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Jumat, 22 Oktober 2010

Today in History - Princeton University Receives Its Charter

College of New Jersey, Princeton. Court Yard in 1764. This depiction shows around school, but none were allowed inside to learn.

On this day in 1746, Princeton University was founded at Elizabeth, New Jersey, as the College of New Jersey. In 1756, the College moved to its new quarters Nassau Hall, in Princeton, New Jersey.

But it was not until 1969 - as the world outside its gates clamored for equal access to intellectual power - that Princeton University first admitted women as undergraduates.

In 1887, the university actually maintained & staffed a sister coIlege in the town on Evelyn & Nassau streets, called the Evelyn College for Women, which was closed down after roughly a decade of operation. And, a few women were allowed to study cartography at the university during World War II, because it was a time of national emergency.
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Today in History - 1797 First Parachute

This tidbit of information did not directly affect Early American Women, but it did become of some importance to their ancestors, so I will mention it here. On this day in 1787, the first parachute jump of note is made by Andre Jacques Garnerin from a hydrogen balloon 1000 meters above Paris.

Leonardo da Vinci conceived the idea of the parachute in his writings, & the Frenchman Louis Bastien Lenormand fashioned a kind of parachute out of two umbrellas & jumped from a tree in 1783, but Andre Jacques Garnerin was the first to design & test parachutes capable of slowing a man's fall from a high altitude.

Garnerin first conceived of the possibility of using air resistance to slow an individual's fall from a high altitude while a prisoner during the French Revolution. Although he never employed a parachute to escape from the high ramparts of the Hungarian prison where he spent three years, Garnerin never lost interest in the concept of the parachute. In 1797, he completed his first parachute, a canopy 23 feet in diameter & attached to a basket with suspension lines.

On 22 October 1797, Garnerin attaches the parachute to a hydrogen balloon & ascends to an altitude of 1000 meters. He then climbs into the basket & severs the parachute from the balloon. As he failed to include an air vent at the top of the prototype, Garnerin oscillated wildly in his descent, but he landed shaken but unhurt 800 meters from the balloon's takeoff site. In 1799, Garnerin's wife, Jeanne-Genevieve, became the first female parachutist. In 1802, Garnerin made a spectacular jump from 2400 meters during an exhibition in England. Unfortunately, he died in a balloon accident in 1823, while preparing to test a new parachute.
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Kamis, 21 Oktober 2010

ARCH Development Soliciting Applications for Artist Residencies

| ARTIST RESIDENCIES |

This article has moved to:

http://www.eastcityart.com/2010/10/21/arch-development-soliciting-applications-for-artist-residencies/

ARCH Development Soliciting Applications for Artist Residencies

| ARTIST RESIDENCIES |

This article has moved to:

http://www.eastcityart.com/2010/10/21/arch-development-soliciting-applications-for-artist-residencies/

Senin, 06 September 2010

An Interesting Take on 18th Century Shoes

James Gillray: Fashionable Contrasts; – or – the Duchess's little shoe yeilding to the magnitude of the Duke's foot, originally published by Hannah Humphrey on January 24, 1792.

The print shows the feet & ankles of the Duke & Duchess of York (Frederick, Duke of York & Albany 1763-1827, son of George III, & Frederica Charlotte Ulrica 1767-1820, his wife), with the Duke's feet enlarged & the Duchess's feet drawn very small.
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Shakers under Lucy Wright

Lucy Wright (1760-1821), a Shaker leader & the dominant figure during the period of the society’s greatest growth, was a female successor to its founder, Ann Lee.

She was born in Pittsfield, Mass., the daughter of John & Mary (Robbins) Wright. Her mother died when she was about 18 years old. The following year she was married to Elizur Goodrich, a young merchant in the neighboring town of Richmond, just before his conversion to Shakerism, which demanded celibacy of it members. This did not bode well for their new marriage.

Elizur Goodrich accepted the gospel which the Shakers were beginning to preach at Watervliet, N.Y. Lucy was sympathetic but did not immediately join the group. In August 1780, when Ann Lee was confined to the Poughkeepsie jail, Lucy sent her “presents for her comfort & convenience.”

Lucy soon became a Shaker, & she & Goodrich quitted their “fleshly relations” & lived in separate men’s & women’s orders. After that, Lucy was renamed Lucy Faith in 1785, & lived at Watervliet. Her husband became an itinerant preacher & finally settled at New Lebanon, N.Y. After her husband left, she often used her maiden name.

In 1787, after the deaths of Mother Ann & Father James Whittaker, Father Joseph Meacham (their successor) selected Lucy Wright as the “first leading character in the female line.”

Under the joint administration of Father Joseph & Mother Lucy, the Believers were gathered together at the mother church in New Lebanon, forming a common-propertied, socio-religious organization which was copied by the 10 other Shaker communities in New York & New England. By this decision the Shakers were transformed from a loosely organized body of followers into an association of monasticlike self-supporting communities.

On Meacham’s death in 1796, Mother Lucy assumed the leadership of the central ministry assisted by one or two “elder brothers.” Under her administration the decision was made, in 1804, to send out the mission which eventually led to the establishment of 7 Shaker societies in Kentucky, Ohio, & Indiana.

She also authorized the publication of the basic theological work of the sect. Benjamin S. Youngs’ The Testimony of Christ’s Second Appearing (1808). Lucy brought more songs into the worship & more lively dances to keep the Shaker meetings animated, & she improved the schools.

She died at Watervliet at the age of 61 & was buried there beside the grave of Ann Lee.
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