The Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy has long collected travel guidebooks as part of our local history collections. Guidebooks are a surprisingly rich source of materials relating to history of a place since they often extensively describe neighborhoods, cultural centers, transit options, and other city landmarks. However, most guidebooks were not aimed toward the visiting or resident families until relatively recently. The earliest in our collections is from the 1940s, with the guidebooks for families becoming common around the 1960s and later.

So what activities for people with children in New York were recommended for visitors and residents in the past? Let’s look at both things you can no longer do as well as classic activities that families can still enjoy today.

Things you can no longer do

Places that no longer exist, activities that are prohibited or restricted now, or are no longer novelties:

Planespotting at LaGuardia or JFK

Several of the older guidebooks suggest gathering your kids and heading out to the airport to watch the aircraft arrive and depart. Planespotting is still a hobby for avid aerospace enthusiasts, but not quite the tourist attraction that it once was when airports were more accessible and open to casual visitors who might stop by to dine in an airport restaurant without a boarding pass or to watch for the newest models of aircraft from an observation desk.

“For a quick and relaxing over-all view of things, you can climb into a “flightseer,” a miniature locomotive that tours the landing strips, hangars, arrival gates, etc.” (6)

“I doubt that I shall ever be so old and blase that the sight of an airport, planes arriving and departing with awesome frequency, will cease to be exciting for me. This is a wonderful world for children to wander about in.” (2)

“The size of Idlewild airport is incredible. It covers an area equal to all of Manhattan from 42nd Street to the Battery… The jets are especially spectacular with their tails of smoke.” (7) Also cited in (4), (5), (1).

Catch a baseball game at Ebbets Field or the Polo Grounds

These were the homes of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants, respectively. Both teams departed for California in the 1950s. Now, if you want to catch a baseball game, you have the options of Yankee Stadium or CitiField, or one of the minor league teams such as the Brooklyn Cyclones or Staten Island Yankees.

“Baseball grew in popularity, whether you preferred to play it yourself or watch others play. Professional teams were organized, and the three great ball parks were built: the Yankee Stadium, the Polo Grounds, and Ebbets Field. Now things have changed and teams have moved on.” (7) Also cited in (5).

Shooting galleries at Times Square

Arcades for recreational shooting featuring mostly air guns were an attraction in Times Square.

“Endless diversion, especially for the young male.” (5)

“For years there were only theaters and movie houses around Times Square. Now you can go to the Flea Circus, play Fascination, poke around the peanut store, buy a hat with your name on it, or send a live turtle to a friend. Here go all the dimes and nickles… Shoot the bear...hit a moving duck? Watch your score mount on the indicator!” (7)

Be in the audience for a radio show

Several radio stations that allow audience members, including flagship WJZ (The American Broadcasting Station, a.k.a. ABC which still has studios at 30 Rockefeller Plaza) and WNYC, which still produces public radio, though usually not for a studio audience. Some of these station have since translated into television studios and do still host studio audiences for broadcasts. (5)(1)

Lunch at the automat

Children were particularly fond of automats, the restaurants where they could make their lunch selection with a couple of coins and withdraw their meals from tiny windows to be replenished by a mostly invisible staff.

“What a nickel does, and buys, is always fun” (5)

Ride on the tops of the double decker Fifth Avenue buses

Double decker buses disappeared in 1953, made a brief comeback in the 1970s and almost came back in 2008, but are still not part of our Fifth Ave landscape any longer.

“A fine vantage point from which to see some of the contrasting sections of the city.” (5)

“Ever since the pleasant double-deckers were scrapped, it’s been almost impossible to ride in a city bus without regretting it.” (6)

Fort Wadsworth Military Museum

Like many other places on this list, it has morphed instead of disappearing altogether. The Staten Island military installation closed in 1994. Military enthusiasts can visit the NY State Military Museum in Saratoga Springs and visitors to Staten Island can enjoy the sweeping harbor views on the grounds of Fort Wadsworth which is now operated by the Park Service. (4)

Chase Manhattan Bank Money Museum

The Money Museum was open from 1928-1977 in Rockefeller Center. Its collection even included wampum, ancient Babylonia currency, wooden nickels, and United Nations money amongst its 75,000 artifacts. The Smithsonian absorbed most of the collections of this museum.

“Some of [the money] looks pretty strange: stone money from Yap, soap from Mexico, silk from China, and pulverized wood from the Congo.” “If you aren’t already a coin collector, this will probably make you one.” (7) Also cited in (4)(1)(6).

FAO Schwartz Flagship Store

The Flagship Store may possibly return to NYC in a new location. But will it have a giant piano that you can dance a tune upon?

“Children are permitted—indeed they are encouraged—to play with the toys at Schwarz’s fabulous store” (7)

“It’s a tossup as to who becomes more excited, children or grownups, by the wondrous wares found throughout this store. No need to debate the point. Everyone ought to come here.” (2) Also cited in (3).

The New York Doll Hospital

The New York Doll Hospital operated from 1900 until 2009, finally closing when “chief surgeon” Irving D. Chais passed away after running his family business for 45 years, which he bought from a relative. “We’ve been in business since 1900,” Mr. Chais told The New York Times in 1990, “and never lost a patient yet.” The Secaucus Doll Hospital in New Jersey is operated by a protege of Mr. Chais.

“The time to hurry here is when your daughter’s favorite doll is in ill health. Bring the victim in. She can be fitted with a new wig, have any part of her body replaced, get a new make-up job and gain an entirely new wardrobe.” (2) Also cited in (7).

Office of Civil Defense on Lexington Avenue

One Cold War era guidebook suggests stopping by the office of Civil Defense at 661 Lexington Ave because “This is a good place to teach children something about: (a) the horror of atomic war; (b) what can be done to survive one (if possible) if it breaks out. The horror is summed up eloquently in a map that shows the zone of destruction that would result from a one-megaton bomb exploding above LaGuardia field. “ Exhibits demonstrated “radioactive peril”, first aid, firefighting, and survival literature. Nuclear warfare preoccupied even travel plans at the time. (6) Currently, shops occupy the ground floor of 661 Lexington.

See some history at Freedomland

Freedomland was an American history themed amusement park in the Bronx that operated only from 1960-1964. One of its main attractions was “little Old New York” designed to recreate elements of the late 19th century in NYC. Ironically, one guidebook described the theme park as having “an air of authenticity and permanence, and it is impressive.” (6)

“At Freedomland the country’s exciting past is crammed into 85 acres of space… Take a ride on the Santa Fe Railroad as it was in the 1880s… Help put out the Chicago Fire, or watch the pony express start off? … By the end of the day you may be tired, but you will have a livelier idea of United States history and you will have seen something new and different in New York.” (7).

Things you can still do

Classic activities that parents and teachers have been doing with kids for years:

New York Public Library Children’s Room

The truth is, that the Main Library (now called the Stephen A Schwarzman Building) lost its children’s room for many years, but it is back in the building now. Many of the old guidebooks feature it and tell about the story hours and historical collection of books. Nowadays, story time is still popular and kids love the displays such as those featuring the toys that inspired the authors of Winnie the Pooh and Mary Poppins.

“Including the largest collection of juvenile books in foreign languages” (2) Also cited in (1).

A Day at Coney Island

The boardwalk still provides a “fine walk and a view of, as well as refuge from, the crowded beach” (5) and the famed amusement park and the New York Aquarium.

“The best amusement area of them all. At least once in a child’s lifetime he should ride the cyclone...eat cotton candy...stop in at Nathan’s for a hot dog…” (6)

“It’s crowded and dirty and people with many undesirable characters, but children edit out the sordid aspects, see only the ‘glamour’: lights and rides and noise and lots of it. At least once in the life of the New York City child, you will have to take him here.” (2)

“There is something in this big, noisy, exciting place for everybody.” (7) Also cited in (1).

See the animals at the Bronx Zoo

The Bronx Zoo is one of the world’s oldest metropolitan zoos, it opened in 1899, and still ranks as one of the largest at 265 acres. It’s notable that NYC has a zoo in each borough, though one source says though that they can’t “compete with the Bronx Zoo in scope, ambience, or ingenuity.” (3) Also cited in (1)(7).

Brooklyn Children’s Museum

It’s one of the world’s oldest museums devoted to children’s interests, founded in 1899.

“Children work at and use this museum and adults stay out” (6)

“One of the most fascinating places to take a child” (2) Also cited in (1)(3).

Metropolitan Museum of Art

In the past the Met ran a program called Junior Museum, now families have access to lots of programs under #metkids and even print a special map for children to explore the museum. (1)(3).

Museum of the City of New York

In particular, kids have loved the toy collection for many years. “This place seems to have been created to provide material for a child’s dreams” (6).

“A must for all children (and a great treat for all ages) is this Museum, devoted exclusively to the life, history and culture of New York City.” (2) Also cited in (1), (3), (7).

Brooklyn Museum

The Brooklyn Museum on Eastern Parkway offers robust programming for youth and families and kids are often extra fond of the Asian and African art collections.

“Almost any child above the age of five is bound to be charmed by at least something in the Brooklyn Museum.” (6)

“To begin with, it is very definitely a family museum. Strollers, carriages are allowed throughout and visitors of all ages are made to feel welcome.” (2) Also cited in (1)(7).

Ride the Subway

This everyday activity is often very fun even for city kids who live here. Books such as Subway, Subway, Subway Ride, and Count on the Subway are ever popular with the preschool crowd. The New York Transit Museum, open since 1976, is very popular with families. But for a younger child, few things are better than riding the train out on the elevated tracks and watching the vast city go by. Spot the Statue of Liberty on the F or G trains, enjoy the view on the ride out to Coney Island or off the 7 train on your way to CitiField, or ride the B D N or Q trains across the Manhattan Bridge for a spectacular view of the Brooklyn Bridge and the harbor.

Parking is impractical in most of the city, so ride the subway. Sound advice that is still true: “stay off during weekday rush hours 7-9:30 am and 4-6 pm” as “it is an absolute torture, especially for children, who must feel as if they are lost in a forest of knobby knees.” (6)

“The subway is a quick and handy way to travel around the city, particularly if you don’t have to use it during rush hours.”

“Very few cities have subways, so most visitors want to take at least one trip this way.” (7)

American Museum of Natural History

The Dinosaur Hall in the Natural History Museum in particular has been thrilling kids for decades. (1)“By now hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who were raised themselves on this wonderful place are taking their grandchildren here too. The standard exhibits seem to remain the same; yet the intellectual wonder and excitement never ceases.” “The painstaking taxidermy here is the best in town.” (6)

“There is no limit to the number of trips you will want to make here. Children of all ages find it a fascinating place.” (2)

“Who would think just bones could be so interesting?” (7)

Christmas in New York

Rockefeller Center is still one of the main stops in December, along with the city’s famous department store window displays at Macy’s, Lord & Taylor, etc. And don’t forget the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, still going strong.

“The glittering reindeer and the beautiful tree with its many colored ornaments make a thrilling sight.” (7) Also cited in (1), (3), (4).

The Staten Island Ferry

For years people have been taking this ferry just for the grand view of the harbor.

“The handsomest form of entertainment the city offers, and the cheapest.” (5)

“Superlatives only for these rides. They are the cheapest, coolest, and best in the city—and the most fun!” (6) Also cited in (1).

Central Park

Visit the Central Park Zoo, take a rowboat on the lake, ice skate at Wollman rink, ride the Central Park Carousel, as kids have been doing for years. (1) Ride the Carousel, climb the Alice in Wonderland Statue, fly a kite in the Sheep Meadow. “There is hardly a weekend when you would not do well to come here.” (2)

The Central Park website currently lists twenty-one playgrounds, including the Wild West Playground, the Ancient Playground near the Met, the Diana Ross Playground, the Adventure Playground, the toddler oriented Tarr-Coyne Playground, and Heckscher Playground which is the largest in Central Park.

“Most statues are for looking. Alice in Wonderland is for climbing. This is such a popular idea that Alice is hardly ever alone.” (7)

Chinese New Year in Chinatown

Have a dim sum lunch (3)—these days you are no longer limited to a singular Chinatown since the festivities and restaurants are also available in other parts of the city, notably Flushing Queens and Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

“Streets crackle with the sound of firecrackers, dragons abound, and everyone parades in festive mood. If you like crowds and your youngsters are past the carriage stage and know how to stay close in tight quarters, come here for an exciting day.” (2)

“All the buildings are gaily decorated… Masked figures waving fans fight or tease the dragons to the sound of weird music. The place is crowded.” (7) Also cited in (4).

Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Especially the Children’s Garden, programming for kids since 1914. (3) See the springtime cherry blossom blooms and the Sakura Matsuri festival to celebrate them. (4)

Museum of the American Indian

The Museum of the American Indian has moved from uptown to downtown in the old guidebooks versus the new ones, but it is still a top destination for families. (1)(3)(4)(7)

Street of Ships

At the South Street Seaport Museum Street of Ships families can reconnoitre the 19th century waterfront atmosphere and explore the vintage ships. (3)(4)

Cruise on the Circle Line

Viewing New York’s skyline from the water is a treat, and families can spot all landmarks in all five boroughs including Lady Liberty, Yankee Stadium, the George Washington bridge, the United Nations, and all of the city’s famous tall buildings.

In 1963, a child’s ticket on the Circle Line Cruises was only $1.25. (1)

“Children from about age four up—and the boat is full of them, plus infants and toddlers—will enjoy the ride.” (2) Also cited in (3)(7)

Empire State Building Observation Deck

Still a top attraction, along with the views from Top of the Rock and the newly opened One World Observatory. Solid advice that is still true: avoid cloudy days and try to go on a weekday early in the morning (6). Also cited in (7).

Statue of Liberty

Some are satisfied with a view from the harbor while many love to explore the grounds or climb the steps inside the statue. Now visitors can add on a trip to the Ellis Island Immigration Museum, which is part of the the Statue of Liberty National Monument.

In 1961, the round trip cost was 75 cents for adults and 35 cents for children (6).

“A day here can inspire even those of us who take the city and the nation for granted.” (2) Also cited in (7)

Recent Guidebooks

Explore these contemporary guidebooks for more ideas.

• Around New York City With Kids by Paul Eisenberg.
• Family Guide New York City by Eleanor Berman, Lee Magill, AnneLise Sorensen
• Frommer's New York City With Kids by Alexis Lipsitz Flippin.
• The Kid's Guide To New York City by Eilenn Ogintz.
• The Little Bookroom Guide To New York City With Children: Play, Eat, Shop by Angela Hederman, Michael Berman.
• Metro New York: Hundreds Of Ideas For Day Trips With The Kids by Mary Lynn Blanks.
• Outdoors With Kids New York City: 100 Fun Places To Explore In And Around The City by Cheryl and William de Jong-Lambert.

Old Guidebooks

The sources for this article:

1. Away We Go! A Guidebook Of Family Trips And Places Of Interest In New Jersey, Nearby Pennsylvania And New York. Edited by Michaela M. Mole. Photos. by William F. Augustine.
2. A Great City For Kids; Parent's Guide To A Child's New York. Illus. by Shelly Sacks.
3. A Kids' New York by Peter D. Lawrence.
4. New York For Children; An Unusual Guide For Parents, Teachers, And Tourists. illus. by Michael Meyerowitz.
5. New York! New York! A Knickerbocker Holiday For You And Your Children by Ruth Mcaneny Loud and Agnes Adams Wales, Illustrated By Eileen Evans.
6. Where Shall We Take The Kids? A Parent's And Teacher's Guide To New York City by Murray Polner and Arthur Barron.
7. Young Folks' New York, by Suzanne Szasz and Susan Lyman.

More old guidebooks to explore:

• The Candy Apple: New York With Kids by Bubbles Fisher.
• How To Survive In New York With Children. Illustrated by Isadore Seltzer.
• New York On The Family Plan.

Biographies can serve many purposes: they can be the product of extensive research, the means to understanding a time period or event more thoroughly, the inspiration for new creative work (hello, Hamilton), or an end in themselves as a source of reading pleasure and intellectual curiosity. As part of its wider collection of online reference material, the New York Public Library has several biography databases. But which one is most appropriate for your particular query? Each covers a different universe of people, and each varies in the characteristics that can be searched for a given person. Someone researching Alan Turing would want to start in a different database than someone researching Beyoncé, so how to navigate these biographical waters?

To get started, this interactive chart summarizes the coverage of each of our biography databases, letting you adjust the list based on where you are and whom you are researching. Clicking on the name of any particular database will bring you to it, via the Library's website, in a new tab.

If you are having trouble finding information on a certain person, don't forget that biographical details can be gathered from places other than traditional biographies. Encyclopedias and historical newspapers are also great sources of such information. Our online historical newspapers are fully text-searchable, making them useful for lesser-known individuals. And there are many more biographies available in print, either for specific people or groups. Some, like the Dictionary of Literary Biography, have equivalent online editions. Others live in print alone.

Searching by subject is a good way to uncover print biographies. A search for "Twain, Mark" suggests the subject Twain, Mark, 1835-1910 -- Biography., which includes 18 books like Inventing Mark Twain: The Lives of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. By using the Library's Advanced Search option, you can combine the terms of your choice (a name or category of people) with the word "biography" in the subject.

You can also search by genre for "Biography" or "Biography -- Dictionaries." The first search will point you toward female Nobel Peace Prize winners and accomplished military leaders. The latter will give you dictionaries of Latin American classical composers and baseball players of the 1950s.

There are thousands upon thousands of books with "biography" listed in their subjects or genres—these examples are just a drop in the bucket. So whether it's online or print, you can find the best biography for your particular research focus. And if you would like help with these resources or any other research question, speak to a librarian! Visit a reference desk at any NYPL location, or make an appointment in advance.

“A very fine day - being St. John’s Day it was celebrated by the ancient and honorable order of Free Masons - they form’d a Procession and walk’d through some of the streets to Trinity Church, where an Oration was deliver’d by Brother Washington Morton, and sacred music perform’d--I went to Mama’s to see the Procession - my Nurse and child went also.”- Elizabeth De Hart Bleecker, June 24, 1802  

Masons famously kept their rituals secretive, but as Bleecker’s diary entry suggests, their celebrations were often public. Bleecker probably did not just happen upon the procession. The Masons placed notices in local newspapers with details about the celebration, including the route the parade would take to Trinity Church, so that interested New Yorkers could observe the festivities. Though one needed tickets to attend the service and oration at the church, it was also open to non-Masons; even women could attend.  

The festivties continued later that evening, though it seems Bleecker had already gone home. Joseph Delacroix—who owned the Vauxhall Gardens, an outdoor theater—planned to hold a“Masonic Fire-Works” display on the evening of St. John's Day.  He avertised in local newspapers to inform both "his Brother Masons and the public” of details about the show and how to acquire tickets.

The Masonic ranks teemed with well-connected and powerful men. Delacroix owned a prominent public venue in the City. Daniel Tompkins, who signed the notice about the procession on behalf of his fellow Masons, would go on to become the governor of New York and vice president. Later in life he also served as grand master—the ranking member—of New York’s Grand Lodge. Prominent politicians often filled that post. Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, the highest judicial officer in New York, was the grand master for over fifteen years.  DeWitt Clinton was the state's grandmaster throughout much of the 1800s and 1810s, during which time he served as the mayor of New York City and lieutenant governor and governor of New York State.

These men saw Masonry as a means to serve the public good. The St. John's Day procession, for instance, celebrated Masonic brotherhood, but also had a charitable purpose. During the church service, the Masons took up a collection “for the relief of 'Poor Widows with small Children,' and of the Society ‘for the relief of Distressed Prisoners.’” Throughout the country, Masons frequently led efforts at communal improvement, especially building schools, which in this period tended not to be publicly funded.

By the early-nineteenth century, Masons were a familiar presence in public life in New York City and throughout the country.  Bleecker's diary entry only scratches the surface of their influence, and merely hints at the important role that seemingly private associations played in the creation of early national civic culture.

This is one of a series of monthly posts highlighting entries from the Elizabeth De Hart Bleecker Diary. Previous installments include a broad overview description of the diary, a post about the election of 1800 and another about lotteries in early New York.

FURTHER READING

For more on the Masons in early America, check out Steven C. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the transformation of the American social order, 1730-1840 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); and John L. Brooke, "Ancient Lodges and Self Created Societies: Voluntary Association and the Public Sphere in the Early Republic," in Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Alberts, eds., Launching the Extended Republic: The Federalist Era  (Charlottesville : Published for the United States Capital Historical Society by the University Press of Virginia, 1996).    

About the Early American Manuscripts Project

Though summer vacation has just begun, it's never too early to look toward the fall and the beginning of another school year. To help you get ready, the Library's Articles & Databases page now holds a new resource for the classroom: Explora.

This new platform from EBSCO is designed to assist students of all ages with their learning and research. There are three versions of Explora for elementary, middle, and high school students. Each searches a different universe of documents to best fit the reading level of its users. Finally, Explora for Educators includes teaching resources like lesson plans and curriculum standards, as well as content from the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC). All of these databases are available at any library location, or from your own computer by logging in with your library card.

Explora Elementary
Searches across content geared toward elementary school students, such as Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia and American Heritage Children's Dictionary. More info»

Explora Middle School
Searches across content geared toward middle school students, such as Middle Search Plus and Newspaper Source. More info»

Explora High School
Searches across content geared toward high school students, such as Academic Search Premier and MasterFILE Premier. More info»

Explora for Educators
A teacher's companion to the various Explora databases, searching across content such as ERIC and Academic Search Premier and highlighting lessons plans, curriculum standards, and other resources. More info»

Explora incorporates content previously searched through the Searchasaurus and Kids Search databases. These databases will redirect to Explora Elementary beginning on July 1.

This is how most Americans in the revolutionary period found out who actually signed the Declaration of Independence.

Not on parchment, but in print. Not in July of 1776, but in January of 1777. Congress, then meeting in Baltimore, ordered “That an authenticated Copy of the DECLARATION of INDEPENDENCY, with the Names of the MEMBERS of CONGRESS, subscribing the same, be sent to each of the UNITED STATES…” The job of printing this new copy of the Declaration, the first to list the signers, went to a woman named Mary Katherine Goddard. Publicizing the signers’ names was a bold step considering that they were endorsing treason.

Mary Katherine Goddard

Goddard was not new to the printing business when Congress gave her this assignment. Her younger brother, William, started a newspaper in Providence, Rhode Island in the early 1760s. Since William was often out of town pursuing business ventures, Sarah Updike Goddard (their mother) effectively ran the paper. Mary Katherine Goddard took an interest in the trade and also became involved in the family business. Sarah Updike Goddard died in 1770, but her daughter continued in the printing industry with her brother.

The family set up in Baltimore in 1773 and Mary took over printing the Maryland Journal and the Baltimore Advertiser in 1774. By the middle of the next year, Goddard started printing the paper under her own name, “M.K. Goddard,” instead of her brother’s. She was also the postmistress of Baltimore; printing offices often doubled as post offices.

Significance Of The Goddard Broadside

The first printings of the Declaration—both famous Dunlap Broadside and in newspapers—did not include a list of the signers. Only two names appeared: John Hancock and Charles Thomson (president and secretary of Congress, respectively). That was because the delegates had not yet signed.

Congress commissioned the famous parchment version—called the Engrossed Copy—of the Declaration of Independence a few weeks after they first issued the text. Evidence suggests that most members of Congress did not sign until August of 1776, and some well after that point. Thomas McKean’s (a delegate from Delaware) name does not appear on the Goddard Broadside but his signature is on the Engrossed Copy. This likely means he did not sign until some time after Goddard’s version went to print. Even once most of the delegates signed it, the Engrossed Copy was still not a public document. Congress carted it around as they moved to avoid encroaching British forces.

The Library owns two copies of the Goddard Broadside. The copy presented here is part of the Theodorus Bailey Myers Collection. Myers was a lawyer and businessman with an interest in revolutionary era history. He collected letters and documents with the autographs of prominent Americans, and organized his vast collection by grouping the signatories of documents into categories. One of those categories, in which there are over two-hundred documents, is for signers of the Declaration of Independence. That is where Myers filed the Goddard broadside. It makes sense that this document would interest someone who collected autograph documents of the Declaration’s signers. This particular copy of the broadside also contains the signatures of John Hancock and Charles Thomson, the secretary of Congress.

All of which is to say the Goddard Broadside is significant for the names it bears. And one of those names is Mary Katherine Goddard. Unlike the Maryland Journal, where Goddard only used her initials, when printing the Declaration she included her full name. Perhaps Goddard was trying to secure her place in the story of the nation's founding. We can only speculate.

We do know that Goddard declared her country's independence, only to see much of her own autonomy slip away in the subsequent years. William Goddard slowly took back control of the Maryland Journal from his sister. By 1784, Mary Katherine was no longer listed as the printer.

