A few months ago, we invited local institutions in AASLH’s network to contribute content to the US National Archives’ centennial project, Remembering WWI. Through participation in this national effort, museums, archives, libraries, historical organizations, and others can help contextualize the experience of World War I at the local level, and help grow our national collection of WWI primary sources.

Here are a few of the fantastic contributions that we have received so far (all available now in our tablet app):

Connecticut State Library, University of Connecticut

Collection: Connecticut Remembers WWI

A draft registration booth for Polish and Yiddish speakers, Hartford, Connecticut. 1917-1919.

Connecticut Remembers WWI is a state collaborative effort to digitize and share WWI collections gathered from Connecticut’s cultural heritage organizations and communities for education and research. The items shared in this project, and now in Remembering WWI, document everything from the daily activities of local citizens and businesses to state institutions and government during the war.

To view more of this collection online, visit Historypin here.

 

The Virginiana Room at the Main Street Library, Newport News, Virginia

Collection: Disembarkation in Newport News, Virginia

Homecoming troops passing under the Arch of Triumph in Newport News, Virginia. 1919.

In the Virginiana Room’s collection, local troops return home after the war to much fanfare. Don’t miss the Street View overlays!

View their collection here.

 

Digital Library at Villanova

Collection: 1916 Easter Uprising at Home and Abroad, and Selling WWI to Children: Juvenile Literature

Cover of Two American Boys with the Allied Armies by Major Sherman Crockett, 1915.

Curators of Home Before the Leaves Fall, a WWI website highlighting materials and resources on the Great War from multiple mid-Atlantic institutions, the Digital Library at Villanova are also the keepers of scores of their own interesting WWI content. They have shared some of these collections in Remembering WWI, highlighting important homefront perspectives of 1916 Easter Rising, and how local WWI literature was marketed to youth.

 

 

Mennonite Library and Archives

Collection: Conscientious Objectors

Some Mennonites agreed to take up noncombatant work and put brooms on their shoulders instead of guns. Some wore the military uniform; others refused. Camp Funston, Kansas, 1918.

This collection of photographs from the Mennonite Library and Archives shines a light on conscientious objectors (COs) during WWI, and their association with religious denominations like the Mennonites with a history of peace activism. Rounded up by government authorities into military camps to carry out noncombatant services, COs were often treated poorly, with those refusing to carry out any services either court-martialed or sent to prison.

View the collection here.

 

The Columbus Museum, Georgia

Collection: WWI and the Chattahoochee Valley

In 1918, American painter Frederick Judd Waugh accepted a position as a camouflage artist (known as a camoufleur) for the U.S. Navy. Waugh designed camouflage for several ships with great success; only one vessel painted with a Waugh design was lost. This is an example of his work before the war, painted in the English coastal town of Saint Ives, Cornwall around 1900.

We featured the great work of the Columbus Museum in Georgia in this post, who are using the Remembering WWI app to engage their visitors in gallery tours and education programming. Their collection, featuring photos, objects, and artwork, is a wonderful snapshot of local Georgia citizens who participated in the war effort at home.

View their collection here.

 

Dyer Memorial Library, Massachusetts

Collection: Abington & Rockland, MA Remember WWI

Medal awarded to D.L Peterson for his service in WWI from the town of Rockland, MA. 1919.

This collection remembers the local citizens of Abington and Rockland’s (MA) contributions to WWI, with the Dyer Memorial Library sharing its collection of medals, photographs, and programs from a veterans welcome home celebration after the war.

View the collection here.

 

To contribute your own materials to our Remembering WWI collection, read more here.

This project is made possible in part by an anonymous donor and the National Archives Foundation. ​