For 14 years prior to the American Revolution, there was a school operating in the colonial capital city of Williamsburg, Virginia for enslaved children. This school, named after the Anglican philanthropist, Rev. Dr. Thomas Bray, was intended to further subjugate enslaved children, but how these children reacted to this education, further enlightens this story.
Help students understand the different types of universities and colleges in the U.S. by examining and analyzing a wide range of photographs from the Library of Congress
Primary sources from the Library of Congress help students explore a fascinating episode from U.S. history: the campaign to teach children to be more moral.
Teachers guide students to create interactive digital maps detailing the migration of Mormons using Library of Congress primary sources.
Engaging Library of Congress primary sources that connect religion and organized labor.
Help students understand the how religious beliefs shaped Americans’ understanding of the Civil War using sheet music from the Library of Congress.
Students learn about the sixteenth president’s relationship with Jewish Americans and his policy of religious tolerance.
Help students make connections between religion, technology, and American culture in this teaching module.
Discover how missionary work impacted Native Americans.
Discover the motivations fueling the 19th-century temperance movement.
How do people talk about and understand the Holocaust today in the U.S. and around the world?
Words constantly evolve and change over time. What did “witch” mean to these artists?
Guam is often left out of discussions of U.S. history. Remedy the situation!
This site, produced by PBS, uses multiple resources to examine the history and influence of Jewish culture in the U.S.
Connect with your ELL students with this bilingual Puerto Rico Encyclopedia!
Looking for proof that students can handle extensive local history projects? You’ve found it.
Peruse an extensive collection of pamphlets related to African-American life leading up to, during, and following the Civil War.
A wheeled pull toy depicting Nixon with a crown? If you’re looking for a unique object to bring up in class, start with the digital commons.
Not technically a military force, the “Regiment” proved integral to the success of the American Revolution.
Use this essay on Jewish immigration to flesh out a unit on the Civil War or immigration.
Absolving the guilty and punishing the innocent. Historian Elizabeth Reis looks at primary sources recording testimony in witchcraft trials.
Are you a Virginia educator teaching VA state history? My your task easy! Explore the Library of Virginia’s 70 collections of digitized primary sources.
Boston abolitionists on the lookout for slave-catchers in 1851.
The Constitution states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Everyone knows what “American Revolution” means. But can you identify these other labels used in naming colonial history?
Historians studying the hidden spirits of religion in America
Attention Secondary teachers! Searching for essays on religion, the environment, or African Americans in U.S. history? TeacherServe is here for you!
To legally exist, English colonies needed charters from the monarchy. Answer these questions about colonies and charters.
Trying to build a New Jerusalem on the coast of Massachusetts.
Burn the witch! Discover how historical coverage of the Salem Witch Trials has changed over time.
“John Brown’s Body” keeps reappearing. What do you know about the song?
Was the antebellum period the height of reform movements in U.S. history?
What does fundamentalism mean and how has that meaning changed over time?
Did you know the Quakers were pre-Revolution abolitionists?…
Examine this 1877 massacre from a total of 40 different perspectives.
Lives dedicated to teaching and nursing.
Missouri teachers looking for primary sources, look no further. Explore this portal for resources from libraries, universities, archives, and heritage sites throughout the state.
What is community? What does it do for us, and how does it shape who we are?
Use autobiographies to deconstruct views of slavery and historical heroes.
On the trail of French Calvinists—apocryphal stories and actual immigrant populations.
Listen to African American Blues from the Fort Valley Music Festivals of 1938-1943.
View 1,300 pieces of sheet music composed by and about African Americans.
Learn about American material culture and its relation to the nation’s religious history.
A comprehensive history of religion and major religious events within the United States.
Explore the history of 17th century New England and, more specifically, the Salem Witchcraft Trials.
An impressive website for the study of Jews and Judaism in the United States.
Learn about Hispanic culture with the Juan B. Rael collection of upper Rio Grande folk music.
This extensive database contains influential documents and literature spanning from 500BC to the 1800s.
A comprehensive guide consisting of over 240 primary source items detailing African American history.
An interactive website which takes visitors through the Salem witch trials.
What impressions did the average citizen or foreigner form of early America and its people?
Explore the life of a major classical conductor.
A hodge podge of history: England, Missouri, and the greater U.S.
What might your life have been like as an African American in Virginia c. 1900?
What questions have past censuses posed? What were the results?
Explore the history and development of a small town. The online scrapbook provides an uncanny lens into town life.
Explore U.S. architectural styles and ornamentation, or date the buildings in your town.
Explore Depression-era, ex-slave, and urban youth life stories.
How does the settling of the Siberian frontier compare to that of the U.S. West?
How did World War I change soldiers’ attitudes, religious beliefs, and employment prospects?
Explore the history of education within the U.S, through writings and images.
Imagine traveling from a university to work on a farm.
Follow the formation of the African American community in the city of Hartford, CT
How do Native Americans preserve their heritage in the world of today?
What work can be accomplished through music?
View maps of Liberia acquired during efforts to restore freedmen to Africa.
Look to the past to consider the prospects of democracy in the U.S.
Access a selection of rare 19th-century books online.
Did you know that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s family was also involved in abolitionism?
Do you read German? Not to worry. Select documents are available in English.
Explore Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin life through rare books.
What do the songs people sing tell us about their lives?
What magazines do you read? What did people read in the 1800s?
What were people reading around the time of the Civil War?
