Philadelphia History Meetup

The Association of Philadelphia Tour Guides (APT) is organizing a tour of the USS New Jersey (BB-62) on Sunday, May 4. The Battleship New Jersey Museum and Memorial, in Camden, NJ, provides an up-close look at our nation’s military history. Guests will enjoy their visit to this floating U.S. Navy museum of our nation’s largest battleships ever built.

Battleship New Jersey was dry docked for major work on at least three separate occasions in her last decade of service, which is the norm for an active vessel. Before now, her most recent dry docking was from late 1990 into 1991 when she was being deactivated and prepared for the mothball fleet. For an active vessel, dry docking every couple of years is necessary, however, for a museum ship, 20-year intervals is acceptable and common.

On March 21, 2024, the Battleship departed the Pat Jones/John Matheussen pier for historic dry dock preventive maintenance for the first time in over 30 years. The ship was guided by tugboats from McAllister Towing. The ship was turned around, headed south under the Walt Whitman Bridge to the Paulsboro Marine Terminal. After adding 2,000 tons of water to her for ballast, on March 27, the Battleship New Jersey left the Paulsboro Marine Terminal. She successfully cruised north on the Delaware River to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. The Battleship was guided by four tug boats from McAllister Towing and took about two hours to traverse the river to the Naval Shipyard, where she was berthed in Dock #3, the same dock she was launched from on Dec. 7, 1942.

The Battleship remained in dry dock for 78 days, and returned to her home port on June 20, 2024.

Space is limited, and participants must pay in advance to secure this trip. The cost is $12 payable in the APT Store. After paying, participants should register with Mike Teti at vicepresident@phillyguides.org to get the relevant meeting information.

Take advantage of this great opportunity to prepare for this fall's Homecoming 250 Navy and Marine Corps anniversaries!

USS New Jersey Directions: https://www.battleshipnewjersey.org/visit/visitor-information/directions/

The Association of Philadelphia Tour Guides (APT) will hold its next monthly meeting on May 14, 7 pm, in person at the Great Hall of Christ Church Neighborhood House (20 N. American Street) and livestreamed on Zoom.

Kicking off the meeting is Kelli Racine Barnes, PhD, formerly a NPS Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow at Independence National Historical Park (INHP) (funding for her position was cut by executive order). Kelli will share the project she worked on, '(In)Visible Architects of Freedom' Digital Archive, a database of primary sources related to the development of the Black American community in early Philadelphia.

As a collaboration between INHP and the Philadelphia School District's African American History Teacher Cohort, this project was designed with and for educators and students. Its original purpose was to serve as a central digital location with free, easy access to primary sources illuminating the community-building endeavors, achievements, and lived experiences of Philadelphia's Black American residents.

Kelli is a scholar whose interests include 18th and 19th century United States history, Black American girlhood, transatlantic material culture, interpretive planning, and exhibit design. She earned her PhD in History and a graduate certificate in Museum Studies from the University of Delaware, where she was an African American Public Humanities Fellow.

The Zoom link will be shared in the APT Tour Talk newsletter the week of the meeting. Non-members should email Marianne Ruane at president@phillyguides.org no later than 5 pm the day of the meeting to receive the Zoom link. A recording will be available on the APT YouTube page for a month following the talk.

APT meetings are open to aspiring and working tour guides as well as anyone with an interest in Philadelphia-focused history. Attend one meeting for free and then it is $60 to join the association for the year or $10 per monthly meeting in-person event. Zoom meetings are free. Please join us for convivial company, good food, fascinating presentations, and lively discussions.

The Association of Philadelphia Tour Guides (APT) will hold its next Zoom book club meeting on May 20 at 7 pm. All are welcome to attend. The book selection is Portrait of a Woman in Silk: Hidden Histories of the British Atlantic World by Zara Anishanslin.

Through the story of a portrait of a woman in a silk dress, historian Zara Anishanslin embarks on a fascinating journey, exploring and refining debates about the cultural history of the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world. While most scholarship on commodities focuses either on labor and production or on consumption and use, Anishanslin unifies both, examining the worlds of four identifiable people who produced, wore, and represented this object: a London weaver, one of early modern Britain’s few women silk designers, a Philadelphia merchant’s wife, and a New England painter.

Blending macro and micro history with nuanced gender analysis, Anishanslin shows how making, buying, and using goods in the British Atlantic created an object-based community that tied its inhabitants together, while also allowing for different views of the Empire. Investigating a range of subjects including self-fashioning, identity, natural history, politics, and trade, Anishanslin makes major contributions both to the study of material culture and to our ongoing conversation about how to write history.

APT members will find Zoom details in the Tour Talk newsletter the week of the meeting. Non-APT members who would like to participate in the May book club should email APT Secretary Pam Covey at secretary@phillyguides.org no later than 5 pm the day of the meeting to receive the Zoom link. Please join us!