Nevada County Historical Society and Museums [CA]

Description

The Nevada County Historical Society seeks to preserve and share the history of Nevada County, California. To this end, the society operates the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum, North Star Mine Powerhouse and Pelton Wheel Museum, Firehouse Museum, and Searls Library. The railroad museum presents local transportation history. Collection highlights include seven historic railroad cars, dating from 1889 to circa 1940. The mining museum's collection highlights include a working Cornish pump; working stamp mill; and the largest Pelton wheel, a mechanism for supplying air to power the mines, ever made. The Firehouse Museum, housed in an 1861 structure, presents exhibits on the Maidu people, the Donner Party, Chinese-American daily life and religion between 1877 and 1938, and vernacular items dating from circa 1850 to present.

The society offers monthly speakers and both library and archive access. Research assistance is available for a fee. The railroad museum and firehouse museum offer exhibits. The mining museum offers self-guided tours, period dioramas, and exhibits. The website offers digital historical and genealogical databases.

Column A and Column B

Quiz Webform ID
22412
date_published
Teaser

In the 19th century, no one expected Chinese food to take off in the United States.

quiz_instructions

Some of the first who ventured to eat Chinese cooking reported back unfavorably—New York journalist Edwin Trafton wrote in Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly, "I feel as though I had eaten a rare-done nightmare," after eating a Chinese meal—but the cuisine soon took off. Answer the following questions.

Quiz Answer

1. In which of the following areas did early Chinese immigrants typically not find work?

e. Opening Chinese restaurants for non-Chinese

2. The first restaurant in America aiming to purvey Chinese food to non-Chinese customers opened around:

b. 1890

3. Which of the following is typical fare in China?

d. Sweet and sour pork

4. Which of the following were not among the first non-Chinese in America to develop a taste for Chinese food?

b. Irish construction workers who built the Union Pacific Railroad line to the West, who learned about Chinese cooking from the Chinese construction workers on the Central Pacific Railroad.

For more information

For more on Chinese immigrants' lifestyles and both outside and inside perceptions of a large Chinese immigrant community, check out the collection of close to 8,000 primary sources at the Library of Congress' American Memory website The Chinese in California, 1850-1925.

The Chinese-American Museum of Chicago collects postcards, menus, and both modern and historical articles on Chinese food on its subpage "Chinese Food and Restaurants in the Midwest".

Also check out the full text of one of the earliest Chinese (and Japanese) cookbooks published in the United States—Sarah Bosse's Chinese-Japanese Cook Book, hosted at Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project.

Sources
  • Bonner, Arthur. Alas! What Brought Thee Hither?: The Chinese in New York, 1800-1950. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1997.
  • Chan, Shiu Wong. The Chinese Cook Book. New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1917.
  • "Chinese Cooking. Chinese Gastronomy Different from American. Wong Chin Foo's Account of His Countrymen's Customs." Galveston Daily News, July 27, 1884, 10.
  • "Chinese newspaper, dishware, basket and other unidentified items," Library of Congress, Alice Iola Hare Photograph Collection, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. (accessed April 16, 2010).
  • "Chinese Reception for Gotham: Reginald De Koven Plans a Purely Celestial Entertainment." Chicago Daily Tribune, November 16, 1896, 1.
  • "Chinese Restaurant on Dupont Street, San Francisco, Cal.: From Illustrated San Francisco News," 1869, Library of Congress, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (accessed April 14, 2010).
  • "Chow Chop Suey." Daily (Chicago) Inter Ocean, March 23, 1896, 4.
  • Foo, Wang Chin. "The Chinese in New York." The Cosmopolitan, June 1888, 297-311.
  • Forman, Allan. "A Celestial Delmonico. Eating Perfumed Pig and Other Delicacies at a Chinese Restaurant in Gotham." Daily (Chicago) Inter Ocean, July 25, 1886, 11.
  • Forman, Allan. "The Chinese in New York." Atchison Daily Globe March 25, 1887.
  • "General Intelligence." Boston Investigator, October 10, 1888, 6.
  • "Quoe's Guests. They Ate of His Several Chinese Viands. Members of Boston's 400 Enjoy a New Dinner." Boston Daily Globe, March 1, 1891, 4.
  • Trafton, Edwin H. "A Chinese Dinner in New York." Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly, February 1884, 183-187.
  • Young, Alexander. "Chinese Food and Cookery." Appletons' Journal of Literature, Science and Art, September 14, 1872, 291-293.
thumbnail
Preview Mode
On

