I love history! Perhaps because each time I encountered history, it seemed to be real and alive. I grew up hearing war stories from both of my grandfathers who were in the U.S. Military in WWII, I spent time working on Capitol Hill, and even gave tours of the U.S. Capitol building. When I studied history in public school and at University, however, I often found the reading dry and boring.

One day I went to an exhibition at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. There I saw fascinating documents that had been recently discovered while scanning the Library of Congress archives. It turns out there are thousands of boxes of historical documents and other items that belong to the American people. However, in the digital era, not everything has been cataloged or scanned. The documents I found at the Library of Congress were captivating, especially the handwritten letters from U.S. Presidents. While looking through them I came to a realization: learning about history is so much more exciting when learning directly from primary documents.

I founded History By Mail to provide others with the opportunity to learn directly from history by holding a piece of history (replicas of actual documents), rather than learning about history from textbooks. History comes alive when you hold a replica of a letter in Abraham Lincoln's handwriting or a handwritten speech by George Washington.

History By Mail is a subscription service to replicas of fascinating historical documents from American history. Our team of history enthusiasts works with archivists to select fascinating documents from the world's best archives and obtain the rights to use each document.

A team of graphic designers then creates replicas which are delivered to subscribers on high quality paper along with a context document. We invite you to try a subscription (it also makes a great gift!), browse our blog, and like us on Facebook. We are excited to share with you the fascinating documents our team has selected. Be sure to also visit Historic Cartoons for a novel and entertaining way to learn history!

Over 200 years of historic cartoons touch upon major moments in American history from the colonial period through the civil rights era. Learn more here. Thank you for your interest in history and happy learning!

Ari Siegel
Founder and CEO
History By Mail