Blogs

In my research on Jay Cooke, I read that Cooke had a private telegraph line.  When Matthew and I first surveyed the collection, we discovered several folders full of ticker tapes and queried one another about best practice for housing them.  It was helpful to have this piece of information to explain the quantity of telegrams in the Cooke papers.   They are rather fun to read, and add a bit of behind-the-scenes perspective on Cooke's voluminous formal correspondence.

Today marks the anniversary of the death of Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated in 1865 by John Wilkes Booth.  While there is little need to recount the events of April 14-15, 1865, when Lincoln and members of his cabinet were mortally wounded, the echoes of mourning in correspondence from the days following are worthy of a look.

The Grand Army of the Republic was formed as a patriotic fraternal organization for veterans of the Union forces of the Civil War.   The GAR advocated for veterans' rights and offered aid to men who were honorably discharged and had never taken up arms against the nation.  Many men were disqualified from membership from the GAR, but were interested in the camaraderie and opportunities for service that the GAR provided.  To meet this desire, the Grand Army of the Republic decided to allow the creation of associations called the Citizens' Corps.  In its 36th national

We have written a lot about process here on Fondly, Pennsylvania to let you know what projects we have in the works, but I realized that we have not kept up with telling everyone what we've completed.  There are 51 collections included in the Digital Center for Americana project, and at this point, 22 collections have been processed, conserved and digitized (in part).  I thought I'd share a list of those collections as a way to celebrate our accomplishments, and to give interested readers the opportunity to peruse our new finding aids and descriptions.