Congress knew printing this copy was a significant step. So did Goddard. And so did Myers. Yet this version of the Declaration of Independence is not very well known to modern Americans. The digitization of the Myers collection and, with it, this copy of the Declaration of Independence offers an opportunity to reflect on key themes in revolutionary history: the creation of the Declaration of Independence; the role of women in the American Revolution; and how we choose to remember the Declaration in the twenty-first century.

About the Early American Manuscripts Project

With support from the The Polonsky Foundation, The New York Public Library is currently digitizing upwards of 50,000 pages of historic early American manuscript material. The Early American Manuscripts Project will allow students, researchers, and the general public to revisit major political events of the era from new perspectives and to explore currents of everyday social, cultural, and economic life in the colonial, revolutionary, and early national periods. The project will present on-line for the first time high quality facsimiles of key documents from America’s Founding, including the papers of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. Drawing on the full breadth of the Library’s manuscript collections, it will also make widely available less well-known manuscript sources, including business papers of Atlantic merchants, diaries of people ranging from elite New York women to Christian Indian preachers, and organizational records of voluntary associations and philanthropic organizations. Over the next two years, this trove of manuscript sources, previously available only at the Library, will be made freely available through nypl.org.

As June turned into July in 1863, the residents of Vicksburg, Mississippi faced an increasingly dire summer. Union troops surrounded the city in a siege that had begun on May 18th. Ulysses S. Grant's army was determined to gain the city and its strategic location along a bend in the Mississippi River, while Robert E. Lee and his lieutenant general John C. Pemberton were equally devoted to holding it. Within Vicksburg's fortifications, the women, children, and other civilians literally dug in, sheltering in caves that protected them from the ever-present bombardment of minié balls and other shelling.

The Vicksburg troops were well-stocked with weapons, but as the days ticked by, food and other necessities became increasingly scarce. The city's newspaper, the Vicksburg Daily Citizen, was remarkable in that it both documented and physically represented the effects of the siege.

Two copies of a single issue of the Citizen are included within the database America's Historical Newspapers, listed as July 2, 1863 issues. Each is printed in broadside format, meaning that the entire issue takes up one full sheet of paper. (It was not folded into multiple leaves like a pamphlet or book.) The recto (front) of the broadside contains the printed text, but the verso (back) is another story. In the digitized version, we can see faint traces of a pattern on each verso. What are these markings? The database is silent, but further research reveals a curious story.

By June 18, 1863, the editor of the Citizen, J.M. Swords, faced a problem. While hoping to continue running his press and distributing news to the city of Vicksburg, Swords no longer had paper on which to print. He instead cut up wallpaper into sheets and fed these through his press. The blank side of the wallpaper, meant to adhere to the wall, bore the newspaper's text. The subtle decorations we see on the versos of these newspapers are the original wallpaper designs. While difficult to discern in the database versions, they are far clearer, and quite beautiful, in their original print format. The Library has two such print copies in its Rare Book Division, each with a different wallpaper design.

[image-gallery]

After more than a month under siege, Vicksburg was lacking in more than just paper. The primary concern was food: by early July, the city was down to the dregs of its supply of fresh meat and "breadstuff"—the rice, peas, meal, and flour used to make bread. By late June, coveted flour was being sold for $600 a barrel. Scurvy was present among the Confederate soldiers. Sweet potatoes were gone, meaning the end of the surrogate "coffee" brewed in place of coffee beans. (Read more about coffee and the Civil War in the New York Times.) Residents had begun slaughtering mules for their meat, eating this alongside the even less savory rats (in a dish termed "squirrel stew") and cats.

This dire state of affairs was documented in what was to be the final issue of the Citizen. Its various articles spoke of civilian deaths, military activity, instances of soldiers stealing civilian provisions, goods sold at extortionist prices, and the consumption of mule (termed "Confederate beef alias meat") and cats ("poor, defunct Thomas"). It nonetheless exhibited a false optimism on the chances of Confederate success, mocking Grant and reporting on illness and desertion among Union troops just days before the city surrendered.

But the last article in this issue of the Citizen is something else entirely. America's Historical Newspapers dates its Citizen issues to July 2, 1863. And at first blush, this is correct—July 2 is, after all, recorded under the newspaper's masthead. The final article, however, is a note dated July 4. This day marked the end of the Vicksburg siege, as General Pemberton, hoping to strategically appeal to the sentimentality and patriotism of the Union forces for better terms, surrendered the city on Independence Day. As the victorious troops entered the city and surveyed the activities of the defeated Rebs, one group stumbled upon the offices of the Citizen and its printing press. The soldiers found that the type for the July 2 issue was still "standing" on the press. In other words, the individual pieces of movable metal type were still held together in their printing forme, ready to be inked and transferred onto more paper. The soldiers decided to make a few adjustments and reset the type for a small appended note announcing the arrival of Grant and the victory of the Union army in Vicksburg:

NOTE.

JULY 4th, 1863.

Two days bring about great changes, The banner of the Union floats over Vicksburg. Gen. Grant has "caught the rabbit;" [a reference to an earlier article in this issue] he has dined in Vicksburg, and he did bring his dinner with him. The "Citizen" lives to see it. For the last time it appears on "Wall-paper." No more will it eulogize the luxury of mule meat and fricassed kitten—urge Southern warriors to such diet never-more. This is the last wall-paper edition, and is, excepting this note, from the types as we found them. It will be valuable hereafter as a curiosity.

The Union troops printed out about fifty copies of this new, July 4 installment of the Citizen and sold them to their fellow soldiers. As suggested in the note, this edition became a wartime keepsake. One of the Library's copies has the faint inscription of a name on its verso, likely the name of the soldier who purchased it. Over time, it has become a valued collectible, leading to commemorative copies and facsimiles that muddy the waters for interested purchasers. (The Library of Congress has authored a guide for distinguishing an authentic Citizen from a reprint.) When the New York Herald Tribune reported on the existence of the newspaper for a 1929 article, it prompted a letter to the editor from one W.T. Gardner, an army veteran and former printer's apprentice who shared:

"I am the Grant soldier who set up the type of the item dated July 4, 1863, and did the press work on an old Franklin press. The item was written, if I am not mistaken, by Sergeant Lanfield (or Landfield), Company G, 97th Illinois Volunteers...When we entered the little one-room printing office we found everything as it had been left on July 2. Mr. Swords, the proprietor, was not in, but he had kindly cut up a quantity of wallpaper and sprinkled it and piled it on the floor ready for use....we used it all and then, dividing the papers up, started out to sell them at 25 cents a copy." (Read the entire letter here, via the New York Tribune/Herald Tribune (1841-1962) database.)

This issue of the Vicksburg Daily Citizen showcases many things. It illustrates how online databases can help us discover and provide us with convenient access to valuable, rare objects we might not otherwise see or even know about. At the same time, it demonstrates why these digital surrogates are not straightforward replacements for the original, print versions. But most importantly, it shows how printed texts are artifacts of our material culture. We can learn about a historical era from the informational content of a book, pamphlet, or newspaper, but we can also learn from the physical object itself. This document tells a story with the materials from which it was made, how it was assembled, why it was created, and how it was received. Only by exploring all of these facets of its lifecycle do we begin to understand the evidence it holds for one crucial point in history.

References

America's Historical Newspapers database

Compelled to Appear in Print: The Vicksburg Manuscript of General John C. Pemberton. Ed. David M. Smith. Cincinnati: Ironclad Publishing, 1999.

Hoehling, A.A. Vicksburg: 47 Days of Siege. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1996.

Lossing, Benson John. Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History from 458 A.D. to 1909. Vol. 10. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1905.

Loughborough, Mary Ann. My Cave Life in Vicksburg. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1864.

New York Tribune/Herald Tribune (1841-1962) database

Sacrifice at Vicksburg: Letters from the Front. Ed. Susan T. Puck. Shippensburg, PA: Burd Street Press, 1997.

Wheeler, Richard. The Siege of Vicksburg. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1978.

Population Movements

In recent weeks, as the end of Immigrant Heritage Month neared, trends in political news headlines seemed to prove that a not insignificant number of people in the United States believe that an “American” is one who finds tradition and bloodline in a single indigenous ethnicity bound to a longstanding, native region. But even the flightiest peep into the slimmest textbook on U.S. history demonstrates otherwise, and one will perceive that America, like most inhabited places on the planet, is the result of the happenstance of population movements.

Tribes of Delaware Indians who once inhabited Brotherton Reservation in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, soon removed to regions in the Midwest; Mayflower pilgrims to the colonies of New England; southern Italians to Argentina before 1888, when an economic crisis redirected immigrants from the Mezzogiorno to Brazil and the States; Oklahoma "sooners" stampeding into Indian Territory in 1889, when Congress, under the Homestead Act, opened lands north of Texas which had formerly been settled by displaced Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole tribes; or New York Irish families who left Hudson Street on the West Side of Manhattan to make the epic journey across the Hudson River and resettle in Hudson County, New Jersey; these are examples of population movements, some major and some minor.

Between 1565, when Spanish settlers founded St. Augustine in Florida, understood as the oldest continuously settled city in the United States, and 1815, at the end of the War of 1812, the second war between America and Great Britain, the majority of the roughly one million migrants to what would become the United States were from the British Isles, Germany, and Africa. Africans were the largest ethnic group, with an estimated 360,000 crossing as slaves in this time period, where one in five slaves died during passage. Roughly 325,000 Europeans arrived as indentured servants seeking eventual free status, or as convicts expelled by the British government. These numbers are ballpark figures, and reflect a study of 1790 census data published in the William and Mary Quarterly in 1984, and an analysis by genealogists in The Source (2006).

The first U.S. census was taken by 650 federal marshals in 1790, and enumerated the population at 3.9 million, which is about equal to the borough of Manhattan plus Queens. The majority of people were U.S. born. Tribal nations were not included in the U.S. census until 1880, because Native Americans were not legally citizens of the U.S., unobliged to pay taxes and withheld the right to vote.

By 1783, at the end of the Revolutionary War, some colonists could trace a family history in America back five to seven generations, with roots in a handful of different countries. From 1790 to 1815, about 5,000 immigrants arrived in the U.S. each year.

Passenger Lists

Familiarity with the history of immigration in the U.S. can provide context for immigration resources used in genealogy research, and as an aid for locating records, knowing whether or not records might exist, where they might be, and what sort of information they might yield. U.S. immigration laws have changed numerous times, continue to change, and are sometimes prevented from changing; these processes alter the types of records accorded to evolving procedures. Changing policies also reflect the shift in contemporary political and social attitudes about newcomers settling in America, which often collide like super-velocity beams in a particle accelerator.

There are numerous records that might trace or prove the details and facts of population movements, that map demographics, place individuals at a certain date, or provide statistical data. One of the most heavily used resources of this type are ship passenger lists. Passenger lists, also called ship manifests, show all the passengers on a vessel traveling to or from the United States, and depending on the year, will provide a varying amount of genealogical data about the passenger, as well as information about the ship. Passenger lists are the chief source of information for researchers of immigrants to the United States between 1820 and the 1950s.

Most records of transatlantic passengers in the colonial period are lost, or were never kept in the first place. Immigration and citizenship laws were decided by each individual colony. Passenger list records are accessible today because of federal laws seeking to monitor incoming residence-seekers in the United States, which laws were first instituted in 1820 with the Steerage Act, a benchmark immigration law that required ship captains to keep official passenger lists of vessels sailing to American ports. The lists would be periodically furnished to the Secretary of State. It was the first law to regulate passenger vessels and monitor individuals arriving in the country. But it was marginally enforced. The avarice of ship captains often resulted in overcrowding and debased conditions on the ship, and in 1840, Congress passed a series of laws to regulate tonnage-to-passenger ratios in order to control the number of people allowed on board.

The Steerage Act served as the boilerplate for future immigration laws related to ships and vessels. The act was named after the area in the ship designed for cargo but loaded with people who could not afford cabin class. In this manner, the ship, which had originally departed the U.S. with goods like cotton or lumber to trade in overseas ports, would capitalize on the empty space for the return trip home.

A copy of the passenger list was handed to state processing officials at the port of entry and filed with the Collector of Customs. Officially known as “Customs Passenger Lists” (1820-c.1891), the forms were not standardized, but generally included the ship’s name, ship’s master or captain, port of embarkation, date and port of arrival, and the name, age, sex, occupation, and nationality of the passenger. In addition, any deaths that occurred at sea were noted in the pages following the lists.

Naturalization Papers

The next most useful resources in U.S. immigration research are naturalization papers. Naturalization is the process one is required to undergo to become a citizen of the United States. A naturalization often consists of a series of official documents that include valuable genealogical information.

