Carol Kammen

In June, 1883, Jefferson and Helen Beardsley of Ithaca, New York, were indicted, tried, and sentenced for "selling and exhibiting obscene pictures." In Smut, historian Carol Kammen draws directly from the trial transcript (where witnesses were required to describe in detail what they saw when looking at pictures deemed obscene) and reveals the fascinating history surrounding the case and its surprising relevance today. The story begins with the 1876 Centennial Celebration in Philadelphia. This enormous affair attracted millions of visitors from around the country and the world, and was, among other things, a venue for all types of art works, including erotica. Kammen explains, "Although there was pornography of one sort or another all along, the dissemination of such pictures and at an affordable price into smaller cities and villages in the country can be traced directly to the advances in photography in the 1850s and to the 1876 Centennial Celebration." The Beardsleys brought several images home from the fair to their small photography studio and proceeded to show them to select customers. The town leaders of Ithaca, a hamlet about to grow rapidly thanks to the presence of the recently-founded Cornell University, were vigilant to protect their town's good name. Through the lens of the trial, Kammen explores the local social control agency of the day; considers the influence of Anthony Comstock's legislation for social purity on smaller communities; and notes the odd role of women in the law. In vivid detail, this small-town trial dramatizes the same forces at work today, as citizens strive to balance the public and private virtues.

Lamentations is a novel about the first group of families crossing west to Oregon in 1842, from the perspective of the dozen women on the trip. Although none of these women left a written record of her journey, the company clerk’s daily notations provided documentation of historical events. Based on these records and the author’s own decades of work as a historian, Carol Kammen provides an interpretation of the women’s thoughts and feelings as events played out in and around the wagons heading west. In this novel the men are in the background-and we hear the women ponder the land, their right to be passing through, their lives and how they are changing, the other people in the company, the Native Americans they encounter, and their changing roles. Lamentations is about women’s reality as wives or unmarried sojourners, as literate or illiterate observers, and as explorers of the land. Kammen gives voice to these women as they consider a strange new land and the people who inhabit it, mulling over what they, as women of their time, could not say aloud. We see the mental and emotional impact of events such as the naming of peoples and lands, of a husband’s suicide, of giving birth, and of ongoing and uncertain interactions with Native peoples from the Missouri River crossing all the way to Oregon. They face the difficulties of the road, the slow trust that builds between some of them, and the oddities of the men with whom they travel. These women move from silent witnesses within a constrained gender sphere to articulate observers of a complicated world they ultimately helped to shape.

For over thirty years, Carol Kammen’s On Doing Local History has been a valuable guide to professional and “amateur” historians alike. First published in 1986, revised in 2003, this book offers not only discussion of practical matters, but also a deeper reflection on local, public history, what it means, and why it is done. It is used in classrooms and found on the shelves of local historians across the U.S. The third edition features: ·Updates to chapters that focus on the current concerns and situation of local historians ·A new chapter on how the field of history cooperates with other arts ·A new chapter on writing a congregational history ·Updated references With the same passion (and now even more experience) that drove her to write the first edition, Kammen has brought her seminal work into today’s context for the next generation of local historians. The new edition ensures that this classic will continue to move anyone interested in public history towards a better understanding of why they do what they do and how it benefits their communities.

For over thirty years, Carol Kammen’s On Doing Local History has been a valuable guide to professional and “amateur” historians alike. First published in 1986, revised in 2003, this book offers not only discussion of practical matters, but also a deeper reflection on local, public history, what it means, and why it is done. It is used in classrooms and found on the shelves of local historians across the U.S. The third edition features: ·Updates to chapters that focus on the current concerns and situation of local historians ·A new chapter on how the field of history cooperates with other arts ·A new chapter on writing a congregational history ·Updated references With the same passion (and now even more experience) that drove her to write the first edition, Kammen has brought her seminal work into today’s context for the next generation of local historians. The new edition ensures that this classic will continue to move anyone interested in public history towards a better understanding of why they do what they do and how it benefits their communities.

