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Posted by: Wendi Maloney
For more than 20 years now, Saundra Rose Maley has required her English composition students — first from George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and now from nearby Montgomery College in Montgomery County, Maryland — to make a short trek to the Library of Congress. There, in the Manuscript Division, the students research primary sources, …
Posted in: Education, Manuscripts, Researcher Stories
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
On Nov. 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Invited to give a “few appropriate remarks” to dedicate a cemetery for Union soldiers killed at the Battle of Gettysburg, Lincoln delivered — over the course of about two minutes — what has become one of the most widely recognized speeches in …
Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, Collections, Events, Manuscripts, Social Media
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
This is a guest post by Michelle Krowl, a historian in the Manuscript Division. Students of the Civil War are fortunate that so many Americans of the era were literate, and during the war made good use of their ability to read and write. Soldiers wrote to loved ones with stirring sentiments of patriotism, observations …
Posted in: Civil War, Collections, Manuscripts, New Online
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
This is a guest post by Lauren Algee, senior innovation specialist with the Library’s Digital Innovation Lab. What yet-unwritten stories lie within the pages of Clara Barton’s diaries, the writings of civil rights pioneer Mary Church Terrell or letters written by constituents, friends and colleagues to Abraham Lincoln? With the launch of crowd.loc.gov, the Library …
Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, Concerts, Manuscripts
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
This is a guest post by Michelle Krowl, a historian in the Manuscript Division. “A diary, faithfully kept in such eventful times as these, must be interesting to our own children,” wrote Betty Herndon Maury on June 3, 1861, explaining her purpose in keeping a journal after Maury’s family chose to leave Washington, D.C., to …
Posted in: Civil War, Collections, Manuscripts, New Online
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
This is a guest post by Michelle Krowl, a historian in the Manuscript Division. On Feb. 14, 1884, Theodore Roosevelt marked an X in his pocket diary, followed by the words, “The light has gone out of my life.” That morning his mother, Martha Roosevelt, died of typhoid fever. That same afternoon, in the same …
Posted in: Collections, Manuscripts, New Online
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
This is a guest post by John Hessler, curator of the Jay I. Kislak Collection of the History and Archaeology of the Early Americas at the Library of Congress. On June 12, 1539, a boat set sail from the Spanish city of Seville containing a cargo that would change the face of the Americas forever. …
Posted in: Curators, Hispanic American History, Manuscripts
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
This is a quest post by John Hessler, curator of the Jay I. Kislak Collection of the History and Archaeology of the Early Americas at the Library of Congress. He describes research and analysis he conducted with Tana Villafana and Meghan Wilson of the Library’s Preservation Research and Testing Division and Stephanie Stillo of the …
Posted in: Collections, Curators, Hispanic American History, Manuscripts, Preservation, Science
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
This is a guest post by Sahr Conway-Lanz, a former Manuscript Division historian. Robert Lansing spent the height of his career in the shadow of giants but left a paper trail that ensured the world would know his side of the story. Now the Library of Congress has made an important segment of former Secretary …
Posted in: Collections, Manuscripts, New Online