www.Virginia
Here are the most useful websites for teaching Virginia history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site’s content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers.
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Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record
Jerome Handler and Michael Tuite Jr., University of Virginia
This collection of more than 1,230 images depicts the enslavement of Africans, the Atlantic Slave Trade, and slave life in the New World. Images are arranged in 18 categories, including capture of slaves, maps, slave ships, plantation scenes, physical punishment, music, free people of color, family life, religion, marketing, rebellion, and emancipation. The category "Pre-colonial Africa: Society, Polity, Culture" contains 242 images; however, most categories have approximately 20 to 80 images. Many of the illustrations and paintings are from 17th and 18th-century books and travel accounts, but some are taken from sketches within slave narratives and Harper's Weekly and Monthly Magazine. In addition to reference information, brief 20- to 100-word comments, often an excerpt from the caption, accompany each image. While there is no attempt to interpret the images, those studying American slave societies, especially the Caribbean and Latin America, will find this a useful site.
Resources Available: IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-11-20.
George Washington: Images of History
Sue Luftschein and David Jaffee
This activity, developed as part of the Learning to Look Faculty Development program at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, asks students to consider how artists' depictions of George Washington have shaped perceptions of "the father of our country" in different eras. The activity requires students to read about Washington; view a variety of images of him; choose a selection of those images; and prepare a written or oral presentation about how an immigrant in the turn-of-the-twentieth-century U.S. might have perceived the nation's first president based on the images chosen.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 0000-00-00.
“The Terrible Transformation”: From Servants to Slaves in Virginia
American Social History Project
In the seventeenth century, Virginia underwent a fateful transition that would shape much of the rest of American history: planters shifted their labor force from one composed primarily of indentured European servants bound for a period of years to one made up largely of enslaved Africans held for life. Designed for college-level students, this detailed and clear activity walks students through the basic steps of analyzing quantitative data and asks them to use the data to test a historical hypothesis about Virginia's “terrible transformation.”
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2002-12-04.
Ladies, Contraband and Spies: Women in the Civil War
American Memory, Library of Congress; Susan Allen; and Mary Rockwell
This lesson uses diaries, letters, and photographs from the Library of Congress American Memory Collection to explore the experiences of slave women, plantation mistresses, female spies, and Union women in the Civil War. Students work in groups to analyze the primary documents then make individual oral presentations with visual back up (such as Power Point). Finally, students must synthesize what they have learned into a 500 word textbook entry, offering an opportunity to discuss the nature of historical synthesis and what gets left out of textbooks. Designed for high school sophomores and juniors, this lesson provides a good model that can be adapted to other historical topics and grade levels.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2002-12-04.
Through the Lens of Time: Images of African Americans from the Cook Collection of Photographs
Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries and Valentine Richmond History Center
This site consists of nearly 300 images of Afro-Virginians dating from the 1880s to the early 20th century. Images are scanned from prints taken by father and son, George S. Cook and Huestes P. Cook, principally in the Richmond and Central Virginia area. Users can search the digital collection by keyword or browse the 19 subject headings, including agriculture, education, recreation, religion, tobacco, and urban life. Those interested in African American women should see the 18 images in the subject heading "domestic work." The 104 "labor" photographs are the most extensive; the 49 "children" and 21 "education" photographs are fascinating. This site is valuable to those studying African-American life at the turn of the century or Virginia history.
Resources Available: IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2008-10-09.
National Postal Museum
Smithsonian Institution
Divided into six galleries, this website features 21 online exhibits. The first gallery, Binding the Nation, includes six exhibits such as "The Post and the Press" and "Moving West" that explains how the postal service contracted with stagecoach lines to transport mail across the frontier. The second gallery, Customers and Communities, uses a series of exhibits to examine the development of mail delivery to the growing urban and rural populations in the 20th century. For example, through a virtual tour of the "Mail by Rail" visitors learn about the revolutionary Railway Mail Service. Moving the Mail is the third gallery, with three exhibits, and Art of Cards and Letters, the fourth gallery, spotlights the important role mail has held as a medium for personal communications, including "Undercover: The Evolution of the American Envelope." The fifth gallery, Artistic License comprises six exhibits and the last, the Philatelic Gallery, includes exhibits entitled "Rarities Vault" and "Inverts." This gallery also features changing exhibits featuring special objects from both the Museum and private collections, including an online version of "Mail to the Chief," a collection of original drawings by Franklin Roosevelt of the many stamps he designed. There are also two research guides online for the Benjamin B. Lipsner Airmail Collection and for the 1847 Federal Postage Stamp Correspondence. An Activity Zone offers materials for young students and free downloadable curriculum guides (grades K through college level) are available for teachers. The 24 online articles from EnRoute, the National Postal Museum's membership magazine, complete this rich site.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2005-12-01.
