Online Exhibitions

The collection of Grant-Burr Family Papers contains over five hundred letters written between 1827 and 1892. Central to the collection is the correspondence between Daniel Grant (1818-1892) and his wife Caroline Burr Grant (1820-1892). The letters of these articulate and well-educated New England families discuss their experiences in westward expansion, early female seminaries, courtship, marriage, childrearing, missionary activity, the California Gold Rush, and the Civil War.

This online resource documents conflicting representations of African-Americans, white Southerners, and reformers during and and immediately after the Civil War. In particular, it looks at the stereotypes popularized in the northern press, and the ways that these depictions were countered--or in some cases, reinforced--in the letters written for northern readers by freedmen's teachers and freedmen themselves.

Digital resource containing over 13,500 images documenting the sculpture on more than 9,000 gravestones, most of which were made prior to 1800, in the Northeastern part of the United States. 

Full of romance and adventure, dime novels were a variety of melodramatic fiction that was popular in the United States from about 1860 until the early 1900s.  Published as cheap paperbacks (most cost only ten cents), they were generally regarded as low-quality fiction. Women, more often than not, were major characters in these novels. This exhibition explores these women.

A look at women's work, from before the American Revolution through the Industrial Revolution, using selected images from the Society's collection.

This online exhibition explores the connections between American and French lithography in the early days of this printing technology.

Online exhibition showing an array of Christmas images from the Society's collections. 

This exhibition focuses on the traditions and myths of Valentine's Day by examining handmade and commercially produced love tokens from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, held at the American Antiquarian Society. From the intimate appeal of reading a beloved’s handwriting to the sheer delight of quickly sending and receiving anonymous messages through the mail, the celebration of what was originally a minor saint’s day connected lovers, friends, and enemies both close and far.

The history of America has always been intimately entwined with the history of communications media—and that has always been changing. This exhibition broadly explores the interconnectedness of American news media, in all its formats, with changes in technology, business, politics, society, and community from 1730 to 1865.

Online exhibition of lithographs, watercolors, and drawings of artist David Claypoole Johnston.