Author Archives: museummark

c. 1820 birth of Gerschon Ausländer, Sadagora, Chernivisti, Austrio Hungarian Empire c. 1825 birth of Hennie Salzman, Bukovina c. 1840 ? Gerschon Auslander marries Hennie Salzman c 1847. Birth of Moses Aron Ausländer, son of Gerschon and Hennie Ausländer. in Sadagora, Chernivtsi, Bukovina. Austrio Hungary c. 1865? Moses Aron Ausländer marries Esther Resch. c.1867 BirthContinue reading “Descendants of Gerschon Ausländer and Hennie Salzman: Timeline”

The poet and storyteller Andre Wilson and I have been contemplating how oral historical narratives passed through his father’s African American family about racial terror might be meaningfully compared with textual sources, nearly all of which were created by white authors. Wilson is the great great grandson of Jennie Harris (or Harrison) Lindsey, whose brothersContinue reading “Relating Family Narratives and Textual Sources of Racial Terror: The 1878 Lynching of the Harris Family in Mount Vernon, Indiana”

Through my research on the legacies of the horrific 1878 Mount Vernon, Indiana lynchings, I’ve become familiar with the remarkable work of Andre Le Mont Wilson, poet, essayist, and storyteller, who has been exploring his family’s rich and complex history in multiple registers and genres. I am especially moved by his 2005 performance piece, “TheContinue reading “Photography, Memory, and Slavery Time in the Storytelling of Andre Le Mont Wilson”

My students at Mount Holyoke College and I have been enormously moved to learn of the memorial event held in October 2022, in Mount Vernon, Posey County Indiana, to commemorate the racial terror lynching of seven African American men in October 1878. Propelled by the activist work of local high school student Sophie Kloppenburg, theContinue reading “In Search of Descendants of the Victims of the 1878 Mount Vernon, Indiana Racial Terror Lynching”

I have been fascinated by the slaveowning history of Isaac Lowenhaupt, a Jewish merchant residing in Vicksburg, Mississippi in the 1850s and early 1860s. Isaac, as it happens, is the great-great grandfather of the husband of my first cousin once removed. Such narratives are powerful reminders of how profoundly all of us are intertwined withContinue reading “In search of enslaved persons owned by Isaac Lowenhaupt”

The following is an abbreviated timeline of the history of the descendants of Moses and Rachel (Rochel) Zeltzer (Novye Dorogi and Starye Dorogi, Belarus), with some notes on the related Weinstein family of Bobruisk. At this point, the chronology goes up until the Second World War. Please share corrections and more notes with me. Note:Continue reading “Zeltzer-Weinstein Family History Timeline”

One of the most intriguing objects in the Joseph Allen Skinner Museum at Mount Holyoke College is a small Japanese Shinto shrine dedicated to the kami or dinvity Inari. For some years, the wooden structure, about four feet high and resting on a table, has been listed in museum records as a “replica” of anContinue reading “The Inari Shrine of Mount Holyoke’s Skinner Museum: Initial Considerations”

One of the more fascinating individuals interred in Mount Zion Cemetery in north Georgetown, District of Columbia, is David Twine (c.1824-1894). Twine was a lifelong hack driver and coachman in the District of Columbia, who for the last decade of his life was employed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum, serving as a coachman, in turn,Continue reading “In Search of David Twine (c. 1824-1894), Smithsonian Coachman”

Like many members of my family, I have been rather uncertain about the early life and background of my mother’s father, Isadore Epstein, who was evidently born 17 April 1886 or 1887 and who died 30 July 1952 in Philadelphia, PA. To begin with, we have been uncertain of his parentage or the location ofContinue reading “In Search of Isadore (Israel) Epstein, c. 1887-1952”

Mark Auslander and Avis E. Williams23 April 2022 The proposed South River (Welaunee) Forest zone spans approximately 3,500 acres in southeastern Fulton County and southeastern unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia. The land is in the watershed of the South River, evidently referenced as the Welaunee or Weelaunee by indigenous Muscogee Creek inhabitants. This land has aContinue reading “What these Trees have Seen: Slavery, Post-Slavery, and Anti-Blackness in the South River (Welaunee) Forest Zone”