The Stamp Act
Britain's tax on paper goods was unremarkable in itself, but the colonies' furious response surprised two continents. Historian Linda Rowe talks about the Stamp Act.
Britain's tax on paper goods was unremarkable in itself, but the colonies' furious response surprised two continents. Historian Linda Rowe talks about the Stamp Act.
Headmistress Ann Wager taught at the Bray School in Williamsburg, VA, from 1760 to 1774, educating enslaved children. Interpreter Antoinette Brennan shares details from Wager's life and describes the school and its operations.
Bill White, the Theresa A. and Lawrence C. Salameno Director of Educational Program Development at Colonial Williamsburg, describes the heated campaigning surrounding the Presidential election of 1800.
Author Carson Hudson discusses the perception of witchcraft in colonial America, including superstitions regarding witches and tests used in witch trials. Click here to watch a short vodcast about witches in colonial America.
Inspiration intersects with means in a partnership that resurrects a city. Character interpreter Ed Way discusses W.A.R. Goodwin, founder of Colonial Williamsburg.
Relating the daily lives of America's ancestors is the product of research and performance. Performer Kat Getward shares the part that music plays in the Electronic Field Trip "Making History Live."
Dr. Caroline Janney discusses her book, Burying the Dead but Not the Past: Ladies' Memorial Associations and the Lost Cause, about the role of Southern women in creating the first Memorial Days to honor fallen Confederate soldiers after the Civil War. While Memorial Day is now a one-day celebration, Janney argues that the concept began in the spring of 1866 when Southern women began memorials, not only to honor the dead, but also as political statements in the post-Civil War South.
A gateway and an archive of numerous articles on New York history, this site "focuses a particularly long lens on the early history of political and economic events, panics, riots and other related matters affecting or contributing to New York City's development and growth." Its main feature is the New York state and New York City directories. (The U.S. directory is currently unavailable.) The New York state directory offers more than 700 links and more than 60 articles organized under 21 topics that include the arts, cities and counties, ethnic groups, military, societies and associations, transportation, women and their professions, and worship.
The New York City directory offers more than 5,200 links and more than 700 articles organized under 58 topics that include architecture, the arts, business matters, city government, clubs and societies, crime and punishment, education, ethnic groups, 5th Avenue, Harlem, immigration, New York City panics, real estate, temperance and prohibition, and Wall Street. The visitor can search the entire site or each directory by keyword. This site is a good starting point for researching the history of New York. It should also be useful for literary scholars, writers, and historical societies.
This archive provides more than 81,000 images and 1,000 texts on the history and culture of California. Images may be searched by keyword or browsed according to six categories: history, nature, people, places, society, and technology. Topics include exploration, Native Americans, gold rushes, and California events.
Three collections of texts are also available. Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive furnishes 309 documents and 67 oral histories. Free Speech Movement: Student Protest, U.C. Berkeley, 19641965 provides 541 documents, including books, letters, press releases, oral histories, photographs, and trial transcripts.
UC Berkeley Regional Oral History Office offers full-text transcripts of 139 interviews organized into 14 topics including agriculture, arts, California government, society and family life, wine industry, disability rights, Earl Warren, Jewish community leaders, medicine (including AIDS), suffragists, and UC Black alumni.
During World War II, the U.S. Government forced more than 100,000 Japanese Americans to leave their homes and businesses, relocating them to internment camps from California to Arkansas. Well-known photographer Ansel Adams documented the lives of Japanese Americans at the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California—from portraits to daily life, including agriculture and leisure.
This site presents 242 original negatives and 209 photographic prints, often displayed together to show Adams's developing and cropping techniques. His 1944 book on Manzanar, Born Free and Equal is also reproduced. Adams donated the collection to the Library of Congress in 1965, writing, "The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice . . . had overcome the sense of defeat and dispair [sic] by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment."