Primary
Resources
Documents using local American History sources.
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Essex LINCs (Local History In a National Context)
is a three year project designed to connect Essex County elementary teachers with local primary source material to make their social studies lessons more relevant and exciting.
Find out more about teaching American History in Essex County.
Find out more here.
Created by Essex County teachers using local resources.
Find out more here.
Documents using local American History sources.
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Educators from across Essex County participate in hands on lessons designed to help teach American History topics
Connecting Essex LINCs
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This is a page designed to help you locate local Essex County resources. They are linked to lessons which were created especially for the Essex LINCs seminars. You can access the lesson plans on the Lesson Plans page. Primary Sources listed here were located by our museum educator, Rebecca Zimmerman. Please contact us if you have any comments or questions regarding these documents.
(All images link to .pdf files)
This lesson was designed to have students begin to examine symbolism used on gravestones and notice that as people’s ideas about death changed so did the symbols they used to mark graves and commemorate their relatives’ and friends’ lives. Earlier stones have images of skulls. Later winged cherubs became predominant and in the early 19th century weeping willows and urns are commonly found. Essex County has a large number of excellent specimens of this artwork and grave stone carvers from Essex County towns (particularly from Haverhill) worked throughout the area.
This lesson may be used in conjunction with a study of the founding of the students’ town and particular attention may be paid to those graves of prominent citizens. Likewise an examination of common people’s graves may prove to be significant. Much information may be gleaned from the stones included here and a logical extension of this lesson may include some demographic study as to ages, prevalence of particular names and the importance of location in cemeteries. Another interesting subject related to this study may be the “cemetery as park” movement that started in the early 19th century (ex. Mt Auburn in Boston). Also, other cultural connections could include a study of “mourning” embroideries, hair wreaths and funerary memorabilia and jewelry. See additional resources for further links.
The photos for this lesson were taken by our museum educator, Rebecca Zimmerman, over the course of several months during the fall/winter of 2008. Additional resources were made available from the Newburyport Library Archival Center and Beverly Historical Society. Many historical societies contain local genealogical information and often can help teachers “flesh out” information about notable people or families from their vicinity.
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