THE USE OF RELEVANT
HISTORICAL EVIDENCE
Historical Context
Audience
Purpose
Point of View
Y
Using AUDIENCE and PURPOSE in
Analyzing Documents
Presidential Candidate
Speech on Clean Energy Sources
Environmentalists in Colorado
Coal Rich West Virginia
How would the intended audience change the content of
the speech? What is the purpose of the speech?
18th Century
Compare the life for immigrants coming to the
North American colonies.
Why would indentured servants immigrate to:
The Chesapeake Colony
The Pennsylvania Colony
Analyzing a Document
The Elizabeth Sprig Letter
(Indentured Servant)
Questions?
-Why is she writing this letter?
-Why is she writing it at this moment
in time?
-How might the fact that she is
writing to her father affect what she
writes?
-How might this affect what she is
writing? Might she be leaving things
out?
Elizabeth Sprig
If Elizabeth Sprig was writing
to her sister?
How might a different audience alter the
purpose of the letter?
How might a different audience and purpose
affect the reliability of the letter?
Exercise
1. Partner up!
2. Analyze and scrutinize the following documents:
Richard Frethorne’s
“Letter to Father and Mother”
Johannes Hanner’s
“Letter by an Immigrant to Pennsylvania”
A Check for Understanding
To whom was each letter intended?
What was each author’s purpose in writing these accounts?
How do different audiences and purpose affect the reliability of a
document?
What were the differences between the two men’s experiences
according to the letters?
What, if any, similarities are there between these two letters?
How are they different than or similar to the Elizabeth Sprig
letter?
Which letter do you find more reliable and why?
What do both of these letters tell you about life in the colonies?
Reward Points (RP’s)
Compare and contrast the Audience and Purpose of the
following documents? Write a short argument for which
document is a more reliable source.
1622 Letter by Sebastian Bach
1634 Letter by John Winthrop
Extra Reward Points
Analyze the following additional documents
An excerpt from Gottlieb Mittleberger’s book,
“Journey to Pennsylvania in the Year 1750”
Memoir of Roger Clap, about First Years in
Massachusetts Bay Colony (1631-32), written in the 1680'
Using Point of View in Doc Analysis
“Allen Frederick is the
best high school basketball
player to appear on the
scene in the last ten years”
Reliability
-Allen’s girlfriend in her diary
-His Dad on Twitter
-His coach in a letter of recommendation
-His history teacher in the stands at a basketball game
-The school newspaper in an article about his high school
career
-The head coach of the Duke basketball program to a
reporter at ESPN
(In groups of 3 rank the reliability of the sources based on POV. 1 being the most reliable, 5 being
the least reliable)
POV Exercise#2
“Pennsylvania, the Poor Man’s Paradise”
-The King of England, William III
-An indentured servant living in Pennsylvania
-A slave on a tobacco plantation living in Virginia
-Gabriel Thomas, a settler living in Pennsylvania
-An English merchant living in London
(On your own, rank these individuals. Explain why.)
Class Discussion
Why did you place this individuals in a particular ranking?
-What do you know about the roles of each of these people
living in the 17th century?
-How might these roles affect their point of view?
-How might the meaning of the quote change based on
your understanding of point of view? Why?
-Which source is most reliable? Why?
POV / Exercise #3
European Observation of Native Americans
-Johannes Megapolensis, a Dutch Minister
-Captain John Smith, leader of Jamestown
-Jean de Brebeuf, French Missionary
-Mary Rowlandson, New England resident, taken captive
(Their excerpts will be provided in class. Who wrote each source? Complete the worksheet, “Who said it?”)
Using Historical Context to Analyze Doc’s
Definition:
Using Historical Context
“Allen Frederick is the
best high school basketball
player to appear on the
scene in the last ten years”
Historical Context
-Allen’s girlfriend in her diary
-His Dad on Twitter*
-His coach in a letter of recommendation
-His history teacher in the stands at a basketball game
-The school newspaper in an article about his high school
career
-The head coach of the Duke basketball program to a
reporter at ESPN
*Allen Frederick’s father is a highly successful college
basketball player at Duke University under the same head
coach of the current basketball program.
Historical Context / Exercise #2
How and why did religious
ideas affect the political
changes in the colonies
from 1635 to 1700?
Roger William’s Letter
“Letter to the Town of Providence”
-What do you already know about the effect of religion on
colonial period politics during this period?
-What do you know about Roger Williams? Who was he?
-What do you know about Providence Plantation?
-Where and when was this letter produced?
-What was happening in the colonies that may affect the
author’s pov?
-How might this context affect the reliability of William’s
letter?
Impact of Changes in Historical Context
How would the meaning of the letter change if…
…it was written to the people of Boston in 1635?
…it was written by Nathaniel Bacon to Virginia
colony in 1676?
Historical Context / Exercise #3
Putting Audience, Purpose, Point of View, and Historical
Context all together.
Using the all documents we have analyzed thus far,
“Compare the religious, economic, and social
experiences of colonists in the northern colonies to
those in the middle and southern colonies”.
Use the H-A-P-P-Y worksheet for each of the documents.
Final Discussion
-How does the content of the document, literally what it
says, help to answer the question?
-Does either its audience, purpose, point of view, or
historical context make this first idea less reliable? More
reliable? Why?
-What is most important about this document in answering
the question: the audience, purpose, point of view, or
historical context? Why?
-If the “H”, “A”, “P”, or “P” of the document makes it less
reliable, how could you still use the document to answer
the question? How would you address the issue of
reliability?