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A Hotel Worker Requests Labor Laws for Women
In this letter to Eleanor Roosevelt, an aging Southern hotel worker describes long hours and hard working conditions. Advocating on behalf of women hotel laborers, she requests a six day, 48 hour work week, and an improved pension for older workers. [...]
An Irish Emigrant to New York Writes Home
This letter home from 23-year-old Irish emigrant Margaret McCarthy captures both the opportunity and adversity awaiting arrivals to a new land. McCarthy sailed from Liverpool on the Columbus on September 7, 1849, and arrived in New York on October [...]
Colonial New York's Governor Reports on the 1712 Slave Revolt
In 1712, Manhattan's population was about 6,000 living in an area twenty blocks long by 10 blocks wide; 10-15% of those inhabitants were enslaved Africans. Within this small area, slaves lived with their masters and worked along side white servants [...]
A Dutch Official Reports on the Purchase of Manhattan
In this letter to superiors at the Hague, Pieter Schaghen describes conditions in New Amsterdam, including the purchase of Manhattan from local Indians for goods worth sixty guilders. Scholars have speculated that the Indians who took part in this [...]
A Letter from Ireland Tells of the Suffering Caused by the Potato Famine
This 1847 letter from Hannah Curtis to her brother John, who had emigrated from Queen's County, Ireland to Philadelphia some years earlier, gives a sense of the deprivation of those who remained behind during the time of the Irish potato famine. The [...]
African-American Women Threaten a Bus Boycott in Montgomery
This letter from the Women's Political Council to the Mayor of Montgomery, Alabama, threatens a bus boycott by the city's African Americans if demands for fair treatment are not met.
An English Explorer Describes the Riches of the Roanoke Colony
This account of the interactions between English explorers and Native Americans was written by Ralph Lane, one of the leaders of Sir Walter Raleigh's early colonizing expedition on what is now Roanoke Island, North Carolina. Despite being a prisoner [...]
English Captains Describe Sir Walter Raleigh
In 1584, Queen Elizabeth I granted the rights to settle the Roanoke colony to Sir Walter Raleigh. Raleigh sent a fleet to investigate the area called Virginia that year. The excerpts below come from a longer account of the first voyage of [...]
Powhatan Asks "Why should you destroy us, who have provided you with food?"
Powhatan (c. 1547-1618) was the head of a confederacy that spanned hundreds of miles and thirty-two tribes. (He is well known today because of his favorite daughter, Pocahontas, who rescued the English captain John Smith from execution in 1608.) In [...]
A Young Jamestown Settler Becomes Powhatan's Interpreter
As a young boy, Henry Spelman was part of the early Jamestown settlement, under the leadership of John Smith. In 1608, Smith arranged an exchange with the Indian leader Powhatan that included beads, provisions, and "sons," who were to act as [...]