When a party of four women, five men, and a ten-year-old boy leave their comfortable homes in eastern New York and faced westward on a cold February morning in the year 1807, they knew they would need a full measure of endurance and courage, but they were far from knowing the challenges and adventures that lay ahead in the newly opened Iroquois lands around the Finger Lakes. In this carefully researched historical novel, E. R. Eastman tells the story of the pioneers who settled "Genesee Country" of frontier New York in the early nineteenth century. The Settlers brings to life men and women of pioneer times and shows their reactions, their work, their play, their hopes and their ideals, their joys and sorrows, their loves and their antipathies as they emigrated over the westward trail, carved homes—and a living out—of the wilderness, and defended those homes against aggression and invasion. In addition to its being an exciting and moving tale of human adventure, The Settlers gives a vivid account of pioneer travel, describing in colorful detail how the woods were cleared, crops raised, cabins built and furnished.

No Drums takes readers into the homes and hearts of the individuals, families, and communities on the home front of the Civil War in Tioga County, New York. First published in 1951, this novel is both a dramatic story of war and a moving tale about living in its shadow. Through a vividly drawn cast of characters centered around George and Nancy Wilson and their family and friends, E. R. Eastman re-creates the daily life of rural America in the mid-nineteenth century—how crops were planted, cultivated, and harvested, how meals were prepared for the table—and the debates that took place in many American homes about the reasons, course, and costs of the Civil War. His narrative moves easily from the small towns of upstate New York to the front lines of war in northern Virginia and into the White House, where Nancy Wilson and her daughter-in-law, Ann, plead with President Lincoln to pardon Nancy's son, Mark, unjustly court-martialed for collaborating with the enemy. "Although the story deals with life during the Civil War," Eastman writes in his foreword, "it is just as timely as now, and will be while men continue to settle their arguments with the sword. It is a story of how people worked, loved, and lived under a great strain. Being a novel, most of the characters are, of course, fictional, but the theme and most of the incidents, situations, and adventures are based on true stories from the lives of people whom I once knew." Available once again, No Drums remains a fitting tribute to the men and women both on and behind the front lines of war.

Calmly nestled among the glacial streams and hills of central New York, residents of Ithaca may find it hard to believe that their city began with a rocky start. Transient teamsters and salt barge workers gave the town a rowdy reputation in its pioneer days, and the fledgling village seemed doomed as the most isolated place on the Eastern Seaboard. Over the course of the nineteenth century, Ithaca's character swung like a pendulum from debauchery to temperance, from boisterous vagrancy to religious fervor and reform. Though the town was hit hard by the Depression of 1837 and periodically ravaged by fire and flood, Ithaca survived to become a lively and bustling community and an important center of education, technological innovation and cultural vibrancy. In this comprehensive history, Carol Kammen shows exactly why Ithaca is known as the Crown of Cayuga.

Calmly nestled among the glacial streams and hills of central New York, residents of Ithaca may find it hard to believe that their city began with a rocky start. Transient teamsters and salt barge workers gave the town a rowdy reputation in its pioneer days, and the fledgling village seemed doomed as the most isolated place on the Eastern Seaboard. Over the course of the nineteenth century, Ithaca s character swung like a pendulumfrom debauchery to temperance, from boisterous vagrancy to religious fervor and reform. Though the town was hit hard by the Depression of 1837 and periodically ravaged by fire and flood, Ithaca survived to become a lively and bustling community and an important center of education, technologicalinnovation and cultural vibrancy. In this comprehensive history, Carol Kammen shows exactly why Ithaca is known as the Crown of Cayuga. "

The steep hills and dramatic gorges of Ithaca were the setting for a revolution in American education when, in the 1860s, a self-made man sought "to do the most good... to the poor and to posterity." Ezra Cornell's philanthropy, enhanced with funds from the Morrill Land Grant Act and enlarged by the vision of educator Andrew Dickson White, created what has been called the first American university—'a modern, democratic, research-oriented institution open to young men and women of all creeds and races. Reflecting the ideas of its founders, Cornell University has combined the industrial science and technology of America with the humanism of Athens to serve both the individual and society.In her concise, generously illustrated account of Cornell, Carol Kammen places that bold vision in its nineteenth-century context—a time when higher education was restricted to a privileged few. Now the university enters the twenty-first century as an institution of international stature and a leader in educational opportunity.Kammen, a noted local historian and lecturer in history at Cornell, tells the story of this great university with verve. Highlighting the text are excerpts from important documents and images from archives in the Cornell Library's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, selected by Susette Newberry, a Cornell archivist specializing in photography and media studies. Together, words and images illustrate the growth of the university, the origins of its famous schools and colleges, and its enduring commitment to excellence in education.