National Park Service: Links to the Past

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Image, History & Culture, http://www.nps.gov/history/.
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Visitors to this site are invited to explore historical aspects of the roughly 200 National Park Service locations designated important to U.S. history and prehistory. Materials are organized by "cultural resource subjects," including archeology, architecture and engineers, cultural groups, cultural landscapes, historic buildings, mapping, maritime and military history, and "cultural resource programs," such as the American Indian Liaison Program and Heritage Preservation Services.

Visitors can search for information on more than 2.5 million Civil War soldiers and sailors; more than 71,000 properties listed in the National Register of Historic Places; and approximately 240,000 reports on federal archaeological projects in the National Archaeological Database. National Register Travel Itineraries provide historic guides to 18 cities and communities. The National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom contains information on 51 sites of importance and on slavery and antislavery efforts.

Also of interest are bibliographies on the African American west and public history, and full-text publications on the Antiquities Act of 1906 and the promotion of the city of Seattle during the gold rush era. The homepage—"History and Culture"—presents several topical, comprehensive historical exhibits including the "Eisenhower Virtual Museum."

From Haven to Home: 350 Years of Jewish Life in America

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Postcard, A Happy New Year, 1910-1920, Hebrew Publishing Company, LoC
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An exhibition on Jewish life in America emphasizing the themes of accommodation, assertion, adaptation, and acculturation. The website features more than 200 illustrations, portraits, and images of books and documents from Library of Congress collections. The website offers an explanatory overview of the exhibition and four brief electronic exhibits focused that help to tell a part of the Jewish story in America from 1654 to the present. Some of the items highlighted by the exhibition include the first book printed in the English settlements of America, The Bay Psalm Book printed in 1640, the first published American Jewish sermon, and a hand-drawn plaque from c. 1942 with dual Hebrew prayers for Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt. A small bibliography lists 10 books plus six books for children. The site provides an introduction to the Library of Congress collections and is useful for teaching about the history of Jewish life in America.

Jews in America: Our Story

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Image, Announcement for a Purim Ball..., New York, 1881, Jews in America
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The history of Jews in America from the 17th century to the present is explored in this website through essays, images, video presentations, and interactive timelines. Eight sections focus on particular time periods: 1654–1776; 1777–1829; 1830–1880; 1881–1919; 1920–1939; 1940–1948; 1949–1967; and 1968–present. Each section has short topical essays discussing the world events, politics, and daily life of the period, video and audio presentations, an image gallery, and books for further reading.

A number of sections also have "featured artifacts" that examine a particular cultural artifact, such as a Colonial-era book of prayers or a Civil War photo album, in greater detail. Each thumbnail is accompanied by a description and a full-sized image. The 590 images in the collection can also be viewed in a separate gallery.

A Portion of the People: Three Hundred Years of Southern Jewish Life

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Oil on canvas, Mary Olivia Lucas Harby. . . , c. 1830, A Portion of the People
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This exhibit tells "the story of Southern Jewish settlers and their descendants from the late 1600s through the 21st century." It currently consists of two presentations, each with more than 50 pages presenting an image from the exhibit's collection with accompanying explanatory text. Images include portraits, maps, historical documents, photographs of Jewish ritual books and religious and cultural objects, paintings and photographs of synagogues, and photographs of Jewish businesses. "First Families" explores the period from the 1600s to the 1820s through more than 50 images and "This Happy Land" explores the antebellum and Civil War years through more than 90 images. (The presentation "Pledging Allegiance," recounting the story of Jewish migration to the South in the first half of the 20th century, is under construction.) Visitors can listen to six interviews featuring voices from the past (transcripts are available). Additionally, a photographic essay with more than 40 photographs, "Palmetto Jews" by Bill Aron, examines Jewish life in South Carolina over the past 50 years. There is no site search capability.

Salem Witch Trials: Documentary Archive and Transcription Project

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Image, Witchcraft at Salem Village, 1876, Salem Witch Trials
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This website presents a valuable collection of resources for examining the Salem Witch trials of 1692. There are full-text versions of the three-volume, verbatim Salem Witch trial transcripts, an extensive 17th-century narrative of the trials, and full-text pamphlets and excerpts of sermons by Cotton Mather, Robert Calef, and Thomas Maule. The site also offers four full-text rare books written in the late 17th and early 18th centuries about the witchcraft scare. Descriptions and images of key players in the trials are presented as well.

Access is provided to more than 500 documents from the collections of the Essex County Court Archives and the Essex Institute Collection, and roughly 100 primary documents housed in other archives. There are also seven maps of Salem and nearby villages. Basic information on the history of Salem/Danvers is complemented by eight related images and a brief description of 14 historical sites in Danvers.

