Thomas Nast Anti-Irish Cartoons

Among the recently digitized images added to our online collection are a number of drawings by cartoonist Thomas Nast. In 1846 at the age of six, Nast immigrated with his mother to the United States and by age 15 he had begun drawing for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated News.[1] He joined

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Patrick Coad, patentee of the galvanic battery, and interesting miscellaneous items

I am almost finished processing a small collection, Patrick Coad Family Papers (MC 37). An online finding aid will soon be available. Patrick Coad (1783-1872), an Irish immigrant who settled in Philadelphia, was the first American patentee of a graduated galvanic battery with insulated poles. Coad was a noted teacher and lecturer of medicine

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Anti-Catholicism in Jacksonian Philadelphia

Anti-Catholicism was present in America since its founding though, by the early 19th century it had become “largely rhetorical.” The influx of Catholic immigrants, however, as well as the increasingly aggressive and authoritarian stance of the papacy, which became more outspoken in its denunciations of modernism and liberalism, established a

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