Database Highlight #1: We've Got the Answer to That
Happy 4th of July and happy new fiscal year! Many of you have expressed a desire to learn more about our Research offerings but don’t know where to start; so in the coming weeks, we’ll be highlighting one topical database and one free open web resource. Let’s kick off the year by celebrating “America’s Birthday” with U.S. History in Context.
“U.S. History in Context provides a complete overview of our nation’s past that covers the most-studied events, decades, conflicts, wars, political and cultural movements, and people. Information is provided on topics ranging from the arrival of Vikings in North America, to the stirrings of the American Revolution, through to the Civil Rights movement, 9/11, and the War on Terror.”
Adhering to Oklahoma curriculum standards, this resource is a good choice for anyone high-school aged and up. There’s plenty of reference, biographies, primary sources, images, magazines, news, videos, audio, and journals to keep everyone engaged - from the serious researcher to an interested browser.
Check it out today!
This week’s open site is the National Register of Historic Places. What better way to get back in touch with American history than visit a historical monument or site?
Action Steps
- Browse or search U.S. History in Context
- Find a historical place in your home state
- Using U.S. History in Context, answer this question (don’t forget to cite your source): the 4th of July is meant to celebrate Congress’s vote for independence but the vote didn’t actually take place on the 4th. On what date did Congress formally pass the resolution for independence?
Free pens to the first 3 correct respondents!
- Log in to post comments
Comments
Pen for you!
Although the Continental Congress formally passed the resolution for independence on July 2, 1776, it was not until July 4 that Congress voted to approve the Declaration of Independence, which stated the reasons for the break with England.
Nemanic, Mary Lou. "Fourth of July Celebrations." St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, Gale, 2013. U.S. History in Context, ezproxy.metrolibrary.org:2048/login?url=http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/MJJKGC002040888/UHIC?u=okla66073&xid=.... Accessed 3 July 2017.
That's the date I was looking for! (Though I acknowledge several different articles had different dates depending on if you were looking at the vote, the resolution draft, the declaration etc.)
Beautiful citation work too! A shiny hoopla pen is coming your way.
According to the NRHP - outside Jones, this occurred:
Many a site - or event - is significant, not in itself,
but through the fortuity of having a notable chronicler. This
is particularly true of that section of Nine Mile Flat beside
the North Canadian River (northeast of present Oklahoma City)
that witnessed, on Oct. 25, 1832, one of history's best
known roundupg of wild horses. Official chronicler was
Washington Irving. And thanks to his spirited account of the
frontier gala - and an assist from MoGuffey - "Ringing the
Wild Horse 11 has been a part of the cultural background of
countless thousands of readers of literature for almost a
century and a half. (The account, of course, is a chapter of
his travel book, A Tour on the Prairies, a best seller of its
day and still both entertaining and enlightening, especially
for the perceptive view it gives of what is now Oklahoma
when it was still a virtual wilderness.)
Washington Irviag, with the Englishman Charles J. Latrobe,
Count Albert de Pourtales of Switzerland, and Henry L. Ellsworth,
a government emissary, left Fort Gibson on the Arkansas River
October 10,j soon caught up with a detachment of Rangers on a
scouting expedition into the central part of present Oklahoma.
They completed the trip with the mounted soldiers. Both
Irving and Latrobe subsequently wrote accounts of their experiences.j
While the junket had its hardships and dangers,
it was not without its moments of fun, too. And October 25
provided one such pleasantry.
"About ten in the morning," Irving writes, "we came to
where this line of rugged hills swept down into a valley,
through which flowed the north fork of the Red River (Canadian^,
A beautiful meadow about half a mile wide, enamelled with
yellow autumnal flowers, stretched for two or three miles
along the foot of the hills, bordered on the opposite side
by the river, whose banks were fringed with cottonwood trees,
the bright foliage of which refreshed and delighted the eye,
after being wearied by the contemplation of monotonous wastes
of brown forest.**
Who would have ever thought it happened here, in OK?