Old Fort Niagara State Historic Site [NY]

Description

The Old Fort Niagara State Historic Site preserves Fort Niagara, founded in 1726. The majority of structures on site date from the 18th and 19th centuries. The fort is strategically located at the mouth of the Niagara River. As a result, it was crucial to deciding American dominance in the Great Lakes Region, as opposed to control by the French or British. Both the British and French controlled either the fort itself or the site of the fort at various points of time. Soldiers lived and trained on site for both World Wars. The fort also shaped the history of the Iroquois. Collections include more than 102,000 artifacts.

The site offers period rooms, student programs, guided tours for students, school overnight programs, school outreach programs, and school distance learning programs. The website offers a virtual tour.

South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum

Description

The South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum is South Carolina's official state military museum. It presents the history of military actions involving South Carolinians. Collections include uniforms, weaponry, Civil War battle flags, and textiles from the 19th and 20th centuries. Wars covered include Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Seminole War, Mexican War, Civil War, Spanish American War, World War I, and World War II. Exhibits are designed to meet state educational standards.

The museum offers exhibits, approximately one-hour school tours, monthly home school programming, Scout tours, JROTC tours, summer day camp, and teacher workshops. School tour options include a general tour and a tour with a focus on African American military history. The website offers activities to be completed at the museum, lesson plans, classroom activities, and a series of educational video clips.

National Archives and Records Administration: Southwest Region [TX]

Description

The Southwest branch of the National Archives provides access to documents—such as letters, photographs, architectural drawings, and maps—which originated from federal agencies and courts. Documents on the premises date from the 1800s to late 1900s; and were created in Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana.

Areas of collection emphasis include Native American removal, westward expansion, Chinese exclusion, segregation, repatriation, the World Wars, economic history, oil, the Civil War, slavery, and the U.S. space program.

Groups and classes are welcome to visit—with advance notice—for activities such as research, tours, internships, exhibit viewing, lectures, learning to teach history with primary sources, and genealogy workshops.

Just for Students and Educators

Educators may be interested in available professional development workshops on archival holdings and using primary sources. If the workshop does not take place at the archives, travel expenses may require payment.

You may also want to check the main page for links to the latest annual K-12 education newsletters.

If you are looking for a way to bring the archives into your classroom, rather than taking your class to Fort Worth, several digital options are available. For one, you could make use of student activities, such as an examination of historical U.S. census documents. You can also explore lesson plans on the domestic slave trade or illegal Chinese immigration, created by teachers; or you can even submit you own, inspired by the archives' sources. Finally, you might consider scheduling a roughly hour-long distance learning program. Available topics vary, but all programs are document-based and provided free of charge.

Interested in art? Looking for more lesson plans? Consider taking some time to explore Art and Archives. . .

Interested in art? Looking for more lesson plans? Consider taking some time to explore Art and Archives, a collaboration between the Southwest branch of the National Archives and the Sid Richardson Museum. The website defines primary and secondary sources, offers art and archival vocabulary lists, and contains a collection of lesson plans which utilize art to think about history. Topics include Lewis and Clark, westward expansion, the Louisiana Purchase, cowboys, Wounded Knee, and black soldiers in the Civil War. These lesson plans are generally for middle and high school students. However, a version of the Louisiana Purchase lesson plan is listed for grade five.

Museum of Colquitt County History [GA]

Description

The Museum of Colquitt County History presents the history of Colquitt County, Georgia. Exhibit topics and displays include Native American artifacts, face jugs, a small scale Chickee dwelling, a Confederate memorial and artifacts, vernacular and home artifacts, 20th-century life, tobacco, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and education.

The museum offers exhibits and a high school self study course on the Confederacy. Tours are available outside of normal museum hours with advance notice.

Harry S Truman Little White House [FL]

Description

The Harry S Truman Little White House has served as a naval station command headquarters of the Spanish American War, World War I, and World War II; President Harry S Truman's Winter White House between 1946 and 1952; and a Cold War response site. The Little White House is a living museum. More than 4/5 of the current furnishings are original to the house's Truman period. Exhibits address the 1948 election, events of 1948, and the 14 presidents who have vacationed in Florida.

