The Deeds of Our Ancestors

"The economy then was almost 100 percent agricultural. Other vocations existed in the community, but they were service vocations intended to supply the needs of the men and women who actually produced saleable items from the land. Every little hamlet aimed at self-sufficiency, with its own general stores,

Plot Lines: What We Know About Where We Live and How We Landed There

"President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act on May 20, 1862. The act provided settlers with 160 acres of surveyed public land after payment of a filing fee and five years of continuous residence. Designed to spur Western migration, the Homestead Act culminated a twenty-year battle to distribute

Land Lust and Land Loss

This week marks my 75th post. I'm realizing it'll require more than just the next two years to understand the numerous throughlines that have led the United States to this dangerous juncture. Here's how my desk looks right now. I'm following several

Bearing Witness: Family Records of Bloody Revolutions

"You and I have both been parts of faculties and faculty senates and understand that the left has taken over our institutions. The reason that they are apoplectic right now, the reason that so many anchors on MSNBC for example, are losing their minds daily is because our side

Smoke and Mirrors: America's Colonialist Imagery and the Popular Imagination

A few days ago, I imagined creating a simple post, an update on a lead mentioned in my essay of September 9. Because this week, I photographed that 1754 painting described by Mohawk Elder Tom Porter. It depicts Porter's ancestors meeting Franklin and Jefferson, along with two other

Now and Then: Learning from American Rebellions

" . . . the tenants have organized themselves into a body, and resolved not to pay any more rent until they can be redressed of their grievances; and to carry the above resolution into effect, the tenants have pledged their honor and fortune even to the last extremity. The tenants now assume

On Listening to the Elders: Democracy, Progress, and Duress

This week, after finishing the second volume in Jennifer Kabat's memoir diptych, I am sitting with the resonances and ripple effects. Kabat engages deeply with history and the landscape as spaces for understanding our experiences, on both personal and collective levels. I'm not typically drawn to

Those Who Have Volunteered

“. . . the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” ― George Eliot, Middlemarch My post

A Country in Danger

"Was with Buel most of the day. He thinks a great deal of home but wishes to see this rebellion ended as bad as I do. Hurrah for the Stars & Stripes, long may they wave oer the land of the free & home of the brave. Aint I

"If Careful Nursing Will Cure Them They Shall Have It"

"That Martha Ballard kept her diary is one small miracle; that her descendants saved it is another." Laurel Thatcher Ulrich "The fact that these tattered and fading notebooks have survived is overwhelming. Berea carried the 1862 diary as he boarded the steamer Seashore and started the trip

So That All May Eat

"Even before the famine began, a writer in the Daily Picayune had used Ireland as a benchmark for misery across the British empire, contending that 'the condition of the most abject slave in the Colonies is, in my opinion, better far than that of the unfortunate Irish peasant.

Mesmerized and Bamboozled: Resisting Tech's Spectacular Sales Pitches

This week, a brief item in Munsell's The Annals of Albany (v. 10) grabbed me. Looking for leads about whether my ancestors participated in the Anti-Rent Rebellion, I found an account of a spectacle instead. It was recorded in January 1838, a year before Stephen Van Rensselaer&