The Newberry has a rich collection of manuscripts ranging from medieval Books of Hours to twentieth-century scrapbooks and letters.
As a collection of Americana, the Edward E. Ayer Collection is one of the best in the country and one of the strongest collections on American Indians.
The Newberry collection for religion focuses on sources from Europe and the Americas, from the late Middle Ages through the early 20th century.
The Newberry houses an extraordinary collection of over 500,000 maps and sources relating to the history and culture of travel.
In the early spring of 1788, John Adams returned from Europe, where he’d spent a decade conducting diplomatic business. He arrived in Massachusetts at a seminal moment; he was stateside, acclimating to his Braintree home, when the U.S. Constitution was formally ratified.
This bilingual broadside, written by labor activist Adolph Fischer, calls on “workingmen” to attend a rally in Chicago’s Haymarket Square. In the demonstration’s aftermath, eight anarchists (including Fischer) were unfairly accused of slaying police officers. An openly biased judge sentenced seven of these defendants—known as the Haymarket martyrs—to death; the eighth was sentenced to 15 years in prison. In 1887, four were executed, after one committed suicide.
