LibGuides: U. S. History: Recommended Websites

Evaluating Websites

Library staff have evaluated and made available high quality resources to meet your needs. A help guide is available to assist you in evaluating websites. For more information on this topic please see this instructional video.

Recommended Websites

71 Digital Portals to State History
American History
American Presidents
America on the Move
National Museum of American History
Annenberg Media--A Biography of America
A companion web site to the video series and telecourse.
Archiving Early America
The Coming of the American Revolution 1764-1776
Digital Scholarship Lab from the University of Richmond
Ellis Island Oral Histories Online
Massachusetts Historical Society: Civil War
National Constitution Center
Smithsonian Folkways
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution, the national museum of the United States.
Zinn Education Project

Primary Sources

A primary source is a historical document or artifact created during a particular period of time.
Salem Press Encyclopedia, Research Starters, 2020.

The following websites are some of the most reliable and reputable primary source sites available on the web for American History.

American Memory from the Library of Congress
Digital Commonwealth
Founder's Online
Correspondence and Other Writings of Six Major Shapers of the United States.
Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners Digital Collections

New England History Websites

Concord Museum
Hancock Shaker Village
Explore 750 acres of rolling farm fields and woodlands, 20 historic buildings (many with costumed interpreters), including the world-famous Round Stone Barn, herds of heritage-breed animals, and extensive gardens of herbs, flowers and produce
Historic Deerfield
Spend a day in old New England. Visit Historic Deerfield, an authentic 18th-century New England village in the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts.
Historic New England
Visit our thirty-six historic sites, spanning five states and four centuries of New England life.
Memorial Hall Museum
Museum is part of Historic Deerfield
Museum of Fine Arts
Museum of Science
Mystic Seaport, The Museum of America and the Sea
Old Sturbridge Village
Old Sturbridge Village, the largest outdoor history museum in the Northeast, depicts a rural New England town of the 1830s.
Peabody Essex Museum
The roots of the Peabody Essex Museum date to the 1799 founding of the East India Marine Society, an organization of Salem captains and supercargoes who had sailed beyond either the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn.
Plimouth Plantation
Plimoth Plantation offers powerful personal encounters with history built on thorough research about the Wampanoag People and the Colonial English community in the 1600s.
Strawberry Banke Museum
Strawbery Banke Museum, in the heart of historic downtown Portsmouth, New Hampshire, is an authentic 10-acre outdoor history museum, listed on the National Register of Historic Places and dedicated to bringing 300+ years of American history to life.