American Shores: Maps of the Middle Atlantic Region to 1850

Image
Annotation

This attractive site explores the mid-Atlantic region and history with maps created before 1850. An extensive collection offers more than 1,852 historical maps of many different types. In addition to numerous regional and state maps, these include land surveys, coast surveys, nautical charts, military maps, ornamental maps, and city maps.

An overview provides historical context for reading the maps of the geographic regions. In addition, the site offers several special features. "Basics of Maps" explains such cartographic terms and features as orientation, scale, and the cartouche. "Maps Through History" highlights particular maps and map genres from the collection, including a look at New York Harbor, the Hudson River, nautical charts, maps revealing early transportation routes, and maps of American Revolution battle sites. "Geographical Areas" highlights many kinds of maps and what information they offer. Visitors can click on thumbnail images to view enlarged maps and pan and zoom the maps.

Urban Experience in Chicago: Hull-House and Its Neighborhoods, 1889-1963

Image
Annotation

This well-organized website offers more than 900 items related to Hull House—including newspaper, magazine, and journal articles, letters, memoirs, reports, maps, and photographs. Materials are embedded within a clear historical narrative that illuminates the life of Jane Addams in addition to the history and legacy of Chicago's Hull House.

Users can search the site or focus on any of the 100 topics arranged in 12 chapters that begin with settlement life in Chicago in the 1880s and end with the movement after Addams's death. Topics include the reform climate in Chicago; activism within the movement; the immigrant experience of race, citizenship, and community; education within the settlement house; and cultural and leisure activities at Hull House and in Chicago. The site provides a timeline, featuring a pictorial biography of Addams; a geographical section that includes maps of Chicago; and an image section, with 12 photograph sections and essays.

Sanborn® Fire Insurance Maps, UT

Image
Annotation

These 1,275 detailed historical maps depict cities in the state of Utah. D. A. Sanborn Company, a pioneer producer of insurance maps on a national scale, designed maps that depicted commercial, industrial, and residential sections of Utah cities. The collection of large-scale detailed maps dating from 1867 through 1969 is an ongoing project, and currently contains maps of 40 cities. Users may download compressed images to view and enhance the maps. Maps are arranged alphabetically by city and date, although the years available for each city are inconsistent.

The maps outline the site, size, shape, construction, and building materials of dwellings, commercial buildings, and factories. In addition, the maps detail building use, sidewalks, property boundaries, house and block numbers, and even the locations of hydrants and wells. The collection presents an opportunity to study Utah history, architectural history, and the development of cartography.

Thomas A. Edison Papers Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/25/2008 - 22:21
Image
Annotation

A vast database of Thomas Edison's papers, this website includes 71,000 pages of correspondence, 12,000 pages of technical drawings, and more than 13,000 clippings about the inventor from 103 journals and newspapers. The site boasts over five million pages of documents related to Edison. Processes for searching the site are complicated, but an extensive guide offers search strategies.

Materials include 2,210 facsimiles of Edison patents from 1868 to 1931 for products such as the electric lamp and the phonograph. A collection of 14 photographs, maps, and prints depict Edison, his environs, and his inventions. The site offers a "Document Sampler" of 23 selections of general interest as well as an 8,000-word essay on Edison's companies, 22 pages about Edison and the development of the motion picture industry, and two chronologies. A bibliography directs visitors to more than 70 books and articles and 21 related websites.

Plymouth Colony Archive Project

Image
Annotation

A wealth of documents and analytical essays emphasize the social history of Plymouth Colony from 1620 to 1691. This website also offers a tribute to the scholarly work of the late James Deetz, professor of historical archaeology. Documents include 135 probates, 24 wills, and 14 texts containing laws and court cases on land division, master-servant relations, sexual misconduct, and disputes involving Native Americans.

The site also provides more than 90 biographical studies, research papers, and topical articles that analyze "life ways" of 395 individuals who lived in the colony and offer theoretical views on the colony's legal structure, gender roles, vernacular house forms, and domestic violence. There are 25 maps or plans, approximately 50 photographs, and excerpts from Deetz's books on the history and myths of Plymouth Colony and on Anglo-American gravestone styles.

