Holiday morning coffee

19 Monday Jun 2023

Posted by in Interpretation, Morristown National Historical Park

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Ford Mansion, Morristown National Historical Park

I’m starting my day here with a cup of coffee while listening to a podcast. Juneteenth has become one of favorite holidays for a number of different reasons. I’m using the day to do a little work adding records for an upcoming project to a citation generator, and preparing for a big project coming this fall to my school. It has become more involved than I had originally imagined and been more than a little stressful. It’s been good to have a long weekend to replenish a bit.

I took the picture above in Morristown this past Saturday on my way back to the train station after my talk. We had a small but engaged audience for my talk about the the Brooklyn Daily Eagle National Park Service Development Tours of the 1910s and 1920s. It was a story I had wanted to tell for several years, and finally did in an article last year and this weekend’s accompanying talk. One woman in the audience had a brother who delivered the Eagle back in the day. Another had a father who helped build Jockey Hollow as a laborer in the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. These are things you get only by engaging with the public. It’s why I love interpretation so much.

Enjoy your day.

Remembering Bunker Hill

17 Saturday Jun 2023

Posted by in Daniel Webster, Lafayette, Monuments and Statuary, Morristown National Historical Park

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lithograph by Pierre Langlumé / Skillman Library, Lafayette College

I’m finishing my morning coffee before heading to Penn Station and Morristown for my talk. Today in New Jersey we’ll be talking about the history of the Park Service. Meanwhile in Boston they will be observing the anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, which was fought on June 17, 1775. The Bunker Hill Monument Association was founded two hundred years ago today to raise funds and build the edifice. The other day I mentioned Lafayette’s grand tour of 1824-25. Here above we see a rendering of him laying the cornerstone for the monument on June 17, 1825. Lafayette at this time was the last surviving major general of the Continental Army. Daniel Webster gave the oration, and did so again in when the monument was dedicated on June 17, 1843.

Juneteenth Weekend

16 Friday Jun 2023

Posted by in Memory, Morristown National Historical Park, National Park Service

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In its few short years as a state and federal holiday Juneteenth has become one of my favorite holidays. Besides its message, I like the way it comes at the start of the summer and two weeks prior to the Fourth of July. Since 2019 when it became a legal holiday it has fallen on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or (this year) Monday. Juneteenth itself is the nineteenth. I hope they never do the Holiday Monday thing where should the nineteenth fall on, say, a Wednesday they move it to Monday for a three day weekend. Like the Fourth of July, the holiday should always be on the nineteenth. There’s my 2 cents.

If one is in the New York/New Jersey area and looking for something to do tomorrow a guy with my initials will be speaking at Morristown National Historical Park tomorrow at 1:00 pm. My talk is one in a series this year commemorating the 90th anniversary of the site. Herbert Hoover created Morristown as the first national historical park on March 2, 1933 just before leaving office. My talk will be about Hans V. Kaltenborn and the tours he led for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in which he led Brooklynites across the country, the Alaskan and Hawaiian territories, South American, Africa, and Europe from 1915 to 1925. The event is free and open to the public. I can’t think of a place I’d rather be for Juneteenth weekend. Come and get some.

Flag Day 2023

14 Wednesday Jun 2023

Posted by in Memory, Philadelphia

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Certificate of the American Flag House and Betsy Ross Memorial Association
Betsy Ross House as it was circa 1900

Longtime readers know that holidays such as Flag Day mean a great deal to me. It only becomes more and more true as time goes by. When I was in Philadelphia a few weeks back one of the places that I found most poignant was the Betsy Ross House. In a way it’s a little curious because while Betsy Ross was indeed a seamstress, knew many of the leading figures of the period, and made many flags in the early days of the nation, the creation myth of her sewing the original flag is almost certainly apocryphal. What is more the house has been renovated beyond recognition so many times over the years. And even it hadn’t, Ross’s ties to the house are tenuous at best. Still, there was something about it I found captivating. I think the reason is that for over a century people have been drawn to the spot on Arch Street just as I was.

The American Flag House and Betsy Ross Memorial Association was founded in 1898 to purchase and renovate the house. They sold the above certificates for ten cents apiece. And those dimes eventually added up. The Berger Bros. building is gone now but interestingly enough the company still exists, under the name Berger Building Products. The Coach Lamps building on the left was also torn down long ago and the spot today is an open area for public gathering, a visitor center, and the reputed resting place of Elizabeth (Betsy) and her third spouse John Claypoole, whom she married in 1783 around the war’s end. A quick peruse of the Betsy Ross House social media shows that they are holding Flag Fest all week long.

