In today's post I want to introduce a special collection of historical photographs. They come from Greenville, N.C.'s longtime newspaper, The Daily Record, and they provide a remarkable view of what life was like in Greenville and the rest of Pitt County in the years between 1949 and about 1975.
Month: December 2020
A Shaker Village on a Snowy Day
A memory. I am racing across New York State after a blizzard. I am searching for historical records on Abraham Galloway, the fiery young slave rebel, radical abolitionist and Union spy who will later become the subject of my book called The Fire of Freedom.
“A Cabinet of Natural and Artificial Curiosities”
A memory. I am at the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. The museum's roots date to 1799. Though relatively small, the library holds one of the country's great maritime history collections, especially significant for understanding the period just after the American Revolution, when Salem was a thriving seaport that was growing rich in what was called the East Indies and Old China trades.
The Light of the Body
I never grow weary of looking at these old portraits at the New Hanover County Public Library. They date from the 1850s to the present day, and they're available to us all even in these times of Covid-19.
The Loveliest Laugh in the World
Tonight my wife Laura went to bed early, after a long, stressful day at the hospital, and I sat up wondering about the fate of the world and feeling a little lonely and Covid-weary.
The Light in the Fields
We always said that we’d go to Chinquapin together. He was going to show me where he grew up. We were going to visit his aunt, the one who raised him, and we were going to sit on her front porch and drink sweet tea and tell stories.
David Cecelski 