I just stumbled across a website with an excellent collection of original historical documents and wanted to share information about it. Since I had this blog but hadn’t really done anything with it up till now, I figured a quick review would make a good initial posting.
Footnote.com says they have the “largest collection of original historical documents on the Web”. I don’t know if that’s actually the case, but they do certainly have a very comprehensive, easy to use site. As of this writing, they advertise having over 66 million images.
I was able to find and download 56 page of muster and pay records on one of my Revolutionary War ancestors in just moments. The resulting images are high-quality, and downloaded quickly. Most of these records are transcriptions made “from copy verified in the R. & P. Office, War Department, in Nov. 1895, of an original record borrowed from the State of New Hampshire”, but one was of a hand-written record “Received from Pension Office January 16, 1913″ according to a stamp on the folder enclosing it, signed by Jedediah Jewett and dated “Exeter, Sept. 22nd, 1780″, attesting to the balance due to Sergt. Amos Boynton for depreciation on the pay he received for three years service in the 6th company, 2nd New Hampshire Regiment, in the amount of 46 pounds, eight shillings & one penny.
Footnote.com offers a 7-day free trial. After that, the entire site is available for US$11.95 per month, or US$79.95 per year. A free membership is available for research, but it does not allow you to download everything in the site, only selected “free” images. The free collection consists mostly of public documents, generally not records about individuals. That is not to say that these documents available for free are worthless, though. There are quite a few interesting items included there, from George Washington’s correspondence to the Pennsylvania Archives (1664-1880).
One of the most quirky collections in the free part of Footnote.com are “nearly 13,000 government UFO reports” from Project Blue Book. Who said history can’t be fun?
