The American Colony in Jerusalem, 1870-2006 - (American Memory from the Library of Congress)

The American Colony in Jerusalem, 1870-2006 - (American Memory from the Library of Congress)

This tremendous collection from the Library of Congress brings together over 10,000 manuscripts, maps, and visual materials from about a hundred years of the American Colony in Jerusalem. These materials were gifted to the Library of Congress in 2004, and the collection consists of photographs, pamphlets, telegrams, letters, book manuscripts, diaries, and ephemera that talk about the colony, along with addressing the broader history of Palestine and the Middle East in the 19th and 20th centuries. One of the highlights of the site is a special feature on the Bertha Vester diaries. Vester was the principal leader of the American Colony from 1923 to 1968, and her 48 diaries make for fascinating reading. The site also includes a timeline of events, and essays like "The Vester Diaries" and "A Community in Jerusalem".

This presentation features selected documents from the American Colony in Jerusalem Collection. The full collection in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress represents well over 10,000 items stemming from the history of the American Colony, a non-denominational Utopian Christian community founded by a small group of American expatriates in Ottoman Palestine in 1881.

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