Category: Archival Follies

Archival Follies, Knowledge Droppings, Now in Actual Work, Our Glorious National Heritage

Such Phrenology. So Railroad. Wow.

daelnorwood

Or, Meme Translation

Asa Whitney Doge

Today I found a portrait and detailed profile of one of the characters I’m currently writing about in the American Phrenological Journal.

Yes folks, in November 1849, Asa Whitney, railroad projector and lobbyist for humanity, was not only the man of the hour and talk of the town, but also the cover model for America’s leading pseudoscientific periodical. Reading what the nation’s foremost experts in head-bumps and skull-shapes had provided to the interested public concerning the former China merchant, it occurred to me that the phrenologist’s analysis might very easily be stripped of its Victorian vagaries, and translated into a jargon with more currency today; that is, into doge speak. Thus, the above.

(Also, per Gary Larson, it was late and I was tired).

Full cite (incl. original image):

“Article LXXI: Phrenological Character of Asa Whitney, with a Likeness,” American Phrenological Journal 11, no. 11 (November 1, 1849): 329–333.

Archival Follies

Today’s Historical Infographic: Money

daelnorwood

Or, Look! I Found a Neat Thing

CASH in various denominations and formats RULES EVERYTHING AROUND ME
CASH in various denominations and formats RULES EVERYTHING AROUND ME

Sometimes you fall down a nineteenth-century government statistical bulletin hole. It happens; I can’t explain it (and I’ll never get those hours from FRASER or HSUS back).

But what I can do is share this neat, colored-in chart of “United States Money in Circulation, 1860-1895” (see above).

It’s from the October 1895 edition of the Monthly Summary of Commerce and Finance of the United States, my second favorite issue of that glorious publication (first place, obviously, belongs to November 1895, for its unexpected and unprecedented compilation of tea customs receipts from 1790 onward). Here’s the specific page (gated by Hathi Trust).

Also, in case you missed it, the U.S. Government once produced a terrifyingly detailed map about syphllis.

Archival Follies, Golden Ghetto, Our Glorious National Heritage

Humblebragging Around the Horn

daelnorwood

Or, Don’t Even Get Him Started on CrossFit

Humblebrag

Richard Cleveland was a sailor, an entrepreneurial merchant, and a well-traveled man – but not a shy one. In his retirement, he published at least three editions of his memoirs, and by the end of the nineteenth century, and he and his children had produced some three different versions of his life’s story, all also in multiple transatlantic editions. Scholars still look to him today for details on Americans’ dealings in the Pacific, and beyond.

He’s a good source, if one we should perhaps examine mainly for its narrative framing and plot elements as much as for specific details. Among other feats, he was, as he explained in the preface to his lengthy autobiography of his time spent on the seas, as good a flinty, thrifty New Englander as Max Weber (or Freeman Hunt) could ever have wished for:
Continue reading “Humblebragging Around the Horn” →

Archival Follies, Our Glorious National Heritage, Power At Play

Josh Giddings Lays the Smack Down

daelnorwood

Or, Shut it, Calhoun

Joshua R. Giddings

Sometimes, studying nineteenth-century America can get damned depressing. It’s a slaughter-bench, and for most of the century, the guys that win (and they’re all guys) seem to be the worst possible: slaveholders, imperialists, filibusters.

There’s an antidote to this, though, and that’s reading Congressional debates.

Well, some of them.

Continue reading “Josh Giddings Lays the Smack Down” →