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Resources : The United States

This is a page listing various resources dealing with United States history, geography and related topics and subjects. Resources range from website and online article links to lists of recommended non-fiction bibliography.

FEDSTATS Searchable access to statistics from over 70 agencies of the U.S. government.

US National Archives - The U.S. Government archives. There's a copy of practically every piece of paper that ever crossed a bureaucrat's desk anywhere in the Federal government since 1787 here. Most of it is offline, but there's some material online. If you have history research to do that involves the U.S. government, this is the place to go

Wilsonville Library : Northwest Heritage Index - This index covers mostly Clackamas County and Oregon people and places, etc., including over 16,000 obituaries from over 100 years of Canby, Oregon newspapers, originally compiled by Canby Public Library volunteers and staff. The subjects of the obituaries were from a wide area including much of Clackamas County and northeast Marion County. Many otherwise unindexed sources in the Wilsonville Public Library Heritage Collection have also been indexed here.

Pikes Peak Library District - Special Collections (Digital Photographs) - Digitized, searchable collection of historical photographs online covering the Pikes Peak region, from the photo archives of the Pikes Peak Library District, Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Charles City, IA Old Photographs and Postcards - Collection of early 1900s views of Charles City, Floyd County, Iowa including the Floyd County Court House, street scenes, churches, schools, The Starr Home for the Aged, Hildreth Hotel, Gem Theatre & Anderson Ice Cream, library and other views. Mostly from 1900-1915, with a couple of views from the 1940s.

California GLO / BLM Land Patents - A name index, created in 1997, of all land deeds (patents) issued by the General Land Office and Bureau of Land Management in California. Details of each patent are listed by county in Adobe pdf and MS Excel formats.

Early Vital Records of Massachusetts to the end of 1849 - Transcriptions and images of the Massachusetts Town Vital Records “Tan Books” from the early 20th Century.

The Montana Sedition Project - Montana's Sedition Prisoners - Montana's state Sedition Law was similar to that of the United States law of 1917. The Montana Sedition Project acquired pardons for those imprisoned under the Sedition Law in 2006. Included in this site is the list of Montana's Sedition Prisoners along with their scanned prison in-take forms.

Paper Trail - Website database created by the Oregon-California Trails Association from thousands of trail-related documents of the mid-19th century western migration. Whether people traveled west for gold, land, religious freedom or new opportunity, they wrote diaries, letters, articles and recollections about the journey. From over 3500 original documents Paper Trail organizes information into an easy-to-search database, featuring names, dates, routes, travel parties, locations and interesting features. The website also lists the library where each document or its copies may be found. The information from each document is accessible by subject codes and by a 6-page outline survey of each document in the Paper Trail website. Names searches are free. Reports require modest subscription.

U.S. Registry of Space Objects - The 1974 UN Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space provides for the national registration by launching states of space objects launched into outer space and for the maintenance of a central register of objects launched into outer space by the Secretary-General of the United Nations. The United States, as a party to the Registration Convention, maintains an official US Registry of Space Objects Launched into Outer Space and provides quarterly updates to the UN Secretary-General on each space object carried on the US Registry. To improve the timeliness and accuracy of the information contained in the US Registry and to make such information more accessible to the public, the Department of State now maintains the US Registry online.


Geography

a.) General resources

US Place Names Gazeteer - Pretty neat site. Only good for US sights, alas, but the information is rather outstanding. It basically puts all the relevant map sites and whatnot on one page. You can search for info on pretty much any community, even the really small ones.

Atlas of Extinct Nations - Examining the forsaken cities, failed states, and extinct nations of North America - An immensely useful historical blog.

US Cities Gazetteer - Data for 42,500 Cities, Towns & ZIP Codes. HTL profiles include census, demographic and income data, parks, schools, libraries, hospitals, airports, hotels, environmental conditions, local newspapers, media outlets, employment, maps, coordinates and aerial photos.

