In 1700s Maryland and Virginia, farmers lived and died by the quality of their tobacco. Teachers tour Maryland’s Piscataway Park, learning about farmers’ struggle against their environment to grow and cure the perfect crop.
Tour Monticello with TAH teachers and learn about the history behind Thomas Jefferson’s home.
TAH teachers get an introduction to Monticello as Thomas Jefferson’s ’laboratory.'
What does architecture say about the past and the present? TAH teachers learn strategies for close examination of buildings in Washington, DC.
A series of five primary source based learning modules that encourage high school students to explore American history through the stories found in Alexandria National Cemetery.
View over 1 million images from U.S. national parks and historic sites.
Invite young students into colonial history with the stories of children from three very different families.
What messages are hidden in art and architecture? Explore the Library of Congress’s Jefferson Building in this online activity.
Discover the rich history of DC’s cherry trees and what they reveal about U.S./Japan relations.
How do we know what people in the past owned and valued?
Whether you’re bolstering your teaching of local history or the War of 1812, the MHS has artifacts to help.
Explore this education- and tourism-centered website for lesson plans for teachers, as well as dozens of thematic topics in Pennsylvania history.
What was life like in abolitionist Frederick Douglass’s home in Washington, DC? The NPS takes a look.
Meet Virginians from the 1860s, and learn about their lives.
What can an inventory tell you about daily life in Delaware in 1804? Curator Barbara Clark Smith asks this document four questions.
What does an 1853 daguerreotype have to say? Plenty, says Frank Goodyear, particularly about tourist culture and the rise of railroads and photography.
There’s far more to West Virginia than stereotypes suggest. Why not take some time to explore the state?
Watch J. Douglas Smith discuss the Massive Resistance policy enacted by U.S. Senator, Harry F. Byrd, Sr., in 1956.
Watch Smithsonian curator Barbara Clark Smith discuss John Smith’s Map of Virginia published in London in 1612.
Summer is the time for professional development! Eighth-grade teacher Elizabeth Schaefer reports on her professional development experiences at DC’s Lincoln’s Cottage.
Looking for proof that students can handle extensive local history projects? You’ve found it.
Looking for a primary source website created especially for elementary teachers?
Let your students go out on a limb, and they might just exceed your expectations.
The work of the Civilian Conservation Corps in central New York State.
What can artistic renderings tell us about the Great Migration?
How emigrants traveled from Pennsylvania to Illinois in 1830.
Integrating English Language Development (ELD) standards and objectives into your lesson planning can strengthen both your students’ understanding of history and their language skill levels.
Many believed the Civil War would be a short, bloodless battle. The reality of the drawn out combat led many soldiers in the North and South to desert the military to return home to farm and family.
Was it illegal? Was it dishonorable? Was it a duel or was it murder?
The influence of the booming rail system on the growth and development of three political parties in the late 19th and early 20th century.
The direct and indirect impacts of various trade routes during the 16th through 19th centuries.
Hour by hour account of how Union Generals moved on the battlefield at Sharpsburg.
Use the Triangle Shirtwaist fire to examine the benefits and costs of industrialization.
Shellfish pirates stole from the rich to feed themselves—and make a little money on the side.
From 1863 to 1935, this tenement building housed working immigrant families. View photographs of their lives, and engage in interactive learning opportunities.
How do you pronounce (and spell) Conococheague and how do we know?
Pennsylvania educators, or teaching urban history? Explore two neighborhoods in Philadelphia using an interactive map and more than 1,240 primary sources.
Neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother, father against son.
How would a 1790 Pennsylvania farmhouse have been furnished?
What were the primary concerns of English colonists in early 17th-century America?
All 102 issues of the first African American newspaper conveniently presented in PDF format.
Travel the Underground Railroad with this interactive website.
How does a nation react, legally and politically, to international terrorism?
Frame your lessons on the Great Migration with the life and works of Jacob Lawrence.
See uncommon photograph subjects for the turn-of-the-century, such as street peddlers.
How does an industrial past shape current work and play? How does it affect what professions still exist in cities?
Find out what people thought of everything from ablation to vinegar in 1911.
Imagine traveling from a university to work on a farm.
Search this Civil War roster for data on the service of New Jersey soldiers.
Explore New England’s topography with more than 1,100 topographical maps, covering all of New England and parts of New York.
How many hospital beds did New Orleans have in 1960? Was it able to accommodate the poor and sick?
Teaching exploration? Why not introduce your students to nautical charts?
