Browse Items (116 total)

This engraved map was published in London in March 1787. It details the siege of Yorktown in 1781, the last great battle of the American Revolution. It clearly shows the American and French forces as they surround the British forces under the command…

As they had been in the pre-war years, broadsides continued to be a way to spread and provide commentary on the news. This broadside features two poems about the surrender of Yorktown. The first is “A Poem Spoken Extempore, by a Young Lady, on…

James Rivington (1724-1802), publisher of Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer, was born in London and was a bookseller in his native land before immigrating to the colonies in 1760. He eventually established a bookstore in New York and then ventured into…

Although breaking news usually appeared on the interior of colonial newspapers as that side of the paper was generally printed last, this copy of the New-Hampshire Gazette—published by Daniel Fowle (ca. 1715-87)—leads with a front-page…

The Continental Congress charged five men with the responsibility to commit to paper the American colonies’ Declaration of Independence from Britain: Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), Benjamin Franklin (1706-90), John Adams (1735-1826), Robert…

Public readings of the newly minted Declaration of Independence took place in taverns, churches, town greens, or anywhere else people could gather. In New England, the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence is believed to have taken…

Diary and journal keeping was a common practice during the Victorian era and particularly during the Civil War, by both men and women, North and South. Unlike the generally terse and dispassionate diaries of the eighteenth century, nineteenth-century…

This set of letters was written by Daniel E. Burbank (1841-1920), a soldier from Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire.Burbank enlisted in the Second New Hampshire infantry, Company A, in the spring of 1861. His letters, mainly to his family, talk about camp…

Nathaniel Paine (1832-1917) was a prominent Worcester banker and civic leader who counted among his friends and mentors Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909) and Senator George Frisbie Hoar (1826-1904). An avid lifelong collector, he was a member of the…