Magazine of Early American Databases (MEAD)

The Magazine of Early American Datasets (MEAD) is an online repository of datasets compiled by historians of early North America. MEAD preserves and makes available these datasets in their original format and as comma-separated-value files (.csv). Each body of data is also accompanied by a codebook.  MEAD provides sweet, intoxicating data for your investigations of early North America and the Atlantic World. 

MEAD is sponsored by the McNeil Center of Early American Studies and the University of Pennsylvania Libraries. 

Please click on the titles of the datasets below for full bibliographic information, files in original and .csv format, codebook, and more. 

If you would like to submit data, please contact Billy G. Smith (bgs at montana dot edu) or Andrew M. Schocket (aschock at bgsu dot edu).

Please submit your data! Although clean data is nice, better to submit messy data than no data at all. Messy files can be replaced with cleaner ones in the future. Messy data mounted on MEAD is preserved; messy data waiting forever to be cleaned will be lost. OpenRefine is a free, easy tool to use to clean data. A tutorial on using OpenRefine is available from Programming Historian: https://programminghistorian.org/en/lessons/cleaning-data-with-openrefine

We welcome coordinated submissions to MEAD and to the Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation (JSDP), in which data articles are published in the JSDP and the dataset is ingested into Enslaved.org’s linked open data hub, while the dataset is preserved with MEAD. Simply indicate in your submission if you would like to pursue this option if your dataset is relevant to both platforms.  

For more about this project, read the feature on it on Common-Place.org. 

Questions? please contact Billy G. Smith (bgs at montana dot edu) or Andrew M. Schocket (aschock at bgsu dot edu). 

The MEAD-iators who brought you this resource: 
Mitch Fraas, Digital Research Services, University of Pennsylvania Libraries 
Nicholas Okrent, Research and Instructional Services, University of Pennsylvania Libraries 
Andrew M. Schocket, Department of History and American Culture Studies Program, Bowling Green State University 
Billy W. Smith, Department of History, Philosophy, and Literary Studies, Montana State University
Sarah Wipperman, Repository Services, University of Pennsylvania Libraries

 

 

 

McNeil Center for Early American Studies (MCEAS)

