SAMUEL Smith, author of New Jersey’s first published history, was born in 1721 into a prosperous Quaker family of Burlington, one of the colony’s two capital cities. His father Richard Smith was a long-serving member of the provincial Assembly and Council. Samuel was to follow him into both.1 His years of service in these capacities, … More First book of chronicles
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 104–Foreign affairs
IN the opening pages of The History of the Rise and Progress of the United States of North America, James Grahame wrote of the “grateful exultation” an American might feel, born in “a land that has yielded as great an increase of glory to God and happiness to man, as any other portion of the world, … More 085–Light sufficient
WITH a dramatic reading of Henry VIII, Fanny Kemble (Mrs. Frances Kemble Butler until her divorce was finalized later in the same year) closed a series of one-woman performances from the stage of New York’s Stuyvesant Institute. After solo renditions before audiences in Boston, New York City and Brooklyn through the winter and spring of … More 084–Thy book doth live
IF a “riot,” by the usual common law definition, requires an unauthorized gathering of more than two people, then behold a Newark riot that wasn’t, until it was.1 The initial upheaval, from a man wielding an axe and with the aid of his employer, happened so quietly and left so slight a wound that few even … More 078–Groundless
(This story includes a death by suicide.) “FRANK Forester,” as he was already widely known, came to Newark trailing tragedy and grief. Death had claimed his young wife the year before; their infant daughter, too. He agreed to a further bereavement, sending off his four-year-old son to be raised in the home of the lad’s … More 077–Infelicissimus
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
MAJOR Francis L. Dade accepted an urgent salute, and was handed his orders. The six weeks they had needed to travel from St. Augustine to Key West, and Dade’s own month-long leave of absence, meant the orders were no longer new. Poor communications between the mainland and the Keys plagued the military as much as … More 065–Most painful intelligence
IF in any way early Key West deserved a reputation for lawlessness, it had good reason. Located at the farthest end of a vast wilderness, the island knew no permanent residents until 1822, and was initially and problematically governed by a military force. When William A. Whitehead settled there in 1831, he came from a … More 062–That which governs least
LOWER latitudes and warmer climes than William Whitehead had previously known defined his nineteenth full winter, and each of the nine that followed. On its face this decade of residence in the South answered no maverick yearning for wild frontiers; it sprang instead from Whitehead’s trusted role in the business concerns of his family, spun … More 060–The greatest gifts