Last month, our project librarian, Erenst Anip, traveled to the infinitely warmer climate of Jakarta, Indonesia, where he gave two presentations regarding newspaper digitization and outreach hosted the US Embassy in Jakarta on the 18th and 19th of February.
It’s Women’s History Month; thus an appropriate time to reflect on women in history as seen in newspapers. Chronicling America‘s newspapers from 1836-1922 help capture an integral period of time in the women’s history: here we see the growing effort for suffrage and equal rights, the passage of the 19th Amendment, and the emergence of such pioneering women as Clara Barton, Susan B. Anthony, Dorothy Dix, and so many more.
The Topics page on Chronicling America contains a number of intriguing women’s history topics, from developments in women’s sporting fashion to Clara Barton’s founding of the American Red Cross; see them below:
Happy searching!
To learn more specifically about Vermont women in history, visit the Vermont Historical Society’s “Vermont Women in History” database.
Last year, on this date, our wonderful project director and principle investigator, Birdie MacLennan, passed away. We are grateful to Birdie for all that she did to ensure the success of the Vermont Digital Newspaper Project. With thanks to her leadership and dedication to historic newspapers, we are now embarking on our third phase of newspaper digitization.
Birdie was a huge proponent of the inclusion of foreign language newspapers in the newspaper digitization project. View our two foreign language papers below:
And, read Birdie’s blog post on the history behind the titles and tracking them down for the project.
Recently, the University of Vermont’s Special Collections purchased 1568 copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy in Birdie’s memory. To read more about the rare book purchase and to view additional images, visit this page.
On an almost warm, partially sunny morning this past Saturday, March 7, at 10:30 am, the Vermont Digital Newspaper Project gave a presentation on how to use Chronicling America for genealogy research to an audience of near fifty people at the Vermont Genealogy Library in Fort Ethan Allen.
In the class, we addressed how VTDNP digitizes and selects content, how to search on Chronicling America, and offered some tips and tricks on how to effectively find information about relatives on Chronicling America.
We are very grateful to the Vermont Genealogy Library for the opportunity to present at their facility!
The PowerPoint, with audio, will be posted on our website and slideshare account soon. We’ll also have a brochure posted on how to conduct genealogy research with historic newspapers on Chronicling America , as well, for free download.
Visit the Vermont Genealogy Library’s website to learn more about what they offer in regard to genealogy research.
Visit our Genealogy section to learn more about how to research ancestors using Chronicling America.
As always, happy searching!
Saturday, March 4, 1865:
Abraham Lincoln’s second term commenced on “a day of gloom and tempest,” ever so near to the close of the bloodiest war in American history: the Civil War. The streets were muddy from a heavy rain, “rendered almost impassable for foot passengers,” but Lincoln’s procession trudged on despite the mucky and wet conditions toward to the Capitol in the late morning, where he was to make his second inaugural speech in the afternoon.
By the time he made his way to the stage, the skies had apparently settled to a murky gray color, with the rain desisting. Lincoln’s speech was brief and to the point, and characteristically his own: “In pithy brevity, sagacity and honesty of purpose, the address is Lincolnian all over” (Evening Star, Washington, D.C., March 4, 1865). Two excerpts follow that this author found particularly poignant:
“With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. On the occasion corresponding to this, four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it; all sought to avoid it…Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came…
…With malice toward none, with charity for all, …let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wound, …to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Following his speech, an account of the remaining portion of the ceremony was relayed in the Lamoille Newsdealer:
The New York Tribune offered a hopeful summation of the day’s events: “May the President’s two terms of service together reflect the day of his second inauguration–so dark and angry in the morning–halcyon and radiant in the evening.”
Indeed, the Civil War was soon to end in April of that year. As Lincoln’s inauguration took place, Union troops were enclosing on Richmond, in a “coiling serpent of bayonets.”
Lincoln’s leadership, however, would be tragically cut short, and scarcely a week after the end of the war.
-K. Norwood