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  • Dataset
    Slaves in Bucks County, Pennsylvania
    (2024) Wright, Robert E.
    The Bucks County Register of Slaves includes the name, occupation, and township of enslavers as well as the name, gender, and age of persons enslaved in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Manumission dates, racial status, and other notes are also noted for some of the slaves. This dataset is a part of the Magazine of American Datasets (MEAD). To view more of the collection, visit https://repository.upenn.edu/exhibits/orgunit/mead.
  • Dataset
    Holland Land Company Deed Tables
    (2024-04-01) Krischer, Elana; Nattrass, Christopher; Rockwell, Sara; Ryan, Jacob
    This dataset is a transcription of the Deed Tables from the Holland Land Company Deed Books held at the New York State Archives. The Holland Land Company was a consortium of Dutch Bankers who purchased the preemption right to lands west of the Genesee River in New York from land speculator Robert Morris. The Holland Land Company then extinguished Seneca title to much of the land at the 1797 Treaty of Big Tree, surveyed townships and Seneca reservations between 1798 and 1800, and then sold the land to settlers beginning in 1802. The deeds listed in these tables include land sales between 1802 and 1833. Fields include names of purchasers, month of purchase, day of purchase, year of purchase, township, range, number of acres sold, and purchase money. The original records include the number of the deed that links the purchases to corresponding records as well as the individual lot number within each township and range. This data was left out of our transcription. Corresponding digitized maps of the Holland Land Purchase can be found at the New York State Archives website. https://www.archives.nysed.gov/ This dataset is a part of the Magazine of American Datasets (MEAD). To view more of the collection, visit https://repository.upenn.edu/exhibits/orgunit/mead.
  • Dataset
    Advertisements for Runaway Indentured Servants, Enslaved Africans, Enslaved American Indians, and Fugitives in the American Weekly Mercury, 1719-1745
    (2023-10-04) Jason Daniels
    This dataset presents newspaper advertisements for runaway indentured servants, enslaved Africans (including individuals of African descent born in the Americas), and enslaved American Indians, as well as, deserters, escaped prisoners, and criminal fugitives extracted from The American Weekly Mercury (1719-1745). It contains 1,087 unique entries. While most of the entries refer to white indentured servants, a significant portion of the dataset is comprised of entries for enslaved Africans and enslaved American Indians, revealing an underappreciated diversity among laborers throughout the mid-Atlantic colonies during the first half of the eighteenth century. At their richest, the advertisements for runaways appearing in American colonial newspapers provide an individual’s name, sex, age, ethnicity, race, religion, information about their proprietor, talents and trade, state of health, gait, bearing, dress, language skills, traces of punishments, wounds, descriptions of brands, teeth, hair, skin color, perceived personality traits, distinguishing physical characteristics, presumed whereabouts, length of absence, and detailed descriptions of clothes and other material possessions. While this dataset is of particular importance for understanding the diversity of the mid-Atlantic’s, early-eighteenth-century, labor pool, and working-class resistance across identity groups, it also highlights the permeable boundaries and dynamic spaces of early American colonies, many of which those advertised as runaways sought to exploit. The dataset is described in Jason Daniels, “‘Gone towards Philadelphia’: Advertisements for Runaway Indentured Servants, Enslaved Africans, Enslaved American Indians, and Fugitives in the American Weekly Mercury, 1719-1745,” Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation 4, no. 3 (2023): 35-43. This dataset is a part of the Magazine of American Datasets (MEAD). To view more of the collection, visit https://repository.upenn.edu/exhibits/orgunit/mead.
  • Dataset
    Pikeland, Pa., Tax List 1783
    (2015-09-08) Humphrey, Thomas J
    This is an assessment/tax list of the residents of Pikeland, Pennsylvania in 1783. This dataset is a part of the Magazine of American Datasets (MEAD). To view more of the collection, visit https://repository.upenn.edu/exhibits/orgunit/mead.
  • Dataset
    Freight income on the Greenville and Columbia Railroad, June 1854-May 1855
    (2016-04-11) Marrs, Aaron
    This dataset provides monthly income from freight on the Greenville and Columbia Railroad from June 1854 to May 1855 as given in the annual report of the company. The annual report broke out up and down freight separately. This dataset is a part of the Magazine of American Datasets (MEAD). To view more of the collection, visit https://repository.upenn.edu/exhibits/orgunit/mead.
  • Dataset
    US Corporate Development 1790-1860
    (2015-01-25) Wright, Robert E
    Contains data about the US Corporate Development. Additional information and data are available at http://faculty.augie.edu/~rwright/ This dataset is a part of the Magazine of American Datasets (MEAD). To view more of the collection, visit https://repository.upenn.edu/exhibits/orgunit/mead.
  • Dataset
    Bray School Enrollments for Free and Enslaved Black Children, 1758-1845
    (2023-03-23) Van Horne, John C; Stanton, Grant
