New Perspectives on the West

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Photo, A Hopi Girl, John K. Hillers, 1879
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This educational resource complements an eight-part PBS documentary series by Ken Burns and Stephen Ives, The West. The site is organized into several sections: a guided tour of the West, an interactive timeline to 1917, a hypertext map which includes migration and commerce routes, games and puzzles, and, most importantly, archival materials collected during the making of the series.

Primary sources, organized in chronological order, include memoirs, letters, government reports, and photographs. Visitors should not expect to encounter new perspectives on the American West offered by such historians as Patricia Limerick or William Cronon, or in-depth discussion of such important historiographical issues as gender or the environment. Political and military history, and to a lesser extent social and ethnic history of the West, however, are well represented in this account.

Hugh Mercer Apothecary [VA]

Description

This 18th-century building was restored to house the Hugh Mercer Apothecary. Dr. Mercer served the citizens of Fredericksburg with medicines and treatments of the time. Leeches, lancets, snakeroot, and crab claws made up just some of the remedies. Dr. Mercer practiced medicine for 15 years in Fredericksburg. His patients included Mary Washington. Dr. Mercer left his practice to join the Revolutionary army and died as a Brigadier General at the Battle of Princeton.

The site offers tours.

American Journeys

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Image for American Journeys
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These 181 firsthand accounts of North American and Canadian exploration range from Viking stories such as The Saga of Eric the Red from circa 1,000 CE to journal entries written in the early 19th century on a trapping expedition in the Southwest. Documents include the Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804–1806. Materials include rare books, original manuscripts, and classic travel narratives.

Users can browse the full archive or by expedition, settlement, geographic region, and U.S. state or Canadian province. Each document is individually searchable and accompanied by a short background essay and a reference map. There are also 150 images available, including woodcuts, drawings, paintings, and photographs. Highlights follows the collection chronologically and connects moments in American history with eyewitness accounts.

An Introduction to Historical Thinking and Reading

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Woodcut, "Reading Lady," Sekka Kamisaka, 1909, NY Public Library
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This Flash movie begins by introducing history as a subject of study that requires thinking and asking questions. It then uses a case study about the opening hostilities in the Revolutionary War to show and explain historical reading and thinking. The movie includes historians thinking out loud about two primary source documents regarding the shots fired on Lexington Green on April 19, 1775.

Viewers simultaneously see the text and the comments and questions that historians make in response to that text (slides 5, 7). Longer, additional examples of historians thinking aloud and analyzing these documents are also available (slides 6,7). The narrator uses these examples to introduce and clarify four kinds of questions that historians ask: sourcing, contextualizing, corroborating, and close reading. With ten consecutive mini-episodes, the movie permits users to control the pace and choose to review or skip particular segments.

AMDOCS: Documents for the Study of American History

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Logo, AMDOCS
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Provides links to approximately 390 documents, most of which are related to the nation's political, diplomatic, military, and legal history. Arranged chronologically, the site begins with excerpts of Christopher Columbus' journal of 1492 and ends, at present, with President George W. Bush's May 1, 2003 address announcing the end of major combat operations in Iraq [update: documents reach from around 800 to 2007]. Includes speeches, statutes, treaties, court decisions, memoirs, diaries, letters, published books, and even a few songs. The site, created by Lynn Nelson, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Kansas, is valuable especially for high school and college students who need easy access to many of the canonical documents in American history.

The Miller Place - Mount Sinai Historical Society [NY]

Description

The Miller Place - Mount Sinai Historical Society has two historical properties that can be toured in the summer or by appointment at other times of the year. The Miller House was built in 1720 on land bought by Andrew Miller Sr., an English immigrant who worked as a cooper, in 1670. The other property, the 1820 Daniel Hawkins House was home of the Hawkins family from Setauket and is located just east of the Miller house.

Tours are available upon appointment. There is no specific educational programming for school groups so the teacher will have to work with the museum to design a field trip.

Ball-Sellers House [VA]

Description

The Ball-Sellers House is an example of an ordinary 1700s home, built and inhabited by mid-18th-century yeoman farmer and miller, John Ball. The original logs with daubing, wide plank floors, and rare clapboard roof remain to this day.

The house offers an interpretive docent.

Rising Sun Tavern [VA]

Description

Built by Charles Washington around 1760 as his home, this frame building became a tavern in 1792, operating in the bustling town of Fredericksburg. The Tap Room features a reconstructed bar cage and fine collection of 18th- and 19th-century English and American pewter. Another spacious room provided a space for meetings and private dinners by patrons of the tavern. "Tavern wenches" provide visitors with a lively interpretation of 18th-century tavern life. The tavern is filled with period furnishings and stories of early life in Fredericksburg.

The tavern offers tours.

St. James's House [VA]

Description

The St. James's House was built around 1768 and is one of the few 18th-century frame houses still standing in Fredericksburg. The house is particularly noted for the collection of antique furniture and decorative arts assembled by Daniel Breslin and William Tolerton, who restored St. James's in the mid-1960s. St. James's represents Messrs Breslin's and Tolerton's interpretation of an 18th-century townhouse in that the furnishings are probably more formal than what would have been in the house during the time of its original owner.

The house is open for tours by appointment.

Hubbardton Battlefield State Historic Site [VT]

Description

The Hubbardton Battlefield State Historic Site is the location of a 1777 Revolutionary War battle. The battle took place between Burgoyne's British forces, who invaded from Canada, and the Green Mountain Boys of New England.

The state historic site offers self-guided tours of the battlefield, special events, and field trip programs. The website offers visitor information, a brief history of the battlefield, and a calendar of events.