, clearly. Still … leaving Indians almost entirely out of a big, mass-market American history book that aims to be a comprehensive single-volume account, and then justifying this decision with a bit of Latin, an Auden quote and a handwave? Is that really something people are still prepared to accept? Because although Brogan wrote it in the early 80s – and for all I know, his own views may have evolved since then – the book is still being sold as Penguin’s standard offering on US history. So presumably they think it’s perfectly all right. (Tangential but interesting note: the day before yesterday I read this piece by Bidisha about what she terms “cultural femicide” in Penguin’s Planet Word book, a tie-in with a recent Stephen Fry TV series. It is incisive and eye-opening, and I’m not suggesting that my amateur observations about a twenty-five-year old backlist history title are in any way its equivalent, but there is a slight linking theme of entire groups of people being shruggingly left out of big, influential books.)

Enough of that. Reading The Name of War has been like a gentle brain-exfoliating treatment, first revealing and then polishing away the traces of non-specific calcified irritation that my long-ago experience of dipping into Brogan left behind. I like Jill Lepore’s writing a lot, though I didn’t know who she was before I started this blog. Most of what I’ve read is in the form of long articles (e.g. this recent one on Planned Parenthood, or this one from 2010 on the Tea Party movement). She writes with clarity and restraint, her prose is elegant, and her observations are perceptive and through-provoking. She introduces this book as “a study of war, and of how people write about it”, asking “If war is, at least in part, a contest for meaning, can it ever be a fair fight when only one side has access to those perfect instruments of empire, pens, paper, and printing presses?” What follows is an exploration of how white Americans and Algonquians defined themselves and characterized one another before, during and since the war in question, and how those constructions of identity shifted according to changes in their circumstances.

It seems American colonists wrote a great deal about King Philip’s War (1675–6), an extraordinarily bloody period in American history: some in order to make sense of their own experiences, others in the hope of defining events for posterity as they saw fit, still others to profit from the appetite for gory detail of readers back in England. By contrast there’s very little, basically nothing, in the way of written accounts by New England’s Algonquians, despite the fact that large numbers of them were literate. The first part of the book is mainly about why the Indians wrote so little and the colonists wrote so much, and it’s illuminating on the potentially fatal consequences of literacy for Indians at the time. The focus is on John Sassamon, a literate Indian whose (probable) murder in 1675 set in motion the events that led to the outbreak of war.

Subsequent sections use accounts of the vivid, often grotesque events of the war as a way into examining some fairly abstract-sounding ideas: first the interplay of the physical and moral boundaries that were drawn during wartime, and the way they were rationalized; then the ways in which colonists and Indians experienced captivity and bondage (with particular reference to Mary Rowlandson, whose captivity narrative is so famous, and to the Nipmuck Indian James Printer, about whom I’d never read before). Finally, Lepore looks at how King Philip’s War has been remembered and retold to varying purposes over the past few hundred years.* There’s an enjoyable chapter on the hugely popular nineteenth-century play Metamora: or, the Last of the Wampanoags, a melodramatic re-telling of Philip’s story, and the various ways in which different audiences responded to it over the years, depending on what else was going on culturally and politically between white Americans and Indians.

It took me a long time to read this relatively short book. It’s ambitious and deserves close attention, and these days my opportunities to spend time reading do not tend to come along at moments of intellectual liveliness. So I went at a snail’s pace, but enjoyed it, and will probably read at least some parts of it again eventually. It’s very different from the other two books I’ve read so far as part of this project  – Ulrich’s Good Wives and Norton’s In the Devil’s Snare – and I’m glad of that; all three are fascinating, and reading them close together has taught me such a lot, as well as reminding me how enormously satisfying it can be to read in depth about history. The Name of War in particular, though, is one I know I’ll keep thinking about for a long time to come (in this case, thankfully, for all the right reasons).

*Family history note: my ancestor Samuel Sewall, in connection with whom I’ve had to discard my rose-tinted spectacles since I started reading in earnest for the blog, crops up at the beginning of that last section, participating in the cheerful dissection of an executed Indian captive. Stay classy, Samuel.

Here’s hoping it’ll be a success. So far there’s not a great deal of content, but it’s clear that they’re genuinely keen to engage with users and encourage interaction (though as Chief Executive and Keeper Oliver Morley was forced to explain when a passing researcher tried to hijack the comments thread of the very first post, they won’t be answering individual family history queries on the blog).

Today’s post mentioned that they’re piloting a live chat service for users this week. Records specialists and reader advisers were online for two hours today (wonder how it went?) and will be doing another shift tomorrow afternoon, then a final one on Friday morning. Full details and times can be found here. If all goes well, the service will eventually become a regular part of what TNA offers.

It’ll be interesting to compare the developing TNA blog with the eleven US National Archives blogs. I don’t use the latter much, myself: there are just so many of them that I’ve never quite found the time to sit and work out what they all do. The names don’t really help: how can one guess what the real difference will be between the ‘Blog of the Archivist of the United States’ and the ‘Blog of the US National Archives’? You’d have to spend a little while on each to work it out. Same goes for the ‘Blog of the National Declassification Center’ versus the ‘Blog of the Public Interest Declassification Board’. It’s all a bit much if you’re pressed for time, and the slightly admonitory tone of the homepage seems likely to put some users off, too (‘We encourage your input, but please be aware of our policies concerning comments on our blogs’).

By contrast, the TNA blog has no clear comments policy up so far (though they may have to put one up soon, if people don’t stop wandering onto threads asking for help with their own research. Why do some family historians seem to do this in the most inappropriate places?) and they’ve given it a much more casual, modern look. It may be in danger of looking a tiny bit childish – the big red rosette at the top with ‘blog’ in lower-case – and it reminds me a little of the plasmid logos from Bioshock; but it’s clear and pleasant to use, and despite not having lots of time to spare, I think I’m quite likely to keep going back.

If you’re interested in keeping abreast of what TNA is doing generally, they offer a monthly email newsletter, which is how I learned about the new blog in the first place.

Photo by Nick Cooper, 2007, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0