The indenture contract of nine-year-old Elizabeth Fortune reveals the opportunities available to young free black women in colonial New York.
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This skillfully painted hide demonstrates the craft and artistry of Quapaw women, and provides clues about the Quapaw’s relationship with French settlers and neighboring tribes.
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These excerpts from Milcah Martha Moore’s textbook reveal the tennets of an eighteenth-century Quaker education.
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This letter from Mary Alexander illuminates women’s roles in the thriving trade of British New York.
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This drawing of the Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo shows the setting of Spanish efforts to convert and Europeanize Native populations in Alta California.
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A Dutch merchant woman who traveled the world before settling in Flatbush and opening a shop to sell luxury goods.
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The story of a métis fur trader of the Great Lakes region.
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The story of a founding mother of St. Louis.
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Colonial women used spinning wheels like this one to create homespun thread that could be woven into fabric. In the lead-up to the American Revolution, spinning became an overtly political act, because it allowed women to avoid paying tax on imported British textiles and supported the general political protest against English policies.
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This poem by Phillis Wheatley demonstrates how enslaved and free Black people saw the American Revolution as an opportunity to end the systematic oppression of Black people in the colonies.
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