Naturalization is a two-step procedure. Generally, a Declaration of Intention (or First Papers) was made after two years of residency in the U.S. Second or Final Papers, in the form of a Petition, were filed after an additional three years residency. Filed in court and signed off by a judge, an oath of allegiance was taken, a certificate of citizenship issued, and the individual officially transpatriated as an American.

In colonial America, citizenship was mandated by the individual colonies. Under British rule, newcoming white males often took an oath of allegiance in order to legally exercise the right to own property. From March 26, 1790, when Congress passed the first Naturalization Act, to September 26, 1906, when the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization was founded, a naturalization could take place in a number of local courts, and sometimes at the federal level.

The early laws required an initial two years residency. This was extended to five years, for qualified applicants who were “free white persons of good moral character.” In 1798, during a period of intense paranoia of foreign influence, especially French, the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed, stretching the residency requirement to 14 years. The Acts reflected a feud between Anglophile Federalists and Jeffersonian, Francophile Democratic-Republicans. The Act was little enforced except for the totalitarian Sedition laws, which resulted in the imprisonment of numerous publishers, editors and writers who voiced or printed anti-Federalist sentiment in public forums.

In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment protected, with some qualifications, “all persons born in the United States” as citizens; African-Americans could naturalize after 1870, while Native American naturalization was restricted in 1887.

In the nineteenth century, many immigrants could live viably as an American without becoming a citizen; harassment and prejudice might have been common, but not the threat of deportation. For example, between 1890 and 1930, the U.S. census shows that 26 percent of aliens were never naturalized. After 1906, all naturalizations were processed at the federal level.

All racial restrictions were lifted in the 1952 Immigration and Naturalization Act, and since 1992, the naturalization process is no longer handled or filed in courts.

Castle Garden (1855-1890)

The first immigration center in the U.S. was known as Castle Garden, a former fort during the War of 1812 that was converted into as an amusement hall and public resort in the 1820s, at the southwest edge of Battery Park. A point of maritime disembarkation as well as a major New York City tourist attraction and public event space, the grounds were then leased by New York City to the State’s Board of Commissioners of Emigration.

The experience of the immigrant, or “alien,” arriving at Castle Garden began at the Quarantine Station, six miles south of Manhattan in New York Bay, where healthy passengers were separated from the sick.

At the Emigrant Landing Depot, Customs agents collected fees and the NYPD inspected luggage before the immigrant entered Castle Garden and proceeded to the Registering Department. Here, an agent recorded names, nationality, former residence, and intended destination. Like all the records related to Castle Garden, these records are lost.

Before the establishment of Castle Garden, an industry of abuse and exploitation thrived at the port areas where immigrants disembarked. No protection had existed for newcomers, who were often greeted by thieves, con artists, hoodwinkers, and thugs. Tickets would be sold for transport that did not exist, luggage was stolen, and human traffickers posed as good samaritans. When Castle Garden opened, the government provided authorized railroad agents to vend transportation; a supervised baggage delivery service to transport luggage; a reliable currency exchange to buck criminally high rates; an Information Department that put newcomers in touch with waiting friends or family and any waiting letters or funds; licensed and approved boarding house keepers who solicited immigrants with no housing; and a Labor Exchange to offer sound, temporary employment.

Ellis Island (1892-1954)

Formerly known as Oyster Island, where Delaware tribes collected shellfish in New York Bay, Ellis Island was the first federal immigration processing station in America. Originally a cavernous three-story building made of wood, the building burned down in 1897 and reopened in a brick and iron structure three years later. An average of 10,000 people were processed each day, and one time, at its peak in 1907, the center bulged with 21,000 individuals in a single day.

Revised immigration laws in 1924 introduced the requirement of first obtaining a visa at the U.S. Embassy located in the country of origin, which process drastically reduced the staff and traffic at the immigration stations at U.S. ports. Passengers continued to disembark at Ellis Island after its processing station closed, after a total number of immigrants estimated at twelve million. The building shut in 1954 and was put under the auspices of the National Park Service in 1965. Occupied by Native American and African American activists as a locale to assemble and demonstrate in the 1970s, it was not opened to the visiting public as an historic site until 1990. Besides Liberty Island, it is the only terrestrial border between New York City and New Jersey, where one can walk from one realm to the other without crossing a bridge.

U.S. Immigration History

Between 1820-1840, seventy percent of immigrants were German, Irish, or English. Immigration from Germany in particular spiked between 1847 and 1855, with a combination of political upheaval, crop failures, and an increasing scarcity of land unfit to accommodate the rising population.

Irish immigration to the U.S. from Ulster County spiked in the early 1770s on the eve of the Revolutionary War. Irish passengers to America in the years of the early republic was the result of a handful of economic factors, like high taxes, currency manipulation, skyrocketing farm rents, and low crop prices. Though this era pre-dated the Steerage Act, indexes of Irish arrivals in America have been published that draw from passenger lists which appeared in Irish newspapers, notably The Shamrock, or Hibernian Chronicle.

The next major Irish wave was the result of the infamous potato famine, which appeared by dubious origins as a splotchy white fungus in 1845, and continued to ruin the normally high yielding potato crop which a many farmers relied on for livelihood. The famine continued through 1848, while the farm economy of Ireland depended very little, if at all, on other or alternative crops. In 1845, the population of the country was about 8.5 million. In 1851, because of starvation, disease, and migration, the population plummeted to 6.5 million people.

During a brief, inflammatory period of months in 1848, mass uprisings by the working class against monarchial regimes ignited across Central and Western Europe. The famous revolution of 1848, the same year gold was discovered in California, was brief, forceful, and, as the historian Eric Hobsbawm said, “within six months of its outbreak, its universal defeat was safely predictable.”

When oppressor regimes were soon reinstated, much of the disenfranchised laboring and peasant classes had cause to flee, spurring immigration to the U.S., a nation where the government had only recently formed as a result of revolution, and which appeared to disavow social class and promise democratic voice to all citizens, in addition to an equal process of citizenship to aliens.

There was an old Italian anecdote about the immigrant en route to America, expecting streets paved with gold, who learns three things upon arrival. “The streets weren’t paved with gold; they weren’t paved at all; and I was expected to pave them.”

In 1882, the Chinese Exclusionary Act banned Chinese women and children from entering the country and restricted males to diplomats, students, and businessmen.

After the 1881 assassination of Czar Alexander II in Russia, government retaliation inaugurated a series of pogroms against Jewish populations in the Ukraine and Bessarabia, today Moldova. This was followed by laws discriminating against Jewish land ownership, known as the May Laws. Major flight of Russian Jews characterized the 1880s and 1890s. In all, about 2.3 million people from the Russian Empire migrated to the United States between 1871 and 1910—among them Lithuanians, Poles, Latvians, Finns, and Ukrainians. A bulk of these migrants sailed to the U.S. from the ports in Hamburg or Bremen.

In Italy, a migration boom occurred roughly between 1871, ten years after the Unification of Northern and Southern Italy, and 1915, when a German submarine attacked and sank the Lusitania, a British ocean liner, sparking the United States to eventually enter World War I. A bulk of migrants left the south of Italy, known as the Mezzogiorno, where by the 1880s birth rates were high while death rates were falling. Between 1880 and 1887, Argentina was the prime destination for immigrants from the Mezzogiorno; from 1888 to 1897, it was Brazil; and after 1898, the United States, which in the early twentieth century was the landing place for 65 percent of all Italians leaving Italy.

In addition, in 1908 an earthquake in Southern Italy triggered a forty foot tsunami that decimated Calabria and coastal Sicily, with the death toll reaching up to 80,000 people. Many displaced survivors departed for the United States.

One hundred and one U.S. ports were in operation throughout the nineteenth century. Pacific coast passenger list arrivals were recorded beginning in 1850. In 1895, the U.S. initiated the collection of records that tallied and processed border crossings of individuals arriving from Canada, and in 1903, immigrants from Mexico into California, Texas, New Mexico, or Arizona. 1907 marked the official year that an act was passed to record alien arrivals at U.S. land borders, or “contiguous territory.” These records took the form of “card manifests” listing identifying information.

In the decades after the Civil War, the U.S. government expanded. The Department of Justice was founded, Civil Rights acts were passed in the 1870s, and enforcement of voting policies was conducted by U.S. marshals and federal election officials. Likewise, in 1890, the Treasury Department terminated its contract with the New York State Commissioners of Emigration, and a year later the federal government assumed total control of all U.S. immigration operations. Consequently, between 1893 and 1907, the number of columns of personal information on passenger lists rose from five to twenty-nine. “Aliens” were now asked how much money they carried; to provide the address of relatives or contacts in the U.S. they were meeting; and if they were an anarchist or polygamist.

With the exception of Irish Catholics, the majority of immigrants before 1882 were Protestants from Northern and Western Europe. By 1907, three out of four immigrants were Catholics and Jews from Southern and Eastern Europe.

The 1924 Immigration Act passed by Congress targeted specific nationalities with quota restrictions. The number of newcomers from Southern and Eastern Europeans nations allowed into the U.S. would now be limited to 2% of the total number of people from those origin countries listed in the 1890 United States census. For example, if one million individuals were listed in the 1890 federal census as born in Italy, then only 20,000 Italians would be allowed entry into the United States annually after 1924.

The 1930s were characterized by more departures from the U.S. than arrivals, while quota laws, World War II, internment camps, and the suppression of ethnicities of wartime enemies were some of the factors causing levels of immigration to decrease.

In 1933, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was established, as part of the Department of Labor; it would later be transferred to the authority of the Department of Justice, which oversaw immigration until 2002 when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) created the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Recent naturalization records are now only obtainable through a Freedom of Information Act request.

While the government reevaluated Alien Registration laws during the Cold War, Congress continued to make it law to keep passenger manifests, including for aircraft; however, arrival records furnished to INS officers were no longer submitted to the collections of the National Archives. As a result, the bulk of lists that may have been kept after the late 1950s are not accessible to researchers.

In 2014, President Obama had announced a series of Immigration Executive Actions, which by various measures provided “temporary legal status to millions of illegal immigrants,” and an “an indefinite reprieve from deportation.” One of these actions would have extended and expanded the “Deferred Action to Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents,” (DAPA) which the DHS describes as an “administrative mechanism” that helps eligible immigrants without legal status to gain “work-authorization… pay taxes and contribute to the economy." Challenged in federal court by 26 states, an injunction was imposed against DAPA by a U.S. District Court in Texas. When the case reached the Supreme Court, in June 2016, the judges deadlocked, and the injunction was “affirmed by an equally divided court.” As a result, the “unauthorized immigrant population” affected by the outcome was estimated by the New York Times at roughly six million people.

The Ellis Island of America in 2016 is Los Angeles International Airport, where arrivals are greeted by the Theme Building, a work of unique architecture resembling a futuristic spacecraft, and co-designed by a former Hollywood art director.

Bibliography

The Milstein Division of U.S. History, Local History, and Genealogy offers free public classes on passenger list research and researching naturalization records.

NYPL Immigrant Services helps non-English speaking and other immigrants understand and interact with the culture, government, and educational system of the United States.

Passenger Lists

• They Came In Ships: A Guide To Finding Your Immigrant Ancestor's Arrival Record / Colletta.
• Mass Migration Under Sail / Cohn.
• American Passenger Arrival Records / Tepper.
• Passenger and Immigration Lists Index / Filby. Full volume set in Room 121.
• New World Immigrants / Tepper. 2 vols.
• A Bibliography of Ship Passenger Lists, 1538-1825 / compiled H. Lancour; rev. R. J. Wolfe.

Castle Garden & Ellis Island

• Encountering Ellis Island / Bayor.
• American Passage: The History of Ellis Island / Cannato.
• Encyclopedia of Ellis Island / Moreno.
• Castle Garden as an Immigrant Depot, 1855-1890 / Svejda.

History of Immigration

• Guide to Genealogical Research in the National Archives / Eales and Kvasnicka.
• Prologue | Journal of the National Archives. Available online & NYPL Room 121.
• U.S. Immigration and Migration Almanac / Benson & Hermsen.
• Immigrants in the Far West: historical identities and experiences / Embry & Cannon.
• Transforming America: Perspectives on U.S. Immigration / LeMay.
• Daily life in immigrant America, 1820-1870 / Bergquist.
• Daily life in immigrant America, 1870-1920 / Alexander.
• Population History of New York City / Rosenwaike.
• Yearbook of Immigration Statistics. Department of Homeland Security.
• “The European Ancestry of the United States Population, 1790: A Symposium.” / Purvis. The William and Mary Quarterly; vol. 41, no. 1 . Jan. 1984.

