Westward by Sea: A Maritime Perspective on American
Expansion, 1820-1890
Related Resources
In American Memory
Maritime Content
- Around the World in the 1890s:
Photographs from the World's Transportation Commission, 1894-1896
- This collection contains nearly nine hundred images of transportation
including railroads, elephants, camels, horses, sleds and sleighs, sedan
chairs, rickshaws, among others. See city views, street and, landscapes,
local inhabitants, and Commission members as they travelled through North
Africa, Asia, Australia, and Oceania. See especially the collection of
photographs on Harbor
Scenes.
- Built in America: Historic
American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record, 1933-Present
- The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and the Historic
American Engineering Record (HAER) collections document achievements in
architecture, engineering, and design in the United States and its
territories through a comprehensive range of building types and
engineering technologies. The collection includes a range of sail and
motor vessels and shipyard buildings. See
Schooners,
Tugs,
Skipjacks,
Shipyards,
and, more generally,
Ships.
- The Capital and the Bay:
Narratives of Washington and the Chesapeake Bay Region, 1600-1925
- The Capital and the Bay: Narratives of Washington and
the Chesapeake Bay Region, ca. 1600-1925 comprises 139 books selected from the
Library of Congress's General Collections and two books from its Rare Book and
Special Collections Division. The collection includes first-person narratives,
early histories, historical biographies, promotional brochures, and books of
photographs that capture in words and pictures a distinctive region as it
developed between the onset of European settlement and the first quarter of
the twentieth century.
- Map Collections: 1544-1999
- This collection form the Geography and Map Division and has captured maps
and atlases organized according to seven major categories. See especially Discovery and Exploration and Cities and Towns.
- Puerto Rico at the Dawn of the
Modern Age: Nineteenth-and Early-Twentieth-Century Perspectives
-
Puerto Rico at the Dawn of the Modern Age: Nineteenth- and
Early-Twentieth-Century Perspectives portrays the early history of the commonwealth of Puerto Rico through
first-person accounts, political writings, and histories drawn from the Library of Congress's General Collections.
Of particular interest is the special presentation of
cartographic items that
feature maps of
the Caribbean, Puerto Rico and its cities, and war maps from the
Spanish-American War
of 1898.
Westward Settlement and the
American West
-
American Indians of the Pacific Northwest
- This digital collection integrates over 2,300
photographs and 7,700 pages of text relating to the American Indians in two
cultural areas of the Pacific Northwest, the Northwest Coast and Plateau.
These resources illustrate many aspects of life and work, including housing,
clothing, crafts, transportation, education, and employment. The materials are
drawn from the extensive collections of the University of Washington
Libraries, the Cheney Cowles Museum/Eastern Washington State Historical
Society in Spokane, and the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle.
- "California as
I Saw It": First-Person Narratives of California's Early Years,
1849-1900
- Consists of the full texts and illustrations of 190 works documenting the formative era of California's history
through eyewitness accounts. The collection covers the dramatic decades between
the Gold Rush and the turn of the twentieth century. It captures
the pioneer experience; encounters between Anglo-Americans and the diverse peoples who
had preceded them; the transformation of the land by mining,
ranching, agriculture, and urban development; the often-turbulent growth of communities and
cities; and California's emergence as both a state and a
place of uniquely American dreams. Of particular interest is Richard Henry Dana,
Jr.'s
Two Years Before the Mast. This personal narrative, gives an account
of Dana's expedition at sea. Leaving from Boston in 1834, he sailed as a
common seaman on board the brig Pilgrim bound for the Pacific, and
returned to Massachusetts two years later. It contains a rare and
detailed account of life on the California coast a decade before the Gold
Rush revolutionized the region's culture and society. He describes the
lives of sailors in the ports and their work of hide-curing on the
beaches, and he gives close attention to the daily life of the peoples of
California: Hispanic, Native American, and European.
- Edward S. Curtis's The
North American Indian: Photographic Images
- The North American Indian by Edward S. Curtis is one
of the most significant and controversial representations of traditional
American Indian culture ever produced. Issued in a limited edition from
1907-1930, the publication continues to exert a major influence on the image
of Indians in popular culture. Curtis said he wanted to document "the old time
Indian, his dress, his ceremonies, his life and manners." In over 2000
photogravure plates and narrative, Curtis portrayed the traditional customs
and lifeways of eighty Indian tribes. The twenty volumes, each with an
accompanying portfolio, are organized by tribes and culture areas encompassing
the Great Plains, Great Basin, Plateau Region, Southwest, California, Pacific
Northwest, and Alaska. Featured here are all of the published photogravure
images including over 1500 illustrations bound in the text volumes, along with
over 700 portfolio plates.
- History of the American
West, 1860-1920: Photographs from the Collection of the Denver Public
Library
- Over 30,000 photographs, drawn from the holdings of
the Western History and Genealogy Department at Denver Public Library,
illuminate many aspects of the history of the American West. Most of the
photographs were taken between 1860 and 1920. They illustrate Colorado towns
and landscape, document the place of mining in the history of Colorado and the
West, and show the lives of Native Americans from more than forty tribes
living west of the Mississippi River.
- The
Nineteenth Century in Print: Books
- The books in this collection bear nineteenth century American imprints,
dating mainly from between 1850 and 1880. They have been digitized by the
University of Michigan as part of the Making of America project, a major
collaborative endeavor to preserve and provide access to historical texts.
Currently, approximately 1,500 books are included. The collection is
particularly strong in poetry and in the subject areas of education,
psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology.
See especially
Travel and Westward
Expansion. In particular, see
Sailing on the Great Lakes and Rivers of America,
Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast and
The Great West and Pacific Coast.
-
Prairie Settlement:
Nebraska Photographs and Family Letters, 1862-1912
- This digital collection integrates two collections
from the holdings of the Nebraska State Historical Society, the Solomon D.
Butcher photographs and the letters of the Uriah W. Oblinger family. Together
they illustrate the story of settlement on the Great Plains. Approximately
3,000 glass plate negatives crafted by Butcher record the process of
settlement in Nebraska between 1886 and 1912. The approximately 3,000 pages of
Oblinger family letters discuss land, work, neighbors, crops, religious
meetings, problems with grasshoppers, financial problems, and the Easter
Blizzard of 1873. In the eloquent letters exchanged between Uriah and his wife
Mattie, and in letters to other family members, Oblinger expresses very
personal insight into the joy, despair, and determination in their struggle to
establish a home on the prairie.
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Perspective on American Expansion, 1820-1890