On May 5, 1834, Rev. John Dunbar set out with two other men for a missionary exploration of the unknown region beyond the Rocky Mountains, on behalf of the First Presbyterian Church of Ithaca, NY. The mission was to be called "The Oregon Mission." Eighteen days later, however, when the men arrived in St. Louis, […]
Month: January 2013
Isabel Chapin Barrows: Love and Tragedy in the 19th Century
It was late summer. The year was 1862. William Wilberforce Chapin, a young seminary student at Andover, writes to Miss Katie Belle Hayes in New Hampshire: Dear Miss Hayes. When I bode you goodbye at Andover I was expecting to spend the first week of vacation in making a tour through Vermont and Canada. Therefore […]
Smug Musings and Humble Landing Places
Sometimes when I am processing archival materials, I muse smugly to myself, “Oh, you silly people from the early 1900’s. Whatever were you thinking! How grand it is to live in more enlightened times.” At times, such lofty musings are founded, say the time when I opened up a folder housing pictures of missionaries in […]
Post-Internship Thoughts
On the first day of my internship at Burke, Brigette, my internship supervisor, asked if I would write a blog post discussing what I expect from my internship and the overall experience. Would I want to be a processing archivist once the next few months were over? Not having had any experience processing a collection […]
Metropolitan Archivist
The Metropolitan Archivist is the newsletter published by the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York. The Luce Project is an update featured on page 26 of the Winter 2013 issue – please take a look! […]