HIST 105 American History I: Colonial History Websites

Web resources for Colonial American history courtesy of Florida State University Library

General

• Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture (OIEACH) (discussion list at H-Net)
• History of Early Settlement in the U.S. forum archives at CUNY
• American Memory, at the Library of Congress
• Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
• History Matters: The U.S. Survey on the Web [George Mason University]
• Outline of American History (first three chapters cover the period through the American Revolution) [U.S. State Department]
• Classics of American Colonial History (books and articles in the public domain) [Dinsmore Documentation]
• Provincial America, 1690-1740, by Evarts B. Greene [Dinsmore Documentation]
• Select Bibliography for Colonial America (used in HIST4620/6620 at The University of Memphis)
• History/Social Sciences Web Site for K-12 Teachers
• Archive of Early American Images [John Carter Brown Library, Brown University]
• Images from Google.com (you need some skills are framing search terms to find them, but the chances are good that you can find any images you need here)

Documents

• Documents for the Study of American History [University of Kansas]
• Early Americas Digital Archive [Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, University of Maryland]
• The American Colonist’s Library: Primary Source Documents Pertaining to Early American History (fabulously comprehensive)
• A Hypertext on American History from the Colonial Period until Modern Times (based on the Outline of American History by the U.S. State Department, above) [Department of Humanities Computing, University of Groningen, The Netherlands]
  • From Revolution to Reconstruction: Documents (despite the name, it has much material before the Revolution)
  • From Revolution to Reconstruction: Essays (not many, and not categorized)
  • From Revolution to Reconstruction: Biographies (indexed)
  • Early Americas Digital Archive
  • Virginia Colonial Records Project
• Avalon Project
  • Pre-18th-century materials
  • 18th-century materials
• 18th-century Resources [Jack Lynch]
• A Chronology of US Historical Documents [University of Oklahoma College of Law]
• Don Mabry’s Historical Text Archive
• Many Pasts [History Matters]
• Making Sense of Documents, and Scholars in Action [History Matters]
• The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites) [Creighton University]
• Archives of the West to 1806 [PBS]

Native Americans

• WWW-Virtual Library, USA: America Before the Europeans
• American Historical Images on File/Indians of North America/The Native American Experience
  • Pre-contact to 1600
  • 1600-1750
  • 1750-1800
  • Spain in Meso-America
• Images of Native America (essays about how Europeans viewed Indians — not actually images themselves)
• Aztec Calendar
• Maps of Native American Nations, History, Info
• Cahokia Mounds State Historical Site (Illinois)
• Sipapu — The Anasazi Emergence into the Cyber World
• Ancient Architects of the Mississippi [National Park Service Archaeology and Ethnography Program]
• Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center
• Theodore de Bry Copper Plate Engravings of Indians of North America
• American Indian History and Related Issues
• Iroquois Oral Traditions
• All Things Cherokee
• American Indians forum archives at CUNY

Africans

• Slavery: Colonial North America and United States [Sue Peabody]
• The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in America: A Visual Record [Jerome S. Handler and Michael L. Tuite Jr.]
• DPLS Archive: Slave Movement during the 18th and 19th centuries [Data and Program Library Service, University of Wisconsin-Madison]
• Chronology on the History of Slavery, 1619 to 1789 [Eddie Becker]
• Africans in America (first two sections deal with colonial and Revolutionary periods — Resource Bank Materials are of particular interest) [PBS]
• Unearthing Secret America: These American Lives
• Slave Songs of the United States
• African-American history forum archives at CUNY
• Fort Mose: Free African settlement
• Virginia Runaways

Exploration and Settlements

• WWW-Virtual Library, USA: Discovery and Exploration
• Exploring the Early Americas [Jay I. Kislak Collection at the Library of Congress]
• Discoverers Web [Andre Engels]
  • Irish and Vikings
  • The medieval period
  • The coast of Africa
  • The Portuguese empire
  • Christophorus Columbua
  • North and Central America
  • South America
• The Age of Exploration Curriculum Guide [The Mariner’s Museum]
• 1492: An Ongoing Voyage [Library of Congress]
• The European Voyages of Exploration
• WWW-Virtual Library, USA: Colonial Period
• A Biography of America: New World Encounters [Annenberg/CPB]
• First Encounters [Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History]
• European Colonization North of Mexico [Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History]
• 13 Originals: Founding the American Colonies
• Thomas Hariot’s A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia: Electronic Edition [University of North Carolina, Documenting the American South]
• Roanoke Island Festival Park
• The Founding of Jamestown in its Atlantic Context [Folger Shakespeare Library]
• Jamestown Rediscovery
• Virtual Jamestown
• Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
• Colonial Williamsburg
• Flowerdew Hundred
• The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, by Herbert L. Osgood [Dinsmore Documentation]
• 17th-century Colonial New England
• MayflowerHistory.com
• Plimoth Plantation
  • Home page
  • Various virtual tours
  • The American Thanksgiving Tradition
  • The 1627 Village
• Plymouth Colony Archive Project
• Pilgrim Hall Museum
• The Founding of New England, by James Truslow Adams [Dinsmore Documentation]
• New France and New England, by John Fiske [Dinsmore Documentation]
• Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, 1636-1776
• The Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America, by John Fiske [Dinsmore Documentation]
• William Penn: Visionary Proprietor [Tuomi J. Forrest]
• WWW-Virtual Library, USA: Boone & Crockett’s America
• North Carolina historic sites
  • Historic Bath
  • Historic Edenton
  • Historic Halifax
  • Tryon’s Palace

Colonial Living

• Common-Place (journal published by American Antiquarian Society and Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History)
• A Land of Contrasts [Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History]
• Bethlehem [Pa] Digital History Project
• Letters and Diaries Online [History Matters]
• DoHistory (uses Martha Ballard’s diary as a focal point for several activities)
• Woman’s Work Is Never Done [American Antiquarian Society]
• A History of American Literature, by Moses Coit Tyler [Dinsmore Documentation]
• Digital Archive of American Architecture
• Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century, by Philip A. Bruce [Dinsmore Documentation]
• Leslie Brock Center for the Study of Colonial Currency
• Coins of Colonial and Early America
• Colonial Music Institute
• Popular songs in American history (with words, and MIDI-sequenced tunes by Lesley Nelson-Burns — first four sections deal with the colonial period)
• Religion and the Founding of the American Republic [Library of Congress]
• Resources on the Puritans
• The First Great Awakening [National Humanities Council]
• The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University
• Sermons of the Reverend George Whitefield [Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics]
• The Ephratha Cloister: Conrad Beissel and his Communal Experiment
• Salem Witch Trials: Documentary Archive and Transcription Project
• Salem Witchcraft Hysteria
• Witchcraft in Salem Village: Intersections of Religion and Society [National Humanities Center]
• Famous American Trials: Salem Witchcraft Trials 1692
• Archiving Early America (lots of images of reproductions of documents sold by this commercial company)
• Using Material Culture to Teach U.S. History forum archives at CUNY
• Plimoth Plantation (Plymouth, Massachusetts)
• Colonial Williamsburg (Williamsburg, Virginia)
• Old Salem (Winston-Salem, North Carolina)
• Winterthur Museum (Wilmington, Delaware)
• Old Sturbridge Village (Sturbridge, Massachusetts)
• Historic Deerfield (Deerfield, Massachusetts)
• Greenfield Village (Dearborn, Michigan)
• Mystic Seaport (Mystic, Connecticut)
• Pennsbury Manor (Bucks County, Pennsylvania)
• Historic Charleston’s Religious and Community Buildings [National Register of Historic Places]
• Colonials and Patriots: Historic Places Commemorating Our Forebears [National Park Service]

The American Revolution

• Coming of the American Revolution [Massachusetts Historical Society]
• WWW-Virtual Library, USA: Revolutionary Era
• Background to the American Revolution Lecture Outline [About.com]
• Founders Library
• The Seven Years War [Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History]
• French and Indian War Resource Guide
• Declaring Independence: Drafting the Documents [Library of Congress]
• The Declaration of Independence [National Archives]
• The Freedom Trail [Boston]
• Liberty: The American Revolution (based on the PBS television series)
• The Age of Revolution [Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History]
• AmericanRevolution.org
• The Revolution’s Black Soldiers [AmericanRevolution.org]
• American Women’s History: A Research Guide, American Revolution
• Image as History: Stamp Act Cartoons [Learner.org]
• Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789 [Library of Congress]
• Loyalist and British Songs and Poetry of the American Revolution (also has links to other Loyalist materials) [M. Christopher New]
• All the News? The American Revolution and Maryland’s Press [Maryland State Archives]
• The Charters of Freedom (facsimiles of Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights) [National Archives and Records Administration]
• American Revolutionary War [National Park Service]
• Historic Philadelphia
• Independence National Historical Park (Independence Hall) [National Park Service]
• Historic Valley Forge
• The American Revolution and Drayton Hall
• King’s Mountain National Park [National Park Service]
• Interactive British Soldier
• Uniforms of the American Revolution
• Another site on Uniforms of the American Revolution
• Religion and the American Revolution [National Humanities Center]
• The Reinterpretation of the American Revolution, by Jack P. Greene [Universal Library/Carnegie Mellon]

Famous Personalities

• Signers of the Declaration of Independence
• Biographies of the Founding Fathers
• Benjamin Franklin: Glimpses of the Man [Franklin Institute]
• Guide to Benjamin Franklin [Richard Jensen]
• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin [ushistory.org]
• Thomas Jefferson Digital Archive
• Monticello — The Home of Thomas Jefferson
• Thomas Jefferson Online (based on Ken Burns’ film on Jefferson)
• Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia
• Thomas Jefferson Papers at the Library of Congress (American Memory)
• George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress (American Memory)
• The Papers of George Washington
• George Washington’s Mount Vernon
• Thomas Paine

Maps

• Hargett Rare Library Map Collection at the University of Georgia
  • Colonial America
  • Revolutionary America
• Map Collections, 1500-2004 [Library of Congress]
• Maps of the French and Indian War [Massachusetts Historical Society]
• The American Revolution and Maps of its Era, 1750-1789 [Library of Congress]