ONE could fairly call William A. Whitehead a “provincial” historian, on the premise that he devoted a large share of his adult life to chronicling the past of one small American state–often of mere parts of it. Indeed, Whitehead might have humbly accepted the title, and not just because so much of his attention was … More Foreign affairs
AMONG the vestiges of an all-but-forgotten colonial capital and seaport, William A. Whitehead grew to his maturity. He came of age as well within two old and intersecting family orbits. A crucial link had been forged before his birth, by the 1792 marriage of Janet “Jennet” Parker of Perth Amboy to Edward Brinley, scion of … More Dear Cate
AMERICANS watched with apprehension, through the winter and spring of 1831-32, as an epidemic of Asiatic cholera swept westward across Europe, conscious that the proliferation of swift oceangoing vessels made it unlikely the plague’s process would stop at the far shores of the Atlantic. Fear combined with a morbid fascination to accelerate the sale of … More 101–This wholesome place
WHEN retained at age 18 to produce a survey of Key West, whose existing streets he could count on the fingers of one hand, William A. Whitehead drew a town “more pretentious on the map than in reality.”1 He would have been unfazed, then, to discover that most streets and squares on a “Plan of … More 100–Last dance
BEHIND the Speaker’s chair and around the perimeter of the Hall rose smooth columns of pudding stone, looking to some observers almost good enough to eat. Festoons of crimson tapestry between them lent an air of luxury to the space.1 An intent observer of the House’s deliberations might pay little heed to such embellishments, but … More 099–So fair a house
ON his first Washington visit, William A. Whitehead likely made his way to Capitol Hill as a pilgrim would, on foot. His approach from the west began at “two flights of steps laid in the slope of the eminence.” Above and before him, crowned by Charles Bulfinch’s copper-clad wooden dome–not the massive cupola familiar to … More 097–Pantheon
DENIZENS of Perth Amboy in the late summer of 1830 could have had a glimpse, at about 6 o’clock one evening, of a most peculiar passerby, but only if they looked skyward. There floated the young balloonist Charles F. Durant, drifting on a straight but swiftly descending course toward the far shore of the Raritan … More 090–Ascension
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
TRAVEL is risk. No matter how close or convenient the destination, no matter how safe the conditions may be, or may be thought, travel unmoors the self from the familiar, the dependable; it causes one to see the comforts of home as things that can be left, and even lost. These effects might be slow … More 019–Tyrannies
FOR all that it has gained or lost in the tides of politics and war, Perth Amboy’s history attests to the power of place, the environment’s ability to span time and distance through the agency of human memory and motivation. For so many who spent the bulk of their lives elsewhere–and William Whitehead was by … More 009–Progress and place
An attractive presence 