HIST 53A Labor, Land, and Money in Early America

Maps showing trade volume of specific commodities along canals.

The National Archives has the census schedules available from 1790 to 1950, and most have now been digitized by our digitization partners. Family researchers generally find it most helpful to begin with the most current census and work backwards as a strategy for locating people in earlier generations.

More than 3,700 digitized images from the Newberry's renowned Graff collection, documenting America's westward expansion. Topics covered include narratives from explorers, pioneers, hunters, traders, and prospectors; accounts of the Mormon treks of 1846 and 1849, the California gold rush, and overland travel during the 19th century; the development of transcontinental railroads; the growth of Western city and town life; and the history and culture of Native Americans.

Maps, statistics, and first-hand stories documenting the United States’ inter-state slave trade.

Dot-density maps showing immigrant population by source country and year.

A database of fugitives from slavery, i.e. newspaper advertisements for the recapture of runaways and jailers’ announcements of recapture.

Diaries of travelers linked to journeys on the Oregon, California, and Mormon trails.

A relational database of habeas petitions from county, state, and federal courts in Arizona, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington between 1812 and 1924

The Statistical Abstract of the United States, published from 1878 to 2012, is the authoritative and comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States.

It is designed to serve as a convenient volume for statistical reference, and as a guide to other statistical publications and sources both in print and on the Web.

These sources of data include the U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and many other Federal agencies and private organizations.

The easy-to-use getaway to historical maps in libraries around the world.

This historical map collection has over 142,000 maps and related images online. The collection includes rare 16th through 21st century maps of North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, Antarctica, the Pacific, the Arctic, and the World. The online map collection is a searchable database that allows you to make your own journeys into spatial representations of the past. Here you can see the history of cartography through primary sources from 1500 into the 21st century.

The Leventhal Map & Education Center cares for more than a quarter million cartographic and geographic objects, including maps, atlases, charts, globes, gazetteers, ephemera, research texts, and data sets. Most, though not all, of our physical objects are housed on location at our gallery and research center at the Central Library in Copley Square. All of our collections holdings are available for access to researchers by appointment, and many are available as digital collections.

Library of Congress's massive map collection, searchable by keyword and date range.