Nineteenth Century Life Documents

What made the 19th century an interesting but tumultuous time? What technological, cultural and social changes influenced life then? Explore those issues in this story collection.

Is a college education necessary to make one's way in the world?  Would a college education help a person to get a better job?  These issues...

Rev. Alexander Crummell was an African-American pastor who encouraged his people in the face of ongoing disappointments under U.S. law and in American...

This image depicts the signature page of a letter dated September 25, 1888.  Purportedly from the person who'd murdered victims in the Whitechap...

Jacob Cook purchased slaves, then those slaves ran away.  Under America's "Fugitive Slave Law of 1850," he had the right to seek-out-and-find tho...

A short biography of James Watt, the Scottish inventor whose brilliance in improving the steam engine helped to change the world.

In 1817, Thomas Jefferson sent a list of helpful rules to live by to Paul Clay, the son of his friend Charles Clay.  He refined that list in 1825...

Image of a Defence Motion in the District Court of Eastern Pennsylvania proceedings - 1860. Click on the image for a better view.

This image is of a Jim Crow Song Book which was published in Ithaca, New York, in 1839. It provides an early depiction of a minstrel-show character, ...

During the 1930s, the federal government hired writers to obtain the oral histories of former slaves.  John Fields was one of those interviewees....

When he represented the Amistad captives in the U.S. Supreme Court, John Quincy Adams personally handwrote his briefs.  This image depicts one of...

During his trial, in the summer of 1867, John Surratt produced witnesses who swore he was in Elmira, New York the day after Lincoln's shooting.  ...

John Cass - from Elmira, New York - testified during the trial of John Surratt.  He told the jury he saw John Surratt in Elmira, New York on Apri...

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