Author Archives: museummark

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”

My collaborator Rev. Avis Williams and I were delighted to be asked to participate in the recent April 22-23 gathering/conference/songfest/happening/summit called, “Singing ourselves back together: Community in Weelaunee.” The event brought together a range of organizations and movements, united by shared, urgent concern over the fate of the “South River Forest zone” around the headwatersContinue reading “Songs of the Forest: A “Re-matriation” Gathering in Weelaunee (South River) Forest”

Rev. Avis Williams and I recently published an essay an contested Afro-indigenous and white historical narratives of the watercourse known as “Dried Indian Creek,” which runs through Newton County, Georgia. In local African American memory, this disturbing term was derived from the early lynching of a Native American leader by white settlers in the lateContinue reading “In Search of the “Welaunee” (South River, Georgia)”

The noted curator and art historian Tetyana Dugaeva has been attempting to call global attention to the unthinkable threats posed to the artistic treasures, cultural heritage, and peoples of her beloved city of Czernowitz (Chernivtsi) in southwestern Ukraine, in the face of the unfolding Russian invasion. She recently updated her Facebook home page image toContinue reading “Czernowitz Art in Peril: The Mosaic Mural of Joseph Lang”