The Story of Virginia
Virginia Historical Society
This attractive website offers a presentation on the history of Virginia from prehistoric times to the present with essays, images, and teaching resources. There are ten chapters: the first Virginians; the settlement of colonial Virginia; Virginia's society before 1775; Virginians in the American Revolution; Virginians as Southerners, Confederates, and New Southerners; Virginians in the 20th century; the struggles of African-American and female Virginians for equality; and a final chapter on images of Virginia in popular culture. Each chapter has an essay featuring images of relevant items in the collections of the Virginia Historical Society. The "resource bank" collects all 95 images from the chapters of people, documents, places, and objects. Additionally, the site offers a teacher's guide for each chapter listing the standards of learning, a summary of key points, classroom activities and lesson plans, links to related websites, and information on tours, outreach programs, and hands-on-history programs. An excellent introduction to the history of Virginia and its people with useful resources for class projects and classroom instruction.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2008-10-06.
The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources: 1745-1799
Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library
One of several outstanding digital collections of George Washington's papers, this site is a valuable resource for studying the Revolutionary Era. Materials include 17,500 letters and documents written by Washington, spanning the years 1749 to 1799. Essentially the digitized version of the 39-volume collection of Washington's papers, the site offers a powerful search feature that allows users to limit searches by recipient and year. It also can be browsed by volume and document. The editors have included a 2,000-word introduction. Not quite as complete as the Library of Congress's 60,000 letter collection, The George Washington Papers, this site is nonetheless a convenient and substantial research resource.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2008-10-08.
Race and Place: An African-American Community in the Jim Crow South: Charlottesville, VA
Virginia Center for Digital History and Carter G. Woodson Institute of African and Afro-American Studies
A valuable resource for placing Jim Crow in the context of a specific locality and the individual lives of African Americans, this archive addresses Jim Crow, or racial segregation, laws from the late 1880s until the mid-20th century focusing on the town of Charlottesville, Virginia. Material include maps, census databases, city records, political materials, personal papers, newspaper articles, and images, as well as a guide to various research projects and exhibitions. The theme is the connection of race with place by understanding the lives of African Americans in the segregated South. "Political materials" includes seven digitized copies of political broadsides and a timeline of African American political activity in Charlottesville and Virginia. "Census data" includes searchable databases containing information about individual African Americans taken from the 1870 and 1910 Charlottesville census records. "City records" includes a database of individual African Americans searchable by name, gender, occupation, and year. It also offers an African-American business directory database that includes churches, schools, clubs, and organizations searchable by first and last name, name and type of business, and year. "Oral histories" includes audio files from over 37 interviews. "Personal papers" contains indexes to the Benjamin F. Yancey family papers and the letters of Catherine Flanagan Coles. "Newspapers," still in progress, includes over 1,000 transcribed articles from or about Charlottesville or Albemarle from two major African-American newspapers--the Charlottesville Recorder and the Richmond Planet. The articles are indexed and searchable by keyword. "Images" has links to two extensive image collections, the Holsinger Studio Collection and the Jackson Davis Collection of African American Educational Photographs, and three smaller collections. Image collections are either searchable or easy to browse.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-30.
Dolley Madison Project
Holly Shulman, Virginia Center for Digital History
This attractive and easy to navigate website focuses on the life and legacy of First Lady Dolley Payne Todd Madison, wife of James Madison. There are two main sections. "Resources" includes four short background essays on different periods of Dolley Madison's life; a timeline and chronology of her life; a short essay explaining the controversy over Dolley Madison's first name; an alphabetical listing of her correspondents with biographical sketches; and a link to the National First Ladies' Library page on Dolley Madison with a bibliography and lesson plans. "Exhibit" offers four presentations focused on Dolley Madison's life: early years, years in Washington, years at Montpelier during her husband's retirement, and widowhood. Each has a background essay, selected letters, an image gallery (41 images total), and a timeline. There is also a link to the Dolley Madison Digital Edition, a fee-based archive containing "the first-ever complete edition of all her known correspondence." Additionally, there is a section on the use of Dolley Madison's name and image in popular culture with a collection of 27 images. A useful information resource for those interested in Dolley Madison or teaching about her life.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2008-10-06.