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- Location:
- Worcester, MA, 01609
- Phone:
- (508) 755-5221
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- 9:00 am - 5:00 pm
- Wed:
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- Thurs - Fri:
- 9:00 am - 5:00 pm
Photos
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Notes
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- 25 Random Things about AAS 1:23pm Oct 26|3 Comments
- The Photographs of Native Americans Inventory is Now Illustrated 8:25pm Nov 6
- New Acquisition: The Female Marine 12:33am Jul 23
Events
1 past eventSee All
- Freehling to give 6th Baron Le...
Antiquarian Hall, Worcester, MA
Thursday, October 22 at 7:30pm
If you were lucky enough to be the recipient of multiple books this holiday season, all of which beg to be read immediately, you may be in need of a crucial tool . . . the humble bookmark!At the Antiquarian Society, as books are catalogued they are checked over carefully by our staff and often re...
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If the holiday leftovers are still lurking in our refrigerators, we figure there’s still time for one more Christmas-themed post, courtesy of Curator of Children’s Literature Laura Wasowicz. The charming engraving below raises two interesting questions you might want to mull over as...
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Within the roughly 60,000 pieces of sheet music in the AAS collection, a devilish and spry Santa Claus waits for just this time of year. At the first talk of Christmas, he appears, dancing on a chimney while playing the violin. This 1846 incarnation of Santa Claus stands on the cover of the San...
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Avis G. Clarke, cataloger-cum-researcher of early American imprints and printers, filled hundreds of AAS card catalogue drawers with the AAS printers’ file. Detailing the lives and works of virtually every printer working in America before 1820, the printers’ file is a masterpiece of indexing. ...
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As we celebrate the holiday season it’s also good to be mindful of those less fortunate than ourselves. 2009 has no monopoly on hard times, as Curator of Books David Whitesell’s account of a recently acquired 1873 pamphlet shows. This very curious little item also carries a mystery ...
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AAS’s The Children’s Friend: A New Year’s Present is one of just two known copies of the 1821 pamphlet. Fifteen centimeters tall and eight pages deep, the paper-covered volume stood little chance of survival in the hands of generations of American children. But there was one fa...
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In 1834, AAS librarian Christopher Columbus Baldwin wrote: “Some philosopher has said that his unhappiest moments were those spent in settling his tavern bills. But the happiest moments of my life are those employed in opening packages of books presented to the Library of the American Antiquaria...
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It’s that time of year. Time to take ornaments out of boxes, shake the dust from stockings, and hang wreaths on front doors. The holiday season is no different at AAS. December is the one month when it’s appropriate to pull out all of our wonderful Christmas treasures– after al...
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Joy Giguere
This is a great organization for anyone interested in history, archaeology, cultural preservation, art history, genealogy, photography, anthropology, etc. Please check it out! Become a fan, perhaps even a member!
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Associ
Inadvertently, three graduate students were responsible for the creation of the Center for Historic American Visual Culture (CHAVic). Two appeared at AAS asking if we had 18th century prints or lithographs of wedding ceremonies. Another spoke of the struggle to convince her dissertation committe...
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Ding, ding, ding… We have a winner! Our exercise in crowd-sourcing research questions was a success, and all the antiquarian glory goes to peterme for solving the reference mystery posed in our earlier post. The correct book our reader was looking for was (drum-roll please) “The Way Our P...
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I was in a bookstore in the ’80s and started reading a book about Puritans feeding their babies ale but now I can’t remember the title. Can you help me find the book?This is the kind of question we live for at AAS: the test that can make or break you as a professional. Succeed and y...
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Proof that humor is not a modern invention: a joke to lighten our Wednesdays direct from John Davis to AAS Librarian Christopher Columbus Baldwin in the close of a February 4, 1832 letter.Can you tell why a catterpillar [sic] is like a woman churning butter? Do you give it up? Because she makes ...
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Continued from Part 2 of the Embezzler RedeemedOne possible answer to this question is suggested by an account published in the November 19, 1803 issue of the Morning Chronicle.We understand that the Manhattan Company have discovered a further fraud of about eight thousand dollars, committed by B...
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Recent economic events have raised the profile of cheapness, which makes this Tuesday evening’s free public lecture at AAS a particularly timely event. On Tuesday, Nov. 17, at 7:30pm Lauren Weber will be discussing the value of thriftiness in American history in a talk titled: ”From ...
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Happy weekend, everyone! Hope you all have had a chance to crash out on the couch and luxuriate in the do-nothing vibe. Should the time come when you decide to do something more drastic with your weekend, here’s a last-minute but heartfelt invitation to join us at the acclaimed Boston Int...
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Continued from Part 1 of “The Embezzler Redeemed”A report that Benjamin Brower had been apprehended at Albany was refuted almost immediately as being “wholly without foundation.” But on October 25, 1803, the New England Palladium (Boston) briefly reported he had been captured. On th...
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One of the great joys of cataloging is figuring out who the folks were who wrote, edited, illustrated, printed, published, or owned the books that cross our desks. In most cases we don’t have time to delve into the lives of these people, and wistfully think that someone ought to write a disserta...
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People tend to treat catalog records a lot like refrigerators: open it, grab what you need, and close it up again. At AAS, the milk, eggs, and butter of the record are the author, title, and call number. Locate those three and the rest can stay a black and white blur. But know that somewhere a c...
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In the October 1813 Report of the Committee, Isaiah Thomas justified the choice of Worcester for the home of the American Antiquarian Society. He maintained that an “inland situation” offered the best protection against,the destruction so often experienced in large towns and cities by fire, as w...
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This one’s for the history geeks among us (and I include myself in this): You will not want to miss a truly unique historical reenactment taking place tomorrow night Defending John Brown: Henry David Thoreau and Worcester’s Reform Tradition on Tuesday, November 3, 2009 at 7:30 p.m. at...
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In the mid 1800s, people began appearing with eyes so clear they were nearly invisible. The ghostly faces stared straight ahead without a hint of shame in their alien faces. They haunt us still, following us from countless daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and cartes-de-visite, warning us of a differe...
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An online fad became a journalistic obsession with a late-winter craze known as “25 Random Things.” Members of the social networking site Facebook began crafting lists about themselves: personal histories, likes, and dislikes — self-identified quirks describable in a sentence they then disp...
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1. The American Antiquarian Society is pleased to announce its new blog: PastIsPresent.org an online forum for discovery, discussion, and diversion. 2. Founded in 1812, AAS was the first national historical society in the United States. 3...
Have you heard the one about the balloon boy? No, not that balloon boy. On April 13, 1844, the New York Sun printed an extra edition reporting that man had finally flown across the Atlantic. In a balloon.A postscript in the April 13th morning edition of the Sun taunted readers,We stop the press...
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AAS invites you to join us in Antiquarian Hall at 7:30pm on Thursday, October 22nd for the 6th Annual Baron Lecture. William W. Freehling, the Singletary Professor of the Humanities Emeritus at the University of Kentucky and Senior Fellow at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, will be di...
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antiqueprintsblog.blogspot.com
I just returned from a terrific conference put on by the Center for Historic American Visual Culture at the American Antiquarian Society. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, it was titled "Destined for ...
pastispresent.org
John Quincy Adams is tweeting from 1808 and our own anonymous blacksmith’s apprentice is blogging away right above these very words. Following Adams’ debut on Twitter, one of the librarians from the ...
At parties, when people discover I work at the American Antiquarian Society, they often ask: what’s your favorite item in the collections? To my mind, this is akin to asking a parent to choose his or her favorite child. I’ve heard curators answer this impossible dilemma simply: whatever I re...
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