What do historians do on a snow day?
After we catch up on email, check on our online courses, try to do a little writing (I think I got one sentence written so far today), we play around online just like everyone else.
Today we’ve been playing with the Digital Public Library of America’s website (Stephanie Richmond, your lowly content provider, is a Community Rep). I searched their collection for “Virginia” and then pulled up the timeline function and found there were not very many documents in the 1610s and 20s, but was is there is fascinating.
For 1619 there are three documents, one is a dud (nothing to do with Virginia at all, it just came from the Library of Virginia), and the other two are the poll tax listing for 1619 and a map of Virginia and Florida published by Jodocus Hondius in Amsterdam. 1621 and 1622 have some interesting items as well, a genealogy of a Virginia family and a poem written by a Virginian about the massacre of the Virginia colonists in 1622 during the conflict with the Powhatans. This was the conflict that Anthony Johnson survived.
If you want to learn more about the DPLA, please check out their website or contact the community rep in your area to schedule a presentation.