Women & the American Story (WAMS) is the flagship education initiative of the New York Historical Society’s Center for Women’s History. This free curriculum project provides teachers and students, as well as curious individuals, with information about the myriad and often critical roles women played in shaping United States history. The primary sources, life stories, essays, and learning activities included in each of the ten units were designed for middle school students but also to be easily scalable for elementary and high school classrooms.
Colonial women were hard at work affecting the colonies in many ways, from enslaved women bringing agricultural knowledge that made colonies flourish to housewives inventing new ways to perform basic tasks. Women took part in the armed resistance to European invasion and challenged the gender norms they were forced to live under. The power of women was well recognized by English colonial governments, who made laws to govern their reproduction, tried them for heresy and witchcraft, and severely punished their crimes, even when the women themselves were not at fault. The very first published poet of the English colonies was a woman. Even though the odds were against them, the women of the early English colonies were important to the development of the New World.
Women and the American Story provides lessons and activities for students to explore the experiences of colonial women and gain insight into how women of the colonial era contributed to the development of colonial America.