Datasets

Demographics

  1. “Directory of the City of Albany, 1815.” Albany Public Library. [Download] (NB: There is no external ‘about’ for this data)
  2. “US Census, City of Albany 1850-1940.” https://data2.nhgis.org/main [Download extract] 
  3. John O’Keefe, “Philadelphia Migrant Landing Reports 1798-1801,” https://repository.upenn.edu/mead/40/ [Download] (For data critique, do only “Journeys” sheet)
  4. Dickinson College Archives, Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center. http://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/ [Download]
  5. “Whaling Crew List Database.” Nantucket Whaling Museum. https://www.whalingmuseum.org/online_exhibits/crewlist/about.php [Download]
  6. Her Hat Was In the Ring: US Women Who Ran For Office Before 1920, http://www.herhatwasinthering.org/index.php [Download]
  7. US population by state, 2010 [Download]
  8. US population by state, 1790-2010 [Download]
  9. US population by state and county, 1790-2010 [Download]

Baptism and correspondence networks

  1. “Records of the Reformed Dutch Church of Albany, New York, 1683–1809.” https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/gen/albany/refchurch.html. [Download]
  2. St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church Baptisms, 1743-1747, Schoharie, NY http://sites.rootsweb.com/~nyschoha/baptstpa.html [Download]
  3. “Founder’s Online Metadata.” National Archives, December 11, 2017. https://www.archives.gov/open/nhprc/dataset-founders-online. [Download]
  4. Papers of the War Department Metadata. https://wardepartmentpapers.org/s/home/page/home [Download]
  5. Society of Historians of the Early American Republic conference panels, 2009-2019 [Download] (There’s no about for this; it’s just a list of who was on each panel for ten years of the conference that I scraped out of the programs)

Wealth and poverty

  1. Billy G. Smith, “Almshouse Admissions Philadelphia 1796-1803.” https://repository.upenn.edu/mead/42/ [Download]
  2. Billy G. Smith, “Philadelphia Census of Almshouse 1807-1810” https://repository.upenn.edu/mead/2/ [Download]
  3. Wendy Lucas and Noel Campbell, “York County Probate Records 1700-1800.” https://repository.upenn.edu/mead/26/ [Download data] [Download key]
  4. Gloria Main, Jackson Main, and Peter H. Lindert, Colonial New England Probates, 1631-1776. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2014-02-11. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR34940.v1 [Download]
  5. American Philosophical Society, “Historic Indenture Data.” https://github.com/AmericanPhilosophicalSociety/Historic-Indenture-Data [Download]
  6. “Registers of Servants Sent to Foreign Plantations 1654-1759.” http://www.virtualjamestown.org/indentures/about_indentures.html [Download]
  7. Children Bound Out, https://primaryresearch.org/binding-out/ [Download]
  8. Sharon Howard, A Catalogue of Westminster Coroners’ Inquests 1760-1799, version 2.0 (2018), based on data from www.londonlives.org. https://github.com/sharonhoward/ll-coroners [Download]
  9. Green County Poorhouse Intake Records, 1880-1883 http://tracingyourrootsgcny.com/poor_house_records_1880-1883.htm [Download]

Crime and prisons

  1. Sharon Howard. “Middlesex Convicts Delivered For Transportation 1785-92.” https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.34086. [Download]
  2. “Eastern State Penitentiary Admission Books.” American Philosophical Society. https://search.amphilsoc.org/collections/view?docId=ead/Mss.365.P381p-ead.xml [Download]
  3. Adam Crymble; Louise Falcini; Tim Hitchcock, ‘Vagrant Lives: 14,789 Vagrants Processed by Middlesex County, 1777-1786’ (2014) https://zenodo.org/record/31026#.YCmuw89KhpQ [Download].
  4. Executions in New York State, extracted from https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/ICPSR/studies/8451/datadocumentation# [Download]

Enslaved and free Black history

  1. Albany County Hall of Records. “Manumissions of Enslaved People.” [Download] (There is no external about for this data)
  2. Library and Archives Canada, “Carleton Papers – Book of Negroes, 1783” https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/military-heritage/loyalists/book-of-negroes/Pages/introduction.aspx [Download]
  3. “Runaway Slaves in Britain,” University of Glasgow. https://www.runaways.gla.ac.uk/ [Download]
  4. Billy G. Smith, “Runaway Slaves advertised in 18th-century Jamaica Newspapers.” https://repository.upenn.edu/mead/41/ [Download]
  5. “Mount Vernon’s Enslaved Community,” George Washington’s Mount Vernon https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/slavery/slavery-database/ [Download]
  6. Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, “Slave Sales and Appraisals, 1775-1865,” https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07421.v3 [Download]
  7. “The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database.” http://www.slavevoyages.org/voyage/search# [Download]
  8. Jacob Metzer and Robert A. Margo, “Union Army Recruits in Black Regiments in the United States, 1862-1865.” [distributor], 2007-07-24. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09426.v1 [Download]
  9. Virginia Emigrants to Liberia. http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/liberia/index.php?page=Home [Download]

Indigenous economic data

If you read my book manuscript in seminar last year, this is some of my research data for that project!

