Believed to be the first photographic portrait made in the United States, this portrait of Dorothy Catherine Draper was originally taken by her brother Dr. John W. Draper (1811-1882) in his Washington Square studio at the New York University in 1839 or 1840, within the first year of Louis Jacques

During the 1880s, the engineer Herman Hollerith devised a set of machines for compiling data from the United States Census. Hollerith's tabulating system included a punch for entering data about each person onto a blank card, a tabulator for reading the cards and summing up information, and a sor

Remington put its writing machines on the market in 1874 at a price of $125. The new Type Writer owed some of its identity to the sewing machines that Remington had recently added to its product line. The writing machine came mounted on a sewing machine stand, with a treadle to operate the carria

This beautiful daguerreotype by Boston-area photographer George K. Warren (1832–1884) is of the photographer's wife, Mary Ann Warren. The Photographic History Collection has a collection of letters, scrapbooks, daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, cartes-de-visites, cabinet cards, other paper prints, an

This embroidered mourning picture was embroidered in Lititz, Pennsylvania, about 1816, using silk thread, silk chenille, gold spangles, watercolor, and ink on silk fabric. In a gilded wood frame, it measured 25" x 25", and its black mat is reverse-painted on the glass. Mourning designs appear in

This 40-saw cotton gin and the wooden gearing came from a farm formerly owned by the Augustus C. Smith family in Monroe County, G. The gin shed was built around 1840 and operated until approximately 1900. The gin stand was probably built in the decade following the Civil War; it bears no manufact

Although some know of the banjo's use by African Americans, the popular consciousness of the banjo has been dominated by images of white Southern musicians and urban folk singers. But the story is more complex. The banjo migrated from Africa to America in the hands and memories of slaves. Through

This small piece of yellow metal is believed to be the first piece of gold discovered in 1848 at Sutter's Mill in California, launching the gold rush. John Marshall was superintending the construction of a sawmill for Col. John Sutter on the morning of January 25, 1848, on the Sout

Through the use of downloadable images of the original documents and 4 brief videos using Lincoln's words to answer questions about the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, students will learn how Abraham Lincoln struggled with the same questions that many Americans had about th

This website focuses on the last handwritten copy of the Gettysburg Address, a manuscript that usually resides out of the public eye in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White house. Also included to help students further explore this important document are a printable version of the manuscript, transcr