Blog posts that I have written most recently are a series of guest posts for Rutgers Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) about Dutch Reformed communities in New Jersey in the 1700s, which were tied to Dutch communities in Ulster County, NY. Underneath that section is a selection of blog posts that I wrote while working as an archivist at SCUA and at Mudd Manuscript Library.

The New Jersey Dutch

• Updates about Ukawsaw Gronniosaw 1: the Van Horn plantation
• Updates about Ukawsaw Gronniosaw 2: Frelinghuysen’s convert
• The terrible fate of the Frelinghuysen brothers 1: Raritan Valley, NJ
• The terrible fate of the Frelinghuysen brothers 2: Ulster County, NY

How Rutgers is connected to Sojourner Truth

It is easy to confuse the first owner of Sojourner Truth, described by her as Colonel Ardinbergh (Hardenbergh) of Hurley, Ulster County, with the father of Rutgers University’s first president and a founding trustee. Instead, it was the first president’s brother, who had the same name as his father and also served as Colonel in the Revolutionary War, who lived nearby.  (Read the blog)

Scorched Dutch 17th century autographs

The only native Dutch speaker at Rutgers Special Collections and University Archives, I made it a mission to list Dutch materials in the collections, which nobody had been able to read before. The search yielded some surprising results.  (Read the blog)

View more blog posts at Rutgers Special Collections and University Archives

John Van Antwerp MacMurray’s films of China, 1925-2

American diplomat John Van Antwerp MacMurray, who served as minister to China at a time of civil war, captured local people and scenery in 28 silent 16mm films. With the help of a Chinese staff member at  Princeton’s East Asian library I was able to identify particular locations and scenes, including the departure of naturalist Roy Chapman Andrews and his excavation crew from Kalgan (Zhangjiakou), a trip along the Yangtze River, and a train trip of the diplomatic corps to attend the reinterment of Sun Yat-sen in Nanking in 1929.

View all  nine posts about the films of John Van Antwerp MacMurray

Films in the Princeton University Archives

Most of the digitized footage at Mudd Manuscript Library concerned materials in the Princeton University Archives, which I put on the University’s YouTube channel and described in a blog. Among the collection was a number of ‘class films,’ shot during students’ senior year to commemorate their Princeton experience. The silent movies capture old traditions and Princeton lore, from the ‘flour picture’ in the 1920s to the ‘nude Olympics,’ caught on camera by the class of 1986.

View all my blogs written or administered at Mudd Library