Check out this site to see “how the West was won.”
How did the Protestant Church become central to Southern African American communities?
Observe statistical trends in U.S. beliefs and demographics from free speech to zodiac signs.
Discover blues, country, bluegrass, gospel, Cajun, Zydeco, Tejano, and Native American music.
Explore the thoughts of Samuel F. Morse, artist and father of the electromagnetic telegraph.
Jonathan Edwards was the grandfather of Aaron Burr, and entrenched in the Great Awakening movement.
What did women think of their work at home, in the arts, and in business?
Need a comprehensive site on Georgia history? Why, here you go!
Meet international anarchist and women’s rights activist Emma Goldman.
View 179 images of Catholic missionary and Native American life in Arizona.
Imagine life as a Moravian in Bethlehem, PA.
Learn about the history of the United States up to 1815 with this website dedicated exclusively to early American history.
A unique website designed to foster communication regarding all of the planet’s native peoples.
A great website for introducing African American history to young or new students.
This gateway site provides a wealth of resources pertaining to the American West.
Speed up your online search for resources on American women’s history with this research guide.
The 46 first-person accounts on this website effectively chronicle slavery in the United States.
The life of famous evangelist Billy Sunday is chronicled on this website.
Read the memoirs and letters of three 19th-century African American women on this website.
Learn about the American south in the late 19th century through 141 firsthand texts.
Visit this website for a firsthand view into the horror of the holocaust.
Imagine what it might have been like growing up over 100 years ago.
Explore campus protest ephemera and the youth movements of the 1960s and 70s.
Peruse this online exhibit on the history of Jewish life in the United States.
Explore slavery in America from nine thematic perspectives.
An extensive glimpse into slave life and the history of slavery in the United States.
Immerse yourself in the historical struggle for the African American vote in Mississippi.
Get to know Benjamin Franklin through his own writings, cartoons, and letters.
Access more than 500 webcasts from the Library of Congress.
Explore 200 years of postcards which document the Vincentian religious order of educators and nurses.
Explore Jewish heritage outside of the Mid-Atlantic or the Holocaust.
Search Wisconsin newspapers mainly from 1860 through 1940.
Have a question about New York City or state history? More than 750 articles available.
Explore the folk lore of Florida—from musical performances and art to occupational lore.
What roles have Jewish women played in the Second Wave of feminism?
Texas educators, looking for primary resources on state history? Search this portal for thousands of images and documents drawn from Texas-based archival collections.
The U.S. Census counts everyone! It creates a current image of the nation with its diversity and class variations.
A diverse array of Antebellum, Civil War, and Gilded Age lesson plans for your convenience.
Listen to, read, and sing sources from the Gilded Age canvassing women, religion, and more.
Explore the politics, neighborhoods, culture, and arts of Harlem.
View more than 400 Native American objects selected and presented by the 11 represented communities.
Examine 19th-century domestic life through sheet music and audio song files.
Uncover novels, readers, hymnals, almanacs, diaries, maps, treaties, and more from between 1801 and 1819.
Connect 20th-century events and daily life with real human experiences through oral history audio files.
Explore American life through advertisements, literature, poetry, Civil War envelopes, and more!
Can you imagine starting your life over in the U.S. following the Holocaust?
What was Atlanta’s role in the larger African American civil rights movement 1940 through 1970?
Explore the history of Maryland, from Edgar Allen Poe to the War of 1812.
Texts throughout U.S. history have featured imagery from the Book of Revelations, including the the documents on this site.
Primary sources document the history of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the first U.S. public university.
Middle school students interpret history at Harpers Ferry.
Protestant or not?
Just before the Revolution, between 2,000 and 3,000 Jews lived in the colonies.
What did Colonial America and Medieval Europe have in common?
Pamphlets and documents from 1875 to 1900 highlight African American leaders and organizations.
In full-text narratives, more than 2,000 people from northeast Ohio discuss issues significant to the state and the nation.
History can be revealed through the study of maps, as these exhibits containing more than 600 maps and related documents explain.
Learn more about American Jewish women’s contributions to their communities and the wider world with these exhibits and resources.
Explore the life and works of one of the most famous revolutionaries—Thomas Paine.
Provides more than 1.5 million pages of text in an effort to digitize more than 11,000 volumes and 100,000 19th-century journal articles.
Collects photographs, texts, and oral histories drawn from 15 Kentucky colleges, universities, libraries, and historical societies.
Nearly 1,400 documents covering Southern life from the 18th to early 20th centuries.
Explore the 15-volume Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, from April 1636 to October 1776.
Presents more than 137,000 photographs of Florida on specific localities from the mid-19th century to the present.
Presents four guided investigations—on the Spanish-American War, the Scopes Trial, Social Security, and Rosa Parks—designed to teach students to read primary sources and construct historical narratives.
Follow the contentious election of 1896 with close to 100 political cartoons related to the presidential campaigns.
Presents the letters and diaries of Kate and Sue McBeth, late 19th-century missionaries and teachers among the Nez Perce Indians.
Provides full-text transcriptions and page images of 1815–1865 Sunday school books addressing religious instruction for youth.
Get up close-and-personal with western migrants. Explore personal accounts of westward treks from the perspective of 45 men and four women.
Explore California from Japanese American internment or the Free Speech Movement to oral histories.
Reproduces a privately held collection of American ephemeral films produced between 1927 and 1987.
Examine the verbatim transcripts of the 1692 Salem Witch Trials.