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17 Total pages
12 Contributing members
"Business Possibilities with United States Army...." by A. Roy Knabenshue
The A. Roy Knabenshue Collection contains approximately three and a half cubic feet of material relating to the life and career of a daring aeronaut and the United States' first successful dirigible pilot. The collection includes correspondence, photographic material, drawings of aircraft, and flight records. The material spans over seventy years, from the end of the nineteenth century to the nineteen-sixties.
Browse projects by Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Archives
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102 Total pages
38 Contributing members
"Chauffeur of the Skies" by A. Roy Knabenshue, pages 1-100
The A. Roy Knabenshue Collection contains approximately three and a half cubic feet of material relating to the life and career of a daring aeronaut and the United States' first successful dirigible pilot. The collection includes correspondence, photographic material, drawings of aircraft, and flight records. The material spans over seventy years, from the end of the nineteenth century to the nineteen-sixties.
Browse projects by Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Archives
100% Complete
105 Total pages
66 Contributing members
"Chauffeur of the Skies" by A. Roy Knabenshue, pages 101-201
The A. Roy Knabenshue Collection contains approximately three and a half cubic feet of material relating to the life and career of a daring aeronaut and the United States' first successful dirigible pilot. The collection includes correspondence, photographic material, drawings of aircraft, and flight records. The material spans over seventy years, from the end of the nineteenth century to the nineteen-sixties.
Browse projects by Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Archives
100% Complete
44 Total pages
13 Contributing members
"Compliments of Roy Knabenshue" Souvenir Booklet
The A. Roy Knabenshue Collection contains approximately three and a half cubic feet of material relating to the life and career of a daring aeronaut and the United States' first successful dirigible pilot. The collection includes correspondence, photographic material, drawings of aircraft, and flight records. The material spans over seventy years, from the end of the nineteenth century to the nineteen-sixties.
Browse projects by Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Archives
100% Complete
33 Total pages
20 Contributing members
"Distribution of the Shoshonians in the San Joaquin-Tulare Valley of California" 1905
In 1905, cultural anthropologist Alfred Louis Kroeber provided a report to address the confusion regarding nomenclature of Shoshonian and other tribes in California. Help us transcribe this report to learn about the populations and people of the San Joaquin-Tulare Valley.
100% Complete
1 Total pages
3 Contributing members
"Factory Girl's Song"
This broadside contains the lyrics to “The Factory Girl’s Song,” a folk song whose origins date back at least to the 1830s. The song’s nineteen 4-line stanzas describe the daily work of the mill girls in different jobs: spinning, weaving, and dressing the finished cloth. At the end the singer tells of returning home to marry, giving up the rigors of tending the machinery and working for harsh overseers. The song may have originated in Lowell, Massachusetts, but some scholars suggest that the reference to wages earned in “shillings” instead of dollars may mean it had connections to Canadian immigrants to the Lowell textile mills. Several iterations of the song are known, including “The Lowell Factory Girl”, “The Factory Girl’s Come-All-Ye” from Lewiston, Maine, and generalized versions titled “Factory Girl.” Help transcribe this song as part of the Smithsonian's #BecauseOfHerStory campaign to share and celebrate the diverse stories of American girlhood. Coordination of this and other girlhood history projects in the Transcription Center (including selection, digitization, cataloging, outreach, and educational resources) was funded by the Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative. Click here to learn more.
100% Complete
4 Total pages
5 Contributing members
"Fifty Years To-day" by Solomon G. Brown
"Fifty Years To-day" is a poem written by Solomon G. Brown commemorating his 50 years of continual service at the Smithsonian Institution. Brown, the first African American employee of the Smithsonian and quite likely the first Smithsonian employee to complete 50 years of service, had served under the first three Secretaries of the Smithsonian. A ceremony was held on February 15th, 1902, honoring Brown. The poem was published in a pamphlet made possible by "contributions of his friends at the Smithsonian Institution" in 1903.
100% Complete
1 Total pages
4 Contributing members
"Let Freedom Ring, Let Democracy Prevail" sketch
Issues with race and racial equity have a long history in the United States (US) and so do interracial organizations forming to combat discriminatory practices and demand social justice for all Americans. The story of the Institute on Race Relations, founded by Tomlinson D. Todd (1910 – 1987), is an example of a substantive but understudied history of collaborative anti-racist activism in the District of Columbia. The organization’s aim was to combat segregation and discrimination in the Nation’s Capital through activism and the “Americans All” radio program. Help us transcribe these records, and discover how this interracial organization addressed segregation and worked to end discriminatory practices in Washington, DC.
