United States History Commons^™

The Discovery, Settlement And Present State Of Kentucke, John Filson

Zea E-Books in American Studies

This is an open-access electronic text edition of Filson’s seminal work on the early history of Kentucky, including the first published account of the life and adventures of Daniel Boone. Filson’s work was an unabashedly optimistic account of the western territory, where Filson had acquired large land claims, whose value he sought to enhance by the publication of this advertisement and incitement for further settlement. Scarcely two years after the violent and tragic British and Indian invasion of 1782, Filson portrayed Kentucky as a natural paradise, where peace, plenty, and security reigned. Of some significance is Filson’s recognition that the …

Account Of Services Performed And Money Due Ignatius Goulding, 1783 And 1788, Worcester, Massachusetts., Worcester County, Ignatius Goulding

Broadus R. Littlejohn, Jr. Manuscript and Ephemera Collection

Debit account detailing money due Ignatius Goulding by Worcester County for services performed and expenses incurred.

Request By Grand Jury To Court Of Sessions To Order Treasurer To Give The Jurors Their "Note Upon Interest" In Payment For Their Service, Worcester, Massachusetts, December 7, 1781., Ephraim Doolittle

Broadus R. Littlejohn, Jr. Manuscript and Ephemera Collection

A grand jury in Worcester, Massachusetts requests arrangements be made for their payment in light of the fact that the County Treasurer "has not money in store to pay them."

Record From The Second Continental Congress Ordering That The Secret Committee Produce A List Of Articles Ordered, Signed By Charles Thomson, January 17, 1777., United States. Continental Congress, Charles Thomson

Broadus R. Littlejohn, Jr. Manuscript and Ephemera Collection

Order that “the secret committee” produce a “list of the articles [....] which they have ordered in consequences of the directions of Congress distinguishing how much is arrived + what is expected.”

Ten Pound (£10) Note Of South Carolina Currency, 1775., Provincial Congress Of South Carolina, Gideon Dupont, Edward Blake, Thomas Corbett, Aaron Loocock, William Parker

Broadus R. Littlejohn, Jr. Manuscript and Ephemera Collection

This South Carolina certificate no. 36967 "entitles the bearer to Ten Pounds Current Money." Signed by Gideon Dupont, Aaron Loocock, Thomas Corbett, William Parker, and Edward Blake.

Bill And Receipt For Oak Scantling, 1775, Joseph Ogilby

Charles R. Roberts and Walter E. Boyer Collections

This handwritten bill and receipt, sent by Frederick Shingle of Philadelphia in 1775 and signed by Joseph Ogilby, records the cost of oak scantling.

The receipt was found in an account ledger attributed to Friederich Schenckel (d.1810).

Buckskin Breeches Order Slip, November 3, 1774, Daniel Richards

Charles R. Roberts and Walter E. Boyer Collections

This handwritten order slip, sent to Frederick Shingle of Philadelphia on November 3, 1774 by Daniel Richards, requests buckskin breeches for Richard Finemore.

This slip was found in an account ledger attributed to Friederich Schenckel (d.1810).

Leather Breeches Order Slip, November 4, 1773, Michael M. Gannon

Charles R. Roberts and Walter E. Boyer Collections

This handwritten order slip, sent to Frederick Shingle of Philadelphia on November 4, 1773 by Michael M. Gannon, requests breeches for a slave named John Stagg.

This slip was found in an account ledger attributed to Friederich Schenckel (d.1810).

Buckskin Breeches Order Slip, September 16, 1773, Michael M. Gannon

Charles R. Roberts and Walter E. Boyer Collections

This handwritten order slip, sent to Frederick Shingle of Philadelphia on September 16, 1773 by Michael M. Gannon, requests buckskin breeches.

This slip was found in an account ledger attributed to Friederich Schenckel (d.1810).

Buckskin Breeches Order Slip, May 23, 1770, Unknown

Charles R. Roberts and Walter E. Boyer Collections

This handwritten order slip, sent to Frederick Shingle of Philadelphia on May 23, 1770 requests buckskin breeches.

This slip was found in an account ledger attributed to Friederich Schenckel (d.1810).

Leather Breeches Order Slip, February 3, 1770, James Parson

Charles R. Roberts and Walter E. Boyer Collections

This handwritten order slip, sent to Frederick Shingle of Philadelphia on February 3, 1770 by James Parson, requests breeches for his servant, Alexander McCarthy.

This slip was found in an account ledger attributed to Friederich Schenckel (d.1810).

Leather Breeches Order Slip, Circa 1770, Daniel Richards

Charles R. Roberts and Walter E. Boyer Collections

This undated handwritten order slip, sent to Frederick Shingle of Philadelphia circa 1770 by Daniel Richards, requests a pair of breeches.