The following titles on our Recent Acquisitions Display are just a few of our new books, which are available at the reference desk in the Dorot Jewish Division.

Changing the Immutable: How Orthodox Judaism Rewrites Its History by Marc B. Shapiro

Community Table: Recipes and Stories From the Jewish Community Center In Manhattan and Beyond by JCC Manhattan; with Katja Goldman

Exiles In Sepharad: the Jewish Millennium In Spain by Jeffrey Gorsky

Holocaust and the Germanization of Ukraine by Eric C. Steinhart (e-book available through Cambridge Books Online)

Human Nature & Jewish Thought: Judaism's Case For Why Persons Matter by Alan L. Mittleman

Imagining the Kibbutz: Visions of Utopia In Literature and Film by Ranen Omer-Sherman

In Suffering and Fighting: the Jews of Brno In Fateful Moments of the 20th Century by Jiří Mitáček

Intrigue and Revolution: Chief Rabbis In Aleppo, Baghdad, and Damascus, 1744-1914 by Yaron Harel

Kabbalah and Ecology: God's Image In the More-than-Human World by David Mevorach Seidenberg (e-book available through Cambridge Books Online)

Leaving the Jewish Fold: Conversion and Radical Assimilation In Modern Jewish History by Todd M. Endelman

Metropolitan Jews: Politics, Race, and Religion In Postwar Detroit by Lila Corwin Berman (e-book available through University Press Scholarship Online)

Myth of the Cultural Jew: Culture and Law In Jewish Tradition by Roberta Rosenthal Kwall (e-book available through Oxford Scholarship Online)

Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939-1945 by Joshua D. Zimmerman (e-book available through Cambridge Books Online)

Post-Holocaust France and the Jews, 1945-1955 edited by Seán Hand and Steven T. Katz (e-book available through Project Muse)

Samaritan Version of Saadya Gaon's Translation of the Pentateuch: Critical Edition and Study of Ms London Bl OR7562 and Related MSS edited by Tamar Zewi

Survivors and Exiles: Yiddish Culture After the Holocaust by Jan Schwarz (e-book available through Project Muse)

Yosef Haim Brenner: A Life by Anita Shapira (e-book available through University Press Scholarship Online)

Zionism and Judaism: A New Theory by David Novak (e-book available through Cambridge Books Online)

Ever wondered who lived in your home before you? Perhaps it was someone famous? Or someone infamous. Maybe you have tried searching for your great-grandparents in old census records, but you are having trouble finding them using the indexes? Searching—or browsing—the census by address will help you do this. The United States Federal Census, from 1790 through 1940, is available through subscription genealogy databases like Ancestry, FindMyPast, and HeritageQuest, and free through FamilySearch, and others.  To browse the census, searching for an address, is much easier if you can find something called an ED (Enumeration District) number.

Genealogy is full of brick walls. For instance, you're following a name through the censuses, tracing a family line back through the years, when you hit a dead end. You have your ancestor in, let's say, the 1940 census, back through 1930, 1920, and 1910, but you can't seem to  find your ancestor in the 1900 census. You believe this is only a few years after they immigrated, and you really want to see that record: it describes your family's first years in the United States, so is an important record. You've tried searching by name, but nothing works.

Perhaps that name hasn't been indexed correctly, or the enumerator misspelled the name, or had sloppy handwriting? Perhaps your ancestor wasn't there at all? You've tried Soundex searches, truncated searches, variant spellings. You've tried searching the spouse and children's names, and nearby friends and relatives, in case that approach works. Alas you have drawn a blank.

One possible way around this problem may be to browse the census, in order to search by address. To do this the researcher needs to generate an enumeration district (ED) number. To do that one needs an address. This post will tell you how you find an ancestor's address at census time, how to generate an ED number, and how to browse the census. For free, online.

What is an Enumeration District?

An enumeration district is an area assigned to a census taker (also known as an enumerator) at census time that could be covered in one census taking period. In a densely populated area, an enumeration district may cover only two or three blocks, or an institution, like a school or hospital. In rural areas, an enumeration district may cover many square miles, or a whole county. Each area is assigned a number, an enumeration district, or ED number. A researcher can use that number to browse the census more efficiently, to locate an address, and a name.

In order to discover the enumeration district within which an address falls—the numbers are different for each census—a researcher can use an enumeration district map (example from 1900  above), like those found at Ancestry, or in Room 121, the Milstein Division. Alternatively, an ED number can be found using an online enumeration district number generator, in this instance One-Step by Stephen Morse.

1. Find an address.

Before we can generate an ED number, we need to first locate a name and address in a record or directory from as near to the year of the census as possible. N.B. bear in mind that the census can only be searched by a street address from 1870  in Manhattan (2^nd enumeration) or 1880 for the rest of the country. Possible address sources include:

1. City or telephone directories
2. Military draft cards
3. Family archives
4. Digitized newspapers
5. Vital records
6. Records of citizenship

Once you have your ancestor's address from an approximate census year (within a few years if possible), work out the historical cross streets. An easy way to do this is using  a digitized historical property map online. You can search for digitized historical property maps online using New York Public Library's Map Warper, NYPL Digital Collections, or Old Maps Online, or the street directory in a historical city directory.

For instance, Trow's  New York City Directory for 1900 (above, left) lists 

Miller, Christopher butcher h 416 E 18th 

The G.W. Bromley Atlas of 1899 (above, right) shows the cross streets for 416 East 18th Street, Manhattan, as 1st Avenue and Avenue A, and the back street as East 17th Street.

2. Generate an ED number.

Once you have your address and cross streets, go to One Step Pages by Stephen Morse (www.stevemorse.org) > U.S. Census > One-Step, Unified 1880-1950 Census ED Finder

To generate an ED number first select the census you want to browse (1880, 1900, 1910, etc.), and then fill out the address details you want to locate.

Using our sample address, for instance, we can now generate an E.D. number. We select, in One-Step, Unified Census ED Finder the following:

1. Census year: 1900
2. State: New York
3. County: New York County
4. City or Town: Manhattan
5. House Number: 416
6. Street: 18th E
7. Cross or back street : 1st Av
8. Cross or back street: Av A
9. Cross or back street [in this case the back street]: 17th E

This generates the 1900 ED number New York : 432 (see blow).

You can now use the ED number you have generated to browse the census. 

3. Browse the United States Census

You can do this at any genealogy site that has a browseable, digitized U.S. Federal census collection; Ancestry, FindMyPast,HeritageQuest, FamilySearch, or the Internet Archive, for instance. We're going to use FamilySearch, as this is a free site.

1. Google familysearch 1900
2. You should see a link to United States Census, 1900 — FamilySearch.org
3. Scroll down and click Browse through 1,602,454 images.
4. Click State: New York
5. Click County: New York
6. Look for and click ED 432 Borough of Manhattan [...]
7. You will now be looking at the pages from the 1900 census that describe the New York, New York Enumeration District number 432.

Provided that you are looking at a census that describes addresses, in the first page of the census you will see, to the far left, a column along which is written the street name, in this case "East 17th." In the next column to the right, you will see listed building numbers. Look for the street name and number where your ancestor lived. If you don't see the address listed, you will have to browse through the pages until you do. This is approximately true for all censuses that describe street names and numbers.

Browsing through the pages that describe ED 432 Borough of Manhattan in the 1900 US federal Census, we find the residents of 416 East 18th Street listed on page 24, including Christopher Miller and his family: see below.

5 further tips...

1. Rural areas do not always describe street names and building numbers.
2. If you do not see your address described in the census, it may be at the back of the ED section you are browsing. If your ancestor was not at home for instance, the census taker may have returned later and taken the household details then.
3. Remember: street names and numbers change. Try to consult maps or street directories from the approximate years of the census you are browsing.
4. Search city directories either side of a census year, to make sure you have the correct address. For the 1910 census, for instance, consult directories from 1909 through 1911 (where available).
5. Sometimes the genealogy database, or the census map does not describe enumeration districts as clearly as we would like. Sometimes a database will offer browsing of different administrative districts used at census time, wards, assembly districts (AD), or supervisor's district (SD), for instance. A census map might describe an electoral district, which is different from an enumeration district. In the case of the databases, you might have to click through the ward, AD, or SDs listed to find the enumeration district you are looking for. With census maps describing electoral districts, there may be a key or guide describing how you work out an ED using an electoral district map. 

No one ever said genealogy would be easy!

As usual, write to us at history@nypl.org, with all your genealogy queries, especially as they relate to this post.

Praise, suggestions, observations, criticisms, etc, are welcome in the comments below.

Resources

Introduction to Census Records

One Step Pages by Stephen Morse

FamilySearch Wiki: 1940 Census - Enumeration Districts

Censuses, free online

United States Census, 1870

United States Census, 1880

United States Census, 1900

United States Census, 1910

United States Census,, 1920

United States Census, 1930

United States Census, 1940

The announcement of President Obama's recent designation of the site of the June 28, 1969 Stonewall uprising as a national monument prominently featured LGBT historical materials from the Library's Manuscripts & Archives Division available online in our Digital Collections. The images in the White House's video announcement include photographs of the Stonewall after the uprising, as well as historic photographs of pioneering LGBT activists of the 1960s and 1970s. These photographs were drawn from the archives of activist photojournalists Kay Tobin Lahusen, Diana Davies, and Richard Wandel. Some highlights include:

Diana Davies' photo of the Stonewall Inn in 1969.

Kay Tobin Lahusen's photo of Frank Kameny in the first LGBT Pride March.

And, Richard Wandel's photo of a Gay rights demonstration in Albany in 1971.

These are just a small sample of the thousands of images illustrating LGBT civil rights struggles available on the Library's website. The White House's video announcement is available on YouTube.

Since it opened in 1999, the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers has had seventeen classes of fellows in residence at The New York Public Library. These gifted independent scholars, creative writers, academics, and visual artists have produced more than one hundred books since 1999, and we recommend fifteen of their recent titles for 2016 summer reading.

Chronicle of a Last Summer by Yasmine El Rashidi (June 2016, Tim Duggan Books)
Subtle and strong, this slim first novel draws a portrait of daily life and political struggle in Egypt as seen through the eyes of a young woman over the course of twenty years.

Sudden Deathby Alvaro Enrigue (Riverhead, February 2016)
Tennis balls made from the hair of the beheaded Anne Boleyn rocket across court in a match between the Italian painter Caravaggio and the Spanish poet Quevedo, with a delightful cameo appearance by The New York Public Library.

Little Laborsby Rivka Galchen (New Directions, May 2016)
A gem of a book: witty, unsentimental essays on motherhood, childhood, and literature.

Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographerby Arthur Lubow (Ecco, June 2016)
This fascinating, thoughtful biography of one of the most important figures in modern photography takes a far deeper, more searching look at the artist’s life and work than we have had until now. Don’t miss the exhibition of Arbus’s early photographs at New York’s Met Breuer this summer.

Hereby Richard McGuire (Pantheon, 2014)
Time travel without leaving the corner of a room: McGuire’s stunning art book imagines events taking place in a single space over thousands of years.

Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Helpby Larissa MacFarquhar (Penguin Press, 2015)
In her close look at extreme virtue, MacFarquhar profiles people whose altruism and ethical commitments go far beyond what most of us consider normal. What drives them? How should we regard them? Are there dark sides to doing good?

The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis (Knopf, 2012)
Mathis’s powerful first novel tells the intimate stories of Hattie, swept up in the Great Migration north from Georgia in 1923, and her descendants over the ensuing decades.

The Sport of Kings by C.E. Morgan (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, May 2016)
Morgan’s ambitious new novel takes in generations of Kentucky history as it follows two families, one black, one white, through dramas of race, racing, poverty, wealth, solitude, prison, lineage, and pain. One critic calls it “a high literary epic of America.”

Black Deutschlandby Darryl Pinckney (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, February 2016)
The lure of Europe for black Americans has a long literary history, and the novel Black Deutschland, set in Berlin and Chicago in the 1980s, places Pinckney in the company of James Baldwin and Richard Wright. An observation of his central character has terrible new resonance in the summer of 2016: “I wanted to live where authority had little interest in black men.”