The China Trade

Description

Using ESSEX History examines local history at its best in this seminar lookubg at Salem and the China Trade with Salem State's Dr. Dane Morrison. Dr. Morrison will lead attendees through a discussion of the economic and maritime history of Salem during the China Trade and the ways in which this vast trading network affected the economy and culture of Essex County. This seminar will take place at the House of the Seven Gables—a stone's throw from historic Derby Wharf, the center of the China Trade. In the afternoon, teachers will be introduced to some of the Peabody Essex Museum's vast collections of China Trade artifacts.

Contact name
Bethany, Jay
Registration Deadline
Sponsoring Organization
http://teachinghistory.org/node/20040/editUsingEssexHistory.org
Phone number
1 978-542-7349
Target Audience
Middle and high school
Start Date
Course Credit
By attending an entire seminar and preparing a quality lesson plan based on the materials and information discussed during the day, participating teachers will earn 10 PDPs and a stipend of $125.
Contact Title
Academic Director
Duration
Six hours

Teach In: Race and Immigration

Description

This event will provide an examination of two Facing History resources that explore the critical role that race has played in U.S. history as it relates to immigration policy: Race and Membership in American History: The Eugenics Movement and Becoming American: The Chinese Experience.

Sponsoring Organization
Facing History and Ourselves
Target Audience
K-12
Start Date
Cost
Free
Duration
Three hours

Becoming American: The Chinese Experience

Description

Bill Moyers's documentary, Becoming American: The Chinese Experience, explores the challenges faced by Chinese Americans from the 1800s to the present and raises questions about the tensions between race, democracy, and citizenship. Participants view excerpts and explore parallels between the Chinese experience and those of other newcomers to the U.S.—what it means to "become American" today.

Sponsoring Organization
Facing History and Ourselves
Target Audience
K-12
Start Date
Cost
Free
Duration
Five hours

Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project

Image
Annotation

The long history of struggle for equal rights by various ethnic groups in Seattle, including Filipino, Chinese, Japanese, African, and Native Americans; Jews; and Latinos is documented on this website. Primary and secondary sources integrate labor rights movements with struggles for political rights, as is evident in the "special sections," that highlight the Chicano/a movement, the Black Panther Party, Filipino Cannery Unionism, the United Construction Workers Association, Communism, and the United Farm Workers. Each section brings together oral histories, documents, newspapers, and photographs that are accompanied by written and video commentary to provide historical context. The collection of more than 70 oral histories of activists is especially useful for understanding the lived experience of racism and its especially subtle workings in the Pacific Northwest. Together, these resources provide important national context for the civil rights struggle, too often understood as a solely southern phenomenon.

USC Archival Research Center Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/14/2008 - 11:31
Image
Annotation

These varied collections document the history of Los Angeles and southern California. "Digital Archives" offer more than 126,000 photographs, maps, manuscripts, texts, and sound recordings in addition to exhibits. Nearly 1,200 images of artifacts from early Chinese American settlements in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara are available, as is the entire run of El Clamor Publico, the city's main Spanish-language newspaper from the 1850s. Photographs document Japanese American relocation during World War II and photographs, documents, and oral history audio files record Korean-American history. The archive also includes Works Projects Administration Land Use survey maps and Auto Club materials. A related exhibit, "Los Angeles: Past, Present, and Future", offers collections on additional topics, including discovery and settlement, California missions, electric power, "murders, crimes, and scandals," city neighborhoods, cemeteries, Disneyland, African American gangs, and the Red Car lines.

Marchand Archive Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/25/2008 - 22:21
Image
Annotation

A memorial to Roland Marchand, the late historian of popular culture and advertising, this website presents a slide library with more than 6,100 images, including more than 2,000 advertisements, drawn from Marchand's collection. The images are organized into more than 40 major categories and close to 200 subcategories.

The site also offers 48 lesson plans designed by Marchand, each with an introduction, an essay assignment, and 10 to 40 primary source documents. The lessons cover a diverse range of controversial topics, including the Antinomian Controversy, the reactions against Chinese immigrants, the Pullman Strike, the Women's Suffrage Movement, and Watergate. The site will be useful for researching popular culture and advertising, as well as numerous other topics in American history, such as women, wars, immigration, labor, and African Americans.