I am not a coffee drinker, but many of my colleagues at the Rosenbach definitely enjoy a good cup. So when I was paging through issues of the Oregon Statesman looking for possible references to the 1859 Pig War (more on that another time) and ran across a front-page tidbit entitled “Coffee,” it caught my …
Upcoming Events
The DNC Comes to Philadelphia–In 1936
Philadelphia is gearing up for next week’s arrival of the Democratic National Convention and museums across town have been highlighting their historical and political collections. We, of course, have our Freedom Train exhibition, looking at a project that both celebrated American history and raised questions (intentionally and unintentionally) about what freedom means. The Constitution Center …
The Art of Making Money Plenty
While doing some shelf reading yesterday I ran across around little volume entitled The Art of Making Money Plenty in Every Man’s Pocket, printed by Samuel Wood around 1811. The get rich quick title caught my eye and when I opened it up I was fascinated to see that it was presented in the form …
Founding Fathers for the Fourth
As we gear up for July 4th weekend, we wanted to kick off the festivities with some fabulous founding father documents to put us in the spirit. This document regarding Washington’s role as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army is currently on display in our Freedom Train exhibition. Dr. Rosenbach lent it to the original Freedom …
Freedom Train Exhibit on Track at the Rosenbach!
Our newest exhibit, Freedom Train 1947-1949: Exhibiting America’s Past to Shape America’s Future, opens next Friday, July 1, and the collections staff has been hard at work on installation. The Freedom Train was a massive traveling exhibition of over 125 American historical documents, housed in a specially designed train, that crossed the country from September …
The Mexican War
One of the exhibition ideas we’ve considered here is “Wars You Forgot” and I suspect for many of us north-easterners, myself included, the Mexican War is not one we spend much time thinking about. But today marks the 170th anniversary of the U.S.’s declaration of war on Mexico; Congress voted to approve the war on …
Gold Rush Washout
Inspired by the limericks from a few weeks back, this week we’re highlighting another humorous book from our collections: Journey to the gold diggins, by Jeremiah Saddlebags. This book of comic drawings was published in 1849, at the height of the gold rush, and pokes fun at the over-eager would-be gold miners. Journey to the …
Stamping Out the Stamp Act
Today marks the 250th anniversary of the repeal of the Stamp Act, which was passed on March 22, 1765 and repealed on March 18, 1766. As you may (or may not) recall from your American history classes, the Stamp Act was a tax on printed paper, including newspapers, legal documents, and playing cards. It was …
There Was A Sweet Girl of Kingsessing…
In 1846 Edward Lear published an illustrated collection of 72 limericks entitled A Book of Nonsense. The volume, which is referenced in our exhibit Wonderland Rules: Alice at 150 , helped popularize the limerick form and inspired a number of similar books by other people and organizations. One of these, The New Book of Nonsense, …
North and South: Objects on the Road
This past week the Rosenbach has sent objects on loan to exhibitions at two other institutions: one traveled northward to Princeton and the others headed south to Alexandria. The Princeton loan is one of our two Thomas Sully portraits of Rebecca Gratz (we lovingly refer to her as “Rebecca without the hat”). She is normally …