The “Curious Sources” series is a new series with two goals. The first goal is to offer junior scholars—particularly graduate students and recent graduates—a forum in The Panorama, the blog of the Journal of the Early Republic. The second goal of the series is to be a home for the sources that have ended up on the proverbial cutting-room floor. These sources may be accidental finds, manuscripts tucked inside the wrong folder, for example. They might be not-so-accidental finds, end of day requests made by a tired researcher whose eye caught something strange in the catalog. As painful as it can be, not everything can make it into the final product of hours, days, weeks of research. Luckily, anything can make it into Curious Sources. The authors of these short form pieces have generously shared fragments of their research and, in doing so, have invited the readers of The Panorama into to share in one of their own precious moments of curiosity in the archive. The first installment of Curious Sources includes one early American’s vision of America as Atlantis, coverage of a dog-powered mill, British peace medals gifted to fifty-seven Dakota men after the war of 1812, and a literal grain in the archive.

The Curious Sources series will appear periodically, and The Panorama’s call for participants is ongoing. We invite junior scholars to submit brief abstracts of their own reflections on their curious archival finds to the Journal of the Early Republic’s senior editorial assistant, Elena Telles Ryan at emryan@princeton.edu.