History Commons^™

The Seven Years' War In New York State: Introduction, Timothy J. Shannon

History Faculty Publications

Ask the average person on the street about the Seven Years' War and you are likely to get a blank stare. Try again, only this time call the conflict "The French and Indian War" and you might get a faint smile of recognition. Take a different approach: ask random strangers their opinion about The Last of the Mohicans. Many will tell you they loved it, although they will more likely be thinking about Daniel Day-Lewis than James Fenimore Cooper.

Such has been the fate of one of the most important events in early history. In 2004, the 250th anniversary of …

Jack Hopkins' Civil War, Peter C. Vermilyea

Adams County History

In the 1862 Pennsylvania College album there is a photograph of John Hopkins, who that year was entering his fifteenth year of service as the college's janitor. In one student's book, the portrait of Hopkins jokingly refers to him as the school's "vice president." This appellation speaks volumes about the life of the African-American custodian, for while it was clearly made in jest as a token of the students' genuine affection for Hopkins, it symbolizes the gulf between the white students and the black janitor. It goes without saying that the students found the picture humorous because they understood that …

An Analysis Of Media Perceptions Regarding African Americans In Gettsyburg Throughout 1963, Brendan M. Shelley

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

On Monday, September 28, 1863, the Compiler, Gettysburg Pennsylvania’s Democratic newspaper, published an article taken from the Sussex Messenger about a black man forcing himself onto a white woman. The girl, daughter of Mr. Daniel Messick, was going from her father’s house which was just outside of the town limits to a neighbor’s home when she was suddenly assaulted by a black man. The man jumped out from behind thick brush and grabbed the girl. A struggle ensued and the assailant ripped off the girl’s clothing and put his hand over her mouth in order to keep her from …

The Albany Movement And The Origin Of Freedom Songs, Nicole Lenart

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

“We became visible.” This is how Bernice Johnson Reagon, a Civil Rights Movement worker, a member of the Freedom Singers, and the founder of Sweet Honey In The Rock explained how songs uplifted and inspired those blacks and whites who worked tirelessly for freedom throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s. Indeed, freedom songs in the movement gave participants the ability to stand up against their fears, express their hopes and desires, and unite the diverse range of people who participated in the movement. Reagon, now a history professor and music legend, grew up right outside of Albany, Georgia, where freedom songs …

How Abe Lincoln Lost The Black Vote: Lincoln And Emancipation In The African American Mind, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

No other American president has wielded the power of words with greater skill than Abraham Lincoln. "No one can read Mr. Lincoln's state papers without perceiving in them a most remarkable facility of 'putting things' so as to command the attention and assent of the people," wrote Henry J. Raymond, editor of the New York Times in 1864, and Raymond had an editor's unerring eye for this sort of thing. Massachusetts congressman George Boutwell, reminiscing for Allen Thorndike Rice twenty years after Lincoln's death, thought that "Lincoln's fame" would "be carried along the ages" by his writings, and especially the …

Lincoln On The Abolition Of Slavery, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

That man who thinks Lincoln calmly sat down and gathered his robes about him, waiting for the people to call him, has a very erroneous knowledge of Lincoln," wrote Abraham Lincoln's long-time law partner, William Henry Herndon. "He was always calculating, and always planning ahead. His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest." And in no other pursuit was Lincoln more ambitious than in politics. As a lawyer and Whig political organizer in Illinois, "Politics were his life and his ambition and his motive power." [excerpt]

The Slave Birth Register Of Adams County

Adams County History

This record is from a book, deposited in the Prothonotary's office, which shows the dates of birth and registration of 109 children born to slave mothers between 1799 and 1820. Several pages at the beginning of the book are missing, including the page on which are recorded the names of slaveholders whose surnames begin with A. That register might not be the original record, however. [excerpt]

The Slaveholders Of Adams County

Adams County History

This catalog of slaveholder names includes all known slaveholders in Adams County both before and after its split from York County in 1800. Included with each name are the place or places of residence and the year or years of documented slave ownership. In order to achieve some conformity, in certain instances the spelling of surnames is arbitrary, based on experience with what the names actually were or have become.

Distribution Of Slaveholders In Adams County

Adams County History

This roster repeats the names of "The Slaveholders of Adams County," from this journal, separating them, however, by their places of residence. The aim is to give an idea of where in the county slavery was most prevalent and at the same time a glimpse at the national origins of settlers in different areas.

There is a considerable duplication of names, which reflects the movement of families within the county or the establishment of new townships and the incorporation of Gettysburg as a borough. An accounting is given for each distinct place an individual lived, whether by actual move or …

The Slaves Of Adams County

Adams County History

This compilation of named slaves surely does not represent anything near the total number who toiled in the county; without a doubt many are now irretrievable. Of those who can be isolated, a large number may be identified to some extent by age or sex or name of owner, or by a combination of those definers. This list, however, comprises only those slaves whose names are recorded. [excerpt]

Pennsylvania Legislation Relating To Slavery

Adams County History

The following acts have been taken, complete or in part, from the published volumes of The Statutes At Large of Pennsylvania and Laws of Pennsylvania. These extracts are not all-inclusive, but do cover the years 1725/6-1847, from the province's first general statement of the legal standing of blacks, full-blooded and mixed, and the treatment to be afforded them, up to the state's rewritten and strengthened prohibition of the kidnapping of free blacks and the seizing of fugitive slaves. Included are not only acts showing the status and the protection of slaves, whether residents or sojourners, but also those requiring resident …

Adams County History 2003

Adams County History

No abstract provided.

