New Jersey Public Records and Archives

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For historians researching New Jersey, this site's main interest will be its "state archives." "Catalog" provides access to nearly 200 pre-established searches on the archive's manuscript series, genealogical holdings, business and corporate records, cultural resources, and maps. Topics include military conflicts, society and economics, transportation, public works agencies, and photographic collections, as well as state, county, municipal, and federal government records. The other major feature consists of eight image collections with themes that include New Jersey Civil War soldiers, Spanish-American War Infantry Officers, Spanish-American War Naval Officers, Gettysburg Monuments, and views of the Morris Canal. The archives site also includes a searchable index of New Jersey Supreme Court cases, a transcription of New Jersey's 1776 constitution, and a table summarizing the holdings of the state archives. This site is a useful aid for researching the history and culture of New Jersey.

Dolley Madison Digital Edition

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This website presents all known correspondence of the wife of James Madison, containing roughly 2,000 letters. Although many letters are thank-you notes or polite responses to social invitations, others offer rich insights into the personality and experiences of the First Lady, especially those exchanged with her sisters. The letters are organized into five periods: birth and youth; the years as wife of the secretary of state; the years as first lady; retirement; and widowhood. Users can search by name, date, topic, or place. A table of contents lists the letters by date, author, and recipient.

Additional features include a biographical sketch; "Crosslinks" listing all names (including nicknames, middle, and maiden) appearing in each letter, in order of appearance; a different color font to highlight unclear or missing characters or words; and a summary of the contents of each letter. Although the site is gated, a free trial option is accessible to all.

Maryland Digital Cultural Heritage

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The cultural heritage of Maryland is readily accessible here through thousands of digitized documents, maps, and images arranged into more than 40 collections and two exhibits. Baltimore's native son and prominent early 20th-century journalist H.L. Mencken is featured through a collection of 19 portraits, artifacts, and letters. Edgar Allen Poe, who lived in Baltimore late in his life, can be glimpsed through 18 portraits, drafts, and letters. Another collection offers digital copies of primary sources from the War of 1812, including an original draft of the "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Other collections include photographs of African American life, a selection of sports-related items, photographs and watercolor paintings of old houses and churches in Queen Anne's County, vintage photographs of Baltimore streets and street cars, and a series of photographs awaiting identification from collection users. Ample historical context, including library donation information, is provided for all collections. The website's blog will be useful for those interested in library sciences, preservation, and digital archiving.

The Franklin County Publication Archives Index

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This resource was designed for researchers and genealogists interested in Franklin County, MA, or social history in the late 19th century. It provides more than 12,000 articles from January 1870 to September 1873, organized by a full-text index. Gathered from the Greenfield Courier and Gazette, the articles are searchable by subject, and address topics such as African Americans, birth control, crime, cults, immigration, food, and bicycling.

The articles were chosen according to the interests of the site creator and emphasize social history and daily life. Information is also available on local court cases, cosmetics, fashion, and wife abuse. Article lengths vary from a few words to more than 700 words, but most are about 40 words. There are some explanatory comments and links within the text that provide biographical information of individuals and descriptions of 19th-century terminology, celebrations, or illnesses. The articles have been transcribed; original documents are not viewable. A valuable resource.

Red White Blue & Brimstone: New World Literature and the American Millennium

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An exhibit of 101 images with a 10,000-word essay that tracks the influence of the Book of Revelations' apocalyptic vision of history in shaping conceptions of America and its destiny for religious zealots and others from the colonial era to the present. With images primarily from published texts—covers, title pages, illustrations, and relevant pages of writing—the exhibit is divided into 14 chronological sections, each opening with a quote from Revelations and detailing its relevance in successive historical periods. The exhibit begins with the period of the English Reformation, when John Foxe's Book of Martyrs, exported to America, related contemporary political events to scripture and established a timeline that proved influential over the next 250 years. The site covers beliefs that American Indians were descendants of the lost tribes of Israel; Cotton Mather's sermons as the culmination of a century of speculation about America's place in the apocalyptic scheme; early nationalist ambitions as fulfilling prophecy; and the influence of Revelations on Thomas Jefferson. The site also looks at William Miller's numerologically-based predictions of the end of the world in 1843; millennial movements in the antebellum era; urban exposÎs that conceived of American cities as present-day incarnations of Babylon; and 20th-century anti-Semitic thought. Well organized, the exhibit provides a useful introduction to students of American religion and culture of the persistence of the power of the Book of Revelations, but exaggerates its importance with the odd claim that no other book has "produced a more profound vision of America's hopes, duties, dreams, and destiny."