    Beginning in the middle of the eighteenth century, the Associates of Dr. Thomas Bray established and maintained schools for the education of free and enslaved black children in North America. The purpose of these schools was to introduce them to the doctrines of the Church of England, and also to instruct the students in reading and writing, sometimes even mathematics, as well as sewing, knitting, and embroidery for girls. By the time of the War for Independence, five such schools had been established in Newport, Rhode Island; New York city; Philadelphia; and Williamsburg and Fredericksburg in Virginia, though only the Philadelphia school would reopen after the conflict ended. Overseen by a series of white mistresses, this school was associated with Philadelphia’s Christ Church and would remain in operation until 1845. Meanwhile, the Associates supported two other schools in Philadelphia. The first was initially taught by the Rev. Absalom Jones and then by Solomon Clarkson, both of the African Methodist Episcopal Church of St. Thomas. The second was in Northern Liberties and was instructed by James C. Ward, a black man ordained as a deacon in the Episcopal Church. Throughout the existence of the Associates’ various schools, teachers and administrators sent periodic reports to the secretaries of the Associates in London, often including rosters of the students that recorded such information as their names, ages, addresses, curriculum, and (if enslaved) owners’ names. The files uploaded here include an Introduction with explanation of the Editorial Method; and all extant records relevant to the American schools’ students, teachers, and curricula between their first establishment in 1758 and the closure of the Philadelphia schools by 1845. Though many records are missing, and those that remain are often incomplete, these lists identify about 400 individual students by name (there were undoubtedly many more) and together comprise what is probably the largest aggregation of such data, one that will yield valuable insights into one of the few opportunities for black education in early America. N.B. There is a .csv file for each of 13 school or teacher spreadsheets and the Summary Spreadsheet. There is also an Excel file of the Summary Spreadsheet. This dataset is a part of the Magazine of American Datasets (MEAD). To view more of the collection, visit https://repository.upenn.edu/exhibits/orgunit/mead.
  • Dataset
    St. Martinville Louisiana Baptism Network
    (2022-12-01) Merring-Darling, Kathy; Kane, Maeve
    This dataset includes a transcription of the baptismal register for the French Catholic church Saint-Martin des Attakapas, now modern St. Martinville Louisiana, as well as a cleaned version of each baptism formatted as source-target pairs for social network analysis. The data includes 163 baptisms from 1756 to 1794, mainly of displaced Acadians. A handful of enslaved and Indigenous people are also represented. The data has been prepared for network analysis by regularizing the spelling of names. Source/Target pairs for network analysis were created by creating a pair between all adults who participated in a baptism. The network is assumed to be undirected. The year of baptism or edge creation is included in the edgelist file. This dataset is a part of the Magazine of American Datasets (MEAD). To view more of the collection, visit https://repository.upenn.edu/exhibits/orgunit/mead.
  • Dataset
    Founders Online Correspondence Metadata
    (2020-01-01) Kane, Maeve
    This dataset is a cleaned version of the Founders Online (founders.archives.gov) author/recipient metadata available as of June 2020, formatted as an edge file for network analysis. This metadata includes only letters with authors and recipients, and does not include metadata for documents in the Founders Online database with no author or no recipient, such as receipts or account books. Source/Target pairs for network analysis were created between each author and recipient. In the case of multiple authors or multiple recipients, were split into multiple records with only one author and one recipient each. For example, the letter "Sarah Read to Benjamin and Deborah Franklin, 10 April 1734," was split into two records: one with ‘author: Sarah Read’ and ‘recipient: Benjamin Franklin,’ and the other with author: ‘Sarah Read, recipient: Deborah Franklin.’ Links were not made between multiple authors or recipients of a letter. Names were standardized with as little change as possible: for example, the spellings "Jacquelin Ambler," "Jaqueline Ambler," and "Jacquelin (Jaquelin) Ambler" in the transcriptions were merged into simply "Jacquelin Ambler." Gender of individuals in the network was assigned by first names or historical fact, or if ambiguous for a pseudonym, group of people, or unidentifiable, was left marked NA. The dataset includes 163,671 edges between more than 17,000 individuals. Fields also include the original title of the letter, papers project within Founders Online, permalink to the letter transcription and year, month, and date of the letter. This dataset is a part of the Magazine of American Datasets (MEAD). To view more of the collection, visit https://repository.upenn.edu/exhibits/orgunit/mead.
  • Dataset
    Runaway Advertisements from Jamaica, 1791
    (2022-06-06) Newman, Simon P
    Newspaper advertisements written and published by enslavers seeking the capture and return of enslaved people who had escaped. Published in the Kingston Daily Advertiser, Jamaica, January-December 1791. This dataset is a part of the Magazine of American Datasets (MEAD). To view more of the collection, visit https://repository.upenn.edu/exhibits/orgunit/mead.