City-Data.Com - From the website: We've collected and analyzed data from numerous sources to create as complete and interesting profiles of all U.S. cities as we could. We have over 43,000 city photos not found anywhere else, hundreds of thousands of maps, satellite photos, stats about residents (race, income, ancestries, education, employment…), geographical data, state profiles, crime data, sex offenders, housing, businesses, local news links based on our exclusive technology, birthplaces of famous people, political contributions, city government finances and employment, weather, hospitals, schools, libraries, houses, airports, radio and TV stations, zip codes, area codes, air pollution, water systems and their health and monitoring violations, professionally written city guides, a forum with over 120,000 registered members and 1,000,000 posts, 5000+ user-submitted facts, 5000+ exclusive local business profiles with photos, comparisons to averages, and more. If you ever need to research any city for any reason, from considering a move there to just checking where somebody you know is staying, this is the site for you.

b.) Regional and local resources

The 1670 Connecticut state census - A reconstructed listing of 1,544 household heads and 824 freeman. Data for the census was found in household, estate, tax, landowner, church and freeman lists between the years 1660 and 1673.

Introduction to Manhattan Timeformations ~ New York - Maps Manhattan's Skyscrapper district through time. Way cool animation. Try 'Transparent New York'.

New Orleans Ward Boundaries, 1805-1880

Morgan Index of Ohio People, Businesses and Institutions, 1796-1850 - This is a new updated and expanded index of the Ohio Name Index. It is now called the Morgan Index of Ohio People, Businesses and Institutions, 1796-1850. The site is now platformed on OhioLINK, has a new search engine for basic searches as well as advanced searches with limit options. Searches can be conducted by name, address, city, state, occupation, race, birth/death date and place of birth and death, as well as employer. Searches may be sorted by name, date city or occupation and by gender, male or female, or business. Entries have been expanded from 88,000 to over 130,000 with quarterly updates now a regular feature.

Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 - Interactive map showing the Great Fire's destruction of the Baltimore business district in 1904.

The Stone Structures of the Northeastern United States - “This website is a resource for information about historic stone structures, Native American ritual stone structure, and stone quarrying methods in Northeastern United States. It provides information about how to identify these stones structures, their history and purpose.”


Media

The Geography of Slavery in Virginia - Digital collection of advertisements for runaway slaves, captured slaves & servants in 18th- & 19th-century Virginia newspapers. Over 4000 advertisements for runaway slaves and indentured servants from newspapers in Virginia & Maryland from 1736-1803. Keyword searchable database.

Virginia Runaways - Runaway slave advertisements from 18th-century Virginia newspapers. Similar to the site above but focuses more on the 1736-1776 time period.

African American Newspapers in Kansas

Prints and Photographs Online - Courtesy of the Library of Congress website.

The New York Times Article Archive - Contains New York Times articles dating back to 1851. The archive is divided into two search sets: 1851–1980 and 1981–present.

South Georgia Historic Newspapers Archive - The South Georgia Historic Newspapers Archive (U.S) provides users with an archive of over 81,000 newspaper pages from several south Georgia cities. The newspapers are word searchable and can be browse by issue. The site was created and is maintained by the Digital Library of Georgia.

Collection of 170,000 historical American photos - “Photogrammar is a web-based platform for organizing, searching, and visualizing the 170,000 photographs from 1935 to 1945 created by the United States Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information (FSA-OWI).” Between 1935 and 1944, the Farm Security Agency-Office of War Information dispatched photographers to all ends of the United States to document life during hard times and wartime. Many of their photos, taken by now-legendary photographers like Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, have become iconic representations of America during the Depression and World War II. But most of the hundreds of thousands of negatives, collected in what became known as “The File,” were never seen by the public before being released in 2014.

The Making of Modern Michigan : Digitizing Michigan's Hidden Past - The Making of Modern Michigan is a collaborative project involving more than 50 Michigan libraries. It includes local history materials from communities around the state. Michigan's unique heritage is represented through photographs, family papers, oral histories, genealogical materials, and much more.


