AmericanRevolution.org
http://www.americanrevolution.org/home.html
Originally a portal site, this domain now provides an impressive amount of useful original content. It still contains over 1,000 links and claims to verify them weekly for errors. One of the interesting features is the art gallery of famous Revolutionary War paintings. Included with these paintings are biographies on the artists, histories of the paintings and even guides showing whom the key figures in the paintings represent. The “Scholars Showcase” boasts a number of digitized books on various subjects. Within these documents are links to related sites and subjects. The greatest strength of this site is that the thousands of links it provides connect to quality sites, are well organized throughout the site and most of all, work. (BR)

Government - History 322
http://www.skidmore.edu/~tkuroda/gh322/onl322.htm
"The history and political thought of the American Revolution 1763 - 1789…"
At first glance this would appear to simply be a syllabus for a college course. The reason that this has been included however is because the professor in this instance chose to provide links to pertinent information on constitutional history. The site/page is short, sweet, and to the point making it easy to locate good, specific information with little internet “surfing”.

Jamestown Virtual Colony
http://curry.edschool.virginia.edu/socialstudies/projects/jvc/home.html
“The Jamestown Virtual Colony was developed by the Program in Social Studies Education of the Curry School of Education, with the assistance of a grant from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy.”
This website’s main purpose, provided by the University of Virginia, is to help teachers plan lessons and activities about America’s first colony, Jamestown. They provide enough material for an entire course (5 full units), but recognize that many teachers won’t be able to devote that many classes to the subject. They offer a series of well developed and researched lesson plans that can be adapted to the individual teacher’s needs. The lesson plans include activities and bibliographies, but still leave some work for the teacher in fitting the lesson to their students’ needs. With these lesson plans, the teacher has an excellent framework of ideas and approaches to build upon. This site also includes a few interesting webquest activities for students that could be productive if there is access to a computer lab. The historical overview should help give background information for teachers and students, and the additional links provide a portal to some primary documents and other useful sites. This site is an excellent starting point for information on the Jamestown Colony (through its links) and a great resource for lesson plans and other classroom ideas. BR

The Plymouth Colony Project
http://etext.virginia.edu/users/deetz/
“This Plymouth Colony Archive presents a collection of fully searchable texts, including: court records, colony laws, seventeenth century journals and memoirs, probate inventories, wills, town plans, maps, and fort plans; research and seminar analyses of numerous topics; biographical profiles of selected colonists; and architectural, archaeological and material culture studies.”
As suggested by the website’s introduction, it promises an extensive selection of primary source material and data. Boasting awards, accolades and widespread academic and public recognition, this University of Virginia website lives up to its self praise. The best primary documents are the selection of wills and court records. Throughout the rest of the site are numerous other primary documents, biographies and texts which all prove insightful. There are numerous images of historic paintings, sites, maps, and artifacts excavated in Plymouth. Mixed in with these images and documents are essays and articles that help contextualize the material culture and artifacts being displayed. The site also contains an internal search engine to speed up the process of finding information relevant to the browse’s interests. One last valuable feature of this site is the numerous links that it provides. If something of interest is not found on this site, there are many links to other sites that will hopefully prove more fruitful. For someone interested in Plymouth, this website definitely warrants consideration and attention. BR

University of Virginia Electronic Text Center
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/subjects/
“The Etext Center at the University of Virginia Library has pursued twin missions with equal seriousness of purpose since its inception in 1992: To build and maintain an internet-accessible collection of SGML and XML-encoded texts and images…To build and maintain user communities adept at the creation and use of these materials.”
The most useful collection in this online library is The Modern English Collection (AD 1500-present). Within this collection there are primary documents from African American and Native American sources, the American Civil War, the Colonial era, Women Writers and many others. These documents range from runaway slave advertisements to works of early American fiction. This collection has many of the common documents that are easily found elsewhere, but also contains thousands of unique resources. The selection offers the opportunity to go beyond well-known sources and to utilize new and fresh documents. This collection is an excellent place to find primary documents for classroom use. Though not directly applicable to U.S. History there are also interesting sources for European and world history. (BR)

Voice of the Shuttle
http://vos.ucsb.edu/browse.asp?id=2713
A professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara together with a team of graduate students maintains this portal site. They must have been keeping themselves busy because their sites content is enormous! Although including many subjects, the most extensive is the list of History websites. On the right hand side of the page is a list of topics including U.S. and Native American history. Clicking on these links will direct you to lists of websites. The links are all organized into subcategories such as “US-Indian Treaties and Related Documents,” “Revolutionary America (to 1791)” and “U.S. Civil War.” There are 38 such subcategories. Each link has a brief annotation or explanation of the site. Furthermore, the resources on the page all seem to be updated and without bad links. This is a well-organized portal site with a wide range of subjects to choose from. It well deserves the awards and distinctions it has received.