Found

On the long history of governments attempting to restrict access to documents about their inner workings.

An enslaved woman’s refusal to name her child challenged Pennsylvania’s gradual abolition laws and left behind a rare archival trace of resistance.

The sad remnants of a soldier’s life revealed through probate and Ancestry offer a moving glimpse into the afterlife of Civil War service.

The challenge: how to catalog and derive meaning from so much digital clutter.

Baseball’s early years.

Tamara Lanier, who sued the school over daguerreotypes of her enslaved ancestors held in its museum, called the outcome “a turning point in American history.”

John Scanlan’s “The Idea of Waste” argues that all civilization is an attempt to make waste disappear.

In the 19th century, dyed ostrich feathers were haute couture, adorning the hats and boas of fashionistas on both sides of the Atlantic.

Its ingenious design inspired generations of language-processing technology, but only one prototype was made and had long been assumed lost.

Letters, diaries, and remembrances shared on JSTOR by University of the Pacific reveal the hardships of day-to-day life during the California Gold Rush.

Identifying Sophie Mousseau from a Civil War-Era photo helps us understand our complex past.

O-o-be' stood out in an era when smiles on camera weren't common.

An oral history project to document the stories of federal workforce cuts is open to all feds and contractors — even DOGE and Musk.

The radical legacy of Abram Colby, one of Georgia’s first Black legislators, was almost erased by racist revisionists.

A presidential lawyer and historian combed through the latest document dump so you don’t have to. Here’s what he found.

We risk losing not just the images but also our ability to bear witness to history itself.

A global network of maritime archeologists is excavating slave shipwrecks—and reconnecting Black communities to the deep.

The civil rights leader’s lone poem, written from prison, reveals his love of language — and his quest for truth.

The poignant images, at once banal and intimate, in the Lynch Family Photographs Collection contain mysteries perhaps only the public can solve.

How a clerk on Ellis Island at the dawn of the 20th century documented discrimination through photography, and what that tells us about today’s malaise.

William H. Townsend drew the rebels as they stood trial, leaving behind an invaluable record.

How scholars achieved some of the most consequential intelligence victories of the twentieth century.

Countries have also used their postal systems to fight back against aggression.

The con artist was either a very unlucky man or a trickster who got away with it all.

Tamara Thomsen discovered a 1,200-year-old dugout canoe in Wisconsin’s Lake Mendota in 2021, spurring efforts to catalog historic canoes statewide.

The Washington Post has found more than three times as many deaths as the U.S. government documented in its investigation of Indian boarding schools.

What it conveys is quite specific: grandeur, beauty, dynamism, and power.

Belle da Costa Greene, a brilliant archivist, buried her own history.

A new release of an 1891 song by Louis Vasnier deepens what we know about the genre’s origins.

Getting lost and found in the Bob Dylan archives.