Awesome Social & Cultural Historical Resource

I found this resource this week and have literally pinned it on my web browser because I’ve taken to referencing it for social and cultural historical details every day.

To be clear, social and cultural history are really important for historical fiction because the kinds of details we need to give our work that historical feel are in the realms of social and cultural history. Social history focuses on ordinary people and how they deal with life, like emigrating to find better work or creating a female pant called bloomers to make housework easier. Cultural history is about pop-culture like art, entertainment, customs, etc.

Rear view of a woman using a gadget to tighten and close the back of her skirt, 1899. From http://wwwlhistoricalstockphotos.com/

So this awesome resource is called The Gjenvick-Gjønvik Archives http://www.gjenvick.com, and is one of the largest collections of primary sources for social and cultural history. It offers more than 2,000 historical documents and images in the categories of steamships/ocean liners, immigration/emigration, military/wars, Work Progress Administration (work program connected to the New Deal), and there’s a section with historical food/recipes, fashion (which includes sizes and prices), magazines, and entertainment. Hello useful!

Although their name is Norwegian, the archives focus on American history. Archivist and curator Paul Ament-Gjenvick founded the collection in 2000 for researchers, teacher, and family historians and what an awesome resource he created. 

Why is steamship and ocean liners information a big deal? Well, they have names and detailed demographics of the people who were on those ships to America—that’s the big deal. Along with various immigration documents from Ellis Island, you could find all kinds of information. Or I could imagine needing to know the name of a boat that brought people to America and could go find it there, or what that boat looked like, what kind of fuel did it use, etc. Sometimes those tiny details can be really important and even more difficult to find information on. Usually you have to comb through primary documents for something like fuel type. In that section they have vintage tickets, programs, menus, postcards, passenger information, ship information, and a Titanic collection.

The immigration/emigration has all kinds of articles and documents about the life of immigrants, demographics, laws, tickets, passenger lists, deportation, steamship conditions, what happened at the inspections, prices! You could write an entire novel based on these documents alone. Also, under “other collection” the “historical documents” section has even more immigration documents like certificates of health and identification cards.

Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange From http://www.historicalstockphotos.com/. 

The war section focuses on WWI and WWII and has Navy and Army specific documents, letters, posters, draft information, unit histories, training information, guidebooks for military members, which if it’s anything like the books my husband has (he’s in the Navy) they will entail detailed instructions as to what their days and behaviors were expected to be, and information on a mutiny too—cool. Plus there’s much more in those sections.

I am personally the most excited about the cultural history, i.e., fashion, food recipes, entertainment. Those are the areas from which I get details for my women’s historical fiction and so far I’ve only used this site for fashion, and as I said I’ve already referenced it daily for the past week. I can’t wait to explore the food recipes! Not only do they have recipes you can RE-CREATE and try the historical food – imagine the descriptions – but they also have a detailed index of cooking processes. Did people in 1900 steam things and how?

Know what’s even cooler about this site? They are constantly uploading new documents to the collection so it’s literally growing all the time. You can even join their email newsletter to get updates about new documents. I highly recommend everyone check this resource out and bookmark it for future reference. It’s awesome!

Comment and share with us any cool, useful information you find on that website or if you have your own great resource for primary documents. Share it with it us! And don’t forget to follow my blog to always get cool tips and tricks for historical fiction, especially women’s historical fiction.