Tony Williams, author of The Pox and the Covenant: Franklin, Mather, and the Epidemic That Changed America's Destiny, discusses the colonial-era smallpox epidemic that began in Boston in 1721.
Discover more about colonial germ warfare by reading this article by Harold B. Gill Jr.
Interpreters Steve Holloway and John Hamant discuss their views on the upcoming Revolutionary War in character as John Adams and Benjamin Franklin.
Yale University has made a sampling of their courses available for listeners, viewers, and readers.
As of writing, the history subsection contains six courses—two of which relate directly to U.S. history ("The American Revolution" and "The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877") and one which touches on relevant issues, "Epidemics and Western Society Since 1600." Each of these courses offers links to individual pages for each lecture. Lecture pages contain short text overviews of the topic at hand; a list of any reading which was required for the day; and links to lecture audio, video, and transcriptions.
Our site links you directly to the Yale's history courses. However, consider exploring other topics as well. Maybe a lecture on Roman architecture will give you background for discussing monuments in Washington, DC, or an economics course will give you a new way of thinking about the American Revolution. Interdisciplinary possibilities are endless.
This website uses photographs, historical maps and atlases, and city directories to contextualize "the people, places, and events that have shaped the city from the years before the American Civil War through 20th-century urban renewal." The site has four exhibits, each accompanied by an introduction. Moments is a searchable collection of more than 2,500 historic maps and photographs that includes some of the earliest urban photography in the country. Places presents three historic atlases of the city, from 1874, 1898, and 1928. Each of the 94 plates in the atlases can be viewed individually. People offers nine city directories from 1845 to 1925 and five examples of how people's histories can be traced in the directories and how the directories can be combined with the images and maps from the site to "contextualize in time and place a single history or the history of millions."
Cowpaths allows users to plot information gathered from the images and directories on a map as an aid to tracing the history of the city and its people. Users can define their own data layers, query the data, and have results mapped on historical maps. An illustrated primer on how to use "Cowpaths" is available.
Each exhibit is individually searchable with basic or advanced searches. This site is a useful resource for those interested in the history of Boston and is also of interest to those studying urban history.
TAH grants, James Liou argues, support the teaching of the broad scope of American history, instead of subdividing U.S. history into narrower and narrower specialized narratives in an effort to appeal to students.
I don't think a lot of kids necessarily have a natural connection to say, "Oh, this is how this relates to what happened when people were marching on the Liberty Tree after the Boston Massacre." But, I mean I think if you really—I think that's our job as educators, is to really create structured opportunities and lay out materials in a way so that those connections are a little bit easier to make. I try to be really deliberate in terms of the case studies that I've chosen.
And, you know, there's space now for variety, two of my friends and colleagues are currently teaching the class and I keep in touch with them. And I think that so often sometimes, especially in history education, that you tend to go a little bit too extreme and say, "Alright, 'minority' kids, let's look at 'minority' history because that's obviously what's important to you." And I think kids lose out.
And I think that's one thing the Teaching American History grant gets right: let's look at traditional American history because that's our history and that’s our story. And we have to really create opportunities for them to identify within it and to say they are products of it and also they are the promise of it.
So in the case studies I looked at I didn't want to just choose instances of—you know these are really strong young men and women in urban areas who look like you who did this. I want to make sure there's some of that, but I wanted to choose early 19th-century 13-year-old girls from Lowell, I wanted to look at community activists of different races, in different geographic areas, with different interests. I think in the end they have an identity as young people, and they have a voice that's necessary and important and it's worthy of being developed. And I think those are the connections I really try hard to make for them.
Eighth-grade history teacher Eric Langhorst gives teachers and tourists some advice on walking Boston's Freedom Trail, a tour of 23 Revolutionary War historic sites that stretches for three-and-a-half miles, one way.
The 1750 Dillaway-Thomas House presents Roxbury, Massachusetts' history and present. The structure, the Continental Army headquarters during the 1775 siege of Boston, has been preserved in a manner which illustrates its change over time.
The house offers exhibits.
The Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists presents visual arts pieces created by African-American, African-Latin, African-Caribbean, and African artists.
The center offers exhibits.
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum presents 30 centuries of decorative arts, paintings, sculptures, tapestries, furniture, and other works of art. Collections include more than 2,500 works; and particular strengths include Italian Renaissance paintings and works by James McNeill Whistler and John Singer Sargent. Other artists represented include Titian, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Raphael, Botticelli, Manet, and Degas. The museum also supports modern art, music, and scholarship.
The museum offers exhibits, lectures, educational programs, self-guided tours, thematic guided tours for students, and audio tours. Reservations are required for school tours. The website offers partial collection listings with images, virtual exhibits, podcasts, audio files of classical music, and inspiration for ways to include the museum in classroom curricula.
The Yellow Room and Macknight Room are currently closed for preservation.
The Massachusetts Historical Society is an independent research library and manuscript repository. The society holds millions of rare and unique documents, many of which are vital to the study of national history and are national treasures. Examples of society treasures include architectural drawing by Thomas Jefferson and correspondence between John and Abigail Adams.
The society offers a research library, educational programs, lesson plans complete with primary sources from the society, and teacher workshops. The website offers visitor information, information regarding the educational resources offered by the website, an online catalog, and a collection of online primary resources. In order to contact the society via email, use the "contact us" link located at the top of the webpage under the "About MHS" tab.