Thunder and Lightning: Weather Past, Present, Futureby Lauren Redniss (Random House, 2015)
Perhaps best described as a graphic biography of weather, this gorgeous art book tells riveting stories about the physical world we inhabit – most of the time without thinking about it—and which we’re likely to be destroying through climate change

The Other Paris by Luc Sante (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Fall 2015)
A rich and detailed alternate history of Paris, populated by the “boulevardiers, rabble-rousers, and tramps” who are not the usual focus of the city’s history and art.

Children of Paradise: The Struggle for the Soul of Iran by Laura Secor (Riverhead, 2016)
Though Iran is more in the news than ever, it has remained a closed mystery to most of the world since its Islamic Revolution in 1979. Secor takes us deep inside the courageous movements that have resisted theocracy and fought for political and cultural change.

The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606 by James Shapiro (Simon & Schuster, 2015)
Four hundred and ten years ago, during a series of tumultuous political changes in England, Shakespeare wrote King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra. Adding tremendous depth to our understandings of history and literature, Shapiro brilliantly sets these great plays in context.

The Lost Time Accidentsby John Wray (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, February 2016)
A complex tale of lost love and family secrets, Wray’s novel tours the chaos of the twentieth century with a man who has been “excused from time.”

Multiple Choice by Alejandro Zambra (June 2016, Penguin)
Designed to look like the “blue book” of a standardized test, Zambra’s new novel, at once playful and deeply serious, is a marvel.

On Sunday morning, July 30, 1916, at 2:08 a.m., one of the worst terrorist attacks in American history took place at Black Tom Island, New Jersey, a shipping facility located in New York Harbor. Under cover of darkness, German agents detonated more than 2 million pounds of ammunition that was awaiting shipment to England. The explosion—the equivalent of an earthquake measuring 5.5 on the Richter scale—was felt and heard as far away as Philadelphia and southern Connecticut. Windows were shattered across Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Jersey City, and to this day the torch of the Statue of Liberty remains closed to visitors due to the damage it sustained from flying shrapnel. Amazingly, though dozens of dock workers, fire fighters, and civilians were injured, fewer than 10 people lost their lives in the blast.

Initially, the cause of the explosion was unclear. Almost before the fires were extinguished, however, multiple explanatory theories were put forth, with hypotheses ranging from the spontaneous combustion of unstable munitions to sparks from a passing freight train. Some initial evidence seemed to point to dock workers who, in an effort to ward off the clouds of mosquitoes that swarmed the waterfront, had carelessly lit smoke pots, sparking fires that subsequently ignited the ordnance. Most Americans, though, goaded by sensational stories in the press, soon began to subscribe to a more sinister line of speculation: that is, that German operatives or sympathizers had blown up the ammunition to prevent it from being shipped to, and used by, the Allies.

From the outset, Kaiser Wilhelm II and his government steadfastly denied any involvement in the matter. Nevertheless, the extensive media coverage of the Black Tom incident, coupled with other contemporary reports of espionage and sabotage activities on American soil, helped to further turn public opinion against Germany and her allies. Within a year, angered by a series of real or perceived violations of its sovereignty, the United States declared war on the German Empire.

But this was not the end of the Black Tom Island story.

After the war’s end, the German-American Mixed Claims Commission—the organization charged with assessing war reparations—launched an inquiry into the cause of the blast. Over the next decade and a half, investigators sifted through a mountain of less-than-conclusive evidence, finally ruling in 1939 that Germany had, indeed, supported the attack. By then, however, with another world war looming, the German government under Adolf Hitler was less than inclined to pay the United States $50 million in damages. Ultimately, another 14 years would pass until the two countries agreed that Germany would reconcile all of its outstanding war reparations claims, including those resulting from the Black Tom explosion. The final payment of the settlement was received in 1979, at last bringing the issue to an overdue, official close. Today, the events of July 1916 are commemorated by a memorial at Liberty State Park in Jersey City, New Jersey, which informs visitors that they are “walking on a site which saw one of the worst acts of terrorism in American history.”

For contemporary accounts of the Black Tom Island explosion, New York City newspapers such as The New York Herald Tribune and The New York Times serve as an excellent resource. For more recent treatments of the subject, see journalist Harold Blum’s, Dark Invasion: 1915: Germany's Secret War and the Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in America,whichprovides a thorough account of covert German espionage and sabotage operations in the United States during World War I. Other noteworthy treatments of the topic include The Detonators: The Secret Plot to Destroy America and an Epic Hunt for Justice (2006), by Chad Millman, and Jules Whitcover’s 1989 work, Sabotage at Black Tom: Imperial Germany's Secret War in America, 1914-1917.

“Mama, Mary and Anthony went to Morris Town — Mama has not been very well for some time past, and she has gone to try if change of air will be of service to her”—Elizabeth De Hart Bleecker, July 27, 1803

“there is some talk of the Fever — a Vessel has been suffer’d to come in to the Dock, from the West Indies — one or two persons who had been on board have died” —Elizabeth De Hart Bleecker, July 28, 1803

“in the afternoon James mov’d his family out of Water Street to Mama’s — several persons have died near him with the fever” —Elizabeth De Hart Bleecker, July 30, 1803

“I believe it has been traced that almost every one that has died, has had some connection with the Vessel from the West Indies”—Elizabeth De Hart Bleecker, August 1, 1803

“in the afternoon, I went to William’s — his wife was very sick with the cholera”—Elizabeth De Hart Bleecker, August 4, 1803

“Papa and Mama return’d from Morris Town”—Elizabeth De Hart Bleecker, August 4, 1803

Everyone was sick or in danger of getting sick. So it probably seemed to Elizabeth De Hart Bleecker during this one week in the summer of 1803. But Bleecker’s family was better off than most because they had the means to avoid fast-spreading diseases.

Early American cities were densely populated, connected by commerce to tropical climates, and possessed inadequate public health apparatuses. Diseases thus easily found their way to American cities. When they did, they could quickly turn into epidemics. This was a fact of life. It is why those who could afford to, often sent their children to school in more rural settings, with more "salubrious" climates. Many Americans thought the hinterlands were not just less unhealthy than cities, but actually ameliorative.

When Bleecker's “Mama” got sick, she fled the city for New Jersey and a "change of air," which the family hoped would make her feel better. Whatever ailed her certainly paled in comparison to the other virulent threats New Yorkers encountered that summer. Cholera was scary, though no major outbreak afflicted New York until the 1830s.

Yellow Fever was another story. Outbreaks of “the Fever,” as Bleecker called it, was a perennial threat for much of her early life. In 1793, yellow fever tore through Philadelphia, killing 5,000 people, or some ten percent of the city’s population. New York City shielded itself that year by refusing to take in refugees and quarantining goods and people from the City of Brotherly Love. In 1795, though, New York contended with a yellow fever epidemic of its own, which claimed the lives of hundreds. (Another recently digitized collection documents the experience of a doctor who treated yellow fever patients at Bellevue Hospital). A major outbreak hit the City yet again in 1798.

These entries from Bleecker’s diary capture the very beginning of the 1803 yellow fever epidemic. By the following week, Bleecker concluded that the spread of fever had become “allarming.” The next day, August 9th, she noted that “a great many people are moving out of town.” And on the day after that, Bleecker took a stage coach and escaped the City to Bedford, north of Manhattan in Westchester County. Other New Yorkers were not so lucky. Over 500 people died in the City before the epidemic finally ended in October.

Bleecker's diary is undoubtedly an important source for understanding early New York City. Yet as her and her family's comparatively easy encounter with the 1803 season attests, Bleecker's experience was far from typical.

This is one of a series of monthly posts highlighting entries from the Elizabeth De Hart Bleecker Diary. Previous installments include a broad overview description of the diary, a post about the election of 1800, and another about lotteries in early New York.

Further Reading

For more on public health in early American cities, see John Duffy, A History of Public Health in New York City, 1625-1866, Vol. 1 (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1968); and Simon Finger, The Contagious City: The Politics of Public Health in Early Philadelphia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012). For a more contemporary account, see James Hardie, An account of the yellow fever...in the city of New York, in the year 1822, to which is prefixed a brief sketch of the different pestilential diseases, with which this city was afflicted, in the years 1798, 1799, 1803 & 1805...(New York: Printed by Samuel Marks, 1822).

About the Early American Manuscripts Project

With support from the The Polonsky Foundation, The New York Public Library is currently digitizing upwards of 50,000 pages of historic early American manuscript material. The Early American Manuscripts Project will allow students, researchers, and the general public to revisit major political events of the era from new perspectives and to explore currents of everyday social, cultural, and economic life in the colonial, revolutionary, and early national periods. The project will present online for the first time high quality facsimiles of key documents from America’s Founding, including the papers of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. Drawing on the full breadth of the Library’s manuscript collections, it will also make widely available less well-known manuscript sources, including business papers of Atlantic merchants, diaries of people ranging from elite New York women to Christian Indian preachers, and organizational records of voluntary associations and philanthropic organizations. Over the next two years, this trove of manuscript sources, previously available only at the Library, will be made freely available through nypl.org.

Hannah Lawrence Schieffelin was, in many ways, an exceptional woman. A prodigious poet, she used her talents to provoke the British by depositing, anonymously, her mocking, anti-British poem in front of Trinity Church. At twenty-two, she rebelled on the domestic scale, renouncing her family’s Quaker faith in order to marry Jacob Schieffelin, a young British officer. Less than three months later, the newlyweds left New York for Detroit, beginning what would be a seven-month journey through Canada. Along the way, Schieffelin recorded her observations of the Canadian wilderness, its fledgling cities, and its rough-hewn inhabitants. Her literary talents make the narrative a compelling, rich historical source. The account covers a wide range of topics, from Native American lifestyle, to modes of traversing icy rivers, to etiquette at British garrisons. Notably, the account also describes a number of the women Schieffelin met along the way, including French- and British-Canadian women, women from a variety of tribes living around Quebec and Detroit, and female missionaries. As in every primary source, these accounts are colored by the author’s own perceptions, perceptions which can tell us about both the author and the time period in which she lived. For Hannah Schieffelin, appearance, character, status, and the connection between these three attributes were most important in describing and evaluating the women she encountered.

Molly Brant 

Molly Brant (c.1736-1796) is the most recognizable of the women Schieffelin encountered. Coming from a politically powerful, Anglicized Mohawk family, Brant’s position was further elevated by the military status of her brother, Joseph (c.1743-1807), and her long relationship with Sir William Johnson (c.1715-1774), the British Superintendent of Indian Affairs from 1756 to 1774. Johnson and Brant met in the late 1750’s, and began a relationship that would continue until his death in 1774. They lived together during this time, and had a total of nine children.  During the Revolutionary War, Brant exerted her influence to aid the British.

Hannah Schieffelin met Molly Brant in November 1780. Schieffelin was excited to see Brant, “this female Indian, whose wealth and influence, as well as the decent propreity [sic] of her conduct, procure her a degree of respect nearly equal to that of a legal Relict (widow).” The way in which Schieffelin accounts for Brant’s status is telling. By beginning with Brant’s “wealth and influence,” Schieffelin acknowledges Brant’s connections to the more “masculine” worlds of politics and warfare. However, she quickly moves on to Brant’s manners and conduct, traditionally more “feminine” markers of character. Further, though Schieffelin is technically correct, in that Brant and Johnson never married, Brant was widely accepted as his partner. It is interesting, then, that Schieffelin qualifies the respect Brant received as “nearly equal to a legal Relict,” and indicates the importance to Schieffelin of formal titles and marital status.

Schieffelin also describes Brant’s appearance and person. Brant “is below the middle size, as the Indian women generally are, her countenance not displeasing, though grave, and her manner sedate, her complection [sic] is fairer than most of her Nation.” Whenever she encounters Native American women, Schieffelin pays particular attention to the shade of their skin color, noting those who are “lighter” or “fairer” due to their mixed parentage. She often described these lighter skinned women as more attractive, and in turn more socially acceptable. Continuing her description of Brant, Schieffelin references the lyrical and gentle sound of Brant’s voice, a characteristic she cites as common amongst Mohawk women, and reflected in their “extremely mild and modest” countenances. However, this ostensible compliment is merely a set-up to contrast the appearance of these women with their alleged “savagery”: “nor could we suppose from appearance, that those gentle pleasing creatures, become the furiest of furies, when the chance of war subjects an ill-fated captive to their mercy.” Though Schieffelin concludes that Brant’s behavior is “conformable to our modes of politeness,” and seems pleased with her overall appearance, her racialized conceptions of beauty and character show her wariness of the woman, and of Native Americans in general.

The Farmer’s Daughter

Though briefer than the passage on Brant, Schieffelin’s description of a wealthy farmer’s daughter follows many of the same themes, and is similarly revealing in understanding Schieffelin’s conceptions of womanhood.