The site offers an introductory film, guided tours, tours for students, and self-guided botanical tour. Student tours have different themes depending on group tours, and are available for fourth graders and above. Tour scripts are available in Czech, French, German, Japanese, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. The website offers historic photographs.

Soldiers and Sailors Military Museum and Memorial [PA]

Description

The Soldiers and Sailors Military Museum and Memorial presents the military history of Pennsylvanians from the Civil War to the War on Terrorism, and commemorates the veterans and fallen of past and present military action. Exhibits include a wide range of wartime artifacts and artwork, including a comprehensive range of prosthetic limbs and military headgear. All military branches are represented.

The museum offers exhibits, one-hour or 270-minute guided educational tours, 150-minute guided educational tours with hands-on activities, outreach presentations, camps, and Scout programs. Tour topics include both World Wars, the Homefront, the Civil War, women and war, African Americans and war, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. The website offers veteran and fallen solider listings.

Buffalo Soldiers National Museum [TX]

Description

The Buffalo Soldiers National Museum presents the story of African American soldiers in the United States. An 1866 Congressional act created six African American Army units, two cavalry and four infantry. The high skill level of the 10th cavalry unit led to its members being known as Buffalo Warriors as early as 1867. Over time, the nickname spread; and came to refer to all African American soldiers.

The museum offers exhibits.

Pennsylvania Military Museum

Description

The Pennsylvania Military Museum tells the story of Pennsylvanians who have served the United States through military enrollment, regardless of branch. The grounds served as the National Guard's first mounted machine gun troop's training grounds in 1916.

The museum offers exhibits; a film; guided tours of the museum and the National Guard's 28th Infantry Division Shrine; a themed, guided tour focusing on armored vehicles; self-guided tours; an information hunt or RECON mission; outreach PowerPoint presentations on changing battlefield technologies, field medicine, and being a historical interpreter; and a picnic area. The website offers teaching modules on the Spanish American War, World War I, and World War II.

California State Military Museum

Description

The California State Military Museum is the official state military museum, under the U.S. Army. Today, the museum houses over 30,000 artifacts, a library with over 10,000 volumes, and archives. These collections include items of importance to state and national military history of all military branches, ranging in time from prior to the Spanish American War to World War II.

The museum offers exhibits, a research library, an image library with a number of online selections, and guided tours for school groups.

ABMC War Dead Database

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Annotation

This American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) Burials and Memorializations database features over 224,000 records of individuals buried or memorialized in ABMC cemeteries and memorials worldwide. Covering 24 cemeteries in 10 foreign countries and 3 additional memorials in the U.S., this database provides online access to burial information of those killed in action primarily during World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.

Additional individuals include veterans, active duty military, and civilians. The database also provides information on individuals in the Corozal American Cemetery (Panama) and the Mexico City National Cemetery (Mexico), including civilians and veterans of the Spanish-American War and the Civil War.

The database interface allows students to search by name, war or conflict, service or serial number, branch of service, unit, service entry location, cemetery/memorial, date of death, and keyword. Users can also search for service members who are missing in action and Medal of Honor recipients who are buried or memorialized by ABMC.

This organization of the material allows the user to explore a wealth of information. Students can research the geographic distribution of burials or explore representation among military branches in individual cemeteries. The ABMC database allows users to focus on who is buried and memorialized and to explore the experiences of individual soldiers as well as patterns and commonalities.

Students, for example, could begin to explore the number of women who served as nurses during World War I and the Influenza epidemic of 1918, or the experiences of the 100th Infantry Battalion of the U.S. Army during World War II. Or they could chose to search for an individual from their home state or community and use the database’s information as a starting point to research the life of this individual. They can download search results and print, email, or share individual records.

This valuable research and teaching resource is accompanied by a robust “Education Resources” section featuring interactive timelines and campaign narratives, cemetery or memorial-specific mobile apps, publications, videos, lesson plans, and curriculum ideas. The “Flying Yanks: American Airmen in WWI” interactive, for example, provides historical background for students exploring the air war in WWI, a timeline and map with primary sources, as well as individual stories of airmen.

Students can use the database in conjunction with the learning materials to enrich their understanding of U.S. military history, memorialization, public history, and numerous other historical topics.