Search | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

90,945 items

Collection Landing Page

Reference, Rights & Reproductions

ORDER RESEARCH COPIES Research copies are PDFs of items from our Collection. PDFs cost $10 per item and are sent via email after your invoice is paid. 5 PDF copies per calendar year are provided for free to Affiliate School K–12...

Collection Landing Page

The Gilder Lehrman Collection

In 1991, Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman embarked on a mission to create one of the most important repositories of historical American documents in the country. Today, the Gilder Lehrman Collection contains more than eighty-five...

Classroom Resources

Cultural Encounters: Teaching Exploration and Encounter to Students

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, World History

5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Some 40,000 years from now, give or take a few millennia, someone, somewhere in the universe may find and listen to the Golden Record, NASA’s attempt to describe Earth and its peoples to anyone out there who might be interested. There...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

The Doctrine of Discovery, 1493

Geography, Religion and Philosophy, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The Papal Bull "Inter Caetera," issued by Pope Alexander VI on May 4, 1493, played a central role in the Spanish conquest of the New World. The document supported Spain’s strategy to ensure its exclusive right to the lands...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

A Jamestown settler describes life in Virginia, 1622

Economics, Geography

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The first English settlers in Jamestown, Virginia, who arrived in 1607, were eager to find gold and silver. Instead they found sickness and disease. Eventually, these colonists learned how to survive in their new environment, and by...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

The surrender of New Netherland, 1664

Geography

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The Dutch colonization of New Netherland (which included parts of present-day New York, Delaware, New Jersey, and Connecticut) began in the 1620s. From the outset, New Netherland was a multiethnic, multireligious society: about half...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Late seventeenth-century map of the Northeast, 1682

Geography, World History

3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Like many other explorers, Henry Hudson stumbled upon North America almost by accident. Employed by the Dutch Republic to find a sea passage to the Far East, Hudson and the crew of his ship the Halve Maen landed at what is today New...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Cotton Mather’s account of the Salem witch trials, 1693

Government and Civics, Literature, Religion and Philosophy

Most Americans’ knowledge of the seventeenth century comes from heavily mythologized events: the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth, Pocahontas purportedly saving Captain John Smith from execution in early Virginia, and the Salem witch...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Carte de la Louisiane et du cours du Mississipi, 1718

Geography, World History

This map of “la Louisiane” was published by French geographer Guillaume de l’Isle. It is the first detailed map of the Gulf Coast region and the Mississippi River, as well as the first printed map to show Texas (identified as “Mission...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre, 1770

Art, World History

5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

By the beginning of 1770, there were 4,000 British soldiers in Boston, a city with 15,000 inhabitants, and tensions were running high. On the evening of March 5, crowds of day laborers, apprentices, and merchant sailors began to pelt...

Site Search

90,945 items

Reference, Rights & Reproductions

The Gilder Lehrman Collection

Cultural Encounters: Teaching Exploration and Encounter to Students

The Doctrine of Discovery, 1493

A Jamestown settler describes life in Virginia, 1622

The surrender of New Netherland, 1664

Late seventeenth-century map of the Northeast, 1682

Cotton Mather’s account of the Salem witch trials, 1693

Carte de la Louisiane et du cours du Mississipi, 1718

Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre, 1770

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