History of Childhood and Education

Childhood in US Primary Sources

This is a brief guide to getting started in studying the history of childhood and/or education. The guide provides access points to finding reference material; scholarly books and articles; as well as various primary source sets focused on schools, childr

Sourcing the History of Childhood

Historians have been struggling to write the history of childhood for centuries in part because children do not stay children. Instead, children inherently occupy a temporary status and do not frequently leave clear records from their own perspective. In consequence, most historians of children and childhood use the resources left by the adults around them, in the form of photographs, reports, commentary, and more.

What's on This Page

Broad Digital Collections

ARTSTOR: Children
More than 100,000 facsimiles of images, photographs, decorative arts, and more related to "children OR child OR girl OR boy" from 25,000 BCE to the present.

Bridgeman Education This link opens in a new window
The Bridgeman Art Library, with over 600,000 high resolution images of art, history and culture from global museums, galleries, private collections and contemporary artists all copyright cleared for educational use.

Calisphere: Children
More than 85,000 facsimiles of photographs, illustrations, and more related to "child* OR boy* OR girl*" from the 17th century to the present.

HathiTrust This link opens in a new window
A digital repository for the nation's research libraries, HathiTrust brings together the digitized book and serial collections of major universities and other partner institutions, a significant portion of which is in the public domain and available full text. Boston College's status as a partner makes it possible for members of the Boston College community to download any of the out-of-copyright items as PDFs.

Internet Archive: Books & Texts
Digitized books and special collections from libraries, archives, and museums around the world.
Library of Congress Digital Collections
Interface in English. Content in English or other languages.
Digitized collections from the Library of Congress, includes manuscripts, books, photos, maps, audio recordings, and more. Strongest between the 17th and 21st centuries. Content dating back to B.C.E.
Open Access.

World Digital Library This link opens in a new window
The World Digital Library is a Library of Congress project sponsored by UNESCO. Items in this digital library, including books, manuscripts, photographs, maps and sound recordings, are individually described and searchable in seven languages. Most countries and regions around the world are represented.

Children's Drawing, Illustrations, and Writing

International Collection of Child Art
Illinois State University Milner Library’s International Collection of Child Art celebrates the creativity and innovative work produced by children with a global perspective. The collection holds over 8,600 original works of art made by children representing more than fifty countries and cultures.
Historic Iowa Children's Diaries
Eleven full facsimiles of children's handwritten diaries from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Gov. Docs. and State Papers

Hein Online This link opens in a new window
HeinOnline is an image-based legal research database with over 50 million pages of legal information in fully-searchable PDF format, comprising over 30 separate collections including Law Journal Library, Legal Classics, U.S. Supreme Court Library, U.S. Federal Legislative History Library, U.S. Congressional Documents, Treaties and Agreements Library and many others. Additional titles and years are added regularly.
Records of the Children's Bureau, 1912-1969 (Proquest History Vault) This link opens in a new window
Though the United States' Children's Bureau is one of the least well-known federal agencies, its records provide a rich source for an understanding of twentieth-century American society. Founded in 1912 as part of the federal government's new commitment to promoting individual and family welfare, the Children's Bureau played an active role in the design and administration of many important social welfare measures including the 1921 Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Act to reduce infant mortality and the campaign to reduce child labor in the 1930s.
ProQuest Congressional This link opens in a new window
Provides access to hearings, published and unpublished from 1824 to the present, congressional committee reports, bills, public laws, selected committee prints, congressional documents, the Congressional Record from the 99th Congress forward, Federal Register from 1980 forward, the current Code of Federal Regulations, and the current US Code.

US Bureau of Education Reports (HathiTrust)
Reports from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

International Organizations

UN on Children
More the 5,000 documents with "children" in the title from 1946 forward. Includes country reports and international comparisons in education as well as examinations of child soldiers and more.
Children's Drawings from the AFSC Vietnam Curriculum Project
These eighteen drawings were created by Vietnamese children around 1966, as part of the American Friends Service Committee's resource materials. The drawings were submitted to a contest sponsored by artist Le van Khoa in connection with his "World of Children," a Saigon television program. Le van Khoa donated the pictures to the Committee of Responsibility to assist it in raising funds for its work in Vietnam.
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Institution: U Mass Boston
Spanish Civil War Children's Drawings
A collection of over 600 drawings made during the Spanish Civil War by Spanish school children circa 1938, both in Spain and in refugee centers in France, rendered in pencil, crayon, ink, and watercolor.
Spanish children's drawings of the Civil War collection (Colombia University)
More than 150 drawings from between between 1936 and 1939.