The Boston Massacre: Fact, Fiction, or Bad Memory

Teaser

Help students think about where evidence for history comes from.

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Description

Students attempt to assign responsibility for the Boston Massacre through careful reading of primary and secondary sources and consideration of such issues as who produced the evidence, when it was produced and why was it produced.

Article Body

With iconic historical events such as the Boston Massacre it can be difficult to separate historical fact from myth. This lesson acquaints students with some of the subtleties of constructing historical accounts. It allows them to see firsthand the role of point of view, motive for writing, and historical context in doing history. The lesson opens with an anticipatory activity that helps illustrate to students how unreliable memory can be, and how accounts of the past change over time. Students then analyze a set of three different accounts of the Boston Massacre: a first-hand recollection recorded 64 years after the fact, an account written by an historian in 1877, and an engraving made by Paul Revere shortly after the event. We especially like the fact that with the first document, the teacher models the cognitive process of analyzing the source information by engaging in a “think aloud” with the document. This provides a great opportunity to uncover for students the kinds of thoughts and questions with which an historian approaches an historical source. The primary source reading is challenging, and students will likely require significant additional scaffolding to understand the meaning of the texts. Teachers may want to consider pre-teaching some of the difficult vocabulary, excerpting or modifying the text, or perhaps reading the text dramatically together as a whole class.

Topic
Revolutionary War; Boston Massacre
Time Estimate
1 class period
flexibility_scale
4
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Rubric_Content_Accurate_Scholarship

Yes

Rubric_Content_Historical_Background

Yes
The image linked in the “materials” section offers valuable supplemental information for teachers. But minimal background information is provided for students.

Rubric_Content_Read_Write

Yes
Teachers will have to plan carefully to help students read the challenging texts. In addition, teachers may want to augment the writing portion of the lesson; the extension activity provides a great opportunity for this.

Rubric_Analytical_Construct_Interpretations

Yes
Teacher models a “think aloud” with the first document. Students replicate the process first in groups, and then individually.

Rubric_Analytical_Close_Reading_Sourcing

Yes
Identifying and evaluating source information is a key element of this lesson.

Rubric_Scaffolding_Appropriate

Yes
While appropriate for elementary school students, it could easily be adapted for middle school.

Rubric_Scaffolding_Supports_Historical_Thinking

No
Very limited vocabulary support is provided. Teachers will have to read aloud or otherwise provide additional scaffolding to assist students in understanding the documents.

Rubric_Structure_Assessment

Yes
The assessment activity provided is not thorough, and no criteria for evaluation are provided. However the extension activity provides a splendid opportunity for teachers to assess how well students have acquired the skills taught in the lesson, as well as an opportunity for students to see that these skills may be used in other situations and contexts.

Rubric_Structure_Realistic

Yes

Rubric_Structure_Learning_Goals

Yes

Supreme Court Historical Society

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This site is designed to preserve and disseminate the history of the Supreme Court, from its first session in 1789 to the present. The main section presents the history of the Court, including a detailed timeline with biographical sketches of the chief and associate justices and the history of major decisions during the tenure of each Chief Justice. "How the Court Works" includes 17 short essays (150-700 words each) on the term of the justices, the types of cases they hear, and the role of the Chief Justice. In this section, users will find the text of opinions from 411 cases (130 from the Warren Court, 160 from the Burger Court, and 121 from the first seven years of the Rehnquist Court) heard by the Supreme Court between 1955 and 1993. There are also recordings of 10 sample cases, including Roe v. Wade. "Publications" features four articles, Historical Society yearbooks from 1976 to 1990, and six digitized volumes that include the memoirs of Henry Billings Brown. For students and instructors, the "Learning Center" is an excellent resource. It presents three cases for and about students and four landmark cases that illustrate the development of the Court's gender discrimination doctrine. There are also activities and lesson plans on key Supreme Court cases, for example Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education. The site provides several quizzes, along with a multimedia presentation about President Franklin Roosevelt and the 1937 Supreme Court controversy. This material will be useful to anyone interested in studying the Supreme Court, the court's history, and various justices.

