Handsome Devils, or, Whiskers and the Men Who Wore Them
As we on the CLIR survey team have discovered in the hundreds of photographs we have encountered since beginning our work last April, the gentlemen and ladies who strolled the streets of 19th-century Brooklyn took great care to stay up on the hottest fashions of the day. For the gents, this often involved the sporting of some truly impressive and daring facial hair styles. I thought I might take this opportunity to share but a modest sampling of the mustaches, beards, and sideburns that have evoked our admiration and/or bewilderment. Let these photographs be a testament to the hidden power…
Celebrate Forefathers Day!
My favorite holiday of the year is nearly upon us, and I think the time is right for a celebratory BHS blog post! Sure, while there are many holidays populating the month of December, I think we can all agree that there is one that obviously outshines all the others. That day, of course, comes on December 22nd, when we unite in celebration of Forefathers Day, the anniversary of the Pilgrims’ landing at Plymouth Rock in 1620!
Drama on the High Seas
A colleague here at BHS recently informed me that the National Archives of the UK has made its collection of Royal Navy surgeons' journals entirely accessible online. This immediately reminded me of a small collection of nautical journals that the CLIR team recently uncovered, in which a ship's surgeon is also featured, only not quite in the way you'd think. The journals were kept by Henry W. Dodge, a New Yorker who served on a number of highly-publicized expeditions to explore the Arctic before passing away suddenly in a saloon on Fulton Street in 1874. His journal kept aboard the…