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Welcome

Welcome to Relic on the Lethe. This blog is my little foray into primary sources to find forgotten tidbits of history. While I cannot guarantee what we will find and what the format will be, you're almost certain never to have heard these tales before. 📖

I am currently aiming to create a post every two weeks, but that's not a hard and fast schedule. I sometime drop hints about my next blog on my Ko-fi page

A large part of the work of this blog actually focus on the back-end part of making scanned newspapers accessible and easily searched/read by correcting the OCR errors. While this is my hobby, it's still hard work that's pretty much unappreciated. A couple bucks here and there for my coffee habit helps keep up the motivation!

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

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Popular posts from this blog

A Fratricide in Clarke County: Part Four

If you're just joining us on this long and twisting tale, you can catch up with Part One , Part Two , and Part Three . Today's entry should be our final entry into the saga of the Little family, and it will not have any detailed medical testimony (just in case you're squeamish). To quickly recap where we left off, the first trial for Lycurgus Little was held over two weeks in October of 1873 in Berryville, with Judge Turner presiding. At the end, Lycurgus was deemed guilty of second degree murder. Lycurgus' Sentencing The sentence was proclaimed on the following Saturday, around 3 PM. Lycurgus was said to be pale but composed, "though a few tears were shed." According to the Winchester News : Judge Turner then proceeded to pronounce the sentence of the court, in conformity with the decision of the jury. When the Judge mentioned the term of imprisonment, the prisoner interrupted him by asking. “How long, Judge?" “Fourteen years,” replied the Judge; “bu...

Halloween Harvest Art Pack

I slipped one last Halloween-adjacent pack into the shop this week! This is predominantly a simple line art pack, with many images pulled from an image scavenger hunt page for children circa 1919.  A divider bar from the pack, featuring three black cats and mice. This pack also includes of my favorite full page magazine covers I had seen from The Pacific Printer, a trade magazine for printers, publishers, and editors. Their November 1916 edition featured very organic, almost psychedelic pumpkins. I have removed the text, so now the page is more adaptable - it would be a fun greeting card cover or one-page invitation form, especially when paired with an Art Nouveau or 1960s style sinuous font. A completed teaser image for this pack, featuring a frog, rat, two spiderwebs, and a gnome tickling the leaves off a tree.   You can snag your pack at Ko-fi starting at $2!

Thanksgiving Feast Artwork

While I missed Canada's Thanksgiving this year, this next pack of 20 PNGs should give the US friends plenty of time to design invitations, place settings, or greeting cards. A turkey bears an invitation to Thanksgiving, suggested as a place card for the Thanksgiving table, circa 1919. This batch is a mixed bag from different artists and time periods, and even publications. The oldest images are circa 1869, sourced from newspaper "specimen books" to show off typefaces and ornaments. About half of the images are from homemaking magazines like Good Housekeeping, either as illustrations to stories or as divider bars or section titles. The three hand-lettered versions of the word "Thanksgiving" were all part of a school workbook, showing examples of classroom activities around 1920. A few images in this batch were even sourced from a sales book for pottery! I selected this batch to focus more on the people, food and cooking aspects of Thanksgiving; if this doesn'...