Digital History Projects
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Digital History Projects
Digital History projects present history using new multi-media and technological tools. Each project focuses on a theme. Unlike documents in the Collections section, documents here are offered with historical context or interpretation. Watch this area for new additions!
 The Chew Family Papers comprise one of the largest collections housed at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The collection centers on Benjamin Chew (1722 - 1810) and his family, and includes numerous documents relating to servants and enslaved people. |
 Long before the women's suffrage movement brought about the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, women were making themselves heard in a variety of ways that broadly transformed the American experience. Read primary sources revealing stories of women's activism leading up to the right to vote.
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 The In Her Own Right project aims to showcase material related to women thinkers, philanthropists, and activists in the century leading up to the 19th amendment. |
 The Pemberton Papers Project, funded by the Lapidus Grant, is a collaboration between the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and Dr. Rosalind Beiler of the University of Central to digitize and make available volumes 1 and 2 (1641-1702) of the collection. The collection details early Pennsylvania history and provides insight to the persecution of Quakers in England. |
 Neighbors/Vecinos is a bilingual website that documents 200 years of Puerto Rican heritage in Philadelphia. It is the end product of Audience Embedded, a project to explore how communities can create cultural programs of meaning for their members. |
 Digital Paxton: A Digital Archive and Critical Edition of the Paxton Pamphlet War for the first time collects in one open-source repository all surviving pamphlets, broadsides, political cartoons, and correspondence related to the Paxton incident and also serves as a web-based critical edition and teaching platform. |
 Anonymous No More: John Fryer, Psychiatry, and the Fight for LGBT Equality documents both the story of Dr. John Fryer, a Philadelphia psychiatrist best-known for challenging the psychiatric profession's decision to categorize homosexuality as an illness, and the collaboration between HSP and playwright Ain Gordon. Major support for this project was provided by the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, with additional support from HSP. |
 The Historical Society of Pennsylvania has begun work on a new digital history project about the Underground Railroad. The project will weave new connections between the manuscript journal and published book of William Still, known as the "Father of the Underground Railroad." |
 Preserving American Freedom, a HSP digital history project, provides 50 key documents for teaching about the evolution of the idea of freedom and practices of liberty throughout U.S. history - along with Educator Tools, such as lesson plans, DBQs, and podcasts. |
 Learn about the early years of the Great Depression and the December 1930 failure of a large Philadelphia bank, Bankers Trust Company. |
 Explore Philadelphia - the City of Neighborhoods - through maps, stories, photographs, and documents. Share your favorite "PhilaPlace" by adding photographs and stories. HSP welcomes interns to help add new stories; to apply see the Internships section of the website. |
 Founded in 1775, the Pennsylvania Abolition Society (PAS) worked on “improving the Condition of the African Race.” The PAS Papers contain the records of the Society's meetings, legal actions they took, papers related to education for the free black community, and the records of numerous anti-slavery societies. |
 The Tobias Lear journal documents the death of George Washington in 1799. Housed in HSP's archives, the journal provides fascinating insight into the final days of one of the most consequential figures in early U.S. history. A full transcription and high-resolution images of the journal are available to view. |
 HSP is pleased to announce the launch of Politics in Graphic Detail: Exploring History through Political Cartoons, an exciting and innovative digital history exhibit featuring more than 125 cartoons digitized as part of the "Historic Images, New Technologies" (HINT) project. |