On a Friday afternoon in late July, I was on the Mason-Dixon Line as a severe thunderstorm swept across Washington and Franklin counties. As threatening clouds moved into the area, I paused and captured a few photos at one of the markers along the line. Earlier in the winter, I had explored points along the…
The Suffrage Army Marches in Salem
WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE — I have been studying social late 19th and early 20th-century progressive movements in some of South Jersey’s rural counties, the fieldwork concentrating on temperance, prohibition, prison reform, crime control, and voting rights. As it concerns women’s suffrage New Jersey has a complicated history since the State’s 1776 Constitution had enfranchised men and…
Researching Cold Cases For a Lecture on the 19th Century Criminal Justice System
I have been traveling throughout the Mid-Atlantic researching the dark underside of history, shocking murders from long ago that once stunned communities and filled newspapers with sensational headlines. From the mountains of Western Pennsylvania and Maryland to the Atlantic Coast, these terrible crimes, many lingering as unsolved cold cases, provide a stark look at the…
A New Program: CSI — The Historical Edition
Programs such as Law and Order and CSI have acquainted most people with modern techniques for solving crimes. But for most of our past, sleuths did as much as they could to investigate crimes, but they lacked the most basic tools. There wasn’t much the sheriff, part-time constable, justice of the peace, and coroner could…