A few days ago I wrote about Online Learning (Apr. 13, 2020). There’s no doubt you can learn on the Internet. Good quality stuff, if you search it out. Here’s an article that suggests targeted learning might someday replace university degrees. “Could targeted, bite-sized chunks of education help you get a job?” This particular article focuses on the rising cost of...
History doesn’t change but our interpretation of it does. It’s all the same events and and the same material culture (as far we can discover it), but when we look back on it we often see different things than our ancestors did. I’ve been looking for a good example to add to my “toolkit” of elevator speeches, and here it is. Victorian pornography. We think of the...
Malatiah Luce, of Martha’s Vineyard married a woman named Eleanor Harley or Harlow. Everything I’ve found about her online comes directly or indirectly from Charles Edward Banks’ 3-volume History of Martha’s Vineyard (1901, 1966): 59. Malatiah(3) Luce, (Thomas(2), Henry(1)), b. 1710; res. T., husbandman; m. Eleanor Harley (or Harlow) 5 July 1738, who was b. 1715 and d. 18...
I’m a fan of using networks to break through genealogical brick walls. My shorthand for this is “People tend to marry someone they know.” When you’re studying a community it helps to start mapping everyone. Look at their relatives, look at their neighbors, look at the other people who sign the same documents. It’s time consuming but not hard. It’s called social...
Here’s a guy, someone I watch now and then on YouTube, complaining that White Americans have no culture. It’s hard to know what to make of this. It’s an idea generally associated with White Supremacists, but I don’t think that’s his point. He says most white Americans lack a sense of culture and a sense of racial or ethnic identity. He says culture is not just...