This slip was found in an account ledger attributed to Friederich Schenckel (d.1810).

Leather Breeches Order Slip, November 11, 1768, Lawrence Carter

Charles R. Roberts and Walter E. Boyer Collections

This handwritten order slip, sent to Frederick Shingle of Philadelphia on November 11, 1768 by Lawrence Carter, requests breeches for his servant, Morton.

This slip was found in an account ledger attributed to Friederich Schenckel (d.1810).

Leather Breeches Order Slip, September 24, 1768, Edward Bonsall

Charles R. Roberts and Walter E. Boyer Collections

This handwritten order slip, sent to Frederick Shingle of Philadelphia on September 24, 1768 by Edward Bonsall, requests leather breeches. The breeches are, presumably, for his servant, James Brown.

This slip was found in an account ledger attributed to Friederich Schenckel (d.1810).

Buckskin Breeches Order Slip, 1768, Michael M. Gannon

Charles R. Roberts and Walter E. Boyer Collections

This handwritten order slip, sent to Frederick Shingle of Philadelphia in 1768 by Michael M. Gannon, requests buckskin breeches.

This slip was found in an account ledger attributed to Friederich Schenckel (d.1810).

Account Ledger, 1766-1777, Friederich Schenckel (D. 1810)

Charles R. Roberts and Walter E. Boyer Collections

This handwritten account book is attributed to Friederich Schenckel (d.1810), a leather breeches maker working in Philadelphia. Entries, written in German script, date from approximately 1766 to 1777. The book lists quantities of materials and their prices. One of his shops may have been called the Three Gloves and Breeches, located near the Indian Queen Hotel on Market Street.

Multiple order slips and a tax notice were also found in the account ledger.

The Journal Of Major George Washington, George Washington

Zea E-Books in American Studies

In October of 1753, George Washington, a 21-year-old major in the Virginia militia, volunteered to carry a letter from the governor of Virginia to the French commander of the forts recently built on the headwaters of the Ohio River in northwestern Pennsylvania. The French had recently expanded their military operations from the Great Lakes into the Ohio country, and had spent the summer of 1753 building forts and roads along the Allegheny River, with the design of linking their trade routes and sphere of influence down the Ohio to the Mississippi. Virginia governor Robert Dinwiddie believed them to be in …

A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission And Non-Resistance To The Higher Powers: With Some Reflections On The Resistance Made To King Charles I. And On The Anniversary Of His Death: In Which The Mysterious Doctrine Of That Prince’S Saintship And Martyrdom Is Unriddled, Jonathan Mayhew

Zea E-Books in American Studies

After the Restoration of the English monarchy in the person of Charles II in 1660, the new king and his first Parliament declared the anniversary of the beheading of his father Charles I (January 30, 1649) a religious holiday with a special commemoration in the Book of Common Prayer, naming the late monarch a saint and martyr. This holiday was not generally celebrated in Massachusetts until the emergence of several Anglican churches there in the early eighteenth century. In 1750, Jonathan Mayhew, the twenty-nine-yearold pastor of the West (Congregational) Church in Boston, took occasion to dispute the first Charles’ credentials …

The Negro Christianized. An Essay To Excite And Assist That Good Work, The Instruction Of Negro-Servants In Christianity (1706), Cotton Mather, Paul Royster , Editor

Electronic Texts in American Studies

There were Africans in New England before there were Puritans there, and by 1700 they numbered about 1,000 out of a total population of 90,000. Roughly half of them lived in Massachusetts, and were concentrated in Boston and the coastal towns. Puritans actively participated in the trafficking of enslaved persons, importing Africans from the West Indies and sometimes selling native American prisoners overseas.

Cotton Mather’s household contained enslaved Negro servants, and his congregation at the Second (or North) Church included both merchants of slavery and persons of African descent. The pamphlet reprinted here appeared in 1706 without his name, but …

Mary Pike, George Heathcote, March 30, 1697; August 6, 1697, Mary Pike

Pemberton Correspondence Transcriptions

A letter from Mary Pike to George Heathcote on March 30, 1697

Old Mens Tears For Their Own Declensions, Mixed With Fears Of Their And Posterities Further Falling Off From New-England’S Primitive Constitution, Joshua Scottow

Zea E-Books in American Studies

This is an online edition of Scottow’s popular tract, published in Boston in 1691, based on the first edition. Later editions were published in Boston in 1715, 1733, and 1749, and in New London in 1769. It is a searchable PDF document. The characteristics of Scottow’s original text (spelling, punctuation, capitalization, italics, etc.) have been retained. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected, and a list of emendations is included at the end. Its typographic design is based on that of the original. The work decries the falling off of New England from the purity and purpose of its original founding, …

An Arrow Against Profane And Promiscuous Dancing Drawn Out Of The Quiver Of The Scriptures, Increase Mather

Electronic Texts in American Studies

When a dancing master arrived in Boston in 1685 and offered lessons and classes for both sexes during times normally reserved for church meetings, the Puritan ministers went to court to suppress the practice. Increase Mather (1639-1723) took the leading part, writing and publishing this tract, which compiles arguments and precedents for the prohibition of “Gynecandrical Dancing, [i.e.] Mixt or Promiscuous Dancing, viz. of Men and Women … together.” These justifications were certainly shared with the court, which found the dancing master guilty, fined him £100, and allowed him to skip town.