Early on in their journey, the Schieffelins stayed with a wealthy farming family outside of Quebec City. The farmer and his wife had one daughter who Schieffelin describes in the same backhanded manner she used on the Mohawk women, contrasting appearance with character. The farmer’s daughter “might have been esteemed rather pretty,” Schiefflin says, “if the extreme of vulgarity and indelicacy, had not proved more repulsive, than her person was attractive.” She ties the lost potential of the daughter to the appearance of the family’s home, which “though large and delightfully situated… had a neglected appearance.” She extends this metaphor to Canadians in general, as “the misery observable in their looks, dress and habitations, is the more surprizing [sic] when we reflect that the fertility of the soil is remarkable.”

That Schieffelin extends this appearance vs. character standard of judgment to a people as a whole indicates that the standard is not completely gendered.  Nonetheless, though she describes many men in depth, including Joseph Brant and British General Frederick Haldimand, she never directly compares their appearances to their characters. 

The Northwestern frontiers of the Revolutionary War were rife with marauding armies, bitterly cold weather, and disease. Life there was difficult. As Hannah Schieffelin’s narrative reveals, it was particularly difficult for women. Women were expected, despite the circumstances, to conform to social norms—no easy task, and one that even Hannah Schieffelin herself was not exempt from.  

About the Early American Manuscripts Project

With support from the The Polonsky Foundation, The New York Public Library is currently digitizing upwards of 50,000 pages of historic early American manuscript material. The Early American Manuscripts Project will allow students, researchers, and the general public to revisit major political events of the era from new perspectives and to explore currents of everyday social, cultural, and economic life in the colonial, revolutionary, and early national periods. The project will present online for the first time high quality facsimiles of key documents from America’s Founding, including the papers of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. Drawing on the full breadth of the Library’s manuscript collections, it will also make widely available less well-known manuscript sources, including business papers of Atlantic merchants, diaries of people ranging from elite New York women to Christian Indian preachers, and organizational records of voluntary associations and philanthropic organizations. Over the next two years, this trove of manuscript sources, previously available only at the Library, will be made freely available through nypl.org.

by Elizabeth Cronin and Zulay Chang, Photography Collection.

At first glance, this photograph may not seem like much. The photograph depicts a group of men in suits, sitting in a theater. We don’t know what they are viewing and there doesn’t seem to be anything happening… that is until you learn the title of the image: 

“First Picture taken in absolute darkness.”

How could this photograph be taken in “absolute darkness” if the space appears lit? And furthermore, photographing in the dark seems an impossible task. After all, the word photography means drawing with light. How then was this photograph made? 

Accompanying the photograph in the library’s collection are three documents: two letters and a newspaper article. In a letter dated October 8, 1931, Eugene Chrystal, the Public Relations Director from the Eastman Kodak Company, writes to Will H. Hays, the first President of the Motion Picture Producers & Distributors of America, expressing his delight and amazement of photograph. Chrystal gifts the photograph to Mr. Hays and encloses it along with a clipping. The enclosed clipping informs us that invisible infra-red light flooded the theater and Kodak’s new sensitized film responded to it.

The Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, N.Y. was one of the leading companies that made photographic equipment, film negatives and photographic papers. They invested heavily in research and development of their products. A new sensitized film, along with the “flood of infrared light” made this photograph possible. Kodak viewed it as a great success. The company soon introduced the film commercially and infrared photography became more common. Motion pictures even began using infrared film, which blocks the visible spectrum, to simulate night scenes during the day.

Less than a month after the Motion Picture Producers & Distributors of America received the photograph and clipping, they donated it to the New York Public Library. In the donation letter, Frank Wilstach writes he thinks the library would want it “as a curiosity” and a curious photograph it is indeed.

Now Screening highlights NYPL's recent electronic resource acquisitions. This month: the digital runs of several national and international newspapers and magazines. Publishers Weekly Digital Archive is available at any NYPL location. All other titles are available at any NYPL location, or remotely using your library card.

This summer, the New York Public Library added a bevy of new magazine and newspaper titles to its collection of online resources. These new acquisitions are international in scope, covering nine cities, six countries, and three continents. Whether you're interested in WWII-era Russia or last year's Chanel couture runway, the only passport you'll need is your library card.

See the map and list below for more details and related resources.

Chinese Newspapers Collection (1832-1953)
English-language newspapers, mostly from Shanghai and Beijing, including the North China Herald, Peking Daily News, and Shanghai Times. For coverage of Hong Kong, see the South China Morning Post (1903-1996).

Harper's Bazaar Archive
New York, NY, 1867-present. And for more fashion content, be sure to browse the Vogue Archive and Women's Wear Daily Archive. Note: Because this resource is newly-released, not all issues have been loaded thus far.

Japan Times Archives
Tokyo, Japan, 1897-2015. Japan's oldest English-language newspaper.

Pravda Digital Archive
Moscow, Russia, 1912-2015. This is the digitized Moscow edition, in the original Russian language and Cyrillic characters. For information on other Russian publications, try Russian National Bibliography.

Publishers Weekly Digital Archive
New York, NY, 1872-2016. Includes reviews, contemporary prices, bestseller lists, and feature articles. For additional coverage of the historical book trade, see The Bookman. You can also find more book reviews in titles like the New York Review of Books and London Review of Books. Note: Because this resource is newly-released, not all issues have been loaded thus far.

The Scotsman
Edinburgh, Scotland, 1817-1950. NYPL has several UK-based historical newspaper collections, such as the Irish Times, Guardian and Observer, Telegraph, and Times of London.

The Toronto Star
Toronto, Canada, 1894-2011. See the Globe and Mail (1844-2011) for additional historical news coverage from Toronto.

Looking for something else? For more international periodicals, browse NYPL's historical newspaper, international newspaper, and magazine/journal/serial databases. Or, search for a particular title in our online catalog.

The following titles on our Recent Acquisitions Display are just a few of our new books, which are available at the reference desk in the Dorot Jewish Division.

Between Tel Aviv And Moscow: A Life Of Dissent And Exile In Mandate Palestine And The Soviet Union by Leah Trachtman-Palchan
Can A Seamless Garment Be Truly Torn?: Questions Surrounding The Jewish-catholic Löb Family, 1881-1945 by Peter Steffen
Double Diaspora In Sephardic Literature: Jewish Cultural Production Before And After 1492 by David A. Wacks (also available as an e-book)
Eugenio Montale, The Fascist Storm And The Jewish Sunflower by David Michael Hertz.
Forging Shoah Memories: Italian Women Writers, Jewish Identity, And The Holocaust by Stefania Lucamante.
How Was It Possible? A Holocaust Reader by edited by Peter Hayes (also available as an e-book)
Jewish Space In Contemporary Poland by Erica T. Lehrer (ed.) (also available as an e-book)
Kabbalah: A Neurocognitive Approach To Mystical Experiences by Shahar Arzy (also available as an e-book)
Leo Strauss On The Borders Of Judaism, Philosophy, And History by Jeffrey A. Bernstein.
Looking Jewish: Visual Culture And Modern Diaspora by Carol Zemel. (also available as an e-book)
Mapping Jewish Loyalties In Interwar Slovakia by Rebekah Klein-Pejšová. (also available as an e-book)
Obligation In Exile: The Jewish Diaspora, Israel And Critique by Ilan Zvi Baron.
Origins Of Organized Charity In Rabbinic Judaism by Gregg E. Gardner. (also available as an e-book)
Psalms Of Solomon: Language, History, Theology by Eberhard Bons (ed.)
Rabbinic Discourse As A System Of Knowledge: "The Study Of Torah Is Equal To Them All" by Hannah E. Hashkes.
Recetario Light Para Una Vida Más Sana by introducción, Esther Finkenthal de Mughinstein
Slave Labor In Nazi Concentration Camps by Marc Buggeln
Sweet Burdens: Welfare And Communality Among Russian Jews In Germany by Sveta Roberman. (also available as an e-book)
Women Writers Of Yiddish Literature: Critical Essays by edited by Rosemary Horowitz.

“Impressed with the uncertainty of Life and anxious to arrange my worldly affairs…”

Probate records are often gainful resources in genealogy research, yielding core genealogical data like names, dates, locales, and family information.  The chief document in probate records is the will.  A will is a legal instrument whereby one is allowed to lawfully remain in possession of property after having been borne to the ancestral sepulcher.  A will must be “proven,” or probated, in Surrogate’s Court, where it is validated for the executors to carry out the “will” of the deceased, or “testator,” in the eventual dispossession of the property listed in the inventory provided by the will.  Surrogate’s Courts are state courts located at the county level which act as “surrogates” of the State of New York.

In colonial New York, wills were filed in the capital, New York City.  The records were moved upstate after the Revolution, where today the bulk of pre-Evacuation probate and will records are at the New York State Archives.

For probate records in New York City, consisting of five counties with five Surrogate’s Courts, there are three ways to go about researching a will:

• Online databases
• Visit the Surrogate’s Court records room
• NYPL print and microfilm collections

Online Databases

Depending on the year, one should start with the digitized resources available at Family Search, where probate records for many U.S. States have been scanned, but have not been indexed by name, so one must access the material digitally the same way one would browse the physical copies. 

Basically, the process involves two steps; first check the available index, and then use the reference in the index to find the will.

On the homepage of Family Search, find "Search" on the toolbar and then select "Records" from the dropdown menu.  On the search screen, instead of typing in a name, look towards the bottom of the page, and click "Browse all published collections." Then, in the search bar at the top left, where it says “filter by collection name,” type in the name of the state in which you are researching, and pair it with the term "probate." The collections list will then filter to a particular resource; for example, Alabama Probate Records, or Ohio Probate Records.

In this instance, one would search for the collection "New York Probate Records, 1629-1971."  Even though the name indicates a date range to 1971, a bulk of the NYS probate records in Family Search date to about the 1920s.

Note that the Bronx County Estate Files and Queens County Probate Records also appear in the results; these collections have been digitized and organized separately, with the copious Queens materials dating to the 1950s.  There is also a similar separate collection of Kings County Estate Files (1866-1923), which has been indexed and is keyword searchable by first and last name.

Next, select the county where the will would have been filed, likely the county where the death occurred. 

Then browse the list of probate resources available for that county, and select the relevant index. 

Counties will often use different indexing systems, some of which include: 

• a straightforward alphabetical list, by last name, and within a certain date range.
• alphabetical only by the first letter of the surname; for example, all surnames beginning with "H" will be grouped together, but in no order.
• alphabetical only by the first letter of the surname, and then grouped in columns by the first vowel to appear after the first letter.
• alphabetical by surname, then grouped by first letter of the first, or given, name.

Next, find your subject decedent in the index.  Adjacent to the name, a liber number, or volume number, is listed, with a corresponding page number; this indicates where the researcher will find the text of the actual will.

Browse the available resources to find the corresponding volume, and locate the cited page number.

Surrogate’s Courts

Unlike vital records, wills and probate records are accessible to the public with little privacy restrictions.  One can access probate records onsite at the records room of the Surrogate’s Court.  The clerks at the Kings County records room, at 2 Johnson Street, are affable, orderly, and helpful to researchers.  The Surrogate's Court archives for New York County, at 31 Chambers Street, are operated by a professional archivist with a Master’s in Library Science, and offer a searchable database to the probate collections.  The Unified Court System provides access info for Surrogate's Courts in New York City while the NY State Archives has an online directory for county Surrogate’s Courts.

NYPL Catalog

If one has still hit the brick wall, and is researching wills from the seventeenth through early nineteenth century, the complex of New York State probate records on microfilm at NYPL might be helpful.   Use the below subject heading formats to search relevant material in the NYPL catalog:

• Wills -- New York (State) -- New York.
• Wills -- New York (State) – [NAME OF COUNTY] County.
• Probate records -- [NAME OF STATE] -- [NAME OF COUNTY].

For example:

• Wills -- New York (State) – New York County.
• Probate records -- New York (State) -- New York.
• Probate records -- New York (State) – Otsego County.

Locating an individual probate record in any of the microfilm collections, as noted above for the digital resources, first requires checking the corresponding index.

Language

The language of wills is archaic and abstruse—"probate" is derived from probatus, in Latin, "tried, tested, approved"—and suggests that a system of distributing  the property of the dead according to the decedent's sentient wishes is both a legal procedure and sacred ritual dating to the earliest generations of civilized societies.  That a will must be verified by a judge might also indicate that, in the history of humankind, the concept of property ownership was concomitant with treachery, dishonesty, and avarice among family members.  Note the twenty-nine people who claimed to be heirs to the estate of Minnesota rock demigod Prince, who died intestate, but were rejected as lawful relatives by a Carver County judge in the District Court Probate Division. 

