Description: Vicarious research is one of the great joys of the reference desk at the Smithsonian Institution Archives. From our front-row (well, only-row) seat outside the reading room, we catch tantalizing glimpses of our patrons’ manifold research topics.The reference team fields around 6,000 queries per year. Ask us what people have been researching recently, and you’ll get into some
Description: [caption id="attachment_4168" align="aligncenter" width="261" caption="Albumen portrait of the Reverend Levi L. Hill, Baptist minister and early daguerreotypist, West Kill, New York and New York City, b. 1816-d. February 9, 1865. Inscription on reverse, “Levi L. Hill, Died February 9, 1865, He is Asleep in Heaven.”"][/caption] Just when we think that we must have at last