About
Tweets of Old is the blog of @TweetsofOld
@TweetsofOld is a Twitter stream that began as a convenient way to store interesting old news found while doing research for a book (due out Fall, 2011) about fraternal lodge initiations in the late 19th, early 20th centuries, and the company which manufactured the extraordinary equipment used for them.
Most of what I publish here are “one-liners,” the original items –brief, but whole. I sometimes edit in minor ways for length. These occasionally gossipy news briefs were popular in small town papers and often were grouped according to section or county of residence, and in some newspapers filled several pages. They were listed under headings entitled “local brevities,” “tidbits,” “squibs,” “jottings,” “scintillations,” “whisperings,” “murmurings,” “siftings,” “dots,” “echos,” “crumbs,” “sparks,” “ripples,” “telegraphs,” and so on.
Before 1900, news was often telegraphed. “Telegraphic Brevities” were found in The New York Times and other newspapers worldwide. http://bit.ly/bQYZ0G
Most “Tweets of Old” are transcribed by me from digital scans of newspapers found in online archives, or from actual antique newspapers. Some tweets are taken, already transcribed, from USGENWEB archives. Thanks to devoted genealogists, I am able to do this.
R. L. Ripples is a pseudonym.