Conduct your own “virtual dig” of a Dutch farmhouse.
Which locations, open for visitation, are most relevant to the civil rights movement?
What role has art had in the depiction and reality of U.S. labor?
See American life through Gedney’s eyes and European and Indian life through American eyes.
Read the correspondence of lesser known founding father John Jay.
Examine the nexus of representation, modernity, and urban life.
Explore the history of Brooklyn, 1841 through 1902, with historical newspaper issues.
Experience Caucasian, middle-class Northeastern life through the collections of four families.
Delve into more than 85 million records related to U.S. history.
See Pittsburgh, PA, the way it appeared as early as the 1890s.
Visit the businesses and meet the people of Harrisonburg, PA’s 8th Ward.
How much do you know about the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury?
Follow Capt. Reynold’s life, from childhood photos to his stint as a Union soldier.
Seek inspiration from classroom visual aids of the past.
Travel through history with the New Jersey Turnpike.
How did the Underground Railroad work? Listen to an insider’s story.
Imagine life as a Moravian in Bethlehem, PA.
Early 20th century Washington is captured in this collection of 14,350 photographs by Theodor Horydczak.
Explore early 20th century architecture and interior design with this expansive photo gallery.
Relive media coverage of the famous Lindbergh Trial through this Hunterdon County Democrat database.
Explore the early history of America with reproductions of important documents and newspapers.
Use New Jersey during the American Revolution as a national microcosm.
What role did Brooklyn play in the War Between the States?
What happened between 1880 and 1910 in the area where you live?
Have a question about New York City or state history? More than 750 articles available.
Acquaint yourself with Pittsburgh history through full texts, images, maps, census data, and lesson plans.
View streaming videos on American folk culture from fox hunting to Zydeco.
Visual depictions of post-industrial urban decay in California and New Jersey.
Familiarize yourself with New Jersey history using images, maps, and official documents.
View African American life in Pittsburgh between 1930 and 1970.
Explore the politics, neighborhoods, culture, and arts of Harlem.
Check out five design schemes created by Frank Lloyd Wright, but never implemented.
Tie civics into units involving Native American history using relevant full-text legal documents.
View Prairie School works by famed architects and designers Wright, Sullivan, Elmslie, Purcell, and Maher.
Explore the positions and words of a former PA Governor and Attorney General.
Did you know that between 1840 and 1929 many maps were not drawn to scale?
Known for the 9/11 tragedy, the World Trade Center possesses a broader social history.
Looking for new ideas on how to teach with the historic places in your community?
Historians endeavor to uncover Native American perspectives.
Explore the history of America’s most iconic image—the American flag. But remember: lip-syncing is not allowed!
From South Carolina to Maine, colonists protested the Tea Act of 1773.
Almost two million dollars allocated to feed prisoners was returned to the U.S. Treasury.
Explore the historic sites in more than 50 cities and towns across the U.S.
Primary sources from Philadelphia’s 1876 Centennial Exhibition provide a view of the U.S.’s industrial development.
Explore writer-photographer William P. Gottlieb photographs of 1938–1948 jazz culture.
Alexander Graham Bell’s work and interests extended far beyond the invention of the telephone. Explore his papers here.
Sixty-four photographs taken by Lewis W. Hine between 1908 and 1912 document child labor conditions.
A variety of primary sources and background essays explore the 1911 fire, a hallmark tragedy of the industrial age.
Access close to 140,000 images from the Smithsonian Institution.
Nine galleries explore the history of slavery in New York City.
Presents 27 iconic works of art as examples for the use of art and primary sources in history classrooms.
A 4th-grade teacher shows strategies for encouraging and supporting student analysis of maps.
Explore the mid-Atlantic region with more than 1,852 maps created before 1850.
More than 12,000 stereoscopic photographs depict life in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut small towns and rural areas from 1850 to 1920.
Records of more than 25 million passengers and crew who passed through Ellis Island 1892-1924.
Examples of early photographs preserve the likenesses of cities, famous figures, and other subjects.
Records the user-contributed histories of people affected by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Take a closer look at the Civil War with this extensive database that offers a comparison of two Shenandoah Valley counties—Augusta County, VA and Franklin County, PA.
Provides transcriptions and images of more than 4,000 newspaper advertisements for runaway slaves and indentured servants between 1736 and 1803.
Presents articles from 18th- and 19th-century newspapers, magazines, and books, with a focus on the Mid-Atlantic region.