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Category: Early America

Men and women seated and standing around a table, with one man standing and pointing at something unseen at left, frescoes and heavy curtains in background

Intern Spotlight: The Shifting Reputation of Christopher Columbus as Seen in the Christopher Columbus Collection at the Library of Congress

Posted by: Julie Miller

The Christopher Columbus collection at the Library of Congress includes a rare and valuable copy from 1502 of a group of documents known collectively as the “Book of Privileges,” purchased by the Library in 1901. The larger collection also contains additional copies in various formats the Library acquired from the 1890s through the 1940s. Junior Fellow Molly Williams explores the history of these documents.

The capitol building at Williamsburg, Virginia, where the House of Burgesses met.

George Washington and the “Spirit of Association”

Posted by: Julie Miller

Filed with the correspondence in the George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress are six printed copies of an agreement to boycott British goods that Washington, then a Virginia burgess representing Fairfax County, brought to his constituents to sign. The agreement, crafted by the colony’s House of Burgesses (the lower house of Virginia’s colonial …

Book jacket on left with author's headshot on right

Made at the Library with Cassandra Good, author of First Family: George Washington’s Heirs and the Making of America

Posted by: Julie Miller

George Washington is widely known to have had no biological children of his own. Less well known is his role in raising several of the children and grandchildren of Martha Washington’s marriage to her first husband, Daniel Parke Custis. In this informal conversation with Manuscript Division curator Julie Miller and archivist Kate Madison, Cassandra Good, …