Highlights
- More than 70 items document the relations between the colonists and American Indian peoples
- 22 letters related to Quaker settlement in the colonies include 12 from William Penn and 5 regarding Elizabeth Woodhouse, a young woman who wanted to emigrate without her father or boyfriend
- 16 maps of the colonial era (prior to 1763)
- Sebastian Brandt’s 1622 letter to Henry Hovener, one of the earliest surviving letters written by an ordinary colonist who held no official position
- Puritan preacher Cotton Mather’s 1693 account of the Salem witch trials
- A Latin printing of a 1493 report from Columbus detailing his findings in the Americas