American Women's Dime Novel Project

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Book cover, "Wild, and Willful, or a Hoiden's Love," Lucy Randall Comfort
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This site examines the changing role of women's dime novels in America from 1870 to 1920. Rather than simply collect texts or author biographies (although it does that), the site is built around the goal of analyzing the novels and placing them in historical context. A 3,000-word Overview describes the novels' growth in popularity and explains their appeal to working-class audiences. In addition, it details the Comstock campaign against dime novels that blamed novels for glorifying petty crime such as larceny. There are 250-word biographies of 24 authors who specialized in dime novels, as well as title lists for each of the authors. Except for the explanatory essay and the biographies, the bulk of the site consists of approximately 300 primary source materials, including 12 journal articles dating back to 1875. The website also offers links to three outside collections of dime novel cover art and contains a list of archives with significant collections of dime novels in their holdings (the collections include 285 novel covers), including the Library of Congress. The site includes 12 essays by 20th-century scholars examining the importance and impact of dime novels, and a chapter from an 1860s dime novel, Willful Gaynell. Despite its reliance on secondary sources rather than primary, the site provides a useful introduction to studies of 19th- and early-20th-century women's literature.

Across the Generations: Exploring U.S. History through Family Papers

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Photo, Edward Kellogg Dunham, Sr., with daughter Theodora, Wilhelm (?), 1897
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This collection from one of the nation's leading repositories for sources on women's history features photographs, letters, account books, diaries, legal documents, artwork, and memorabilia generated by four prominent northeastern families from the late 18th through the early 20th centuries. The four families—the Bodmans, Dunhams, Garrisons, and Hales—are white, middle-class families, and their experiences represent only a portion of American society in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

This site features 63 documents and images gathered from the families' papers ,and there are two ways to navigate them: by family or by one of four themes (Family Life, Social Awareness and Reform, Arts and Leisure, and Work). Each family or theme has its own page, with short (350–500 word) interpretive text combined with excerpts from the documents. Each excerpt is accompanied by links to the entire document—both a scanned image and a transcription.

The theme "family life" contains documents that reflect courtship patterns over the 19th century, childrearing practices, and 19th-century gender roles. "Social awareness and reform" features items related to the abolition of slavery and changing perceptions of race, and women's suffrage. Some of the materials within "arts and leisure" reflect increased opportunities for professional women artists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The "work" theme includes materials that demonstrate the barriers women faced within the workplace. This site, when supplemented with additional resources, can help show students how to use family papers to study U.S. history.

Slavery in Canada

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 Photo, William Henson escaped from slavery. . . , Daniel G. Hill, NYPL
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This website covers a topic that often goes overlooked—that slavery spread as far north as Canada.

Resources include portions of a slave autobiography; slave narratives; Underground Railroad stories and songs; articles from abolitionist newspapers; short timelines (1600-1699, 1700-1799, 1800-1899, and 1900-present); more than 60 biographies of slaves; 10 images, including maps, photographs, artworks, and newspaper scans; radio and documentary links; and a collection of web links relevant to the topic. The included glossary and chapter quizzes are not currently working.

However, the site could prove useful for locating primary sources which attest to the geographical breadth of slavery in North America.

Lest We Forget: The Triumph Over Slavery

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Image, Frederick Douglass, c. 1817-1895, NYPL
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This attractive exhibit utilizes essays and more than 140 images to explore the 400-year history of slavery in the Americas. The site reminds us that together "the slave trade and slavery represented one of the longest, most sustained assaults on the dignity and self-worth of human beings in the history of humankind." The site's home page offers an introductory essay that presents the central themes of the exhibit. The site is centered around nine thematic presentations on the forging of common identities in slavery; the enslavement process in Africa; the transatlantic slave trade; slave labor and slave systems; the struggle against slavery and the abolition of slavery; family life and social development; religion; language, literacy, and education; and culture. Each image is accompanied by an explanatory caption. There is no search feature available on the site. An informative overview of slavery in the Americas, the site is also of interest to those studying African-American culture.

In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience

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Image for In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience
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Migration, both forced and voluntary, remains a prominent theme in African American history. This website is built around the history of 13 African American migration experiences: the transatlantic slave trade (1450s–1867), runaway journeys (1630s–1865), the domestic slave trade (1760s–1865), colonization and emigration (1783–1910s), Haitian Immigration (1791–1809), Western migration (1840s–1970), and Northern migration (1840s–1890).

Twentieth-century migrations include the Great Migration (1916–1930), the Second Great Migration (1940–1970), Caribbean immigration (1900–present), the return South migration (1970–present), Haitian immigration in the 20th century (1970–present), and African immigration (1970–present). More than 16,500 pages of texts, 8,300 illustrations, and 67 maps are included. An interactive timeline places migration in the context of U.S. history and the history of the African Diaspora.