Society and Population Statistics

The 1670 Connecticut state census - A reconstructed listing of 1,544 household heads and 824 freeman. Data for the census was found in household, estate, tax, landowner, church and freeman lists between the years 1660 and 1673.

United States historical census data browser, 1790-1970 Examine state and county topics for individual census years (1790-1960) on such topics as literacy rates, ethnicity, average size of farms and slave population, to name just a few.

Mortality Schedules - Search marriage, death records found in the New York State federal and state census mortality schedules 1850, 1855, 1860, 1865, 1870, 1875, 1880.

US population statistics from 1830

Maps of ancestry by US state - Based on data from the 2000 census. Courtesy of Thande.

The Underground Railroad at Nationalgeographic.com - Routes to Freedom Map

Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy 1719-1820 - Online searchable database of over 100,000 descriptions of slaves found in documents in Louisiana between 1718 and 1821 from Dr. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall. Scans of original documents as well as detailed information on the slaves involved in various revolts and rebellions. Dr. Hall appears to be a big fan of charts and statistics so one can find charts on such detailed things as 'age group of slave by decade', 'Average price by place of origin' and 'Number of slaves with Islamic names' for example.

A Dictionary of Colonial American English - From a glossary by Richard M. Lederer, Jr., first published in 1985. Compiled by Wolfpaw. Good for checking if you got your AmE archaisms right in works concernign the 17th-19th century North American territories.

Military Lots assigned to soldiers, Garrett County, Maryland. 1787 - Lots assigned to Marylanders who served 3 years in the American army during the Revolution.

The Rich Men of Massachusetts - Indexed page images of an 1851 book containing 'A Statement of the Reputed Wealth of About Fifteen Hundred Persons, with Brief Sketches of More than One Thousand Characters'.

Roots and Routes - Yankee Migration FAQ - With animated map showing Yankee migration over time.

Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest - Located in Minneapolis, Minnesota.


Politics

All the political platforms/manifestoes of US presidential campaigns from the 1840s onwards - Courtesy of the US Election Atlas.

Politics1.com - Bills itself as “The Most Comprehensive Online Guide to American Politics”, a statement which may very well be accurate. Includes a list of every single American political party, from the Democrats and Republicans to the big third parties like the Libertarians and the Greens to tiny fringe parties (including what looks like a half dozen Socialist Parties, the American Nazi party, and the Pot Party) and links to their websites, a complete listing of every declared and potential 2004 presidential candidate, and links to lots of other useful political sites. Far more comprehensive list of links than anything that could be written here. A first rate site. Direct link to the political parties page.

PollingReport.com - Comprehensive compilation of dozens of public opinion poll results from nearly every legitimate polling organization on every major issue.

WashingtonPost.com - While the New York Times is bigger, the Post is THE source for inside-the-beltway news. Registration is free.

White House home page - Keep in mind all American government agencies except the military use .gov, not .com (the military uses .mil) for their official home pages. Typing in [government agency].com can produce some interesting results, especially if someone is reading over your shoulder.

Homepage of the United States Senate - Includes a listing of all current senators, their home states and their party affiliations. Also includes links to every senator's individual homepage, and contact information so constituents can e-mail, write, or call them (actually their offices, but most Congressmen at least read all their mail).

Homepage of the Congress of the United States

Homepage of the Supreme Court of the United States - A rather barren and poorly done site, actually, but it does have a feature for searching for cases currently in the docket.

Homepage of the Library of Congress - A fantastically useful collection of information on all subjects, including government. Includes two hundred years of records of Congressional proceedings (very useful for debates that hinge on interpretations of laws or Constitutional amendments). Also includes copies of the United States Constitution and other important documents.

Thomas.loc.gov - Records the activities of both houses of Congress, including the online version of the Congressional Record. Very useful for finding out the status of a particular bill. A service of the Library of Congress.

