[Follow Friday] Your Daguerreotype Boyfriend, Child Laborers, & an American in Paris

As I approach my 50th blog post, I realized I haven’t done a Follow Friday in forever. …So here goes!

Photography

My Daguerreotype Boyfriend – Admit it. You thought Robert Cornelius, the photographer of the very first selfie back in 1839, was hot.  (To me he looks like what Heathcliff should look like.) Well, this Tumblr compiles Cornelius and all of your other daguerreotype boyfriends together in one handy reference list.

Also, you can submit your photos. If it isn’t too squicky for you, maybe your hot daguerreotype ancestor can become someone’s daguerreotype boyfriend. Speaking of historical hotties, check out young Joseph Stalin at #9. (This link goes to Cracked.com which will always, at some point, become NSFW.)

The Lewis Hine Project – Labor Day just happened, so what better time to anxiously peer at photos of child laborers? I’ve already written about Shorpy.com, a historical photograph website inspired by a photograph of Shorpy Higginbotham, a tiny little boy working in a mine in Alabama. If you’re interested in more of Hine’s work documenting child labor, check out the Lewis Hine Project, run by historian Joe Manning. The site also features some mystery photos. Can you help identify these people?

Diary

Addie’s Sojourn – After serendipitously finding some old family letters, I’ve been especially interested in older personal writings. That’s why I was delighted to discover that my friend Liz Loveland (@Lizl_genealogy on Twitter) had inherited a copy of her ancestor, Addie Sturtevant Burnett’s diary, kept during her time as an American living in Paris from 1889-90. Addie was a well-educated, if, in Liz’s words “ethnocentric” woman who made an extraordinary decision for her time. The historian in me is especially drawn to issues of race and class, so it’s interesting to see phrases like “We met four people and two Chinese that came over with us on the Gascoygne.” Two Chinese indeed.

Genealogy News

4YourFamilyStory.com – I griped and griped about how I didn’t have any time for genealogy for about 6 weeks due to a big work project. So when I dug my way out, I was happy to see that Caroline Pointer (@FamilyStories on Twitter) had started posting a daily “# Things You Need to Know about Genealogy This Morning” post. Now I’m all back up to speed. Whew.

Happy Detecting!

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6 thoughts on “[Follow Friday] Your Daguerreotype Boyfriend, Child Laborers, & an American in Paris”

  1. Oh my word!!! How I never heard of this before. daguerreotype boyfriend is a combination of all of my favorite things, photography, history and hot men 🙂 thanks for sharing!!

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