Researching
Autographs on the Web
This page
is an ongoing project, and one to which I hope visitors will contribute.
My goal
is to develop a list of resources available on the world wide web that
are useful for researching autographs. I am particularly interested
in sites that allow one to do substantive, in-depth research that will
help establish the context of a particular letter or document or answer
questions about its content.
Below
is a list of some sites that I have found especially helpful. I invite
visitors to email me their own discoveries and suggestions for possible
addition to this list.
American
National Biography
The successor
to the Dictionary of American Biography, the ANB is a
wonderful resource if you need to research a variety of U.S. historical
figures. It contains some 18,000 profiles of men and women important
in all aspects of U.S. history. Each biography includes an up-to-date
bibliography, which provides an excellent starting point for any further
research that might be needed. The ANB is in print in a 24-volume
set, but if you don't have that much shelf space, try the online edition.
It is a subscription service, but at $89 a year, I find it a bargain.
To get a free sample of one of the profiles, click on the "Biography
of the Day" on the home page.
(P.S.
Don't throw out your Dictionary of American Biography. There
are many individuals in that publication who have been left out of the
ANB.)
American
Memory: Historical Collections
The Library
of Congress has been working for some years on an ambitious program
of digitizing its collections of primary source materials to make them
available online. This includes not only manuscripts, but also a wide
variety of printed materials, sheet music, maps, photographs, and film.
The wealth of material available at the Library's American Memory site
is truly astounding. The link above will take you to the home page for
the whole project, and from there, you can browse a list of all the
collections that are now online or search for an item across all those
collections. Some of the entries that follow are part of the American
Memory project, but the links given for them will take you directly
to those specific collections.
George
Washington Papers at the Library of Congress
Thomas Jefferson
Papers at the Library of Congress
James
Madison Papers at the Library of Congress
Abraham Lincoln
Papers at the Library of Congress
The documents
in each of these collections were microfilmed many years ago, and now,
the microfilm has been digitized and placed online. So what you see
at these sites are images of the actual documents, not just transcripts
of them. Each collection can be browsed or searched in various ways.
I have often been able to find much background information for a specific
letter by viewing other correspondence related to it in one of these
collections.
Since
these collections include incoming correspondence, they can be a good
place to find examples of the handwriting of various individuals who
wrote to Washington, Jefferson, or Lincoln. Such research must be undertaken
with caution, however, since the collections do include some clerical
copies and items with secretarial signatures. Each site also has interesting
"Special Presentations" or "Essays" about its subject,
and they can be wonderful places for an autograph enthusiast to browse.
The
Writings of George Washington, edited by John C. Fitzpatrick
This is
an online version of the 39-volume printed edition of Washington's writings,
edited by John C. Fitzpatrick and published between 1931 and 1944. Fitzpatrick's
work is gradually being supplanted by the modern Papers of George
Washington, which is far more comprehensive and scholarly (but not
available online). Still, Fitzpatrick remains indispensable for the
many years of Washington's life that are not yet covered by the current
Papers project. In addition to being a great saver of shelf space,
the online version of Fitzpatrick has a very useful search feature.
A
Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents
and Debate, 1774-1875
Part of
the American Memory project, this remarkable site makes available a
wealth of printed material relating to the Continental Congress, the
Constitutional Convention, and the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives
up through 1875. You can find here the full text of the Journals
of the Continental Congress and of the recent, 25-volume edition
of Letters of Delegates to [the Continental] Congress, 1774-1789.
There are also the printed records of the Constitutional Convention
and of the state ratifying conventions. Many publications of the U.S.
Congress are here, including statutes, some bills and resolutions, the
House and Senate Journals, and the various records of Congressional
debates. There are approximately 700 volumes of material now available
in this online archive.
Any of
this material can be browsed. It can also be searched, and you can search
for a name or subject in all of the titles or limit your search to just
one set of records. As one small example of this site's research potential,
I had a letter from Lafayette, dated 1825, in which he effusively praised
an American Revolutionary patriot - but failed to name the person. However,
the letter suggested that Lafayette's correspondent, Francis Henderson,
was petitioning Congress over some matter relating to the unnamed patriot.
By searching this web site using Henderson's name and the date, I was
able to identify the patriot in question as John Laurens and learn exactly
what Henderson was up to.
Biographical
Directory of the U.S. Congress, 1774-Present
This useful
resource gives basic biographical data for every member of Congress,
including delegates to the Continental Congress. For each individual,
it lists the dates of birth and death, education, military service,
professional training and career, and political career, including dates
of service in all major public offices and party affiliation.
The online
Directory offers some very helpful features that are not found in the
printed editions of this work. Online, many entries have a basic bibliography,
and if warranted, a longer extended bibliography on a separate page.
For many individuals, there is also a guide to research collections
of their manuscripts, if they exist.
Making
of America (Cornell University) and Making
of America (University of Michigan)
The Making
of America project is digitizing thousands of U.S. books and periodicals
published between 1850 and 1877. What you see online are the scanned
pages of the 19th century printed volumes, most of which would be difficult
to locate and access in the original. The subjects covered include education,
history, religion, science and technology, sociology, and psychology.
There
are two sites for the project, one at Cornell University and the other
at the University of Michigan, each offering a different selection of
material. At each site, you can browse the publications or search them
in a variety of ways. The two sites are useful for finding the published
text of a manuscript from this period, for following up references in
letters or documents from the era, and for general background research
on an individual, event, or topic of the time.
Nobel
Prize Winners
The Nobel
Foundation's web site offers information on every Nobel Prize winner.
This includes a biography, usually accompanied by a bibliography for
further research, and the text of each laureate's Nobel Lecture. There
are also links to other sites of interest for each individual, and for
the more famous historical figures, there are often additional, lengthy
articles on their life and work.
The
Avalon Project at Yale Law School: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy
This
web site provides the complete text of a wide variety of important documents
in the fields of law, government, and diplomacy. The entries are weighted
towards U.S. history, with a heavy concentration of statutes and treaties,
but the overall range is quite broad. In addition to documents such
as colonial American charters, all of The Federalist, and Presidential
inaugural addresses, the site also offers the full text of Blackstone’s
Commentaries, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man,
the Balfour Declaration, and the U.N. Charter. The project has a search
engine, but the documents can also be browsed by major collection groups,
by authors or titles, and by date. The source from which each text has
been taken is noted.
Among
the more than sixty major document collections are the U.S. Constitution,
important U.S. and European treaties, the Confederate States of America,
statutes and treaties concerning Native Americans, statutes and treaties
on slavery, American state constitutions, the League of Nations and
the United Nations, World War II, and the Cold War.
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