Historian Kyle Ward speaks with Steve Inskeep about his book, History in the Making. It chronicles the ways that U.S. history textbooks change over time in their portrayal of events like the Mexican-American War.
The Andover Historical Society seeks to preserve and share the history of Andover, Massachusetts, founded 1646. To this end, the society operates the 1819 Amos Blanchard House and Barn Museum which illustrates the life of an early 19th-century (1820-1850), middle-class family. The barn contains a variety of vernacular tools. According to the society site, tour topics include "politics, religion, women's roles, economics, banking, youth, education, household management, and agriculture." Extensive archival materials are available for research at the Caroline M. Underhill Research Center.
The society offers exhibits, period rooms, guided tours, educational programs, hands-on activities, and archival access.
Camp Floyd / Stagecoach Inn State Park Museum is Utah's link with the Civil War. The quiet streets of Fairfield hold the secrets of 3,500 troops, nearly one-third of the entire U.S. Army at that time, which were brought to Camp Floyd to suppress the rumored rebellion in Utah. With no rebellion taking place, the troops were recalled in 1861 with the outbreak of the Civil War. The museum houses a collection of artifacts and documents used by the soldiers of Johnston's Army. Interpretive exhibits display these items along with historic photos, describing the history and activity of Camp Floyd. Visitors can see bullets, currency, uniform insignia, and more. The Stagecoach Inn is fully restored and houses antique furnishing of the time period. The historic Fairfield District Schoolhouse is available for school groups to enjoy an authentic one-room schoolhouse experience. Fairfield School was constructed in 1898 with federal funds received when Utah became a state in 1896.
The site offers exhibits, educational programs, and occasional recreational and educational events (including living history events).
Professor David Foster analyzes Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, looking at what the novel, its characters, and the life of its author reveal about the "American character" and views of American ideals and life at the time of its writing.
This lecture continues from the lecture Mark Twain and the American Character, Part One.
For the lecture, follow the link below and scroll down to the second seminar under Wednesday, August 4.
An older version of this lecture can be found here.
Professor David Foster analyzes Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, looking at what the novel, its characters, and the life of its author reveal about the "American character" and views of American ideals and life at the time of its writing.
For the lecture, follow the Website Title link and scroll down to the first seminar under Wednesday, August 4.
This lecture continues in Mark Twain and the American Character, Part Two.
An older version of this lecture can be found here.
Over more than 15 years, Rocky Gap High School of Rocky Gap, VA, has offered students the opportunity to participate in a history and technology project. While working on the project, students conduct oral history interviews, and archive these interviews and related photographs in a database and, in many cases, online.
The main page can be somewhat difficult to navigate. However, the largest portion of content can be found under Stories of the People. This section contains roughly 90 oral history transcripts on the lives of Bland County residents. Topics range from train rides and farm life to working in a World War II aircraft factory and religious practices. Some of the transcripts are also accompanied by photographs of the interviewee throughout his or her life.
Yet other transcripts link to collection pages which bring together related oral histories, as well as narration written by students. In some cases, video and audio versions are available in addition to the text transcripts. Topics include the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), church, death practices, farming, logging, the railroad, school life, tunnel building, and Bland County residents at war.
For more information on the project and its facilities, try the links under "Mountain Home Project."
This website is excellent as inspiration for beginning your own local history projects, as well as a fantastic resource for anyone looking for information on life in rural Virginia.
Note: The site is frequently unavailable for short bursts of time. Try again later if you reach a 404 error page.
This website presents historical sources and teaching materials that address notions of childhood and the experiences of children and youth throughout history and around the world. Primary sources can be found in a database of 200 annotated primary sources, including objects, photographs and paintings, quantitative evidence, and texts, as well as through 50 website reviews covering all regions of the world. More than 20 reviews and more than 70 primary sources relate to North American history.
The website also includes 20 teaching case studies written by experienced educators that model strategies for using primary sources to teach the history of childhood and youth, as well as 10 teaching modules that provide historical context, strategies for teaching with sets of roughly 10 primary sources, and a lesson plan and document-based question. These teaching resources cover topics ranging from the transatlantic slave trade, to girlhood as portrayed in the novel Little Women, to children and human rights. Eight case studies relate to North American history, as do two teaching modules.
The website also includes a useful introductory essay outlining major themes in the history of childhood and youth and addressing the use of primary sources for understanding this history.
Through a series of maps of the world, continents, and specific countries, users can trace large-scale demographic, economic, and political trends and developments covering the twentieth century. Topics charted on these maps include changes in agricultural workforce, infant mortality rates, life expectancy, literacy, persons with telephones, systems of government, alliances, borders between countries, and political violence, including wars. While examining any one map, click on buttons to find contextual information from additional maps. The site also includes informative timelines. Created by a librarian, the atlas provides a quick and easy way to see comparative change over time on a worldwide basis. Users should be aware, however, that the categorization scheme does not necessarily reflect the views of professional historians.
Images and articles on the famine in Ireland between 1845 and 1851, including some pre-famine material on related events. Taken primarily from newspapers in London and Ireland, the site includes 74 images and 16 articles from the Illustrated London News; short reports and articles from the Cork Examiner, September 1846 to December 1847; 17 illustrations and two articles from the Pictorial Times of 1846 and 1847; 30 cartoons and four articles from London's Punch; and the contents of an 1847 pamphlet, Narrative of a Journey from Oxford to Skibbereen during the Year of the Irish Famine by Lord Dufferin and G. G. Boyle.
Provides a master picture list of 99 illustrations and cartoons from the materials, arranged by depicted subjects such as cabins, landlords and ejections, begging, food riots and attacks, relief, workhouse, funerals, voyage, and life in America. Also presents a list of 44 links to related resources. Although the site lacks contextual material, other than sentence-long biographical data on some of the cartoonists, it offers visitors visual and textual material that was available to contemporary Irish and English readers of popular print forms to make sense of the Famine.
Created by a weekly newspaper based in Flemington, New Jersey, this site is devoted the 1932 kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby and the subsequent trial of a 35-year-old Bronx carpenter named Bruno Richard Hauptmann. Among the few primary materials included are approximately 35 photographs related to the trial and six episodes from a 1934-35 comic strip about the crime. The site offers a summary of events and biographies of the leading characters, theories about Hauptmann's innocence, a timeline, nine recent articles from the newspaper on the case and about several "Lindbergh baby claimants." Of limited value due to the site's reliance on only one newspaper for most of its documentation.
The "Inside Lindbergh Trial" menu is defunct. Use the links located throughout the page.