Magazines and Periodicals

American Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Full text of popular periodicals published between 1740 and 1940 in the United States, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines. Now updated with labor, trade, literary, scientific, and photographic periodicals from the Center for Research Libraries.
Fireside Companions and Family Literature Periodicals, 1805-1877 This link opens in a new window
The Fireside Companions and Family Literature Periodicals, 1805-1877 collection draws from a rich tradition of family and children's literature. Many of the titles found here focus on courtship, marriage and child-rearing by emphasizing moral, wholesome, family living. Highlights include the New York Fireside Companion, Merry's Museum, and Parley's Magazine. Researchers can also find a number of children's Sunday School and temperance periodicals. Taken together, the titles comprising this collection enable scholars to study not only prescribed values but also the social and family dynamics of nineteenth-century America.

Newspapers

ProQuest Historical U.S. Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Combined searching of the historical New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Constitution, Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal, NY Amsterdam News, and Chicago Defender.

For historical newspapers and television, visit BC Libraries' Historical News page.

Photographs and Images

Children in Progressive-Era America Exhibition (DPLA)
A curated collection of photographs and more available through the Digital Public Library of America.
Harold Roth photograph collection, 1937-1950
The collection consists of 25 gelatin silver photographic prints, 11 x 14 inches, by photographer Harold Roth, capturing New York street life between 1937 and 1950. The photographs show Roth's attention to light and composition, and range from a group of children playing in the spray of an open fire hydrant in the waning sunlight to a view of foot traffic in Madison Square Park against the hazy backdrop of the Flatiron Building.
Library of Congress: Children
A collection of more than 4,000 images--mostly photographs--with the subject heading "children" with geographic tag "United States" from the 19th and 20th centuries.
National Child Labor Committee Collection
Working as an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), Lewis Hine (1874-1940) documented working and living conditions of children in the United States between 1908 and 1924. The NCLC photos are useful for the study of labor, reform movements, children, working class families, education, public health, urban and rural housing conditions, industrial and agricultural sites, and other aspects of urban and rural life in America in the early twentieth century.
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Institution: Library of Congress
Photographic record of Work Projects Administration for the City of New York, 1938
Album of photographs produced by the Education and Recreation District Office of the Work Projects Administration, New York City, in 1938. The photographs depict children and adults engaged in educational and recreational activities as part of various city programs, including the Child Nutrition Program, the Recreation Program for Pre-School Age Children, the Recreational Day Camp Program, and more.

Reports and Studies

Education Source This link opens in a new window
Education Source covers areas of curriculum instruction as well as administration, policy, funding, and related social issues. The database provides indexing and abstracts for a very large number of journals, as well as full text for over one thousand journals. Topics covered include all levels of education from early childhood to higher education, and all educational specialties, such as multilingual education, health education, and testing. This database also includes full text for hundreds of books and monographs, and full text for numerous education-related conference papers.

School Records

New-York African Free School records, 1817-1832
This collection covers the latter portion of the existence of the African Free-Schools, founded by the New-York Manumission Society, to help prepare black children for lives as free men and women. The records end two years before oversight of the schools was transferred to the Public School Society. They relate to classroom observation, student performance, behavior and promotions, as well as examples of lessons and student work.
Records of the Association for the Benefit of Colored Orphans, 1836-1972 (bulk 1850-1936)
The Association for the Benefit of Colored Orphans was founded in 1836 and was originally located on Fifth Avenue between 43rd and 44th Streets in Manhattan. The Colored Orphan Asylum was among the earliest organizations in the country to provide housing, training, and employment specifically for African-American orphans.
Town Book for Castletown For the Entry of Black Children, 1799-1827
Birth records and deeds of manumission for African American children in the town of Castleton, Staten Island, N.Y. between 1799 and 1827.

Caption: M. H. Kimball, Rebecca, Charley, and Rosa, Slave Children from New Orleans, Photograph, 1863, Library of Congress.

Databases A-Z

For Additional Help

For additional recommendations, contact your History Liaison, Erin, at erinkate.scheopner@bc.edu or schedule an appointment.

O'Neill Library

Bapst Library

Burns Library

Educational Resource Center

Law Library

Social Work Library

Theology & Ministry Library

O'Connor Library

Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies

History of Childhood and Education

Childhood in US Primary Sources

Sourcing the History of Childhood

What's on This Page

Broad Digital Collections

Children's Drawing, Illustrations, and Writing

Gov. Docs. and State Papers

International Organizations

Magazines and Periodicals

Newspapers

Photographs and Images

Reports and Studies

School Records

For Additional Help