WHERE the surest token of wealth and worth, present and future, is the land that one owns, possession of an unsullied title and clear delineation of boundaries are somewhat akin to godliness. Landholding has been construed, historically, as compliance with the injunction in the book of Genesis to “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the … More 076–The saints of old
NO human lives were lost when fire destroyed Edward Stewart’s United States Hotel. But upon the plight of hundreds already dead, the 1844 blaze cast a lurid glow.1 Stewart’s hotel stood upon ground that the first settlers of Newark had early reserved for common use. Thirty years after their arrival, the dimensions and limits of … More 075–Old Mortality
FACED with an array of nineteenth-century scrapbooks, historians will likely nod in agreement with one of the more intrepid investigators of such specimens, who pronounced them both “tantalizing” and “impossibly frustrating.” While a scrapbook promises a window on its creator’s private past, the practice of scrapbook-making also obscures, even destroys, the context and sometimes the … More 074–Scissors paper paste
FIRST, there’s the name of the place. When linguist John Heckewelder took down Indian toponyms, he rendered “the bear’s mountain” in Latin letters as machktschúnk. William A. Whitehead, after a visit in 1830 to the Lehigh Valley settlement of this name, gave the pronunciation mauchunk. Today, standard practice comes nearer to the mauk chunk favored … More 073–The ride of a lifetime
IN a travel memoir such as William A. Whitehead compiled, telling of sundry voyages “by land & water” made over the span of four or five years, time is by turns an objective measure of experience and a phantasm. Between journeys, time vanishes entirely. In successive narratives, it seems to expand or contract, as details … More 072–Grandeur in the view
DURING the first decades that swift stages traversed the breadth of northern New Jersey, whose roads while judged by an early commentator “not so good” were nonetheless “absolutely turnpiked,” an ever swelling tide of travelers made for Schooley’s Mountain, one of the earliest leisure destinations in the United States.1 As European colonizers became aware of … More 071–Royal retreat
NOTHING on earth’s surface is older than the New Jersey Highlands, which William A. Whitehead must have seen for the first time when just a boy. As an adult, revisiting the ageless landscape with his half-brother, he could contemplate its scenery with more seasoned eyes and mind.1 What most pleased the 20-year-old on his return … More 070–His father’s business
LITTLE is known of the writings from William A. Whitehead’s youth, but a generous amount survives from his early twenties, chiefly through a book of travel narratives in his own hand. This volume is the second of at least two, none other having come to light. Whitehead gave the work a grandiose name, Memorandums of Peregrinations … More 069–Road trip
GAZING one last time at a pair of large, unfurled sheets of paper, William A. Whitehead traced with his eye the busy waterfront, the streets and buildings depicted on them. Then, possibly with a faint smile, he again rolled them up carefully to be delivered to their final destination. License to imagine such an interlude … More 068–Tift’s Tower
KEY West the island sits upon a bed of limestone a hundred thousand years old. Key West the city has for its foundation poor judgments and worse luck that, less than two centuries ago, with painful regularity piled up seagoing vessels on the Florida Reef. That history created what attorney Charles Walker called “the city … More 067–The fiefdom