Mather’s tract on dancing is an overwhelming compendium …

The Cry Of Sodom Enquired Into, Samuel Danforth

Zea E-Books in American Studies

This is a well-known execution sermon from seventeenth-century Massachusetts, delivered on the occasion of the sentencing to death of a young man convicted of bestiality—specifically of copulation with a mare, in which he was discovered in the open in broad daylight. Samuel Danforth, who wrote and delivered the sermon, would have known the condemned young man very well. Benjamin Goad had been born into Danforth’s congregation at Roxbury and had grown up under his pastoral care. Danforth was also familiar with the anguish of a parent over the death of a child, having suffered the deaths of eight of his …

The Life And Death Of That Reverend Man Of God, Richard Mather, Teacher Of The Church In Dorchester In New-England. A Facsimile Reprint With An Introduction ..., Increase Mather, Benjamin Franklin V, William K. Bottoroff

Electronic Texts in American Studies

We most often turn to American Puritan prose to glean historicalor biographical data. If we seek a biography that spans the evolution of American Puritanism from its nadir in England through its zenith in the New England of the 1630's to 1650's, and to the beginning of its decline as symbolized by the "Half-Way Covenant" in 1662, we may turn to Increase Mather's biography of his father, The Life and Death of That Reverend Man of God, Mr. Richard Mather. It includes the background for the elder Mather's decision to emigrate to New England (events leading to his suspension from …

A Declaration Of The Sad And Great Persecution And Martyrdom Of The People Of God, Called Quakers, In New-England, For The Worshipping Of God, Edward Burroughs

Zea E-Books in American Studies

From 1656 through 1661, the Massachusetts Bay Colony experienced an “invasion” of Quaker missionaries, who were not deterred by the increasingly severe punishments enacted and inflicted by the colonial authorities. In October 1659, two (William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson) were hanged at Boston; in June 1660, Mary Dyar (or Dyer) became the third; in March 1661, William Leddra became the fourth (and last) to suffer capital punishment or “mar-tyrdom” for their Quaker beliefs.While members of the Society of Friends rushed to Massachu-setts to test the harsh sentences under the newly enacted laws, other Friends in England simultaneously petitioned Parliament and …

Four English Histories Of The Pequod War, P. Vincentius, John Underhill, Lion Gardener, John Mason

Zea E-Books in American Studies

P. Vincentius, A True Relation of the Late Battell fought in New England, between the English, and the Salvages : With the present state of things there (1637)

John Underhill, Newes From America; or, A New and Experimentall Discoverie of New England; Containing, a Trve Relation of Their War-like proceedings these two yeares last past, with a Figure of the Indian Fort, or Palizado (1638)

Lion Gardener, Relation of the Pequot Warres [1660]

John Mason, A Brief History of the Pequot War: Especially of the memorable Taking of their Fort at Mistick in Connecticut in 1637 (1736)

Gods Promise To His Plantation, John Cotton

Zea E-Books in American Studies

The work reprinted here, in an online electronic text edition, is Cotton’s famous farewell sermon preached at the departure of the Winthrop fleet in Southampton in 1630. Gods Promise to His Plantation (1630)—courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society—is an ideological justification for engaging in such a risky venture, a promotional tract to encourage emigration, and a typological argument for possessing the wilderness. Like Winthrop’s famous A Model of Christian Charity (1630), John Cotton’s sermon is central to the Puritan experiment in the New World.

New-England Or A Briefe Enarration Of The Ayre, Earth, Water, Fish And Fowles Of That Country. With A Description Of The Natures, Orders, Habits, And Religion Of The Natives; In Latine And English Verse, William Morrell, Andrew Gaudio , Editor

Electronic Texts in American Studies

This text, a Latin poem in dactylic hexameter with an accompanying English translation in heroic verse stands as the earliest surviving work of poetry about New England and the second oldest poem whose origins can be traced directly to the British American colonies. Only two copies of the original 1625 edition are known to survive; one is held at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, and the other is housed at the British Museum. The Latin portion comprises 309 lines and praises the geographic features, flora and fauna of New England, and spends a majority of its verses describing …