Browse Projects
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234 Total pages
101 Contributing members
Virginia Education, Unregistered Letters Received, May–Nov. 1869, Part 3
The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, often referred to as the Freedmen’s Bureau, was established on March 3, 1865. The duties of the Freedmen’s Bureau included supervision of all affairs relating to refugees, freedmen, and the custody of abandoned lands and property. These documents come from the Records of the Superintendent of Education for Virginia, Series 3: Letters Received. Additional resources are available on the Freedmen's Bureau Instructions Page. Please help us transcribe these records to learn more about the lives of formerly enslaved men and women in Virginia during the Reconstruction Era.
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235 Total pages
87 Contributing members
Virginia Education, Unregistered Letters Received, May–Nov. 1869, Part 4
The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, often referred to as the Freedmen’s Bureau, was established on March 3, 1865. The duties of the Freedmen’s Bureau included supervision of all affairs relating to refugees, freedmen, and the custody of abandoned lands and property. These documents come from the Records of the Superintendent of Education for Virginia, Series 3: Letters Received. Additional resources are available on the Freedmen's Bureau Instructions Page. Please help us transcribe these records to learn more about the lives of formerly enslaved men and women in Virginia during the Reconstruction Era.
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236 Total pages
94 Contributing members
Virginia Education, Unregistered Letters Received, May–Nov. 1869, Part 5
The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, often referred to as the Freedmen’s Bureau, was established on March 3, 1865. The duties of the Freedmen’s Bureau included supervision of all affairs relating to refugees, freedmen, and the custody of abandoned lands and property. These documents come from the Records of the Superintendent of Education for Virginia, Series 3: Letters Received. Additional resources are available on the Freedmen's Bureau Instructions Page. Please help us transcribe these records to learn more about the lives of formerly enslaved men and women in Virginia during the Reconstruction Era.
100% Complete
232 Total pages
104 Contributing members
Virginia Education, Unregistered Letters Received, May–Nov. 1869, Part 6
The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, often referred to as the Freedmen’s Bureau, was established on March 3, 1865. The duties of the Freedmen’s Bureau included supervision of all affairs relating to refugees, freedmen, and the custody of abandoned lands and property. These documents come from the Records of the Superintendent of Education for Virginia, Series 3: Letters Received. Additional resources are available on the Freedmen's Bureau Instructions Page. Please help us transcribe these records to learn more about the lives of formerly enslaved men and women in Virginia during the Reconstruction Era.
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98 Total pages
95 Contributing members
Vocabularies and notes based on material from enslaved African-Brazilians
The United States Exploring Expedition, led by Lt. Charles Wilkes, was a scientific expedition that circumnavigated the globe from 1838 to 1842, making observations and collecting specimens that formed the historical nucleus of Smithsonian collections. Expedition members collected many things that suggest the level of global exchange already taking place, but nothing that speaks so poignantly to the darkest side of that exchange - the trade in human lives that brought Africans to Brazil. Transcribe Horatio Hale's handwritten notes on West and Central African vocabulary and facial scarification that he collected from enslaved Africans in Brazil during the expedition.
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13 Total pages
12 Contributing members
Volume Two of Phillis Wheatley's Poems of Various Subjects, Moral and Entertaining
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
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Vote for Tomlinson D. Todd flyer
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.
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71 Total pages
64 Contributing members
W.L. Judson diary
In brief daily entries, W.L. Judson shares experiences of a year as a bugle player in a Civil War military band. Transcribe these entries to learn more about the company's movements and daily life as they moved through Kentucky and Tennessee.
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58 Total pages
20 Contributing members
W.S. Merrill Manuscript: Private Receipts
W.S. Merrill’s 1878 Private Receipts Book, a manuscript containing recipes for remedies, is a portal into the medical needs of 19th century New England. Druggists, as opposed to formal medical practitioners, were just becoming respected professionals about this time after years of often being consigned to quackery. From his druggist shop in the First National Bank Building in Danvers, Massachusetts, Merrill mixed powders and tinctures for everything from cologne to coughs to poison ivy and hair loss. Whether a ‘simple elixir’ was needed or the client was a cow with sore udders, Merrill had a recipe at hand. A volunpeer has provided this helpful resource for translating the meaning of each apothecary/pharmacist symbol: http://www.textcreationpartnership.org/docs/dox/medical.html.
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30 Total pages
74 Contributing members
Wage book for the slave trading ship Fox captained by Robert Mitchell
This wage book details the voyage of the ship Fox, a 146-ton brigantine that left Liverpool on March 8, 1774. The Fox stopped first in the Cameroons, West Africa, where 148 African people were enslaved and brought aboard. The ship then crossed the Atlantic Ocean westward, landing in Dominica. Seventeen of the enslaved people died during the Atlantic crossing. After likely making other landings in the Caribbean to sell enslaved people, the ship returned to Liverpool, completing the trip on February 22, 1775. This book recorded wages and debts of the crew, desertions, and several deaths of crew members by drowning. There are also records of enslaved people who worked on the ship and were paid in clothing. According to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, Captain Robert Mitchell captained nine trans-Atlantic voyages from Liverpool between 1758 and 1774. This voyage was likely his last. Help us transcribe this wage book to learn more about the trans-Atlantic slave trade during the 18th century.
Browse projects by National Museum of African American History and Culture
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Waldo L. Schmitt - Correspondence, 1911-1914
When the United States entered World War I in 1917, the USS Albatross, like many other US ships, was commissioned into Navy service. What was the ship assigned to before the war? Scientific surveying of West Coast fishing grounds--an expedition led by USS Albatross Naturalist Waldo L. Schmitt! These letters were written to and from Schmitt during his time aboard the USS Albatross, traveling the shores of Alaska and California. While aboard the ship, Schmitt consulted and shared data in correspondence exchanged between the US Bureau of Fisheries, the Scripps Institution for Biological Research, and other scientists. Set sail with Waldo Schmitt and join other volunteers in transcribing these fascinating letters!
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27 Total pages
8 Contributing members
Waldo L. Schmitt - Correspondence, Tortugas Laboratory Trips, 1924-25, Vol. 1
Throughout the early 1900s, hundreds of scientists traveled to Dry Tortugas Islands to conduct marine research at the Carnegie Institution of Washington laboratory. How did those scientists get there? By yacht, of course! The sixty-foot Anton Dohrn yacht brought scientists from Key West to the Tortugas laboratory. Among the many scientists who stepped foot aboard the yacht was the U.S. National Museum's Waldo Schmitt in 1924 (who was working with just a $100 travel stipend!). Climb aboard the Anton Dorhn with Schmitt and help transcribe the correspondence documenting his journey.