Lafayette arrives

13 Tuesday Jun 2023

Posted by in George Washington, Lafayette, Philately, Richard Varick

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I love this gorgeous First Day of Issue commemorating the 1777 arrival of the Marquis de Lafayette—all of nineteen—in America to aid in the Patriot war effort. Europe was not always sending its best and Washington pleaded with Franklin and other diplomats to make it stop. I still collect blocks of four for older stamps, but First Day Covers are the only way to go with new releases given that today’s stamps are all self-adhesive. I can only hope that next year or in 2025 we get a release commemorating the bicentennial of Lafayette’s grand tour of 1824-25 when he visited every state in the union on the cusp of the jubilee. Richard Varick as a friend of Lafayette and president of the New York State Society of the Cincinnati did a fair amount to make that trip a success.

Sailing Saturday, the Lusitania

12 Monday Jun 2023

Posted by in Lusitania

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I was researching something else earlier today when I happened upon this advertisement for the sailing of the Lusitania. It is from the April 25, 1915 edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and announces that the Cunard liner is to sail from New York to Liverpool the following Saturday. Yes, it was that voyage of the Lusitania. I don’t think it qualifies as a lesson but it is certainly a reminder that historical events often take place concurrently. Interestingly, this advert contains no warning to prospective passengers that the ship would be sailing in enemy waters and at risk of getting torpedoed.

One shocking discovery

10 Saturday Jun 2023

Posted by in Benjamin Franklin

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It was on this date in 1752 according to legend that Benjamin Franklin carried out his kite experiment. I say “according to legend” because some have speculated that the event took place some time later in the summer, after word trickled in to America of similar experiments carried out by French scientists over the summer. Personally I have no idea of the order of the events and leave it to others to sort out, if that can even be done. Whatever the timeline, Benjamin Franklin’s contribution to showing that lightning and electricity are one and the same was a significant contribution to Enlightenment ideas. Here via Founders Online is Franklin’s report as published in his Pennsylvania Gazette on October 19.

It is interesting how paintings, lithographs, and other media in use prior to the advent of photography influence our understanding of the past. Currier & Ives printed the image we see here in the Centennial year of 1876. Much like in 1976 there was a huge market for what we would now call Americana during the hundredth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Benjamin’s son William in June 1752 was a young man of 22, not the young lad we see here depicted by Currier & Ives. Colonial and Revolutionary War Era iconography from the past is roughly akin to reading historical novels or watching period movies today. We may enjoy them for their own merits, but shouldn’t take them as authentic representations. I suppose that’s another story though.

Own a little part of television history

02 Friday Jun 2023

Posted by in Uncategorized

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Archie and Edith Bunker’s original chairs are on display in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Jean Stapleton, Rob Reiner, Sally Struthers, and Norman Lear were on hand at the ceremony in 1978 when those items were donated. Carroll O’Connor did not attend in person but telephoned in during the party the included the likes of Senator Barry Goldwater. As I understand it during later seasons the production unit used replicas of those originals. Everything else on set though remained essentially the same. Norman Lear originally had wanted the show to be shot in black and white, but the executives at CBS said no. Instead Lear went with the muted browns with which we are familiar. Well tomorrow the “All in the Family” original set goes on sale alongside Johnny Carson’s interview desk, the Cheers bar and much more.

Sunday morning coffee

28 Sunday May 2023

Posted by in Uncategorized

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Christ Church, Philadelphia

I hope everyone’s Memorial Day Weekend is going well. I was up and out early yesterday to get the 7:17 train out of Moynihan Station for Philadelphia. I was there before 9:00 and got a coffee and croissant in the Old City waiting for the Betsy Ross House to open at 10:00. The more and more I visit Philadelphia the more I enjoy it. I pivoted to this era just five years ago. One of the maxims of his is: “Go there.” I made sure to walk the perimeter of Christ Church, which is where I took the photograph you see above. Philadelphia, or at least Historic Philadelphia, is much like Gettysburg in that people are visiting from across the country and world. Being the Chatty Cathy I am, I always strike up conversations with those around me. A family from Virginia, two women from California visiting the East Coast on a history road trip, and a visitor in the Museum of the American Revolution whose ancestor had served in Vermont’s Green Mountain Boys are just some of the figures I met along the way. I texted a relative with some photos and mentioned a close, late family member of ours who lived outside Philadelphia for much of her life. This person was a public school teacher for decades and took her classes to Independence Hall and the environs many times over the years.

Betsy Ross House

I didn’t go in, but the line for Liberty Bell was long, which was great to see. I was especially moved by the archeological site that is now President’s House. To be there for part of Memorial Day Weekend was even more meaningful. When I got home in the early evening I texted a friend who is a retired NPS ranger here in the city and asked if he knew any of the backstory regarding that project. He did, and gave me a few insights. The memory of the Revolutionary War is fascinating and surprisingly understudied. I struck up a conversation with two of the extraordinary staff at the MOAR about the historiography of Philadelphia at the local level. They recommended a few titles, but we came to the consensus that the corpus of scholarship on Philadelphia itself is surprisingly thin.

Wherever you are, go get a little history on this weekend that kicks off the unofficial start of summer.