Category: Uncategorized

Since 2015 marks the 95^th anniversary of the ratification of the 19^th Amendment to the Constitution, I have been examining the topic of extending the right to vote to women.  While investigating the regional perspective, I recalled the work of Helen Tierney, professor emeritus in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin (UW).  A women’s studies scholar, she helped establish the program at UW-Platteville as the discipline grew out of the resurgence of the women’s movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Scholarship was scarce “in the brand-new world of women’s studies” and what was available on “the other half of humanity” was scattered in various academic fields, Dr. Tierney observed.  Thus she decided to publish the Women’s Studies Encyclopedia to meet the needs for an authoritative reference.  When the title appeared in 1989, the Library Journal called the first edition a “best reference book,” adding that it “was a landmark achievement providing concise definitions and historical context for students and scholars alike.”

Upon retiring from academia in the mid-1990s as the dean of the history department, Dr. Tierney returned home to the Newark area.  After a period, she started volunteering at the Historical Society of Cecil County about the time we reactivated the Society’s newsletter to provide members with a value added product.  Dr. Tierney took on the task of managing our serial publication since we didn’t have an assigned editor and for a number of years she carefully produced a quarterly, bringing high quality, original articles to readers.

During her retirement she also decided to update and expand the Encyclopedia since research on women had proceeded rapidly, feminist thought had grown and branched out, and conditions for women had “changed markedly in some area of life, for good and for ill, and little in others.”  While editing submissions, the professor added new entries to the expanding body of knowledge, and she was interested in how the women’s suffrage movement had evolved in Maryland and Delaware.

I recall Helen studying those old Delmarva newspapers to see what elusive leads could be uncovered.  It can be challenging to find evidence of emerging social movements and civil disobedience that are centered outside the regional norms in local weeklies.  Of course, the highly respected academic with a doctoral degree in ancient Greek history from the University of Chicago was fully aware of the limitations of her sources.  But, research requires a careful study to validate or rule out the availability of traces to the past, and I remember those long ago conversations as she unearthed elusive pieces of surviving evidence.

Helen died October 31, 1997, just days after she penned the introduction to the new volume, but her colleagues, family and publisher arranged for the second edition, a three volume work, to be brought to term.  The family donated Dr. Tierney’s papers to the Historical Society of Cecil County, so as my research interest turned to this civil disobedience movement, I recently examined her field notes to follow her line of investigation on the regional perspective. The data is scarce as anyone working with social movements in rural areas will recognize, but the surviving materials from Dr. Tierney’s labors nearly twenty years ago gave me the perspective of the nationally recognized scholar on this untapped regional subject.  She would be pleased to see that her scholarship is tapped for regional studies.

The Middletown Historical Society undertook a progressive 21^st century project in 2012, one that is of tremendous value to researchers.   The nonprofit focused on interpreting the history of the major New Castle County town south of the canal has digitized the Middletown Transcript.  This paper has always covered its beat thoroughly, cranking out local content about Odessa, Townsend, Port Penn, Delaware City, and Middletown every week since 1868 as it continues publishing in the local community.   When you read the pages of this weekly, you’re reading hometown news.

The Society contracted with a professional electronic imaging firm and now members are able to view the original products digitally.  They are also able to search the issues from 1868 to the top of the 1990s.  This digital creation which is  text searchable is an outstanding contribution to the study of local history.  Newspaper research, once a time-consuming, hit or miss undertaking has quickly moved from the old crank the microfilm process to the point where our  papers are viewable and searchable in full text.

Most major newspapers have been digitized to some degree, but at the local level in Delaware these efforts are just getting underway.  There are, of course, some exceptions in that some of the national subscription content providers have created images of a few of the early Delaware papers, but not much has been done beyond those early years.

Thanks Middletown Historical Society for being a trailblazer with local hometown papers in Delaware and for aiding researchers and genealogist.   This is very progressive work.

 

Thanks, everyone for liking Delmarva History on FB.  As winter draws to a close, we hit 2,000 likes on this Friday in the middle of March.   It was in the midst of our snowy season, February 4, 2015, when we passed another important milestone, 1,500 likes.

We appreciate your engagement and support as the page shares curated and original heritage-related content about the culture and history of the Delmarva Peninsula and the land around the Delaware and Chesapeake.  As you make this a lively place by commenting and sharing other materials, it makes the effort worthwhile since we all learn through collaboration.

As heritage organizations, informal groups, and individuals embraced Facebook as a public commons, we all have had a platform that allows everyone to share our joy and appreciation for the past, whether it’s a local area or a special topic.  Just look around Delmarva, as an example, for there are so many fine pages creating broader contact for the stories and materials from the past.  (notice the other pages that share their posts with us.)

We all come at this in various ways, levels of involvement and purpose.  For formal groups it’s an efficient way to further the organization’s outreach mission of informing, educating, and promoting the stories of a community, which engage new, broader audiences.  Others create informal communities sharing their interest in covered bridges, railroads, waterways, organizations, and much more.

We’ll keep posting original and curated pieces from the region, and thanks for following the page.  It’s been amazing to see the quick growth as we networked with older, more established formal and informal sites, while also adding our original content, photos, articles, and brief updates.

When we launched Delmarva History on October 24, 2014, we weren’t sure about this platform. But we’d often thought about the best way to share our personal collections and interests. This pubic commons provided the answer as it reaches such a broad audience, is so easy to use, and there is virtually no learning curve.

In the 19^th century, a variety of directories were published.  These include mercantile serials, city directories, state gazetteers, newspaper directories, and volumes for the professions, such as doctors and lawyers.  These publications are valuable sources when doing local and family history research.

Fortunately for researchers many of the older volumes are available from online, as library holdings are limited and scattered, except at some of the largest special collections institutions.

Here are links to two volumes I was working with today.

The Thomson’s Mercantile and Professional Directory 1851-52 was a specialty publication, designed to help merchants reach a wider customer base.  It informed a person where they might “obtain the goods he wants to the best advantage.”    This is a quality scan of a volume in the University of Virginia Library.

The other was the Delaware State Directory and Gazetteer for 1874-75, compiled by Wm. H. Boyd Directory Publisher.  The Gazetteer contains descriptions of most towns, villages, and hundreds in the State, while also providing a list of the professions, trades, and occupations in that town, along with the farmers and fruit growers.  This is a quality scan from the New York State Library.