Tag Archives: historic preservation

User Spotlight Series: Egbert Stolk

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Egbert Stolk examining a wall at New York’s Tenement Museum, while an intern there this summer. Photograph by Alexandra Brown.

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Egbert Stolk writes as a guest blogger for our User Spotlight Series this month. Egbert                recently graduated from the University of     Vermont’s Historic Preservation Program with a Master of Science. Below he shares his experience of using Chronicling America to research immigrant stories for The Burlington Edible Food Tour.

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In my work for the edible food walking tour in Burlington, Vermont, we strive to gather immigrant stories who were working directly or indirectly in the food industry in Burlington. The different ethnic groups that came to America, and in our case specifically Burlington, also brought their food traditions with them. Sometimes traditional food was sold in shops or otherwise immigrants sold American food, while cooking ethnic food at home. In The Burlington Edible Food Tour we try to uncover immigrant and food stories, and places that relate to these stories. We used the online newspaper database Chronicling America to find more stories for the tour. For example: to locate street vendors and restaurants owned by immigrants and events pertaining to those businesses. It was very helpful as history is sometimes lost forever, but with the help of century-old journalism we are able to reconstruct part of Burlington’s immigrant              history. Continue reading User Spotlight Series: Egbert Stolk

Researching historic buildings on Chronicling America

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A detailed account of a local businessman’s new home in Montpelier, Vermont, on State Street. This was found by using the advanced search of keywords with any of the words “state” and “street” and the phrase “O.M. Fisher.” I did not limit the years, but did limit results to the state of Vermont.

Historic newspapers on Chronicling America hold an abundance of information regarding local and national news and cultural trends of the past. Newspapers are also particularly helpful in uncovering the history of the built landscape of our communities. Continue reading Researching historic buildings on Chronicling America