If you teach Montana history, I hope you use the Learning from istorical Document Units we've created to accompany almost every chapter of the textbook, Montana: Stories of the Land. These units provide excerpts of primary sources, such as
- 1863 letter from Bannack"
- 1865 letter from Chief Victor
- letters from drought stricken farmers in the 1930s to
- Testimony from Hum Fay concerning the Boycott of Chinese and Japanese Businesses in Butte
- a diary of a 1916 car trip from Seattle to Boston, and
- Constitutional Convention Delegate Virginia Blend's Testimony before the Bill of Rights Committee, 1972.
Each unit includes a link to the typed excerpt (to make it easy for students to read), a link to a Document Analysis Worksheet created by the National Archives, and a link to the actual document. That last link has been broken ever since the Montana Memory Project migration to its new platform. But no longer! Letters, Diaries, and Documents from the Montana Historical Society (which is the collection that most of these documents were a part of) have now been uploaded to the new site. There are still four documents that are part of other collections that haven't been uploaded, but for the most part, the links are now good!
Speaking of the new Montana Memory Project site, I hope you'll check it out if you haven't already. I find it easier to navigate than the old site IF I follow these three tips:
1. Use the drop down menus to narrow your search by format (e.g., image, map, document, etc.).
2. Use the "Search for" drop down menu to select "exact phrase" when searching for a phrase, for example "Evelyn Cameron".
3. Use the refine search term button to add or restrict keywords after the original search.
I also highly recommend registering for a free account, so you can save things in your own personal collection.
Happy searching!
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