Investigate the market revolution in the 1800s through the stories of five Americans from the Merchant Era. Optimized for desktops and laptops.

William Flury was a Merchant Mariner who served on a Liberty Ship carrying supplies for “the Burma Road.”  Listen to his oral history, and then study the supporting primary sources to answer the discussion questions. This resource is part of a series called “Maritime Voices: Merchant M

Between 1865 and 1869, thousands of Chinese migrants toiled at a grueling pace and in perilous working conditions to help construct America’s First Transcontinental Railroad.  The Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project seeks to give a voice to the Chinese migrants whose labor on

In 1906 Ng Shee Lee packed her clothes and belongings in this trunk and left China for America. It was a difficult trip. She slept next to the noisy engine room; arriving tired and sick in San Francisco she was met by the devastating 1906 earthquake. Ng Shee then made her way alone by train across C

This sign was purchased by a North Beach second-hand shop from a proprietor in the neighboring Chinatown district of San Francisco. It is said to date from between 1890 and 1910. If that is so, the sign’s survival is quite miraculous: The 1906 earthquake in April of that year caused much damage

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prevented all but a few Chinese to enter the United States legally. In 1906, a major earthquake and resulting fire in San Francisco destroyed public records, allowing many Chinese to claim that they had been born in San Francisco. These men, with newly established c

Virginia Lee Mead wore this salmon-pink silk satin dress when she was a young woman living in New York City's Chinatown, where her father, Lee B. Lok, a first-generation immigrant, ran a general store. The full-length dress is a traditional style that younger second-generation Chinese women wore

“Wartime often catalyzes developments in philanthropy. In 2017, the museum added the Bowl of Rice party banner, from fundraising efforts to aid people in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War, to its collection. Curator Theodore S. Gonzalves, a scholar of Asian American history, answered three

““Bring the exam room to the community.” That was the motivation behind a 1971 effort led by Dr. Thomas Tam to organize a health fair in New York City’s Lower Manhattan Chinatown. A ten-day event held on the street, the first Chinatown health fair included health education booths, with mater

On June 25, 1950, the Cold War turned hot when armies from North Korea invaded into South Korea hoping to unify the Korean Peninsula under communism. Students will learn about the American involvement in the Korean Conflict in this section of the online exhibition entitled The Price of Freedo