Raid on Deerfield: The Many Stories of 1704

Image
Annotation

This website documents the 1704 raid on Deerfield, MA, by 300 French and their Native American allies. Visitors are introduced to the raid by a multimedia exhibit that describes white settlement patterns that led to profound cross-cultural tensions.

Explanations includes 15 short essays that provide historical background. "Voices and Songs" provides audio commentary for the 300th anniversary of the raid, three audio versions of Native American creation stories, and 17th- and 18th-century music. Meet the Five Cultures includes brief introductions to the English, French, Mohawk, Huron, and Wobanaki.

Twenty-eight individual biographies include Native Americans, French, and English settlers. Fourteen maps depict Native American territories and the areas involved. After viewing the evidence, visitors are asked to decide whether the raid was part of a larger pattern of cross-cultural violence or an aberration.

The Kraus Collection of Sir Francis Drake

Image
Annotation

Sir Francis Drake, English explorer and naval strategist, made many voyages to the Americas in the late 16th century and circumnavigated the globe between 1577 and 1580. This collection of important primary and secondary materials about Drake's voyages in the Americas offers 60 items in various languages, including manuscripts, books, maps, medals, and portraits.

Assembled by Hans Peter Kraus, a 20th-century collector, the main presentation is Kraus's pictorial biography of Drake. The essay also features an extensive seven-part introduction by scholars David W. Waters and Dr. Richard Boulind. A timeline presents Drake's voyages with links to documents. "The Actors and Their Stage" highlights material on the key people in Drake's life, places from his voyages, and images of Drake's ship, the Golden Hind, and Armada battles.

Trails to Utah and the Pacific: Diaries and Letters, 1846-1869

Image
Annotation

Diaries documenting the westward treks of 45 men and four women during the period of the California Gold Rush and the westward migration of Mormonism are presented in this site. Although most of these travelers took either the California or Mormon trails, a few diaries provide accounts describing life on trails to Oregon and Montana.

The diaries are complemented by 82 photographs and illustrations in addition to 43 maps, including an interactive map displaying trails, cities, rivers, and landmarks. There are seven published guides, two essays on the Mormon and California trails, brief biographies of most of the diarists, and a list of suggested readings. This is an excellent collection of materials that documents 49 individual perspectives on a movement that encompassed an estimated 500,000 people.

Virtual Jamestown

Image
Annotation

This is a good place to begin exploring the history of Jamestown. The site includes over 60 letters and firsthand accounts from 1570 to 1720 on voyages, settlements, Bacon's Rebellion, and early history. More than 100 public records, such as census data and laws; 55 maps and images; and a registry of servants sent to plantations from 1654 to 1686 complete the site.

Virtual Jamestown also includes records from 1607 to 1815 of Christ's Hospital in England, where orphans were trained to apprentice in the colonies. There are four interactive virtual recreations. The reference section includes a timeline from 1502 to the present, narratives by prominent historians, links to 20 related sites, a bibliography of primary and secondary sources. The Complete Works of John Smith and John Smith's Map of Virginia have recently been added to the site, while 3D recreations of Jamestown's Statehouse and Meetinghouse as well as an archive of Virginia's first Africans are being added.

American Memory: Historical Collections for the National Digital Library

Image
Annotation

This expansive archive of American history and culture features more than nine million items dating from 1490 to the present. Currently this site includes material from 120 collections, some from libraries and archives around the world.

Strengths include the early republic, with documents and papers on the Continental Congress, U.S. Congress, early Virginia religious petitions, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson; the Civil War, including Abraham Lincoln's papers and Mathew Brady photographs; and exploration and settlement of the West. Collections offer papers of inventors, such as Alexander Graham Bell, Emile Berliner, Samuel F. B. Morse, and the Wright Brothers; and composers, such as Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland.

The site also features New Deal-era documentation projects, such as Farm Security Administration photographs, Federal Writers' Project life histories, the Historic American Buildings Survey, and the Library's own "Man on the Street" interviews following the Pearl Harbor attack. Entertainment history is amply represented with collections on the American Variety Stage, Federal Theatre Project, early cinema, and early sound recordings. African American history, ethnic history, women's history, folk music, sheet music, maps, and photography also are well documented.

Digitized images from materials not included in specific American Memory sites may be searched using the Library's Prints & Photographs Online Catalog, where users can browse images by topic or search the Library's holdings.