It’s Friday again! And that means my only job today is to point out all of the other awesome blogs, posts and sites I’ve encountered during the week. Without further ado…
Blogs & Sites
Yesterday I became enamored with Many Branches, One Tree. Maybe this is because I’m very interested in Mexico and Mexican history or maybe just because Linda’s writing is so wonderful, but I became engrossed in this wonderful family history blog yesterday. I highly recommend you add Many Branches, One Tree to your reader.
At the risk of creating an infinite Follow Friday loop here, I want to recommend Jana’s Genealogy and Family History blog. I found many of the blogs I now follow on her last two roundups. She’s a great curator!
Eastman’s Online Genealogy unearthed this fascinating language and dialect resource this week: North American English Dialects, Based on Pronunciation Patterns. This site breaks down 8 major North American English dialects and even includes samples of each. I’m “Inland South” through and through. What are you? Let me know in the comments!
Posts
Slate is one of my favorite websites in general, and their Vault blog is a regular dose of odd history in images. (Ex: the 1817 Cheat Sheet for Nervous Dancers.) But the Letter Promising Compensation to Former Owners of Slaves from 1893 got my attention. I didn’t have many slaveholders in my family tree full of dirt farmers, but I wonder if any of them fell for this scam?
Speaking of the Civil War, this jaw-dropping post from 22 Words is merely a short video of a historian explaining well-known pictures from the Civil War. The pictures are powerful in themselves, but it’s a whole other thing to have them explained by a knowledgeable source.
Last but not least, these 7 Underappreciated American Novels sound like must-reads, right now. Logan: A Family History by John Neal (1822) features interracial marriage between whites and Native Americans in the Pennsylvania back country. And if that weren’t enough to set you clutching your pearls, there’s also rape, incest and scalping. Oh my! And guess what? Logan: A Family History of available for us all to read on Google Books right now.
Another book from the list, A Book Without a Title by Martha W. Tyler (1855) sets the story of a woman’s empowerment against the backdrop of mill strikes in Lowell, Massachusetts. (I immediately thought of Liz from Adventures in Genealogy when I saw this.)
All the intrigue aside, I’m interested to read these books as primary sources from their time period. Huzzah to HuffPo for rescuing these books from obscurity!
What’s everybody doing this weekend? I really need to try and transcribe all these old land records I found but ugh. Why can’t I be less diligent!?
Happy detecting!