Happy Women’s History Month! We’re kicking off the celebration with this in-depth guest post introducing us to Deborah Norris Logan, an early American historian and prolific diarist. After reading, take a closer look at her diaries in the In Her Own Right database or the HSP catalog, and pay a visit to the museum in her beloved home, Stenton mansion, located in Historic Germantown, Philadelphia. Continue reading “Deborah Norris Logan: Historian, Diarist, Republican”
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Contraband: Centering Black Agency in the Civil War
Popular narratives of the Civil War often suggest that white Northerners saved otherwise helpless African Americans from slavery. However, such portrayals are far from accurate; African Americans played a major role in the war effort and in advocating for emancipation. In honor of #BlackHistoryMonth, today we discuss “contrabands,” African American refugees who contributed to both developments.
Continue reading “Contraband: Centering Black Agency in the Civil War”
New Data for the New Year!
The In Her Own Right project database, hosted at inherownright.org, is proud to present the fruits of our first harvest to the public. Our record count is now over 1000, but rest assured the focus is on quality over quantity. The new data includes photographs, letters, diaries, school records, and much more. Read a bit about each new collection below, and stay tuned–a website redesign is in our future!
The Appeal of a Dying Mother: Society to Protect Children from Cruelty annual reports
This guest post highlights a women’s charitable organization that made some of the first strides toward protecting children from abuse.
By Margery Sly, Director of the Temple University Special Collections Research Center
Meet the InHOR Project Team
In Her Own Right has received valuable contributions from many people throughout the course of the project. Here, we’d like to introduce the Project Team for the CLIR-funded phase; a cross-institution coalition who are thrilled to expand the content and capabilities of the InHOR database.
Abby Hopper Gibbons and the “Hellevated” Trains
At first glance, this letter from Abby Hopper Gibbons might look like just another cranky old lady complaining about that newfangled elevated train, but she’s not just any cranky old lady, as this guest post explains. Continue reading “Abby Hopper Gibbons and the “Hellevated” Trains”
Get Ready for the Bootcamp!
The InHOR project team will host a “bootcamp” training session from 9am-1pm at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania this coming Monday, July 9th, to onboard contributing institutions. Although the bootcamp is targeted at institutions participating in InHOR, any and all staff of PACSCL members are welcome to attend. The bootcamp will cover project content, context, and technical specifications. Those specifications and other project documentation may be found on this site’s documentation page. The bootcamp will also provide a more general introduction to standards and workflows for digitization, and will allow time for questions and comments.
If you’ve registered, check your email for a basic agenda! We look forward to seeing you soon.
In Her Own Right is hiring! Two internships available.
Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries’ CLIR
In Her Own Right Graduate Student Internships

Summary: Two graduate student internships, offering pre-professional experience in creating and editing descriptive metadata and participating in digitization. Continue reading “In Her Own Right is hiring! Two internships available.”