100% Complete
13 Total pages
9 Contributing members
"Life with Teena: A Seventeen Magazine Survey of Subscribers and their Mothers, Vol. 1," Estelle Ellis Collection
Publishing, advertising, and marketing pioneer, Estelle Ellis was among the first to focus on the American female demographic, especially teens and working-class women. Condé Nast Publications, Incorporated, Carter Hawley Hale-owned department stores, Phillips-Van Heusen, Dow Chemical, and the Kimberly-Clark Corporation were among her clients. This advertisement and other materials from Ellis's professional papers reveal information about the history of female-centered marketing campaigns, publications, and the advertising industry. Help transcribe this material as part of the Smithsonian's #BecauseOfHerStory campaign to share and celebrate the diverse stories of American girlhood. Coordination of this and other girlhood history projects in the Transcription Center (including selection, digitization, cataloging, outreach, and educational resources) was funded by the Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative. Click here to learn more.
100% Complete
202 Total pages
51 Contributing members
"Lyrics of Love and Laughter" by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Paul Laurence Dunbar was a renowned poet, author, and playwright. In 1903 he published a collection of poems titled Lyrics of Love and Laughter. Written after a separation from his wife, a nervous breakdown, and a bout with pneumonia, this book of poems contains both “sentimental and somberly realistic expressions and depictions of black life.” Help us transcribe the more than 100 poems featured in this compilation and see how Dunbar used both dialect and standard English verse in his poetry.
Browse projects by National Museum of African American History and Culture
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1 Total pages
2 Contributing members
"Maiden-Forum Newsletter: Thirty Years of Progress," Jan. - Dec., 1952, Maidenform Collection
A thriving brassiere company created in 1922, Maidenform Inc. offered a new type of undergarment for women that enhanced, rather than downplayed, a woman's natural figure. Maidenform advertising campaigns were enormously successful, and generated controversy as well as praise. The now famous "I Dreamed" campaign was launched in 1949; this campaign ran for 20 years, making it one of the longest running campaigns in the history of advertising. The advertisements featured models in everyday or fantastic situations, elaborately costumed but wearing only a Maidenform bra above the waist. This campaign was followed by the "Maidenform Woman" campaign which was credited with boosting sales by 200 percent in some stores. This article & other company records, including advertisements and reports, reveals information about the history of the brassiere industry and female-centered marketing campaigns. Help transcribe this material as part of the Smithsonian's #BecauseOfHerStory campaign to share and celebrate the diverse stories of American girlhood. Coordination of this and other girlhood history projects in the Transcription Center (including selection, digitization, cataloging, outreach, and educational resources) was funded by the Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative. Click here to learn more.
100% Complete
58 Total pages
72 Contributing members
"Ode to the Evening" in Juvenile Letters: Being a Correspondence Between Children, From Eight to Fifteen Years of Age
Phillis Wheatley Peters (c. 1753 – 1784) was born in West Africa and captured by slave traders as a child, whereupon she was sold to John and Susanna Wheatley of Boston, Massachusetts. She was named after the slave ship on which she was transported to the Americas and the name of her enslavers, but her surname of Peters is that of the man she married in 1778—John Peters, a free man of color. The story of the discovery of her talent by the Wheatley family is oft told—they taught her to read and write, and by age fourteen, she had begun to write poetry that was soon published and circulated amongst the elites of late eighteenth century America and Great Britain. Her first and only volume of poetry, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773), was published in London with the assistance of wealthy abolitionists. Peters’ poetry brought her renown in abolitionist circles as proof of the humanity of those of African descent and the inhumanity of the institution of slavery. The Wheatleys manumitted Peters in 1773 under pressure from critics who saw the hypocrisy in praising Peters’ talent while keeping her enslaved. They died within a few years of this decision, and Peters soon met and married grocer John Peters. Her life afterwards was indicative of the troubled freedom of African Americans of the period, who were emancipated but not fully integrated into the promise of American citizenship. Peters was also affected by the loss of all three of her children—the birth of the last of whom caused her premature death at age 31 In 1784. Despite being feted as a prodigy while enslaved, the emancipated Peters struggled to find the support necessary for producing a second volume of poetry and her husband’s financial struggles forced her to find work as a scullery maid—the lowest position of domestic help. Posthumous publications of Peters’ poetry in various anthologies and periodicals solidified her image as a child poet for the benefit of abolitionist activism and African American cultural pride in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the twenty-first century, the accumulation of this collection is a restoration of Peters the woman and the influence of her poetry and activism today.
Browse projects by National Museum of African American History and Culture
