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 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.
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
Adding so I don’t lose the deep magic