Reflecting some of the singular verbiage of probate records, there is a handful of additional paperwork that might accompany the actual will which can include significant genealogical data.  For example:

• The executor, having been named by the decedent to administer the estate, initiates the probate proceedings by applying to the court for "letters testamentary.”  After 1830, the executor would have filed a petition. 
• If the decedent had left no will, or died "intestate," then "letters of administration" were drafted by parties who sought to administer the estate.
• Sometimes one finds "orders," which are made by the judge and can vary in genealogical detail.
• A decree, or a "final decree," articulates the judge's decision and can include useful summary details of the probate case.
• A “renunciation” is filed when an executor officially “renounces” his or her role in the proceedings.
• “Administration bonds” are payments made by executors which the state promises to return, or void, when the probate matter is lawfully and finally administered.
• “Estate files” usually include the will and any other paperwork filed in the case.  Some counties might refer to these bundles as “probate packets” or “proceedings.”  In Dutchess County, one finds a collection of “Ancient Documents” dated 1721-1862 and indexed by surname of the decedent. 

All of these materials are searchable using an index, which is usually found in the front pages of the subject records, or as a separate bound volume.

Reference

Research using probate records may be conditioned by the shifting of New York State inheritance laws, or certain idiosyncrasies in access and recordkeeping.  The Milstein Division has plenty of guidebooks; in particular, see New York State Probate Records.  

Additional guides to probate records include:

• New York County Surrogate’s Court
• New York State Archives Probate Records
• New York Probate Records (FamilySearch Historical Records) | Wiki
• Online New York Death Records, Indexes and Obituaries

As always, please be encouraged to dispatch queries to the U.S. History, Local History, and Genealogy Division, at history@nypl.org.  Answering reference questions is how librarians evolve as librarians, and no answer proves a last testament.

Opening ceremonies are a few days away, and so the eyes of the world are turning to Rio and the beginning of the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. With dozens of events, some more obscure to American viewers than others, it might be time to read up on the ins and outs of these sports. If you aren't planning on taking out twenty new magazine subscriptions, the Library is a great place to learn more. And since so many of our periodicals have digital counterparts, you can do this without leaving home, or your nearest Olympics broadcast. Here are almost thirty sport-specific magazines available right from your computer, tablet, or smartphone—all you need is a library card.

In addition to these titles, the Library also provides online access to more general publications like Sports Illustrated. You can browse our electronic journals, newspapers, and magazines for sports and recreation content available at the Library or from home (over 300), or you can view a gallery of sports newspapers and magazines in PressReader, one of our electronic databases. And of course, the Library has many more current and historical sports periodicals available in print and microfilm. To locate these, search our online catalog.

	Athletics (a.k.a. Track and Field)	Runner's World Running & FitNews
	Canoe	Canoe & Kayak
	Cycling BMX	TransWorld Ride BMX
	Cycling Road	Bicycling Bike Magazine
	Equestrian	Dressage Today Horse & Rider Practical Horseman
	Football (a.k.a. Soccer)	World Soccer
	Golf	Golf Golf Digest Golf World
	Gymnastics	International Gymnast
	Handball	Handball
	Hockey	Hockey Weekly
	Judo	Black Belt
	Rugby	The Daily Telegraph's Rugby Power NZ Rugby World The Rugby Paper
	Sailing	Sail Sailing World
	Swimming	Swimming World
	Taikwondo	Black Belt
	Tennis	Tennis
	Triathlon	220 Triathlon Triathlon Magazine Canada Triathlon Plus

Images are the official Rio Olympics pictograms; learn more about these images on the Rio 2016 site.

August is Women in Translation Month. Celebrate Yiddish women writers in English translation with poetry, fiction, memoirs, prayers, and cookbooks from the Library’s collection.

Women writers in Yiddish constitute a significant group, both creatively and demographically. An informal survey uncovered roughly 900 women writers in Yiddish primarily in book form, without even attempting to document those who wrote for the press.

Some of these writers have gained more prominence in recent years, thanks in part to new translation efforts. This is certainly a welcome development, considering that only 2% of Yiddish literature, primarily that by male authors, has been translated. This statistic comes from the Yiddish Book Center, which has also recently highlighted some of the female translators active in their translation initiatives.

Below are Yiddish books by women translated into English in book form, arranged by genre. Translations also appear in journals such as Bridges, In Geveb, Pakn Treger, and on the Yiddish Book Center’s website.

Yiddish Books by Women in English Translation

Poetry

Hayah Rahel Andres

• For whom do I sing my songs Far ṿemen zing ikh mayne lider. an araynfir un opshatsung fun Shalom Shṭern; iberzetsungen oyf English fun Yudl Ḳohen; [redaḳṭirṭ fun Dzshaneṭ Ḳohen].

Celia Dropkin

• The Acrobat: Selected Poems, translated from the Yiddish by Faith Jones, Jennifer Kronovet, and Samuel Solomon; foreword by Edward Hirsch.

Fell-Sara Yellin

• Songs of Days and Years; Poems. Translated from the Yiddish by Herman Eichenthal, Lila B. Hassid and Max Rosenfeld.

Rukhl Fishman

• I Want to Fall Like This= Azoy ṿil ikh faln: selected poems, translated from the Yiddish by Seymour Levitan; with an introduction by David G. Roskies.

Troim Katz Handler

• Śimḥe: episṭolarishe libe-lider = Simkhe (Celebration): Love-Letter Poems; poetry translated by Shimon Beyles.

Irena Klepfisz

• A Few Words in the Mother Tongue: Poems Selected and New (1971-1990); introduction by Adrienne Rich.

Rokhl Korn

• Generations: Selected Poems, edited by Seymour Mayne; In praise of Rachel Korn by Elie Wiesel; translated from the Yiddish by Rivka Augenfeld et. al.

Anna Margolin

• Drunk From the Bitter Truth: The Poems of Anna Margolin; translated, edited, and with an introduction by Shirley Kumove.

Kadya Molodowsky

• Papirene briḳn = Paper bridges: Selected Poems, translated, edited, and introduced by Kathryn Hellerstein.
• Paper Towers = Papirene ṭurems prints by Sarah Horowitz; poems by Kadya Molodowsky; translation by Kathryn Hellerstein.

Kady Molodowskya, Anna Margolin, Malka Heifetz Tussman

• The Other Voice: Twentieth-Century Women's Poetry in Translation edited by Joanna Bankier; foreword by Adrienne Rich.

Sarah Moskovitz

• Ḳumṭ tsum ṭish= come to the table

Chava Rosenfarb

• Exile at Last: Selected Poems; Goldie Morgentaler, editor.
• Yiddish Poets in Canada: Chava Rosenfarb

Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath

• Plutsemdiḳer regn: lider, iberzetsungen fun Yeḥiel-Abo Sandler un Sholem Berger; haḳdomeh fun Sheve Tsuḳer

Songs to a moonstruck Lady: women in Yiddish poetry [collection]- selected and translated by Barnett Zumoff ; with an introductory essay by Emanuel S. Goldsmith [includes a significant amount of work by women].

Sylvia Siegel-Schildt

• Tsayṭṿayliḳe lider: gezamlṭe poezye = Temporary Songs: Collected Poetry.

Dora Teitelboim

• All My Yesterdays Were Steps. Edited and translated by Aaron Kramer; illustrations by Stan Kaplan.

Malka Heifetz Tussman

• Am I Also You? translated from the Yiddish by Marcia Falk.
• With Teeth in the Earth: selected poems translated, edited, and introduced by Marcia Falk. Editions published in 1992 and 2011

Rosa Newman Walinska

• Ink and Clay

R. Zychlinska

• God Hid His Face. Translated from the Yiddish by Barnett Zumoff, Aaron Kramer, Marek Kanter, and others; with an introductory essay by Emanuel S. Goldsmith.

Fiction

Bella Goldworth

• Across the Border. Short Stories trans. from the Yiddish by Max Rosenfeld.

Esther Singer Kreytman

• Diamonds[Brilyantn]. translated from the Yiddish and with an introduction by Heather Valencia.
• Dance of the Demons [Sheydim-tants]. Translated from Yiddish by Maurice Carr; introduction by Ilan Stavans; afterword by Anita Norich; biographical essays by Maurice Carr and Hazel Karr (2009)
• Deborah [Sheydim-tants]. With a new introduction by Clive Sinclair; translated by Maurice Carr (1983)

Blume Lempel

• Oedipus in Brooklyn & Other Stories, translated by Ellen Cassedy and Yermiyahu Ahron Taub, 2016.

Lili Berger, Rochel Brokhes, Sheindl Franzus-Garfinkle, Shira Gorshman, Chayele Grober, Sarah Hamer-Jaclyn, Rachel Korn, Blume Lempel, Ida Maze, Rikudah Potash, Chava Rosenfarb, Dora Schulner, Mirl Erdberg Shatan

• The Exile Book of Yiddish Women Writers, edited by Frieda Johles Forman, 2013.

Dvora Baron, Celia Dropkin, Rochel Faygenberg, Rachel Korn, Esther Singer Kreitman, Blume Lempel, Helen Londynski, Kadya Molodowsky, Fradel Schtok, Yente Serdatzky

• Beautiful as the Moon, Radiant as the Stars: Jewish Women in Yiddish Stories: An Anthology, edited by Sandra Bark; introduction by Francine Prose, 2003.

Lili Berger, Rochel Brokhes, Shira Gorshman, Hamer-Sarah Jacklyn, Rachel Korn, Esther Singer Kreitman, Malke Lee, Blume Lempel, Ida Maze, Kadya Molodowsky, Rikudah Potash, Miriam Raskin, Chava Rosenfarb, Dora Schulner, Yente Serdatzky, Chava Slucka-Kestin

• Found Treasures: Stories by Yiddish Women Writers edited by Frieda Forman; introduction by Irena Klepfisz, 1994.

Bryna Bercovitch, Rochel Brokhes, Frankel-Paula Zaltzman, Hamer-Sarah Jacklyn, Malke Lee, Rikudah Potash, Chava Rosenfarb, Anne Viderman

• Arguing With the Storm: Stories by Yiddish Women Writers, edited and with a preface by Rhea Tregebov; introduction by Kathryn Hellerstein, 2008.

Kadya Molodowsky

• A House With Seven Windows: Short Stories; translated from the Yiddish by Leah Schoolnik.

Adele Mondry

• Wyszkowo, A Shtetl on the Bug River; translated from the Yiddish by Moshe Spiegel.

Chava Rosenfarb

• Bociany; Of Lodz and Love, translated from the Yiddish by the author.
• Survivors: Seven Short Stories; translated by Goldie Morgentaler.
• The Tree of Life: A Novel About Life in the Lodz Ghetto[Trilogy translated from the Yiddish by the author in collaboration with Goldie Morgentaler]:
• On the Brink of the Precipice[Book 1]
• From the Depths I Call You, 1940-1942[Book 2]
• The Cattle Cars are Waiting, 1942-1942[Book 3]

Memoirs

Hayah Rahel Andres

• Years Have Sped By= Zaynen yorn gelofn [bilingual autobiography and poetry]; forrede un iberzetsungen oyf English fun Yudl Ḳohen; [edited by Jeanette Cohen].

Hinde Bergner

• On Long Winter Nights: Memoirs of a Jewish Family in a Galician Township (1870-1900); translated from the Yiddish, edited, and with an introduction by Justin Daniel Cammy.

Bertha Ferderber-Salz

• And The Sun Kept Shining; foreword by Menachem Z. Rosensaft.

Glueckel of Hameln

• The Life of Glückel of Hameln, 1646-1724, written by herself; translated from the original Yiddish and edited by Beth-Zion Abrahams.
• The Memoirs of Glückel of Hameln translated by Marvin Lowenthal; introd. by Norma and Robert Rosen.

Puah Rakovska

• My Life as a Radical Jewish Woman: Memoirs of a Zionist Feminist in Poland; edited and with an introduction by Paula E. Hyman; translated from the Yiddish by Barbara Harshav with Paula E. Hyman.

Religious writings

Women such as Sore bas Tovim, Seril Rappaport, Sore of Krasny, and Rokhl Ester bas Avikhayl, as well as men, wrote and published tkhines—described in the YIVO Encyclopedia as “private devotions and paraliturgical prayers usually in Yiddish, primarily for women.”