Slaveholders And Slaves Of Adams County, Larry C. Bolin

Adams County History

A close study of the African-American community of Adams county waits to be written. By whatever standards adhered to, however, an in-depth investigation of the subject would be a daunting task at best, and in some areas an all but impossible one. Sadly, the early years, if seen at all, are often barely visible through the mists of repression and slavery. And yet, unfortunate and illogical as it might seem, slave owners very frequently offer the only glimpses of the downtrodden now obtainable....

This study consists of four lists, centered on the names of the county's slaveholders and designed to …

Understanding Emancipation: Lincoln's Proclamation And The Overthrow Of Slavery, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

The most common trope that governs understanding of Abraham Lincoln and emancipation is that of progress. The variations on that trope are legion, and they include notions of Lincoln's journey toward emancipation, his growth in understanding the justice of emancipation, and his path to the Emancipation Proclamation. "Lincoln was," as Horace Greeley put it, "a growing man"; growing from a stance of moral indifference and ignorance at the time of his election in 1860 toward deep conviction about African American freedom by the time of the Emancipation Proclamation less than two years later. That was a generous sentiment, since it …

Reexamining The Racial Record Of Abraham Lincoln, Jonathan Scott Holloway, William E. Gienapp, Gabor Boritt, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

Since his death in 1865 Abraham Lincoln has been universally honored in black America. In many black homes and businesses, his photograph often hangs in honor next to the one of Martin Luther King Jr. But a new book by Ebony editor Lerone Bennett Jr. contends that Lincoln was a crude bigot who told demeaning darky jokes, had an unquenchable thirst for minstrel shows, consistently used the word "nigger," and supported efforts to ship Negroes back to Africa.

As Jack E. White pointed out in a recent Time magazine article, this book largely has been ignored by the mainstream press. …

Ms-002: Franklin O. Loveland Papers, Christine M. Ameduri

All Finding Aids

The Franklin O. Loveland Collection is divided into three Series. I. Charles S. Wake; II. Native American Culture and III. Caribbean Culture. Series I is material Loveland collected while conducting research on British anthropologist Charles S. Wake (1835 - 1910) and includes correspondence between Loveland and other Wake scholars. Series II constitutes the bulk of the collection and includes research, articles and various other materials on Native American cultures. Of special note to researchers is the field research Loveland conducted on Shawnee Indians in Oklahoma during his sabbatical during the summer and fall of 1985. Series III includes research, articles …

The Civil War Letters Of Jeremiah Mickly Of Franklin Township, Adams County, Eric Ledell Smith

Adams County History

On December 2, 1862, just eleven days before the Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia, Jeremiah Mickly said goodbye to his wife and two children and reported for duty with the 177th Pennsylvania Infantry to become a Civil War chaplain. The only known photograph ofMickly shows him dressed in the standard chaplain's uniform of the day: a plain black frock coat with a standing collar and black buttons with plain black pantaloons. Like many other Civil War soldiers, Mickly re-enlisted for service after his stint with the 177th ended, becoming chaplain of the 43rd Regiment, United States Colored Troops. Impressed with the …

Adams County History 1999

Adams County History

No abstract provided.

On The Trail Of Sidney O'Brien: An Inquiry Into Her Family And Status - Was She A Slave Or Servant Of The Gettys Family In Gettysburg? Was Her Daughter, Getty Ann, A Descendant Of James Gettys?, Elwood W. Christ

Adams County History

Like many Decembers in the greater Adams county area, the beginning of the winter usually is a collage of intermittent warm spells spliced amongst Arctic days with cold Canadian northwest winds. Amid the hoopla, as Gettysburgians prepared for the 1873 Christmas holidays during the week between the 17th and 24th of December, a person had, as Alfred Lord Tennyson so eloquently described, "Crossed the Bar." But in the local newspapers there had been no notice of declining health. No death notice appeared. Possibly the cost of five cents a line "for all over four lines- cash to accompany the notice" …

The Jameson Raid (1758) As A Focus For Historical Inquiry, Charles H. Glatfelter

Adams County History

Each year the Adams County Historical Society receives inquiries either in person or by mail from persons asking for information about a young woman who with the rest of her family was seized and carried off from their home in what is now Adams county during the French and Indian War. She was the only member of that family who was not slaughtered as the raiding party and its captives moved into the western part of Pennsylvania. The subsequent life of this woman among the Indians was deemed of sufficient historical importance that she was chosen to be among some …

The Uses Of Maya Structures: A Study Of Architecture And Artifact Distribution At Sepulturas, Copan, Honduras, Julia A. Hendon

Anthropology Faculty Publications

This dissertation presents a compositional analysis of the architecture and a distributional analysis of the associated artifacts resulting from excavation of some ninety buildings dating from the Late to Terminal Classic Period at the Maya site of Copan, Honduras. The study of all artifacts recovered from primary contexts, both in situ and redeposited, focuses first on a determination of their function, second on an analysis of their distribution within the site, and third on their associations with one another in order to identify the kinds of activities carried out at various locations. A second line of evidence used is the …