Karin Wulf (9/2026), "The Family History of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, and the Politics of Genealogy": "a team ... has been working with a strand of Thomas Jefferson's hair to compare recovered DNA with that contributed by descendants of Sally Hemings ... More problematic is the failure of most of the flurry of media attention ... to resist tired and tiresome framings ... History regularly skips or dismisses the essential history of family." Wulf's other posts on "Reading Family History" (2, 3, 4, 5, 6), her course on "Gender, Sexuality and Family in the Early Modern Atlantic World," and other posts / tidbits. Also this month, an interview with Marcia Biederman on a later family's history: "the true story of an Alaska Native woman" with "villainous relatives: the mother- and sister-in-law from hell, who welcomed Agnes by showing her to a stark, unheated attic room." Via.

Pamela Toler (History in the Margins, 9/5/26), "The Great Panic of 1893": "occasionally an event, or person, or book, or idea ... shows up in footnotes or casual asides ... if it's interesting or important enough, I share it ... Lately, the Great Panic of 1893 has become insistent." Neil Flanagan (The Birth of a Capital, 9/4/26), "How often do you think about the 1893 World's Fair?": "what draws us to an event, story, or image depends less on the context of the events than the context we inhabit." Photos / maps / VR of the fair. Foods, sweet treats, and "orange cider" of the fair. Pall Mall Magazine and RIBA Journal on the fair. And other magazines that began in 1893 feature Ida Tarbell on "Pasteur at Home," famous prints, rules for psychic / occult investigators, articles on orchidology and astronomy, "Last Week's Paris" followup on anarchists, and the first story of Sexton Blake.