1. What is your background? Excluding five years in California, I have lived most of my life in Bowling Green, Ohio, home to its namesake university as well as the National Tractor Pulling Championship. I am currently enrolled at the University of Cincinnati, where I am studying Mechanical Engineering and, eventually, Business as part of …
John Jacob Astor was born July 17, 1763, in Walldorf, Germany (near Heidelberg). He came to the United States after the American Revolution and began trading furs, shipping them to Europe via New York. Business was good, and Astor was well on his way to making his fortune when he got a boost with …
In an earlier post I featured an April 1902 Washington Times article on how to get a book from the Library of Congress. While reading the article, a section about the catalog division – “one of the most remarkable departments in the conduct of the library” – also caught my eye. The function of a …
1. What is your background? If you had not already guessed, based on my posts about Mardi Gras, New Orleans, and Louisiana, I am from New Orleans and much of my family still lives there. I was in the 260th graduating class of Ursuline Academy and went to the University of Alabama (ROLL TIDE ROLL!!!) …
I am from Louisiana and sometimes I like to use my home state as a jumping off point for a blog post. 2012 brings a perfect opportunity, because it is Louisiana’s Bicentennial. On April 30, 1812 Louisiana was admitted as a state into the Union. For a little historical background on the years before Louisiana …
Last year I missed the opportunity to write a post commemorating the 100th anniversary of the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory that occurred on March 25, 1911. I didn’t want to let another year pass without writing about it because of its importance in workplace safety and labor history. The Triangle Waist Company was …
Hetty Green seems to have been given a rather frightful sobriquet for a woman who came from a Quaker family and was by several accounts quite religious. Her reputation may have been the result of being a successful businesswoman in an age of businessmen or it may have been a result of being a little …
And no, sports fans, I do not mean the Southeastern Conference of college athletics fame. In this case I am talking about the Securities & Exchange Commission. In the Science & Business Reading Room, we have a microfiche set of SEC company filings that is one of our more regularly used items. I have featured …
I never gave much thought to the history of mobile homes or manufactured housing. For the most part, I thought these developed in the mid to late 20th century. That was until I ran across the 1861 newspaper advertisement that sparked my curiosity and is featured in this post. As you can see, this is …
James Swan entered American historical lore on December 16, 1773, when he and a few others participated in what became known as the Boston Tea Party, but he has a place in early U.S. business history as well. While I was doing some research for the Business of Congress blog post which featured “business” oriented …