Messages of Houses and Their Contents, 1780-1820

Teaser

Examining changes in early American homes helps interpret the past. It reflects the transitions that occurred in that community, as well as within the household.

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Description

Using images and other documents students compare the layout and furnishing of two early American homes to draw inferences about cultural and economic change in New England between 1780 and 1820.

Article Body

Personal possessions help us interpret the past, and this lesson encourages students to think about the "stuff" that people owned in early America. Students examine photographs of reconstructed rooms, inventories of possessions, and house layouts from different time periods and are asked to make inferences about how changes in common household possessions reflect broader changes in society. The lesson is made up of four one-hour activities, any one of which can stand on its own. In the first activity students compare two household inventories that list an individual's possessions and their value. One set of inventories is presented as original documents which give students a flavor of the spelling and penmanship of the time. Students are also given typed transcribed versions of the texts for easier (though still challenging) reading. The second and third activities focus on visual analysis. Students examine a series of photographs comparing rooms decorated according to styles between 1775 and the 1830s and floor plans of two homes. These images are excellent sources of evidence for the changes in consumer goods, fashion and technology that occurred in the early nineteenth century. A fourth (and in our opinion optional) activity focuses on changes in household gardens. All four activities are structured around discussion of differences that students are encouraged to notice in the images and artifacts. For homework, students write paragraphs about what changes in personal items may reveal about the past.

Topic
The New Nation; Daily Life; Family Life; New England
Time Estimate
4 class sessions; however, the lesson may be easily adapted to one or two class sessions
flexibility_scale
5
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Rubric_Content_Accurate_Scholarship

Yes Documents and images are from the collection of Memorial Hall Museum.

Rubric_Content_Read_Write

Yes Students can read primary sources in original and/or transcribed versions. Homework requires writing.

Rubric_Analytical_Construct_Interpretations

Yes Discussion questions focus on constructing interpretations using evidence.

Rubric_Analytical_Close_Reading_Sourcing

Yes Requires close attention to visual detail and basic source information.

Rubric_Scaffolding_Appropriate

Yes

Rubric_Scaffolding_Supports_Historical_Thinking

Yes Teachers are provided with specific questions to help students analyze the documents. A helpful guide to teaching using primary sources and a glossary of unfamiliar vocabulary and spelling is provided for teachers. Sharing these materials with students would be useful.

Rubric_Structure_Assessment

No A written task assesses student learning but assessment criteria are absent.

Rubric_Structure_Realistic

Yes The lesson is easy to use and understand. Access to a computer that can project images to the whole class is desirable.

Rubric_Structure_Learning_Goals

Yes Very clear goals and organization, however students may find the four activities repetitive. We recommend that teachers focus on activities one and two.

Declaration of Independence: Rough Draft to Proclamation

Teaser

How did the final version of the Declaration differ from Jefferson's draft?

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Description

Using carefully prepared excerpts, students compare and analyze differences between Jefferson's original rough draft of the Declaration of Independence and the final version of the document. They read closely and gain experience in document analysis.

Article Body

We love the way this lesson challenges students to closely read and analyze the two versions of the Declaration of Independence. The two versions of the opening paragraphs of the Declaration are placed side-by-side, in small, manageable chunks of text. Even if a teacher were not using this particular lesson plan, this presentation would be especially useful in helping all students access an otherwise difficult text. Other reading and analysis supports include guiding questions and a step where the teacher models the process of comparing the juxtaposed texts.

The lesson begins with students looking at the first pages of the original documents and answering questions that get at the historical context of the documents, before doing careful analysis of the transcribed prose. These procedures potentially convey the necessity of slowing down to read, question, and understand primary sources. And they do so using the Declaration of Independence, a document that all students SHOULD read!

As it stands, the lesson has plenty of opportunity for reading and discussion, but requires very little writing. Teachers may want to enhance the writing component of this lesson by having students write responses to some or all of the discussion questions. There is also an engaging extension activity that could be enhanced by requiring written responses.

Topic
Declaration of Independence, American Revolution
Time Estimate
One day
flexibility_scale
4
Rubric_Content_Accurate_Scholarship

Yes

Rubric_Content_Historical_Background

Yes The lesson includes links to background information on the writing of the Declaration of Independence, but it assumes some familiarity with the political events of the time leading up to the Declaration.

