The Pilgrims were a English Separatist congregation that emigrated to Holland in 1608 to escape religious persecution. Twelve years later, discouraged by economic conditions, the congregation voted to move again, this time to America. A small ship, the Speedwell, carried …[Continue]
American History Resources
Women’s Suffrage
Women’s right to vote (known as suffrage) was fought for for more than fifty years, until the Nineteenth Amendment become national law on August 26, 1920. The idea began to gather steam at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention in New …[Continue]
Voting Rights Act of 1965
On August 6, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law. Its purpose was to remove legal barriers at the state and municipal levels that prevented Black Americans from voting. Then in 2013, key aspects of the …[Continue]
John Adams
John Adams (October 30, 1735 — July 4, 1826) was the second President of the United States, and America’s first Vice President under George Washington. Adams was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and an early voice for separation …[Continue]
Declaration of Independence
This week we travel back in American history to the time of thirteen colonies struggling to free themselves from the rule of the British monarch. The story of the creation of the Declaration of Independence is a dramatic one, and …[Continue]
Louisiana Purchase
Under the leadership of President Thomas Jefferson, the United States purchased 827,987 square miles of territory from France on May 2, 1803 for $15 million. It was a momentous event that doubled the size of the new country, and greatly …[Continue]
Paul Revere
Paul Revere (1735 – 1818) was an American patriot best known for riding on a borrowed horse from Boston to Lexington on April 18, 1775 to warn the colonists of approaching British troops. The next day, when the British arrived …[Continue]
Boston Tea Party
On December 16, 1773, a small group of American colonists (many of them dressed up as Mohawk Indians) sneaked onto three ships in the Boston harbor and dumped more than 300 cases of English tea overboard as a protest against …[Continue]
Thirteen Colonies
The American colonial period began in 1607 with the arrival of settlers in Jamestown, Virginia, and ended in 1775 when the Revolutionary War began. Although the English were not the first Europeans to arrive in the New World, they eventually …[Continue]
Betsy Ross
Many people believe that General George Washington visited seamstress Betsy Ross in June, 1776 to ask her to sew a stars-and-stripes flag that would become the first official flag of the new country. The story continues that Ross convinced Washington …[Continue]
