“Pilgrims on The Ohio” was published in 1997 over a century after Ruben Twaites river trip and features a never before published personal collection of photographs taken on the journey in 1894. The book includes 74 photographs from the trip as well as his narrative descriptions of the images and page references to his journal. Also included are essays by Reid and Fuller discussing Thwaites’ life and the development and influence of the Kodak #2 in the history of photography.
Thwarts personal journal from the same trip is entitled: Afloat on the Ohio by Reuben Gold Thwaites. One of the things Thwaites does in his journal is describe the journey in context of what the early pioneers were experiencing. I am particularly interested in these photographs and his journal writings because my 4xGreat Grand father migrated from either Redding, Wheeling or Pittsburg on a flat boat (or raft) in 1798 (almost 100 years prior to Thwaites journey). I was hoping reading this text might give me some perspective into what it might have been like.
In the spring and summer of 1894, Reuben Gold Thwaites (noted American historian and Society Director), traveled with his family down the Monongahela and Ohio rivers, taking photos all the way. Thwaites’ photographs of the six-week trip offer a unique opportunity to take a glimpse into the gateway to the nation’s interior.
Thwaites used a #2 Kodak camera to take the circular black-and-white images. Thwaites was an early adopter of the Kodak #2 camera, purchasing one in 1891 to document his travels on a bicycle through England. This particular Kodak model, introduced in 1889, was one of the first cameras designed with the amateur in mind. It replaced the heavy, cumbersome glass plate with flexible film on a long roll. Photographers could shoot the entire roll and then send the camera into Kodak to have the film developed and prints made. It was from this generation of camera that Eastman Kodak coined the slogan, “You push the button, we do the rest.”
Some of the photos below were taken in Cannelton, Bridgport and Owensboro, which are all near where my ancestors eventually settled some time around 1810. They first spent about 12 years in Bridgeport Kentucky area which is couple miles outside th of Frankfort.
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I’ve been doing Genealogical research for the a while now and one of the best resources I have found are rare out of print books that have been digitized by books.google.com.Project Gutenberg and archive.org. And even with those resources, you may not be able to find a digital copy. Suppose you want a real hard back copy? Many of these books are extremely hard to find and are only available in reference sections of a few libraries. In some instances you might get lucky and find them at rare book stores or used book aggregation sites, like abebooks.com, alibris.com, biblio.com or bookfinder.com. But in these cases they will likely cost hundreds of dollars. And in many circumstances, you are simply out of luck.
Enter Kirtas.com and their start-up division www.kirtasbooks.com. They have combined specialized book scanning equipment that they sell with partnerships with some of the biggest libraries in the country, like the New York Public Library and University of Pennsylvania Library to offer nearly 1,000,000 titles. Check out the video below explaining what they do.
I ordered 4 books from them recently and I am simply astounded at the quality of the product I received for the money. Two of the books I ordered they already had digitized, the other to were digitized for me. Somebody at the New York library pulled the books, scanned them and then sent them to Kirtasbooks.com. They, in turn, had them printed and hard bound for my order. 3 Weeks later I had my own beautify hard bound copies of books I could have affordability owned no other way. I had to pinch myself to make sure it was real. The books cost me $20 each when I ordered them. They have since raised the price to $28 each.
As many of you know, I have spent a good portion of my spare time over the last 6 months doing research on Caroline’s and my family history. I’ve enjoyed this so much and discovered many interesting things that would have otherwise remained unknown to me. This project has been exciting because it involves many things I love, like my family, research, travel, software, visualizations, story telling, graphic design and layout, and more. I’ve used www.blurb.com for 4 years now to produce annual family albums as a print on demand service and am looking forward to using it to produce an extensive book on our families history.
I’ve also discovered an amazing new service called www.kirtasbooks.com. They have access to around 1,000,000 out of print copyright free publications that they can print on demand. I’ve been able to find and have printed books from the 1800’s that would have cost $100 to $400 for original copies but instead only cost $20 each. Wow! Gutenberg would have been blow away. I ordered 4 books from them at Christmas and I am amazed by the quality of their product that I received. They actually had somebody pull the book from the shelf at the New York Library, scan the entire book (on one of the proprietary machines they sell) and then print, bind (hardback no less) and ship it to me in less than 3 weeks. I’ll post some pics of the end result of their work later.
Below are a couple of the more interesting visualizations I have produced thus far.
This one is from myCanvas.com and is linked directly from Ancestry.com. Over all, the entire process was extremely easy and straight froward.
The next visualization uses a couple additional pieces of software that also integrate with www.ancestry.com. You’ll need to buy Family Tree Maker 2010 and Charting Companion for Family Tree Maker in order to pull this one off. I had to bring my fan and Caroline’s Fan chart both into Photoshop and combine them there in order to get this chart to look the way it does. This should obviously be an option in the software.
