Chinese in California, 1850-1925

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These 8,000 items document the immigrant experience of Chinese who settled in California during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Materials include photographs, letters, diaries, speeches, business records, legal documents, pamphlets, sheet music, cartoons, and artwork.

Access is provided through nine galleries, each containing an introductory essay and 70 to 575 items. Four galleries present materials on San Francisco's Chinatown, including architectural space, business and politics, community life, and appeal to outsiders. Additional galleries deal with Chinese involvement in U.S. expansion westward; communities outside San Francisco; agricultural, fishing and related industries; the anti-Chinese movement and Chinese exclusion; and sentiments concerning the Chinese. Visitors may search by keyword, name, subject, title, group, and theme. The site will be useful for studying ethnic history, labor history, and the history of the West as well as Chinese-American history.

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

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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.

Sunday School Books: Shaping the Values of Youth in 19th-Century America

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These full-text transcriptions and page images of 163 "Sunday school books" address religious instruction for youth published in the U.S. between 1815 and 1865. Materials include texts used by Methodists, Baptists, Mormons, and other denominations and are searchable by subject, author, title, and keyword.

Books are categorized according to nine types: "Advice Books, Moral Tales"; "Animals, Natural History"; "Child Labor, Orphans, Poverty"; "Death, Dying, Illness"; "Holidays"; "Immigrants"; "Slavery, African Americans, Native Americans"; "Temperance, Tobacco"; and "Travel, Missionaries." There are 67 author biographies and an essay on Sunday school books. This collection offers valuable materials for studying antebellum culture, American religious history, print culture, and education.

Religion and the Founding of the American Republic

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This exhibition of 212 written documents and visual images explores the significance of religion in early American history and its relationship with the establishment of republican institutions. Materials include manuscripts, letters, books, prints, paintings, sermons, pamphlets, artifacts, and music.

There are seven sections, each with a 500-word essay and item annotations. Topics include religious persecution in Europe that led to emigration, including woodcuts depicting religious violence; religious experience in 18th-century America, including the Great Awakening; the influence of religious leaders and ideas on the War of Independence; and evangelical movements of the early 19th century. Additional topics include policies toward religion of the Continental Confederation Congress, state governments, and the new federal government, including sermons and appeals arguing for and against tax-supported religion.

Museum of the City of San Francisco

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These 11 exhibits address the history of California and San Francisco. Topics include the Gold Rush of 1849; earthquakes of 1906 and 1989; the history of the city's fire department; construction of the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges; and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. These exhibits provide timelines and links to more than 200 primary documents and images, including newspaper articles, diary entries, oral histories, photographs, political cartoons, and engravings. Two exhibits are hyperlinked chronologies pertaining to San Francisco during World War II and the rock music scene in the city from 1965 to 1969.

Documents can be accessed according to subject, with more than 25 documents listed on the Chinese-American community, fairs and expositions, and labor issues. The site also contains more than 150 biographies of prominent San Franciscans.