Ancestry.com, as a genealogical tool, is a start for many doing genealogy. I see it as a way to sketch and share only. There are a lot of problems with it, but it’s certainly quicker than cranking through all those … Continue reading
Category Archives: Writing
I spent a lot of time chronicling my life from the time I was 8 until I was about 21 or so. I find that when I write other things (fiction, research papers, poetry, blogs) I don’t feel the need … Continue reading
It’s not all sauerbraten and rouladen. I was pleasantly surprised by incredible salads, grilled fish, and lots of mushrooms while in Germany. Let’s start with breakfast. I love European hotel breakfast (most of them). Most decent hotels have a pretty … Continue reading
Some old women’s magazines from the 1940s turned up when we emptied my grandparents’ house. You would expect the articles and advertisements to address their ideal audience of conscientious housewives, transitioning from the wood stove of her mother’s generation to … Continue reading
I’ll have the Scollop of Oysters, hartychokes, cold lobster, and olive pudding! Winterthur has in their collections the Dinner Book of Robert Jocelyn, First Viscount of Jocelyn and one time Lord Chancellor of Ireland. The book includes drawings of his … Continue reading
I’m a Collections Manager in a large New York City institution. My first museum job was as a thirteen year old volunteer at a “living history” state park, Heritage Hill, in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Living history generally denotes that the … Continue reading
It’s no secret, I can see the search terms readers use to get to The Still Room. Some I can tell that you’ve tripped onto this site by accident. Others, I wish you had left a comment so we could discuss … Continue reading
This finger-wag at women about appropriately dividing their time between pleasure and work is fun to sing. Interesting that work is defined in the following line as stitching – something that falls into the play category for me today. The … Continue reading
This post is not about servants. So much of the time when I refer to runaways, it’s in relation to indentured and enslaved women. Thanks to Mr. I for sending around this link to a well-written article in Popular Science about a runaway … Continue reading
In researching the lives of indentured and enslaved women during the 18th century, I’m trying to rebuild their communities, to better understand their lives. See my article ‘Had on When She Went Away . . .’: Expanding the Usefulness of Garment Data in American Runaway Advertisements 1750–90 … Continue reading