Emily Sneff<p>Still learning but grateful to <span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://historians.social/@kawulf" class="u-url mention">@<span>kawulf</span></a></span>, <span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://historians.social/@lizcovart" class="u-url mention">@<span>lizcovart</span></a></span>, and <span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://historians.social/@jmadelman" class="u-url mention">@<span>jmadelman</span></a></span> for setting up historians.social -- no one I would rather follow into a new information network!</p><p>A quick <a href="https://historians.social/tags/histodons" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>histodons</span></a> <a href="https://historians.social/tags/introduction" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>introduction</span></a>: I'm a Ph.D. Candidate at William & Mary and a dissertation fellow at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies. Expect all sorts of Declaration of Independence content here as I write my dissertation, "When Independence was Declared," which traces the news around the Atlantic in 1776.</p>
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Emily Sneff@emily_sneff@historians.social
Historian of the Declaration of Independence | Ph.D. Candidate, William & Mary | MCEAS Dissertation Fellow 2022-23 | #phillyphilly
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2022
- Website
- emilysneff.com
Emily Sneff<p>A favorite line from the last bit of notes John Dickinson prepared for his July 1, 1776 speech urging the Continental Congress to wait on independence:</p><p>"I should be glad to read a little more in the Doomsday Book of America---Not all---that like the Book of Fate might be too dreadful---Title page---Binding."</p><p>He wanted to know if the United States would get the opportunity to exist.</p>
Emily Sneff
Emily Sneff<p>Can't stop won't stop making Declaration content, even when I have my own draft due to my own committee 😅 </p><p><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CtbwAobJ5aV/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="">instagram.com/p/CtbwAobJ5aV/</span><span class="invisible"></span></a></p>
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Emily Sneff<p>I regularly drive through Ursinus College and have to give props to whoever came up with the idea for banners with the motto “It Starts With U And Ends With US”</p>
Emily Sneff<p>So sad that today is our final MCEAS event as fellows, but so glad that it's a seminar from our beyond brilliant sabbatical fellow Tara Bynum. Will be thinking about her writing on Obour Tanner for a long time!</p>
Emily Sneff<p>Very much like Mike Borsk to round out our McNeil Center fellowship year with such lovely words: "It would be much easier to wrap up this year had it not been spent with such great colleagues and friends. I count myself lucky to have been part of a cohort as exciting, as serious, and perhaps most importantly, as kind as this one." <a href="https://www.mceas.org/news/2023/05/01/mceas-fellow-profile-michael-borsk" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">mceas.org/news/2023/05/01/mcea</span><span class="invisible">s-fellow-profile-michael-borsk</span></a></p>
Emily Sneff<p>I love reading toasts from July 4th celebrations and I especially love the gory ones.</p><p>A favorite from 1776 in Worcester, MA is "Perpetual itching without the benefit of scratching to the Enemies of America."</p><p>But this one from Portsmouth, NH in 1812 is pretty good, too: "The American Eagle. She has power to pick out the eyes of the British Lion and build her nest in their sockets."</p>
Emily Sneff<p>Sometimes, being an early American historian means being *very* excited to learn that one of your research subjects was inoculated against smallpox 💪</p>
Emily Sneff<p>I had to go back to April 1775 to understand who was printing in Boston in July 1776, and noticed this cliffhanger on the last page of Edes & Gill's Boston Gazette on April 17.</p><p>Spoiler alert: It was never continued, because the thirteenth "Novanglus" letter was preempted by Lexington and Concord, and Edes & Gill never printed together again. (Edes kept the Boston Gazette going in Watertown during the British occupation, Gill started the Continental Journal in Boston after the British left)</p>
Emily Sneff<p>"My anxiety for your welfare will never leave me but with my parting Breath, tis of more importance to me than all this World contains besides."</p><p>A gorgeous line from Abigail Adams to John, written while she was mid-recovery from smallpox inoculation</p>
Emily Sneff
Emily Sneff
Emily Sneff<p>If you don't see anything different about this printing of the Declaration of Independence, then come to my presentation at the David Center seminar on Wednesday.</p><p>If you do see what's different, then still come! Looking forward to feedback on this pivotal chapter of my dissertation.</p><p><a href="https://www.amphilsoc.org/events/david-center-american-revolution-seminar-eye-enmity-censoring-and-celebrating-declaration" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">amphilsoc.org/events/david-cen</span><span class="invisible">ter-american-revolution-seminar-eye-enmity-censoring-and-celebrating-declaration</span></a></p>
Emily Sneff<p>Realized today that, although Unabhängigkeitserklärung may seem like an unwieldy German word, it has 24 letters, and its English equivalent---Declaration of Independence---has 25. Given how often I type out "Declaration of Independence" in a day, it would actually be more efficient for me to use the German, if I didn't have to pause to add the umlauts.</p>
Emily Sneff<p>Thanks to Rob Lowe's new Netflix show for giving me the word "Declaraish"</p><p>Which, admittedly, doesn't sound as good/bad as "Constitutoosh"</p><p>(And, despite what the character in the show says, does say something about murder)</p>
Emily Sneff<p>Come for the Houdon bust of Jefferson that converted me to early American history, stay for my genuine concern that the Eagles will never make it back to the Super Bowl if I leave the McNeil Center</p><p>(And read the other fellows' profiles, too! So glad to be dissertating with this bunch)</p><p><a href="https://www.mceas.org/news/2023/03/29/mceas-fellow-profile-emily-sneff" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">mceas.org/news/2023/03/29/mcea</span><span class="invisible">s-fellow-profile-emily-sneff</span></a></p>
Emily Sneff<p>The problem with growing up in the boy band era is that I made a quick note to remind myself to "cite JT" and, when I came back to it, I had to think about who I meant. </p><p>(<span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://historians.social/@PubliusOrPerish" class="u-url mention">@<span>PubliusOrPerish</span></a></span>, though "Bye Bye Bye" is on my dissertation playlist)</p>
Emily Sneff<p>Wrapping up my draft for the David Center seminar April 12. If you want to know what happened to the Declaration of Independence in London, please come! This is probably the most important chapter of my dissertation, so I'm really looking forward to the feedback from the David Center/APS community. <a href="https://www.amphilsoc.org/events/david-center-american-revolution-seminar-eye-enmity-censoring-and-celebrating-declaration" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">amphilsoc.org/events/david-cen</span><span class="invisible">ter-american-revolution-seminar-eye-enmity-censoring-and-celebrating-declaration</span></a></p>
Emily Sneff<p>Every time I question how much I actually need to talk about Lord Dunmore in my dissertation, another piece of evidence convinces me. This time, a reference in Sylvia Frey's "Between Slavery and Freedom" to Benjamin Henry Latrobe's journals, where he describes seeing "Many Waggon loads of bones of Men and women and children" on Gwynn's Island decades after July 1776, when Dunmore abandoned hundreds of dead and dying Black people there.</p>
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