  1. Evert Wendell, Account Book. [Download] (NB: there is no external ‘about’ for this data, but a published version with a scholarly introduction is available as To Do Justice to Him and Myself)
  2. Sir William Johnson, Warrants. Thomas Gage Papers. Clements Library, University of Michigan. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/clementsead/umich-wcl-M-341gag [Download]
  3. Anthony Wonderley, transcriber. Account of Losses Sustained by the Oneidas & Tuscaroras, in consequence of Their Attachment to the United States in the Late War. From the files of Fort Stanwix NM, Rome, NY (original in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society). https://www.nps.gov/fost/learn/historyculture/the-oneida-nation-in-the-american-revolution.htm [Download]
  4. Unidentified Dutch Account Book, Historic Hudson Valley. [Download] (There is no external about for this data)
  5. Jelles Fonda Accountbook, New-York Historical Society. [Download] (There is no external about for this data)
  6. Jelles Fonda Accountbook, New York State Archives. [Download] (There is no external about for this data)

Historic registers and markers

  1. National Register of Historic Places. (“Everything” spreadsheet) https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nationalregister/data-downloads.htm [Download]
  2. Historic Albany Foundation Plaques. https://www.historic-albany.org/plaque-services [Download]
  3. Albany County National Historic Places Register [Download] (There is no external about for this data)

Weird stuff

  1. American Philosophical Society, “James Madison’s Montpelier Meteorological Records.” https://github.com/AmericanPhilosophicalSociety/Historic-Weather-Data/tree/main/James%20Madison’s%20Montpelier%20Meteorological%20Records [Download]
  2. New York Public Library, “What’s on the Menu?” http://menus.nypl.org/menus [Download]
  3. Helena Hamerow 2012. Rural Settlements and Society in Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford: Oxford University Press). https://search.library.albany.edu/permalink/01SUNY_ALB/1gnucdc/cdi_proquest_ebookcentral_EBC4700550 [Download]
  4. “Precipitation in Western Europe 1013-1504” Ulf Büntgen, Willy Tegel, Kurt Nicolussi, Michael McCormick, David Frank, Valerie Trouet, Jed O. Kaplan, Franz Herzig, Karl-Uwe Heussner, Heinz Wanner, Jürg Luterbacher, and Jan Esper, ‘2500 Years of European climate variability and human susceptibility’, Science, 331 (13 January 2011, 2011), pp. 578-582. https://search.library.albany.edu/permalink/01SUNY_ALB/1gnucdc/cdi_proquest_miscellaneous_849431412 [Download]
  5. “Western European Climate from Written Sources, ca. 1300 to ca. 1500,” Alexandre, P. 1987. Le Climat en Europe au moyen age: Contribution à l’histoire des variations climatiques de 1000 à 1425, d’après les sources narratives de l’Europe occidentale. Paris: Èd. De l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales. Weikinn, C. 1958. Quellentexte zur Witterungsgeschichte Europas von der Zeitwende bis zum Jahre 1850, vol. 1 (Zeitwende-1500). Berlin (Akademie Verlag). [Download]
  6. Tim Renner, “Haunted Places in America.” https://data.world/timothyrenner/haunted-places [Download]
  7. Ad*Access Digital Collection, Duke University. https://repository.duke.edu/dc/adaccess [Download]
  8. 1930-1931 Time Diary of College Educated Women http://blog.popdata.org/1930-31-time-diary/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=1930-31-time-diary [Download]

Tricky Data

Students in past versions of this class have struggled with the datasets below because they’re not very meaty. There’s some interesting stuff here that could make for a creative project, but look at these with caution and know that they might need to be extended with further research.

  1. John Hammond, “Revivals in New York and Ohio, 1825-1835.” https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07754.v1 [Download NY extract]
  2. Benjamin Franklin, “Post Office Book, 1748-1752.” American Philosophical Society. https://diglib.amphilsoc.org/islandora/object/post-office-book-1748-1752#page/1/mode/1up [Download]
  3. Wendy Lucas and Noel Campbell, “George Washington’s Shipping Invoices from London Factors 1754-1772.” https://repository.upenn.edu/mead/25/ [Download textiles extract data] [Download key]
  4. “African Names, African Origins: Transatlantic Slave Trade.”  http://www.african-origins.org/. [Download]
  5. “England’s Immigrants 1330 – 1550.” https://www.englandsimmigrants.com/. [Download]
  6. “University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology – Online Collections – Data.” https://www.penn.museum/collections/data.php. [Download early modern extract]
  7. Norse World, https://norseworld.nordiska.uu.se/index.php [Download]

Spatial files

The data here should only be used in conjunction with other datasets above. The resources listed below are mainly shapefiles.

  1. New York State Building Footrints, Columbia University Center for International Earth Science Information Network and New York State Energy Research and Development Authority http://fidss.ciesin.columbia.edu/building_data_adaptation
  2. NHGIS Historic County Boundaries https://www.nhgis.org/ (Requires free registration with IPUMS)
  3. MapShaper https://mapshaper.org/ (Converts shapefiles to GeoJSON and CSV and vice versa)
  4. MapWarper https://mapwarper.net/ (rectify and georeference a historical map to produce a geotiff)
  5. NYPL MapWarper http://maps.nypl.org/warper/ (Note that as of 2021 the tiles export often does not work for other services)
  6. David Rumsey Map Collection https://www.davidrumsey.com/view/georeferencer
  7. MapTiler https://www.maptiler.com/ (Upload geotiffs and draw shapefiles over them)
  8. MapBox https://www.mapbox.com/ (upload a geotiff and/or customize a map style for use in Tableau)
  9. Overview of webmapping https://github.com/veltman/learninglunches/tree/master/maps
  10. UCLA’s click2shp browser utility https://apps.gis.ucla.edu/click2shp/# (Draw simple shapefiles in a broswer window; does not accept rectified historical map overlays)