Ye Olde Index (a work in progress)
Considering this blog is now older than some of the people who follow it, I thought it might be useful to attempt to make things a little easier to find. This is going to be an (slowly) ongoing project as I have 15+ years of posts to go through and categorize/re-tag/etc.
Rachel & Co.
Ten years ago I impulse bought a box of more than 1,000 late-Victorian letters at a roadside flea market in rural Tennessee. A large portion of them were written by a wealthy teenage girl named Rachel to her cousins Will and Jack. What I've dubbed the "Rachel & Co." project documents my years-long effort to read, transcribe, research and share the fascinating people, stories and history found in these letters.
Rachel & Co. Who's Who - a brief-ish run down of the most frequent "characters" appearing in the letters (hoping to expand this soon to include more people).
Names
A Guide to Historically Accurate Regency Era Names
A Guide to Common Regency Era Nicknames
A selection of some A+ names I've come across in Regency era newspapers over the years
My annual Gloyd Roberson Memorial List of Actual Human Children Who Wrote Letters to Santa in 1920s/30s Oklahoma
A brief explanation of the origin of some common nicknames
Research Tips and Tricks
How do you find old newspapers online?
How do you read old handwriting?
Portraying a time period authentically in historical fiction
New York Herald Personal Ads
A selection of strange/cryptic/dramatic/scandalous personal ads posted in the New York Herald during the second half of the 19th century.
Breaking a 175-year-old code I found in the personal ads
The San Quentin Women's Ward
Mugshots and profiles of a few of the nearly 1000 women who served time in San Quentin State Prison between 1852 and 1933.
Dear Santa
My ongoing collection of 150 years worth of children's letters to Santa Clause that I post every December.
Upcoming/Ongoing posts and projects
Including this so my followers can peer pressure me into actually posting the things I do/research.
An exciting Rachel & Co. update
I hope you guys like dogs and spreadsheets cause hoooo boy did I go down a rabbit hole with this one
