In Grace’s Pictures Grace McCaffery goes to work as a domestic servant. A vast many young Irish immigrant women were employed in the households of middle class families, like the Parkers in my story. This was the era of the Industrial Revolution, and it came to housewives as well. Once a family could afford to…
Author: Cindy Thomson
The Ellis Island Photographer
Italian immigrant photographed by A. Sherman, NYPL file. From the NYPL file, photograph of Scottish boys taken by Augustus Sherman It wasn’t an official duty, but Augustus F. Sherman, Ellis Island Registry Clerk in the early part of the 20th century was responsible for many of the iconic photographs of immigrants you’ve seen on web sites and…
Top 20 Twitter Influencers on Historical Fiction
This is today’s list of the top influencers.
Ellis Island Faces
If these were your ancestors, you’ll be interested in Grace’s Pictures.[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfDS1BQarmo?list=PLnc6blOUFJf-bQ03ajm7bheT8lGOCzuMy]
That Puzzling Brownie Camera
French Brownie ad showing a child using the camera. While the Brownie’s operation was made to be pretty simple, today there are things about them that are not so intuitive. After all, what’s more simple than what we have today? We don’t even mess with film! There are many Brownie’s out there for sale on…
My Latest Post on the Irish Fire Side
I post historical topics on the Irish Fireside blog, and today I’m talking about Ellis Island and Annie Moore. I hope you’ll stop by and comment! Irish Fire Side: Ellis Island, Linking America and Ireland
Not Her Grandmother’s Camera
In Grace’s Pictures, Grace McCaffery longs to capture an image so that she can study it more closely. What better way to do that than with Kodak? She tries sketching, but she’s not very good at it. She visits a photographer and wants to learn about picture-taking, but he does not want her to get…
Why You Should Remember Ellis Island This Memorial Day
Read about this over on Novel PASTimes and let me know what you think of this prologue clip (below) to the concert I saw last Saturday. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfDS1BQarmo]
The Faces of Your Ancestors…
…could be here. Many of these photographs used in this video were taken by Augustus Sherman. He appears in my novel, Grace’s Pictures, and takes Grace McCaffery’s photograph as she prepares to leave Ellis Island. These faces hold so many stories–the reason I wrote this book. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfDS1BQarmo]
An Irish Book Launch
Ballina photo by eric.delignieres When I was in Ireland, I had the unique opportunity to attend Kate Kerrigan’s book launch! The event was held in the beautiful little town of Ballina (Bow-lynn-ah)–I pronounced it wrong continually until I heard Kate say it. The town is near her home and the place where her mother Moira lives….
