“Like many other churches in the early republic, the Congregational meetinghouse in Castine, Maine, served both sacred and secular functions. Built in 1790, it was home not just to worship services but town meetings and judicial proceedings. Taxpayers paid its pastor’s wages. Though the ratifica

This rare silk banner was probably carried in a public parade in Philadelphia in the mid to late 1790s. Its elaborate design suggests the importance of such festivals, which provided a place for many Americans, voters and non-voters, to express patriotic sentiments or partisan views on current ev

The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History presents a filmed version of its on-the-floor program, Meet the Wheelwoman. In this film, you’ll hear from a wheelwoman—a female bicycle rider from the 1890s—and learn about how women of that era used bicycles to change their l

Between the years 1790 and 1880 the U.S. Patent Office required both documentation and a three-dimensional working model to demonstrate each new invention submitted for a patent. The models helped to explain proposed innovations and compare them against similar inventions. In this online exhibiti

Once a new national government had been established under a new Constitution, attention naturally turned to ways of proclaiming national identity. A new, national coinage was one way of doing so, especially if it featured patriotic new images, rather than the endless sequence of crowned monarchs