What activities are you all taking up to relax during this period of #socialdistancing?

George Mark Wilson, [Syrian American woman named Selina holding knitting, looking at camera], ca. 1923. Gelatin silver print. 

Image depicts woman sitting on a step beneath a wood awning at 10th and Ellsworth Streets, wearing a fringed shawl wrapped around her head, a flowered skirt, and holding a knitting project in her lap.  

How we’re social distancing this week. Hope you all are staying safe and healthy!

Marriott Canby Morris, [Canoe on the river, Browns Mills, NJ with Photographic Society], 1927. Gelatin silver print.

Image depicts a woman and a dog in a canoe on an unidentified river. The woman paddles with an oar around a small island in the middle of the river.

It’s Friday the 13th so here is a handsome little black cat wearing a jaunty red bow to maybe momentarily distract you from the chaos. 

Funny, we’re making the same face…

Image:  J.A. Ladd & Son, Booksellers and Stationers…West Chester, PA. [Philadelphia], [ca. 1880].
Chromolithograph; 3.25 x 2.25 in.

While we should avoid shaking hands with one another, who said we can’t make an exception for our four-legged friends?

Marriott Canby Morris, Geo. Vaux & Ralf in Vaux’s backyard, 1886. Glass negative.

Image depicts Marriott C. Morris’ third cousin George Vaux wearing a bowler hat and long coat kneeling down to shake hands with Ralf, a medium-sized brown dog crouching on its hind legs. Ralf wears a wide collar and tilts his head slightly to look at Vaux. A fence bordered by bare shrubs runs behind Vaux.
   

Spring may not have arrived yet, but this (slightly) warmer weather means it’s not too early for a nice bike ride! 

William Harvey Doering, Bicycling trip, with Al Lindsay and William Doering in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, ca. 1895. Lantern slide. 

Image depicts Al Lindsay (standing in the foreground) and William Doering (photographer, right of Al Lindsay) posed with three other men with their bicycles on a trail in Fairmount Park.

Here’s hoping that March brings warmer weather and plenty of beautiful blossoms! 

Marriott Canby Morris, Elliston P. Morris Jr. and Roses, 1901. Cyanotype. 

Image depicts Marriott C. Morris’ son Elliston Perot Morris Jr. as a child standing next to their home at 6706 Cresheim Road. He looks up at a flowering shrub to his right. He wears a long, light colored frock with a ribbon around the waist and has long hair.   

Who else is excited for that extra day tomorrow?  Happy Leap Day!

Image:  Mayer, Merkel & Ottmann, printer. Use Dalley’s magical pain extractor. The great family ointment. New York : Mayer, Merkel & Ottmann, lith, [ca. 1880].

By the late 19th century, many African Americans had been elected to public offices in the United States and become community activists. This print commemorates the prominent men who were representatives of the advancement of African American civil rights, including Frederick Douglass, senators Blance Kelso Bruce and Hiram Revels from Mississippi, John Brown, and Charles Edmund Nash.

-Jasmine Smith, African American History Subject Specialist. 

Image: Heroes of the colored race [graphic]. Philadelphia: Published by J. Hoover, c1881. Chromolithograph, hand-colored; 56 x 77 cm.

Happy Mardi Gras! All this festive scene is missing is some king cake! 

[Academy of Music trade card] (Philadelphia: 1881). Chromolithograph. 

Image depicts several men, a woman, a cherub, and two butterflies celebrating Mardi Gras. 

#OnThisDay in 1840, John Quincy Adams began to argue the case of the Amistad in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Amistad was a Spanish slave ship bound for Cuba which experienced a mutiny at the hands of the kidnapped Africans who were on board. The rebellion led to a series of trials, during which the fate of those who were doomed to be sold into slavery was in question. Quincy eventually convinced the Court to rule in favor of sending the captives back to Mende (which is present-day Sierra Leone).  

Pictured here is a bust-length portrait of Sarah Margru Kinson Green. Green, a child captive onboard the Amistad slave ship and eventually returned to the United States to study at Oberlin College. 

Green, Sarah Margru Kinson (New York, ca. 1850). Engraving.