J. W. Wheeler’s “White Elephant March” of 1884

Tickling the Ivories

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Mellon Scholars Jalyn Gordon and Shayne McGregor

My First SDS Conference

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  A few weeks ago, hundreds of disability studies scholars, advocates, and activists gathered for the 28th Annual Meeting of the Society for Disability Studies, June 10-13, 2015. I was fortunate to be one of the attendees on…
Mellon Scholars Jalyn Gordon and Shayne McGregor

The Female Physician: A Deviation from 19th-Century Gender Roles?

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This is the tenth anniversary of the Library Company first working with an intern from Haverford College’s Hurford Center for the Arts and Humanities. In their summers at the Library Company, each one has helped increase the digital resources…
Mellon Scholars Jalyn Gordon and Shayne McGregor

Riddle of Independence: Independent but not Free

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Danielle Allen will give the Program in African American History’s 2015 Juneteenth Freedom Symposium talk at the Library Company. While in residence, our Mellon Scholars interns read Dr. Allen’s Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration…
Mellon Scholars Jalyn Gordon and Shayne McGregor

A Dead Prostitute, a Male Impersonator, and a Medium: Three Sensational Pamphlets

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Our Curator of Printed Books Rachel D’Agostino found these three sensational pamphlets at a recent book fair. Purchased with the Davida T. Deutsch Women’s History Fund, they are the sort of lowbrow items our 19th-century predecessors…
Mellon Scholars Jalyn Gordon and Shayne McGregor

The Union Library Company of Hatboro

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The Union Library Company of Hatboro, Pennsylvania, founded in 1755, is one of the oldest public libraries in America and one of many that imitated the Library Company of Philadelphia in name, mission, and organization. Recently the Board…
Mellon Scholars Jalyn Gordon and Shayne McGregor

Frocks and Frills: Children’s Fashion at the Turn of the 20th Century

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Marriott C. Morris took this photograph of his son, Marriott Jr., in 1903 outside their house on Cresheim Road in the Mt. Airy neighborhood.  Young Marriott’s attire was typical for a boy of three at the time: skirted sailor suit, long…