July 19 marked the 159th anniversary of the nation’s first women’s rights convention, held at Seneca Falls in 1848. Manuel Mendoza, a teacher in Whittier, Calif., has found a way to make this event come alive for his computer-literate students.

They click on a new web-based project, Roads from Seneca Falls, where they find links to more than 2,000 sites for some of the best material on the web related to women’s history and leadership for K-12 students and teachers. Women’s history is “a whole other world within U.S. history,” reports Mendoza. This site will open that world. Whether you want to take a field trip to a women’s history historic site, research a local Congresswoman, or find information on Native American women, begin your search here.

Funded by the U.S. Department of Education through SUNY Oswego and Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies, Roads from Seneca Falls catalogs sites by subject, grade level, and type of material. You can learn about Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the first women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls, in 1848. At Seneca Falls, one hundred people (68 women and 32 men) signed a Declaration of Sentiments, patterned after the Declaration of Independence, asserting that, “all men are created equal.” They were determined to work for equality for women and men in the law, work, the family, education, religion, and personal relationships. And, they declared, they would work for the right of women to vote. Seventy-two years later, after a national movement led by Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Lucy Stone, and many others, Congress and the American people officially ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, giving women the right to vote, on Aug. 26, 1919.

Roads from Seneca Falls expands on all the themes identified at the Seneca Falls convention, and more. Here you can learn about thousands of American women, famous and not-so-famous. Special features include links to more than 1,300 historic sites relating to women’s history across the country; links to museums, archives, and libraries relating to women’s history; and sites highlighting biographies of women.

Need specific help with research? Register with “Ask Mrs. Stanton” to receive a personal response to individual questions.