Author Archives: michaeljdouma
Mail stamp with date and time (and other neat archival finds)
From the archival papers of Willard Wichers (a.k.a. “Mr. Holland), at Hope College. This stamp used for outgoing correspondence of the Netherlands Information Service reminds me of an old library stamp, but instead of just adjusting the date, it also could be adjusted to note the time of date. And this stamp, from the same […]
“Word Maps” or “Maps without lines”
When it was still expensive and difficult to print maps, some sources created “maps” like this one, in German, showing the locations of places in North America. From Gottlob Hebold, Das Brittische Reich in America; oder: Kurzgefasste Beschreibung der engländischen Pflanzstädte samt ihrer Macht, Geschichte und Handlung iin [sic] Nord-America (1761)
A White Solomon Northrup? The Barnhart Case in Cattaraugus, NY
Scanning through some digital newspaper databases, I came across the following curious story, originally printed in the Buffalo Courier Express of March 24, 1857. I could not access that newspaper, but other newspapers copied and re-printed the story, in part or in full. The title was typically “A MOHAWK DUTCHMAN IN SLAVERY,” but sometimes it […]
A New Netherlander, or the First New Yorker (?) in Japan
I’ve always been interested in the explorers on the fringe (pun intended) of history. There is Pytheas the Greek, for example, who may have circumnavigated the British Isles in 325 B.C., and then there might have been a Minorite Friar from England who visited Norse Vinland in the 14th century. Had the records of these […]
Michael J Douma 