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Code Breaker

Rose O’Neal Greenhow , Message from Mrs. Greenhow of Washington D.C. 1168/11 This puzzle of a paper is part of a large (a.k.a. hundreds of documents) collection of material at the Rosenbach related to Confederate General P.G. T Beauregard. The note at the top indicates that it’s a message from Confederate spy Rose O’Neal Greenhow, …

On the Beach

As summer ticks away and everyone comes back tanned from their weeks at the shore, I thought I’d share some great beach images from the Rosenbach collection. George Cruikshank, AUGUST–Bathing at Brighton. For The Comic Almanack for 1836. London: Charles Tilt, 1835. 1954.1880.3252 As you can see in this almanac print by George Cruikshank, August …

Field Trip

In addition to exposing our summer interns to the quirks and wonders of the Rosenbach, I like to take them to other museums that are different from ours. This gives the interns a chance to see how other museums operate and to put their Rosenbach experience in a broader perspective. In order to accomplish this, …

Finding Hidden Treasure

In addition to our wonderful Rosenbach summer interns, we’ve also been hosting some other very special guests this summer: processors from the PACSCL/CLIR Hidden Collections Processing Project. For anyone who doesn’t speak acronym, PACSCL is the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries and and CLIR is the Council on Library and Information Resources (now …

Bull Run 150

Battle of Bull Run–July 1861. New York, 1863. AMs 834/16Today marks the 150th anniversary of the First Battle of Bull Run/First Manassas, the first major land battle of the Civil War. This is the battle where Stonewall Jackson received his nickname and where civilians and Congressmen came down from Washington to be spectators at the …

Of Epigrams and Ear-Strings

Today’s guest post is by Kate Duffy, a Collections Intern at the Rosenbach Museum & Library.Greetings, Rosen-blog readers! This post is full of commonplaces. But stifle your yawn! The word “commonplace” did not always carry connotations of triteness and cliché. For early modern Europeans, commonplaces were witty verses, notable observations, or other compelling turns-of-phrase. Here …