Exploring the American Revolution Through Rare Archives

Learning History Through Personal Stories

Students Uncover Forgotten Lives of the American Revolution in Hands-On Seminar

Learning history isn't about memorizing dates and facts, but rather researching the stories of regular people, says Emma Hart, Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Chair of American History and director of Penn's McNeil Center for Early American Studies. And in America's 250th year marking the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the potential for compelling historic storytelling is even greater.

This spring, her seminar "Revolutionary Stories: Philadelphians and the American Revolution" is an opportunity for Penn students to dive deeply into the lives of latter-day Philadelphians at the center of Revolutionary activity.

"The actual stories of people who lived at that time are, I think, very compelling to students," Hart says. "They personalize the process in a way that grand, sweeping narratives fail to do."

A partnership with the Philadelphia-based Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP), aided the students in doing firsthand independent research into diaries, memoirs, account books, ledgers, and other records of lives lived during Philadelphia's early years. Students identified people to write about based on holdings in the HSP's collections: merchants, generals, and laborers, as well as Loyalists and Patriots.

"I wanted to use the HSP partnership to its fullest extent and also inspire undergraduates to become engaged with the revolutionary history of the city and its environs," says Hart.

Staff in the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts also provided resources each week offering context about the Revolutionary period, such as a recently-purchased orderly book of a British regiment stationed in Philadelphia, documenting a daily rundown of its activities.

Ethan Weiser, a fourth-year international relations major from Columbus, Ohio, says he chose the class because he's fallen in love with Philadelphia and its past. "This is a final chance to really enjoy it and immerse myself in the city's history," he says. "This has been an experience learning just how important Philadelphia was and still is to this day in the country."

That is a win, according to Hart, who says one goal is to connect more students to the city. It's an opportunity to get out and explore and "learn more about the city that they are living in and its really important Revolutionary history," she says.

The course, which Hart last taught in 2024, is designed to coach students through the research and writing process, including a bibliography assignment, a workshop on writing, and then a segment of the research paper for feedback, with the final paper due during the final exam period.

"It's been a great opportunity to learn about some of the other Philadelphia resources available to us," Weiser says. He has been investigating the "biography of a coffeehouse" during the Revolutionary period. His inquiry focused on printer William Bradford, who was contracted to run the London Coffee House, which became a focal point for both economic and Patriot activity. The operation had a traditional coffee house on the open ground floor, with upper levels attracting traders, merchants, and others who would buy and sell commodities-America's first stock exchange, he says. The coffeehouse attracted a large number of Patriot sympathizers Weiser says, noting that Bradford himself became a Patriot. According to Weiser, one account indicates that John Adams made the coffeehouse his home base in 1774.

David Sun, a second-year from Qingdao, China, was drawn to the class because of his interest in history and its focus on personal stories and writing biographies. He chose to look into the life of Isaac Collins, an early newspaper publisher who established New Jersey's first newspaper and became the official printer for the New Jersey government.

Exploring the archives at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania was a new experience for Sun, who plans to double-major in history and mathematics. "You're going through the archives, finding letters, family trees ... and that's just a really cool experience," he says. "When you think about historians, you think about someone who's almost like an archaeologist but in an old library instead of in the field. ... That's what I imagined it to be like, and now that I'm finally at that level, it was one of the most interesting things I've done in my life."

The research process certainly wasn't easy, Sun says. Early on, he spent about an hour deciphering the handwriting of the first letter he came across but soon recognized that wasn't an efficient use of his time. "I decided to switch gears and found a few more comprehensive documents about his life and used that as a guide to identify the people he [Collins] interacted with that might have been more significant to the story, so I looked at the letters between him and that person," explains Sun.

The project helped him learn more about the American Revolution, which was a new period of history for him, Sun says. Learning about printers like Collins, who was born in 1746 and died in 1817. The experience has also helped shape Sun's understanding of the war. For people of that time, "most of what you heard about the Revolution was going to be something published by Isaac Collins or one of these other printers," he says. "It shows how important information and communication is, especially in this era, because information was much harder to come by back then."

Hart says she hopes the course helps students like Weiser and Sun hone their research skills, so they can "follow their nose" in future explorations. She says looking at history through the eyes of real people "makes it a much more intriguing exercise."