The thoroughbred racehorse Longfellow was known as the “king of the turf” and won nearly every contest he ran in the 1870s. The horse was born in 1867 in Kentucky and began racing as a four-year-old. His jockey was the young John Samples (d. 1912) who was born to enslaved parents in Midway, Kentucky, around…

PastIsPresent.org

11.06.2025

Reminiscing on the Moments of the Past: My Time at the American Antiquarian Society – Past is Present

It’s not every day that one gets the opportunity to move across state lines to experience the workings of a new career. Throughout my undergraduate years at Virginia Commonwealth University, I juggled with the possibilities of the future and where it would ultimately take me. I have always been attracted to the ways history can…

PastIsPresent.org

14.06.2025

New to AAS: Juan de Grijalva [Grixalva]. Historia del Glorioso San Guillermo Duque de Aquitania. Mexico: Juan de Alcaçar, 1620. – Past is Present

This 1620 Mexican imprint – once in the library of AAS member and prominent Mexican bibliographer Joaquin García Icazbalceta (1825-1894) – arrived at AAS just in time to cause a stir among the students in the 2024 History of the Book in America summer seminar on multilingual cultures of print. Printed well before there was…

PastIsPresent.org

28.06.2025

New to AAS: Boston, Massachusetts, Papers addition, 1710 – Past is Present

Almanacs, pregnancy, and dodging fines are all contained in this one-page testimony to the Court of General Sessions of Massachusetts from 1710. Unmarried Ruth Copeland became pregnant with a child by a man named Samuel Hayden, who promised to marry her after finding out she was to have his child. Samuel subsequently rescinded his offer…

home›PastIsPresent.org

PastIsPresent.org

History

New to AAS: John Cameron. Longfellow. Hand-colored lithograph. Currier & Ives, 1871. – Past is Present

Reminiscing on the Moments of the Past: My Time at the American Antiquarian Society – Past is Present

New to AAS: Juan de Grijalva [Grixalva]. Historia del Glorioso San Guillermo Duque de Aquitania. Mexico: Juan de Alcaçar, 1620. – Past is Present

New to AAS: Boston, Massachusetts, Papers addition, 1710 – Past is Present

home
›
PastIsPresent.org