Three years after launching our Remembering Lincoln digital collection, we share lessons learned and continuing questions about collection-building, building a refined end-product versus citizen history project, defining audiences, challenges of scale, and how this project has refined our storytelling approach.

When writing an essay on Lincoln’s assassination, it can be hard to know where to begin. But Ford’s Theatre has the solution! Fords.org is a great place to find primary sources on the fateful evening of April 14, 1865. 

Don’t live in D.C.? Not a student? Never fear, Ford’s Theatre programming is accessible to those near and far! Learn about four of our virtual programs that bring history to life via an internet connection. 

How can a college professor or K-12 teacher work with a public history institution like Ford’s Theatre to teach students about historical research? Learn from a collaboration between Ford’s and St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas, that inspired college students and brought underrepresented voices into a digital history exhibition--and see how teachers at all levels can do such projects.

In spring 2016, Jason Rude, a seventh and eighth grade social studies teacher at New Hampton Middle School in New Hampton, Iowa, worked with Ford’s Theatre on a pilot project to transcribe primary sources from the Remembering Lincoln website with his students.

Our website Remembering Lincoln, which brings together primary sources with reactions to the Lincoln assassination for everyone to explore from anywhere, has won two awards! 

Education and Digital Outreach Specialist at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine and the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum, shares insights about pages from the diary of Clara Barton. Learn more about the diary’s historical context and view the pages in our Remembering Lincoln collection.

As President Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train wound its way through the northern United States in late April 1865, Americans learned that the two-week manhunt for Lincoln’s assassination abruptly ended when Sergeant Boston Corbett mortally wounded John Wilkes Booth on April 26.

Primary sources are an essential part of every teacher’s tool box. Using repositories like Remembering Lincoln not only teaches students how to read primary sources but also how to utilize online databases for research. 

Chris Lese, a teacher at Marquette University High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, recently worked with Ford’s Theatre to bring his students into local archives and upload responses to the Lincoln assassination to the Remembering Lincoln Digital Collection.