Inservice - Teaching with Primary Sources

Editor's Notes

• #3: Primary sources are the original records created at the time of historical events (or, in the cast of memoirs & oral histories, after the event happened). They can be letters, manuscripts, diaries, journals, newspapers, speeches, interviews, memoirs, documents produced by gov’t agencies, photos, audio, video, research data, or objects/artifacts. Secondary sources are the interpretations of the event created by someone without firsthand experience. Biographies, encyclopedias, newspapers, texbooks, etc.
• #4: Engage students Develop critical thinking skills Construct knowledge
• #6: Primary sources require students to be critical & analytical as they examine them Primary sources lack context & can be incomplete - students must fill in the gaps
• #7: Primary sources encourage students to confront contradictions, differing POV and the complexity of the past Students construct knowledge as they form conclusions, base those conclusions on evidence and connect primary sources to their context Integrating primary source info with what they already know allows for a deeper understanding
• #8: Engage students with primary sources Promote student inquiry Assess how students apply critical thinking and analysis skills to primary sources
• #13: L to R Letter from E.C. Prescott to Governor William G. Brownlow extending an invitation to address the Mercantile Literary Association and offers an honorarium of $300. Simonton wrote this letter to Sue S. White, Chairman of the Tennessee Branch of the National Woman’s Party, with a poem about women’s suffrage. The Conquered Banner was written shortly after the Civil War and was exrtemely popular in the South and in the Catholic Church. It was nationally known and considered by many to be Abram`s finest work. The poem expresses Abram`s deep sorrow at the defeat of the Confederacy and is perhaps the most famous elegy ever written for the “Lost Cause” and its defenders. Father Abram served as a chaplain in the Confederate Army and was a priest in Clarksville, TN before coming to Knoxville, TN. The poem is thought to be written either in Clarksville or Knoxville, TN.
• #14: This map of Knoxville's downtown was most likely created in 1921 according to city directory information. Most of the buildings labeled here are still present in downtown Knoxville though their names may have changed. Other well-known buildings present on the map, such as the Market House in Market Square, no longer exist. Map of Tennessee Counties
• #15: Lumberjacks working in Memphis, TN Interior of a sawmill. Workers tooling saw blades.
• #16: John Gordon was a prominent Smith County man evidenced by the fact that the town of Gordonsville is named for him. These pages include an inventory of the sales of items in his estate, an accounting of the money earned by the estate for the hiring out of slaves, as well as those slaves Gordon owned as part of his estate. Note that the slaves were "inspected" and a recommendation was made for their sale rather than be split between the heirs. This document is a promissory note signed by James K. Polk, William Parr, and George Johnston in August 1823. The document shows that these men have promised to repay $100 to the bank of Tennessee eighty eight days after this note was signed. A list of the heads of families and number of school-age children in district No. 8, White County, Tennessee, in 1857. The list includes the names of 60 families, including David S. England, Charles Lowry, and William Matlock. The number of children eligible for school in those families ranges from one to eight. Commissioners A. Oliver, W.W. Green, and A.M. Goodwin compiled and signed the list.
• #17: This is the leather satchel carried by Dr. Cas Wilson when he practiced medicine at the age of twenty-two in and around the nearby village of old Loyston, Tennessee. The carrying case contains 87 vials, bottles, and cans of medicine, including a variety of pills. Mr. Wilson received his medical degree from the Memphis School of Medicine in 1913. This photograph is titled, "TVA Control Room, 88896-H". It is from a collection contributed by Donald R. (Little Joe) Adams. "The books you are now looking at were started in 1968 by apprentice of different crafts and professional photographers. There were originally three sets of these books, but due to the changing of the supervision in TVA, two of the sets were destroyed. The last remaining set was in my care for about 25 years. (image shows: main control room, unit 1 control panels, left side.)
• #18: An exhibit at the 1917 Tri-State Fair in Memphis, Tennessee. An exhibition at the 1931 Mid-South Fair in Memphis, Tennessee. This particular stand is selling electric refrigerators by Copeland.
• #19: A piece of sheet music bound with others in a volume once belonging to Miss Nora Gardner, who lived in Tennessee. This particular piece was attributed to Alice Hawthorne, but that was a pseudonym for the composer Septimus Winner. The banjo was made in Hancock County, Tennessee by Burchett Mullins. The rim is made from a corn sifter. Sheet music for a song published at the time of the Scopes Monkey Trial, ridiculing the theory of evolution. Part of the Scopes subgroup of the John S. Mitchell Collection.
• #20: Oil on ivory portrait of Rachel Donelson Jackson. Likely copied from a portrait by Ralph E. W. Earl. Colored lithograph of the Hermitage with a road in the foreground lined with a picket fence on the backside along which a white couple, nicely dressed, are talking to a slave man and his children. On the road are two men on horseback approaching the gate to enter the drive up to the Hermitage mansion. The road leading to mansion is lined with small needle trees, the road splits to form a circular tree-lined drive and then another circular drive right in front of the mansion (a figure 8 design). Mansion is viewed from a left angle, tomb is visible to the right of mansion. Tulip Grove mansion is visible in distant right background. This is a painting by Andrew C. Cottrell from Arthur, Tennessee. It shows a man gathering berries underneath two trees. A myriad of woodland creatures surround him. There is heavy foliage falling from the trees and a bright orange sun in the background. On the tree to the right, there is there artist's name and a date. It says A. Cottrell 68 (1968). The work is from the Collection of the Museum of Appalachia.
• #22: The usual suspects - domain (.edu, .gov, .com); author; purpose Scanned images are best - they show the original document, some of them have transcriptions as well Transcriptions of scanned images okay - don’t show original document Meta-links make you go find the document yourself