Family Portrait by Ralph Eleaser Whiteside Earl

The Nashville Museum of Natural and Artificial Curiosities

Inspired by Peale’s Philadelphia Museum, artist and collector Ralph E. W. Earl founded a similar institution in Tennessee in 1818.

Inventing an American Indian Rebellion

False rumors of an alleged Wampanoag uprising on Nantucket Island in 1738 were turned into a story of an Indian rebellion thwarted via a Boston newspaper.
A Black man in the dock following claims of a plot by enslaved people in New York to revolt and level New York City with a series of fires, at an unspecified court in New York, 1741

Was the Conspiracy That Gripped New York in 1741 Real?

Rumors that enslaved Black New Yorkers were planning a revolt spread across Manhattan even more quickly than fires for which they were being blamed.
Title page for Sinners in the hands of an angry God, 1741

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God: Annotated

Jonathan Edwards’s sermon reflects the complicated religious culture of eighteenth-century America, influenced not just by Calvinism, but Newtonian physics as well.
Gathering Sap at a Maple Sugar Camp, Vermont

Praising Maple Sugar in the Early American Republic

In Early America, some prestigious residents advocated for the replacement of cane sugar, supplied by enslaved workers, with maple sugar from family farms.
Edward Jenner vaccinating a young child, held by its mother

The National Vaccine Institute and Vaccination For All

The early US fight against smallpox was helped by the establishment of the National Vaccine Institute, an agency that wouldn't survive government mistrust.
Genealogical Chronological And Geographical Chart. Embracing Biblical And Profane History Of Ancient Times From Adam To Christ, 1887

Where Did Family-Bible Genealogies Come From?

Royal lineage tracing, British laws of inheritance, and patriarchal Protestantism all contributed to the genealogical literacy of some Americans.
Join or Die

The Serpents of Liberty

From the colonial period to the end of the US Civil War, the rattlesnake sssssssymbolized everything from evil to unity and power.
On the left stands King George III surrounded by symbols of British peace and liberty, while across the Channel the figure of Napoleon is stalked by poverty and ‘universal destruction’.

Jacobin Hating, American Style

The most radical faction of the French Revolution was hated by everyone in the United States from reactionaries to abolitionists.
We-Wa

One Barrier to Two-Spirit History: Settler Archives

Historians need to know more about the roles of two-spirit Native Americans, but relying on written records isn't always productive.