Lesson Plan Murder on the Frontier: The Paxton Massacre 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 Click to download this three-lesson unit :
Spotlight on: Primary Source The Middle Passage, 1749 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ Historians estimate that approximately 472,000 Africans were kidnapped and brought to the North American mainland between 1619 and 1860. Of these, nearly 18 percent died during the transatlantic voyage from Africa to the New World....
Lesson Plan “A City upon a Hill” from John Winthrop’s “A Modell of Christian Charity,” 1630 Government and Civics 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 Click here to download this four-lesson unit.
Spotlight on: Primary Source A Jamestown settler describes life in Virginia, 1622 Economics, Geography 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ The first English settlers in Jamestown, Virginia, who arrived in 1607, were eager to find gold and silver. Instead they found sickness and disease. Eventually, these colonists learned how to survive in their new environment, and by...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Late seventeenth-century map of the Northeast, 1682 Geography, World History 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Like many other explorers, Henry Hudson stumbled upon North America almost by accident. Employed by the Dutch Republic to find a sea passage to the Far East, Hudson and the crew of his ship the Halve Maen landed at what is today New...
Spotlight on: Primary Source The death of enslaved Africans on a voyage, 1725 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ Slavery in English America underwent profound changes during the first two centuries of settlement. During the early seventeenth century, some Black laborers were enslaved; others, however, were treated like White indentured servants...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Olaudah Equiano, 1789 Economics, World History 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ Within ten years of the first North American settlements, Europeans began transporting captured Africans to the colonies as enslaved laborers. Imagine the thoughts and fears of an eleven-year-old boy who was kidnapped from his village...
Spotlight on: Primary Source A View of Savannah, Georgia, 1734 World History 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ The colony of Georgia was founded in 1732 by James Oglethorpe, a British Member of Parliament. Oglethorpe planned Savannah as a place where the poor could come to make a better life. An attempt to produce a "classless society," this...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Secotan, an Algonquian village, ca. 1585 Art 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ In the 1570s and 1580s, John White served as an artist and mapmaker to several expeditions around the Carolinas. White made numerous watercolor sketches depicting the Algonquian people and stunning American landscapes. This engraving...
Spotlight on: Primary Source William Penn on the "Well-Governing of My Family," 1751 Religion and Philosophy K, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ Quaker school teacher Josiah Forster first published this broadside in 1751, thirty years after the death of its author, William Penn, the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania. The treatise, Christian Discipline: Or Certain Good and...