History

This collection provides a history of the American people and a testament to the growth of the nation from the colonial period through to the twentieth century. The collection offers multiple perspectives on the thought, culture, and society of North America through the eyes of those who lived it.

Created from the Library Company’s acclaimed Afro-Americana Collection—an accumulation that began with Benjamin Franklin and steadily increased throughout its entire history. Includes books, pamphlets and broadsides, many lesser-known imprints.

This archive contains manuscripts, artwork, and rare printed books dating from the earliest contact with European settlers right up to photographs and newspapers from the mid-twentieth century as well as a wide range of rare and original documents from treaties, speeches and diaries, to historic maps and travel journals.

The Archives of Sexuality & Gender provides a robust and significant collection of primary sources for the historical study of sex, sexuality, and gender. With material dating back to the sixteenth century, researchers and scholars can examine how sexual norms have changed over time, health and hygiene, the development of sex education, the rise of sexology, changing gender roles, social movements and activism, erotica, and many other interesting topical areas. This growing archival program offers rich research opportunities across a wide span of human history.

Drawing from the records of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), it focuses on civil rights, race, gender, and issues relating to the U.S. Supreme Court— topics intensely relevant to today’s curriculum and debates at both national and local levels.
Covering the years from before the ACLU’s official founding in 1920 through the 20th century, this archive offers an array of primary source materials on some of the most important issues that affected the United States.

(1829-1922) Includes more than 170 unique titles of searchable primary source content related to African American religious life and culture.

Gale eBooks is a database of encyclopedias and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research. A good source for background information. Download, print, or email as many chapters as you like. You can even send chapters to your Google or Microsoft account.

Within Oxford Reference, you may find results that range from short-entry, general reference to more in-depth articles on specialized subjects. Note: while we do not have access to all of the titles in the full collection, the default search covers the titles that Davidson owns.

Full text family and local histories drawn from over 25,000 books, the U.S. Federal Census (1790-1940), and other collections as well as images of selected records from the Revolutionary War Era Pension & Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files. Also indexes over 6,500 genealogy and local history periodicals published since 1800.

A collection of online, annotated bibliographies; each entry is compiled by experts in the field and provides citations to the key literature on a topic, including print and online resources. We have access to selected collections only.

Full-text reference materials on Islam and Islamic concepts, history, politics, and more. Contains The Oxford History of the Islamic World, Oxford Dictionary of Islam, Oxford History of Islam, The Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art & Architecture, two Oxford World's Classics versions of the Qur'an, Hanna Kassis' Concordance of the Qur'an, maps, primary source documents, and more.

Biography Index Retrospective is an archive index covering notable individuals from all time periods and countries. Indexing and citations include book reviews, interviews, obituaries, diaries and memoirs.

Covers more than 19,000 prominent U.S. men and women from all periods of history. Excludes living people.