Rare Book Monthly
Articles - November - 2008 Issue
Wiki Bibliographies: The Way to the Future
Patriotism before the Civil War
Now let's take a look at what a working example of a Wiki Bibliography looks like. We have created two. The first is on the printings of Paraclete Potter, a Poughkeepsie printer involved in the trade from 1802 to 1840. The material I've identified includes newspapers, almanacs, books and pamphlets. He inevitably also printed broadsides but I've so far not found any. The other wiki is about Rondout, the town at the nexus of the Rondout Creek and Hudson River that came and went in the 19th century and left a colorful if mostly forgotten history that its wiki bibliography may help restore to public awareness. The balance of this article focuses primarily on Rondout while the Potter bibliography is an option for selecting an alternative to examine. Here is a link to an article I wrote on Paraclete Potter in the September issue of AE. The structure of wikis will be consistent but, as is the case with these two examples, content and emphasis will widely vary.
Shortcut to the Wiki Pages.
Background on Rondout
In the early development of the Hudson Valley Kingston, facing the Hudson River to the east and the Rondout Creek to the south provided both protection and access for early settlement. Kingston was in Indian country, the early buildings fortified and many of the houses made of stone. Early development in New York State was along waterways as travel by land was slow, arduous and sometimes dangerous. In the early 19th century a toll road highway system developed to connect inland points with the communities such as Kingston. In the same era canals were developed to extend the convenience of water transport to places that had significant materials but no natural water outlet by which to send them to market. Apropos of this coal mines in northern Pennsylvania, to send their salable fuel into New York City, needed efficient transportation and from that need the Delaware & Hudson Canal was proposed in 1823 and completed in 1828. It stretched 108 miles from Honesdale, Pennsylvania to Eddyville on the Rondout Creek. A few miles further on, near to where the Creek runs into the Hudson and where deep water mooring was possible, Rondout was born. The canal, the steady cargo, New York City's increasing requirements, and the absence of competitive alternatives then turned a minor footnote into a thriving place that in sixty years would peak and then decline into historical obscurity.
Do a Google map search today for Rondout in New York State and it finds only a creek. Rondout, the place, long ago disappeared, its moment in the sun brief. On David Burr’s 1829 "Map of the County of Ulster" there is Kingston and a coterie of nearby villages but not yet a Rondout. In the 1840 re-strike of this map executed by Stone & Clark "Roundaut" is present. Bolton and Twaalkskill, present in the 1829 map, have then disappeared and in their general place the spectral "Roundout" hoves into view. In 1845 Rondout appears among the list of communities that have a post office and on the 1847 Disturnell's Map of the State of New York the place is identified by its correct spelling and places it among many nearby names - Kingston, Eddyville and Rosendale that survive to the current day. From that day to the present in fact only Rondout will prove to be ephemeral. The others would survive to become Google map search results.
When the Gazetteer of the State of New York by J.H. French is published in 1860 its modern description of Rondout suggests a robust place:
