Colonial History Digtial Library
Digital Library > History > U.S. > Early America
See alsoThe Atlantic World: America and the Netherlands (English or Nederlands)
"...explores the history of the Dutch presence in America and the interactions between the United States and the Netherlands from Henry Hudson's 1609 voyage to the post-World-War-II period. The project is the product of ongoing cooperation between the Library of Congress and the National Library of the Netherlands, which has enlisted the cooperation of other leading Dutch libraries, museums, and archives."
- Library of Congress Global Gateway
American Journeys
Eyewitness Accounts of Early American Exploration and Settlement: A Digital Library and Learning Center
"American Journeys contains more than 18,000 pages of eyewitness accounts of North American exploration, from the sagas of Vikings in Canada in AD1000 to the diaries of mountain men in the Rockies 800 years later."
Common-Place
The Interactive Journal of Early American Life
The Declaration ofIndependence
"This site provides a wealth of information about the signers of the Declaration, the history of the Declaration, and an online version of the Declaration for you to read...The site also provides links to other Declaration-related biographies and histories and a guestbook where you are invited to add comments and ideas. This site is a good resource for anyone curious about the Declaration and its history, or for the student who needs resources for his or her research paper."
- ushistory.org
Declaring Independence: Drafting the Documents
Sections include: Chronology of Events (June 7, 1776 to January 18, 1777) ; Drafting the Documents ; Objects in the Exhibition.
An online exhibit from the Library of Congress
The Diary, Correspondence, and Papers of Robert "King" Carter of Virginia, 1701-1732
Transcribed and Edited by Edmund Berkeley, Jr.
"This site includes transcriptions of the diary, correspondence, and papers of the richest and most important man of his day in Virginia, who owned at his death at least 300,000 acres containing many farms and plantations that produced tobacco and other crops for sale, some 1,000 slaves to work those plantations, and large sums of money invested in Virginia and in England. Robert Carter was a member of the Council of Virginia, was acting governor, and a political power in the colony. He had received a classical education in England, and corresponded widely both within the colony and with merchants in England."
Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia
Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture
E-Facsimiles
"...collects and creates electronic resources for study and research of the decorative arts, with a particular focus on Early America. Included are electronic texts and facsimiles, image databases, and Web resources...The project will provide access to digitized primary materials significant to the decorative arts and material culture of Early America. Materials for this project will range from Catesby's Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, to a database of early American Furniture from the Chipstone Foundation."
Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison
The First American West: The Ohio River Valley, 1750-1820
"...consists of 15,000 pages of original historical material documenting the land, peoples, exploration, and transformation of the trans-Appalachian West from the mid-eighteenth to the early nineteenth century. The collection is drawn from the holdings of the University of Chicago Library and the Filson Historical Society of Louisville, Kentucky. Among the sources included are books, periodicals, newspapers, pamphlets, scientific publications, broadsides, letters, journals, legal documents, ledgers and other financial records, maps, physical artifacts, and pictorial images."
- American Memory, Library of Congress
From Revolution to Reconstruction
"This collection of thoughts, opinions, and arguments of the Founders is meant to be useful to different kinds of readers, and hence useful in a variety of ways. How one uses this book will depend on the energy, time, and needs of the particular individual. Those desiring a general view of the state of the question that ultimately took the form of a specific phrase or clause in the Constitution will find materials assembled under the article, section, and clause numbers of that provision. Readers wishing to pursue their inquiries further are directed--within and at the end of each unit or chapter--to the location of other primary materials that they might find germane. Some of those materials are reprinted here under the headings of thematic chapters in volume 1 or under other, closely related, constitutional clauses, and their location will be so indicated. Many other documents will be of a kind that we could not accommodate within the already stretched confines of this collection; references to their published locations are clearly noted. "
The Founders' Constitution
"In this unique anthology, Philip B. Kurland and Ralph Lerner draw on the writings of a wide array of people engaged in the problem of making popular government safe, steady, and accountable. The documents included range from the early seventeenth century to the 1830s, from the reflections of philosophers to popular pamphlets, from public debates in ratifying conventions to the private correspondence of the leading political actors of the day."
Web edition, University of Chicago Press and Liberty Fund
Voices from the Days of Slavery: Former Slaves Tell Their Stories
"...provides the opportunity to listen to former slaves describe their lives. These interviews, conducted between 1932 and 1975, capture the recollections of twenty-three identifiable people born between 1823 and the early 1860s and known to have been former slaves."
Rare Map Collection at the Hargrett Library
"...a collection of about 800 historical maps spanning nearly 500 years, from the sixteenth century through the early twentieth century...All of our maps are available in this Library in digital format, but only a subset of them are on this site."
- University of Georgia
Salem Witch Trials
Documentary Archive and Transcription Project
"...consists of an electronic collection of primary source materials relating to the Salem witch trials of 1692 and a new transcription of the court records."
Sections include: Archives ; Books & Letters ; Documents ; Maps ; People.
Project Director: Benjamin C. Ray, Dept. of Religious Studies, University of Virginia
Slave Movement During the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
"This site provides access to the raw data and documentation which contains information on the following slave trade topics from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: records of slave ship movement between Africa and the Americas, slave ships of eighteenth century France, slave trade to Rio de Janeiro, Virginia slave trade in the eighteenth century, English slave trade (House of Lords Survey), Angola slave trade in the eighteenth century, internal slave trade to Rio de Janeiro, slave trade to Havana, Cuba, Nantes slave trade in the eighteenth century, and slave trade to Jamaica."
Data and Program Library Service (DPLS), University of Wisconsin
Thomas Jefferson Digital Archive
Sections include: Digital Texts ; Scholarship ; Quotations ; Bibliographies ; Organizations ; The UVA Jefferson Collection ; UVA Special Collections Online Exhibitions with Jefferson Content
University of Virginia - electronic text center
Thomas Jefferson Exhibit at the Library of Congress
"This exhibition focuses on the extraordinary written legacy of Thomas Jefferson--founding father, farmer, architect, inventor, slaveholder, book collector, scholar, diplomat, and the third president of the United States. It traces Jefferson's intellectual development from his earliest days in the Piedmont to an ever-expanding realm of influence in republican Virginia, the American Revolutionary government, the creation of the American nation, and the revolution in individual rights in America and the world."
University of Georgia Hargrett Library Rare Map Collection
"...maintains a collection of more than 800 historic maps spanning nearly 500 years, from the sixteenth century through the early twentieth century."
Site contents include: New World ; Colonial America ; Revolutionary America ; Revolutionary Georgia ; Union & Expansion ; American Civil War ; Frontier to New South ; Savannah & the Coast ; Transportation.
Virginia Runaways Project
"The Virginia Runaways Project is a digital database of runaway and captured slave advertisements from 18th-century Virginia newspapers. When a slave ran away, slaveowners often placed remarkably detailed advertisements for their return. Sheriffs and other county officials also often advertised the capture of runaways or suspected runaways. This project offers full transcripts and images of all runaway and captured ads placed in Virginia newspapers from 1736 to 1790."
By Thomas Costa, History Department, University of Virginia's College at Wise
Words & Deeds in American History
"...approximately ninety representative documents spanning from the fifteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. Included are the papers of presidents, cabinet ministers, members of Congress, Supreme Court justices, military officers and diplomats, reformers and political activists, artists and writers, scientists and inventors, and other prominent American..."
Library of Congress' American Memory Project
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