Rubric_Content_Read_Write

Yes This lesson focuses almost entirely on closely reading the two versions of the document. It calls for some student writing, but there are many points in the lesson at which teachers could easily insert additional writing tasks. For example, students could write responses to most of the lesson's discussion questions.

Rubric_Analytical_Construct_Interpretations

Yes This occurs primarily in the final task, where students suggest possible reasons for the changes between the rough and final drafts. Given sufficient background information, it could also occur as part of the discussion in step three regarding historical context.

Rubric_Analytical_Close_Reading_Sourcing

Yes Discussion questions are structured so students must read both versions of the Declaration closely and carefully in order to answer them.

Rubric_Scaffolding_Appropriate

Yes Some vocabulary may be challenging for some students, but it is well scaffolded: students have an opportunity to identify and define difficult vocabulary before analyzing the document itself, and the text is presented in small, manageable chunks.

Rubric_Scaffolding_Supports_Historical_Thinking

Yes This lesson includes excellent discussion questions to support students' analysis of the documents, and the documents themselves are presented in an accessible format. Also, the teacher models the process of comparing the two versions of the document before students do it on their own.

Rubric_Structure_Assessment

No The final task at the end of step five could be used as a closing assessment, but no assessment criteria are provided.

Rubric_Structure_Realistic

Yes The text on this site is very small; teachers will want to adjust computer or browser display settings to enlarge it for easier reading.

Rubric_Structure_Learning_Goals

Yes

Lewis and Clark: Same Place, Different Perspectives

Teaser

How geography influenced interactions among Lewis, Clark, & Native Americans.

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Description

In small groups, students analyze short excerpts from primary sources and secondary information that describe an encounter between the Lewis and Clark expedition and a Native American tribe. They share their analysis with the class and consider how varied locations influenced the ways in which the explorers and the various Native tribes interacted.

Article Body

Encouraging students to work collaboratively in groups, this lesson asks students to think and write about history from multiple viewpoints. The primary source excerpts, primarily from the expedition members’ journals, are a bit challenging, but they are brief and informative. Short expository passages describe different Native American groups and their encounter with the expedition. The absence of primary documents from the Native American perspective provides an opportunity to discuss what sources of information make up the historical record.

Additionally, and maybe more importantly, the lesson engages students in geographic analysis. Using geographic indicators, students must locate each encounter at a specific site on expedition maps. Students consider the varied physical environments that Lewis and Clark encountered and how these connect to cultural variations between the Native American tribes whom they met. This lesson pays special attention to the differences between Native American cultures, countering a common student belief that all Indians lived alike.

We like the closing activity where each group reports back to the whole class before a large group discussion on the similarities and differences between the encounters. The suggested assessment asks students to write about one of the encounters from the perspective of Sacagawea, Lewis and Clark’s Native American guide, or York, a slave on the expedition. Unless this lesson is taught in conjunction with the film or other rich resources providing additional background information, this assessment seems ill-suited as students likely need more background to complete these essays successfully.

Topic
Lewis and Clark Expedition
Time Estimate
1 class period
flexibility_scale
4
Rubric_Content_Accurate_Scholarship

Yes Uses primary sources from the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Rubric_Content_Historical_Background
No We recommend that teachers include additional background information.
Rubric_Content_Read_Write

Yes Students read about environments, resources, and daily life in different places and write about how and why people from different groups perceived events differently.

Rubric_Analytical_Construct_Interpretations

Yes Students' historical and geographic analysis skills are fostered through interpretation of primary and informational texts and maps.

Rubric_Analytical_Close_Reading_Sourcing

Yes Students must read documents and maps closely in order to compare different perspectives.

Rubric_Scaffolding_Appropriate

Yes Some of the document prose is challenging, but grouping students by mixed ability can help address comprehension issues.

Rubric_Scaffolding_Supports_Historical_Thinking

No Teachers may need to create scaffolding questions to guide their students during group work.

Rubric_Structure_Assessment

No Assessment is vague. Teachers may wish to design their own assessments that involve students in viewing the expedition from multiple viewpoints or considering how location influences cultural variation.

Rubric_Structure_Realistic

Yes The directions are clear and all of the materials available on the web are easily reproducible for classroom use

Rubric_Structure_Learning_Goals

Yes Activities require students to examine an event from multiple viewpoints. Students also have the opportunity to see how geography influenced both Native American groups and the expedition members .