Homework #9, due Thursday, Oct. 23:

American Notes: Travels in America, 1750-1920 , Library of Congress, General Collections.   http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/lhtnhtml/lhtnhome.html .  

This digital collection, part of the Library of Congress's American Memory website, is composed of 253 published accounts of traveling in the United States. The full text of the collection may be searched by keyword.
Your assignment is to search the full text to locate a substantial description of a town or city with which you are familiar. You may choose your hometown, or any other town in Connecticut or the United States. Select a description that is at least a full paragraph long; a longer passage would be easier to work with. If you can't find a long description of your chosen town, pick another town. Then, answer these questions:

• What town did you select? What is the source you selected? Provide a full citation, with a page number.

• When did the writer visit that town (as best as you can determine)?

• What does the writer emphasize in this description?

• How might a different observer have described the town differently?

• How might a historian use this description? What are the strengths and weaknesses of this description as a primary source?