- Erie Canal
The University of Rochester's official site has maps, images, drawings, biographies and chronologies showing the creation and subsequent development of the canal and related equipment. This ambitious online project is only just in its early stages.
- DeWitt Clinton
The New York governor who made the Erie Canal
financially and politically feasible.
- Samuel F.B. Morse
The inventor of the telegraph and the Morse code, this selection from the Library of Congress includes a photograph of Morse and photo of the paper tape of the first telegraphic message sent in 1844.
- River steamboat
The "Ben Campbell," a typical riverboat of the pre-Civil War era. Photo from the Library of Congress.
- Railroad Development
The first 5 maps show the growth of railroads before the Civil War, with particular focus on the South. From the University of Georgia Library's rare map collection.
- Cyrus McCormick
The inventor of the mechanical reaper is pictured here in 1846, more than a decade after he first patented the device that would revolutionize commercial farming. Go to the (see next link)
- National Portrait Gallery's home page
and click on "Search" to look for images of other famous Americans.
- Old Sturbridge Village
A living history museum in Massachusetts that embodies preindustrial village life in America.
- Views of the Irish Potato Famine
Contemporary drawings and paintings illustrating the conditions that drove millions of Irish people to seek refuge in America.
- Ireland's Great Famine 1845-49
This section of The Ireland Story web site, dedicated to the memory of the Great Famine, is a detailed introduction to a topic which has shaped Irish history fundamentally. A full understanding of the causes and consequences of the Famine requires a study of political science, economics, demography, dietary science, sociology and agriculture.
- America's first cotton mill
The first steps toward industrialization came in the 1790s. Beverly, Massachusetts claims to have been the site for the first cotton mill. Read the story here.
- Women's Work and Manufacturing
Three different contemporary accounts, including one by the famous author James Fenimore Cooper, that grapple with the new phenomenon of women factory workers at the Lowell Mills and elsewhere in New England.
- Mill Architecture
Photographic tour of New England factory mills, compared with earlier preindustrial and later 20th century designs. Part of the Digital Archive of American Architecture, assembled by Prof. Jeffery Howe of Boston College.
- The sewing machine
Women who once tended spinning wheels like the one pictured in the text (2d ed., p. 349) steadily migrated to factory looms or to hand-powered machines like the one pictured here. From the Library of Congress collection.
- Low-wage shoemakers
This photo shows each man with a specific tool to do a portion of the work needed to complete a shoe. The man seated on the right holds a nearly completed shoe in his hand. Piece work and interchangeable parts transformed the shoe industry from a high-skill, high-wage craft to a low-skill, low-wage industrial trade.
- Travelling salesman
One of the new and expanding occupations made possible by factory production and improved transportation was the travelling salesman or peddler, sample cases in hand.
- Labor Conditions
One of the first government investigations into the life and problems of mill laborers. An excerpt from Massachusetts House Document no. 50, March 1845.
- Interview with a shoe factory worker
Enter "Jane K. Leary" without the quotation marks, press the "Search" button, and then browse the page until you find "Shoe Laster of Lynn #1." Click on it to read the account Leary gave to a Federal Writers Project interviewer during the Great Depression in 1939. Her description suggests the waves of change that industrialization brought about throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries.
- Penny Magazine
This weekly periodical was aimed at the working class. It was part of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge's program for liberal reform. It captures the spirit of the new urban middle class. Browse among a dozen issues from the year 1835.
- Scientific American
The first magazine to carry this name was not very technically oriented, but like the Penny Magazine it captures the flavor of the new urban middle class, with its focus on the future and progress. The online site provides the first eight issues from the year 1845.
- Women's Suffrage Movement
The early years of the movement in the late 1840s and 1850s are included in this major Library of Congress online exhibition.
- 19th Century Science and The Woman Question
The various arguments given by nineteenth century scientists to "prove" that women were inferior to men.
- Walt Whitman notebooks
Selections from four of Whitman's notebooks, giving a sense of the man's genius and breadth. The online materials include discussions on how the notebooks are being preserved.
- African colonization movement
Words and images describe the origins and course of the "back to Africa" efforts before the Civil War. Part of the Library of Congress online exhibit "African American Mosaic."
- Abolitionist movement
The reform movement that eventually overshadowed all the others took many decades of slow and often painful development. The items presented online date from the 1790s to the 1850s.
- Thoreau Reader site
"Readable, online editions of Thoreau’s works, with an introduction to Thoreau, with images, essays and links."
- The sewing machine
From the Library of Congress photographic collection, enter the words sewing machine in the space provided and click on the "Search" button. Women who once tended spinning wheels steadily migrated to factory looms or to hand-powered machines like the one pictured here.
- Low-wage shoemakers
From the Library of Congress photographic collection, enter the words low wage shoemakers in the space provided and click on the "Search" button.
This photo shows each man with a specific tool to do a portion of the work needed to complete a shoe. The man seated on the right holds a nearly completed shoe in his hand. Piece work and interchangeable parts transformed the shoe industry from a high-skill, high-wage craft to a low-skill, low-wage industrial trade.
- Traveling salesman
From the Library of Congress photographic collection, enter the words traveling salesman in the space provided and click on the "Search" button.
One of the new and expanding occupations made possible by factory production and improved transportation was the traveling salesman or peddler, sample cases in hand.
- The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920
The first signs of environmental consciousness emerged among reformers just before the Civil War. This collection of pamphlets, essays, and images includes the full text of Henry David Thoreau's "Excursions." Use the timeline to find resources.
- Walt Whitman notebooks
Selections from four of Whitman's notebooks, giving a sense of the man's genius and breadth. The online materials include discussions on how the notebooks are being preserved.
- African colonization movement
Words and images describe the origins and course of the "back to Africa" efforts before the Civil War. Part of the Library of Congress online exhibit "African American Mosaic."
- Portraits of Garrison and Dorthea Dix
Two leading reformers are pictured in rare photographs from the Smithsonian Institution.
- William Lloyd Garrison: famous quotations
Drawn from "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations," these brief but pithy sayings perfectly capture the unrelenting singlemindedness of America's leading white-identified aboltionist.
- Frederick Douglass: an online biography
A brief but well written summary of Douglass' entire life, subdivided into five chronological sections plus a chronology and bibliography.
- The Transcendentalists
Thorough coverage of America's first indigenous philosophical movement, including its leading figure, Ralph Waldo Emerson.
- David Thoreau: Early Encologist
Thoreau's essays "The Succession of Forest Trees" and "Walking" in Excursions (1863) were foundational writings in the environmental and ecological movements.
- Thoreau Reader site
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