RealChange.org - Essential. Has the skeleton closet of just about every major American politician of recent years.

OpenSecrets.org - Contains info concerning campaign finance.

FAIR.org - Homepage of Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. Exposing the lies and twisting of the truth that occurs in the mainstream media.

Global Security.org & The Federation of American Scientists - Excellent resources for defence, security, and intelligence-related information, especially with regard to the United States.

The Republican National Committee & The Democratic National Committee - Good sources for their respective positions on policy, and are usually good for providing criticism of the other party's positions, as well.

U.S. National Archives & Records Administration - Another interesting source of information.

U.S. Government Manual - 2002/2003

FindLaw.org - You need the text of a specific Supreme Court case? How about a lower court ruling, which are harder to find online ? Find it here.

Political Graveyard - Site with information on just about thousands of dead and former politicians in America (excellent category selections).

US Legislative Explorer Website

Why is the US Foriegn Office called the State Department ?


Military topics

Forts, Refuge Rocks and Defensive Sites: The Antiquity of Warfare along the North Pacific Coast of North America - Archaeological research article by Jon Erlandson and Madonna L. Moss, in downloadable .pdf format, on the native fortifications used in the Pacific Northwest.

North American forts and fortifications of the 16th-19th century

Swords in the Virginia Muster of 1624/25

Forts of Pennsylvania in American History - About 18th century forts, colonial forts and blockhouses in today's state of Pennsylvania. French and Indian War, American Revolutionary War.

Pennsylvanian Long Rifles - Website of a working replica manufacturer, includes a lot of detailed info on the history and variants of the Pennsylvania Long Rifle.

Peterson, H. L.; American Sword, 1775 to 1945

Officers of the Continental and U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-1900

War of 1812 : Privateers - This site includes both American and British privateers – where possible accompanied by images of original documents.Includes some crew lists of American privateers captured by the Royal Navy. Work in progress but looks good so far.

Discussion on the nature of 18th century to mid-19th century warfare in North America

Texas Confederate Military Page - Contains a list of abbreviations commonly used in Confederate records; a list of Confederate military camps in Texas and their general location if known; a list of Confederate companies furnished by each county in Texas.

Contributions of American Indians to the U.S. Navy: Serving the United States since its Birth

National Museum of the USAF

California Military History

Korean War.com

US sealift capability in 1960s ?


Maps

Maps By You - Customize U.S. maps of selected states for outdoor activities, with lakes, rivers, campgrounds, and places of interest.

ERsys.com - Demographic, lifestyle, and economic data covering over 1300 US cities portrayed as thematic maps, informative reports, detailed tables and colorful charts.

U.S. Territorial Maps 1775-1920

50states.com - Blank Outline Maps - Printable blank outline map of each US State. Excellent homework helper.

A nice map of the USA and bits of British North America from 1814

Map of potential nuclear targets in the US

North Carolina Maps - “When complete, North Carolina Maps will contain over 1,500 maps, ranging in date from the late 1500s to the 1970s, and will include detailed maps for each of North Carolina's one hundred counties.

National Solar Radiation Database

Geothermal Resources Data

Animated Flooding Maps - Storm Surge, Sea Level Rise And River Flooding

19th-Century Maps Tracking Major Diseases Across the United States

A Map of all the Places in the U.S. Where Nobody Lives

Making more than a century of major earthquakes

A Data-Packed Map of American Immigration in 1903 - Additional info here.

Maps of ancestry by US state - Based on data from the 2000 census. Courtesy of Thande.

Germans in America (1914 Map) - From the Library of Congress.

1872 County Map of Colorado, Dakota, Indian Nations, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska & Wyoming

1895 U.S. Atlas - Scanned images of county and state maps, index of towns.

Color Landform Atlas of the United States

Details of the original Mason-Dixon Line Map - From the Maryland State Archives.

Historical County Lines of the U.S.


See Also

resources/usa.txt · Last modified: 2020/02/08 00:23 by eofpi

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