Brooke Welborn, a journeywoman milliner and mantua maker at Colonial Williamsburg, describes colonial women's undergarments, the ways in which dress determined or was determined by women's social roles and class, and the trade of millinery and mantua making. For more information on 18th century clothing, click here.
Colonial Williamsburg museum educator Anne Willis discusses the youths and marriage of Edmund Randolph and Elizabeth Nicholas, a colonial couple, married in 1776, whose families stood on opposites sides of political and religious ideology.
Note: this podcast is no longer available. To view a transcript of the original podcast, click here.
Lady Dunmore, wife of Lord Dunmore (royal governor of Virginia from 1771 to 1776), was beloved by the colonists. Interpreter Corrine Dame reflects on Lady Dunmore's life.
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.
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.
According to BackStory:
"To mark the rebirth of BackStory as a weekly program, the History Guys set out to explore the earliest stages of life in America. They begin with a few of the basic assumptions we have about birth in America today, and spend the hour exploring how those assumptions came into being. How is it that hospital doctors moved in on what had been midwife’s exclusive territory? Why did Puritans think their newborns were damned from the outset? When did courts start ruling that fetuses had legal rights? Why have generations of Americans resisted the notion of birthright citizenship?"
What happened to the royal family of Hawaii after the U.S. took over?
Hawaii's monarchy was limited by the 1887 Constitution of the Kingdom of Hawaii, which King David Kalakaua (18361891) signed under threat of force, and which was therefore often known as the Bayonet Constitution. It established a constitutional monarchy much like Britain's, but also transferred power through a redefinition of the electoral franchise to an elite class of American, European, and native Hawaiian landowners.
When Kalakaua died in 1891, his sister Lili'uokalani (18381917) succeeded him on the throne. Soon she made plans to restore the monarchy's veto power and other features of the pre-1887 Constitution. A group of American and European residents, in opposition to the Queen, organized themselves and solicited protection from U.S. Marines and sailors, which U.S. Government Minister John Stevens provided. Queen Lili'uokalani was deposed on January 14, 1893, and a provisional government was formed.
On February 1, Stevens proclaimed Hawaii a protectorate of the United States. On July 4, 1894, the Republic of Hawaii was founded and Sanford Dole became its President. A brief effort at the beginning of 1895 to restore the monarchy and Lili'uokalani to the throne was thwarted. Arrested and convicted for playing a part in the failed effort, Lili'uokalani was confined to house arrest in Iolani Palace, where she spent much of her time writing songs. She abdicated her throne eight months later, in return for the commutation of the sentence of her fellow conspirators. Later, she would write that her signature on the abdication agreement, which she signed "Lili'uokalani Domonis" (she had married Robert Domonis), invalidated it because, as a monarch, she had never acted under that name, but only "Lili'uokalani." Be that as it may, the government pensioned her off and she retired to her palatial home, where she died, at age 79.
Hawaii was a united kingdom under a single monarch only for eighty years, from 1810, when Kamehameha I (17381819) brought all the islands under his control, to the time when the monarchy became defunct under Lili'uokalani. During that time, the rules of succession evolved, to include not only the members of the families of Kamehameha and Kalakaua, but also adopted sons and daughters (Lili'uokalani had three) and members of a noble class recognized by Kamehameha as eligible to be rulers. Because the kingdom ended more than a century ago and because all these families have continued to proliferate, there are currently a large number of people who might be considered as heirs or pretenders to the Hawaiian throne, were it ever to be revived.
William Adam Russ, The Hawaiian Revolution (189394) (Selinsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press, 1992).
Ralph S. Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, 18741893 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1967).
Gavan Daws, Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1974).
Norris W. Potter et al, History of the Hawaiian Kingdom (Honolulu: Bess Press, 2003).
George S. Kanahele, Emma: Hawai'i's Remarkable Queen (Honolulu: The Queen Emma Foundation, 1999) Liliuokalani, Hawaii’s Story (Rutland, Vt.: Tuttle, 1964).
This website offers more than 50,000 slides and photographs that document the history of the American period in Micronesia from 1947 to 1988. The image collection can be browsed or the visitor can sample the types of images in the collection through 12 short animated image tours. The topics of the image tours give an idea of the variety of images available in the collection: parades, dancing, voting, agriculture, stone money, canoes, architecture, women, leaders, education and children, health and hospitals, and men. The only search capability on the site is a Google search of the photograph description files. Additional resources include a map of Oceania and a link to the Hawaii War Records Archive. This archive is a useful source of images for those researching, writing, or teaching the cultural history of the Pacific Islands.
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.