Pullman – America’s First Planned Industrial Community By Donna K. Keesling What comes to mind when you hear the word “Pullman?” Do you think of elegant railway sleeper cars from [...]
The WASP – First American Women to Fly for their Country By Donna K. Keesling In the late summer of 1942, twenty-eight experienced civilian women pilots volunteered to ferry aircraft [...]
Chautauqua Institution: A Model for Life-Long Learning By Donna K. Keesling Founded in 1874 as a summer assembly to train Sunday school teachers, Chautauqua Institution evolved into an active community [...]
Camp David – The Presidential Retreat By Donna K. Keesling The president of the United States lives a very public life, especially when he is at the White House. Each [...]
Fred Harvey: Defining Hospitality in the American West By Donna K. Keesling Fred Harvey, a nineteenth century entrepreneur in the hospitality industry is credited with standardizing food service along the [...]
USS Constitution Proves Its Mettle By John Allison It took Naval Constructor George Claghorn and his crew of shipwrights three tries to launch the USS Constitution. On a cold October [...]
Commanding USS Constitution By Donna K. Keesling USS Constitution is the world’s oldest commissioned warship afloat and is the oldest sailing vessel worldwide that can still sail under her own [...]
Friendship 7: NASA’s First Manned Orbital Spaceflight By Donna K. Keesling Sixty years ago, on February 20, 1962, an Atlas 6 rocket was launched at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station [...]
Towns of the Swift River Valley – Lost to the Quabbin Reservoir By Donna K. Keesling Four towns – Dana, Enfield, Greenwich, and Prescott – were incorporated in the Swift [...]
Operation Torch: Striking Back in North Africa By Donna K. Keesling “You have embarked for distant places where the war is being fought.” President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote these words [...]
The Gettysburg Address Still Resonates Today By John Allison Why should we care about the Gettysburg Address? Lincoln wasn’t the keynote speaker at the dedication of the National Cemetery on [...]
Still Searching for the “Lost Colony” By Donna K. Keesling “CRO” and “CROATOAN,” carved into a tree and a post were the only clues that Englishman John White found when [...]
The Battle of Gettysburg – Crucial Turning Point By Donna K. Keesling The town of Gettysburg, in southcentral Pennsylvania, was laid out with two hundred and ten lots by James [...]
Celebrating the Smithsonian Institution’s 175th Anniversary By Donna K. Keesling On August 10, 2021, the Smithsonian Institution celebrated its 175th anniversary. You probably know the Smithsonian by its many artifacts [...]
America’s First Fourth of July By J. L. Bell, boston1775.net As the latest The Pursuit of History Historical Moments mailing quoted, John Adams praised the Continental Congress’s vote for independence [...]
A Trip Down History Lane: Reading My Way Through the Pandemic By Dr. Michael Shire The innocent question asked by grandchildren to their grandparents, ‘What did you do during the [...]
Katharine Gibbs: Pioneering American Business Executive By Rose Doherty Women will be in public life from now on. However, this societal change did not happen quickly and was the result [...]
National Parks Posters from the WPA Era By Joanna Wendel In honor of The Pursuit of History’s limited edition screenprint of Fort Ticonderoga, designed in the iconic style of [...]
The Lafayette Trail Traces a Noteworthy Path By Joanna Wendel The Marquis de Lafayette played a major role in the American Revolution and helped build an enduring friendship between France [...]
Nellie Tayloe Ross: The First Female Governor By Joanna Wendel January 2021 will be remembered as the inauguration of Kamala Harris, the United States’ first female vice president. But this [...]
Honoring a Remarkable Life: The William B. Gould Memorial Project By Joanna Wendel Over the summer, as he watched statues fall around the country, Brian Keaney began to think about [...]
I have loved history my whole life. I love the story of history – that’s what connects us to it because the story is how we relate to people in [...]
Gravestone Girls: Bringing New England Cemeteries to Life By Joanna Wendel Most people take their Halloween decorations out of storage every October and then pack them away until the following [...]
The Lucy Burns Museum: Shedding light on a dark episode in the history of women’s suffrage By Joanna Wendel August 18, 2020 marked the centennial of the ratification of the [...]
When we had to cancel our in-person History Camps this year, we wanted to find a unique way to connect people to history and to historic sites across the country. [...]
American Panorama: Mapping History for the Twenty-First Century By Joanna Wendel What is a map? Fundamentally, it’s a tool, a visual record of the surface of the world. Yet maps [...]
America’s Summer Roadtrip The Pursuit of History puts on annual History Camps that bring together people from all walks of life for a day of learning and sharing. When we [...]
From History Camp to The Pursuit of History In late 2013, Lee Wright approached three authors and bloggers in the Boston area and proposed that they adapt the format that [...]
Witness to the Revolution: Decoding the Boston Massacre By Joanna Wendel Imagine yourself pacing the narrow streets of Boston on a chilly morning in 1770. The night before, March 5, [...]
History Test Scores Have Dropped By Kayla Schultz The state of public education has been and always will be a hot topic of conversation. While many of those conversations veer [...]