Research Posts
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A little party to celebrate St. Valentine’s Eve
“Frank accompanied us on the triangle, a new instrument which has lately been introduced into the family”
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September in Jane’s World
A month ago, I decided to start tweeting out lines from my dissertation research, one for each day of the year. Many of the bits I’ve chosen were never referenced in the dissertation or any of my published work; they’re just evocative or amusing lines. Some are sentences that have stuck with me since I […]
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The Best That Could Happen: Suicide and Suffering under a Benevolent God
TW for extensive discussions of mental illness and suicide A few notes to start. I originally presented this at the July 2018 SHEAR conference in Cleveland, which means that while it is deeply-considered and deeply-sourced, it is also something that had to be read in 20 minutes or less. It was also written to both […]
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“…then I should most decidedly prefer the existence of slavery”
This is a portion of a letter dated January 2, 1845, from Herbert O’Sullivan, the younger brother of John L. O’Sullivan, to his friend Jane Minot Sedgwick II, whose life I researched for my dissertation. Herbert was in New York, and was writing to Jane while she was teaching at Harriet Randolph Hackley’s school for […]
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Confessions of a horse shed historian
David Hall famously wrote of the “horse shed Christians,” those people in early New England who, during service, were just as likely to be out back by the horse shed talking about the price of wheat with their friends as they were to be in the church listening attentively. I’m stretching the metaphor a lot […]
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Well worth hearing
The “rediscovery” of Frederick Douglass recently made me remember a letter I found in my research, from one young Sedgwick woman to her cousin. The letter is undated and no one in it is named, and it wasn’t really vital to my research so I never bothered to figure out precisely who it was talking […]
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“Extinct Species”
Found this article on extinct species in an issue of The Catholic World from 1865, reprinted from The St. James’s Magazine. It’s very fun to read if you initially dreamed of being a paleontologist as a child, as I did. One bit caught my eye: It is no part of our intention to discuss the causes of mammoth […]
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The perfect bookmark
I found this being used as a bookmark in the middle of an old biography of Orestes Brownson. Though I don’t think he’d agree that his pursuit of religious truth was spurred by “[journeying] through incarnation after incarnation,” I think this passage would resonate for Brownson: “subtle questions become more persistent, the need for answers […]
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Resonance
Sister Mary Frances Clare is a very prolific writer, and at the rate she goes on, will, in a few years, furnish us quite a library. She possesses considerable intellectual powers, which must have been carefully cultivated ; she writes with vivacity and vigor, with earnestness and power; but in those of her writings which […]
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“the female portion of the candidates”
Two selections from an article entitled “Diocese of Hartford,” from The Catholic Telegraph, October 23, 1845. The article discusses the recent “ceremony of confirmation.” Rev. Mr. Smyth officiated at divine service in the forenoon, (previous to confirmation.) After the reading of the gospel, by the officiating priest, the Right Rev. Bishop ascended the pulpit and read […]
