Sheet Music Collections

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African-American Sheet Music from Brown University
(Part of the American Memory Project.) This collection consists of 1,305 pieces of African-American sheet music dating from 1850 through 1920. The collection includes many songs from the heyday of antebellum black face minstrelsy in the 1850s and from the abolitionist movement of the same period. Numerous titles are associated with the novel and the play Uncle Tom's Cabin. Civil War period music includes songs about African-American soldiers and the plight of the newly emancipated slave. Post-Civil War music reflects the problems of Reconstruction and the beginnings of urbanization and the northern migration of African Americans.

America Singing: Nineteenth-Century Song Sheets
From the Library of Congress American Memory Project. "The Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress holds 4291 song sheets. Included among these American songs are ninety-seven British song sheets from Dublin and London. The collection spans the period from the turn of the nineteenth century to the 1880s, although a majority of the song sheets were published during the height of the craze, from the 1850s to the 1870s. "

California Sheet Music: 19th-Century.
A virtual library of some 2,000 pieces of sheet music published in California between 1852 and 1900, together with related materials such as a San Francisco publisher's catalog of 1872, programs, songsheets, advertisements, and photographs. Images of every printed page of sheet music have been scanned at 400 dpi, in color where indicated.

Duke Sheet Music Project

Historic American Sheet Music, 1850-1920
The Historic American Sheet Music collection presents 3,042 pieces of sheet music drawn from the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University, which holds an important, representative, and comprehensive collection of nineteenth and early twentieth century American sheet music. Part of the American Memory Project.

I Hear America Singing

Inventions of Note (MIT)
The Inventions of Note Sheet Music Collection was established in 1997 by the Lewis Music Library at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This sheet music collection consists of popular songs and piano compositions that portray technologies (old and new alike) as revealed through song texts and/or cover art.

Johns Hopkins-Lester Levy Sheet Music Collection

Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, 1870-1885
Another part of the American Memory Project at the Library of Congress, this collection consists of over 47,000 pieces of sheet music registered for copyright during the years 1870 to 1885. Included are popular songs, piano music, sacred and secular choral music, solo instrumental music, method books and instructional materials, and music for band and orchestra.

MusicLink: University of Tennessee-Knoxville Song Index
This is a publicly available database providing access to about 40,000 songs in more than 1,400 published song anthologies owned by the George F. DeVine Music Library at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Sheet Music About Lincoln, Emancipation, and the Civil War from the Stern Collection.
(Part of the Amercian Memory Project) The collection spans the years from Lincoln's presidential campaign in 1859 through the centenary of Lincoln's birth in 1909. This music was compiled by Alfred Whital Stern (1881-1960), who is considered the greatest private collector of materials relating to the life and times of Abraham Lincoln.

Washington University Gaylord Music Library Sheet Music Collection
This is a collection of some 60,000 items that bears the personal stamp of Ernst C. Krohn. It represents the accumulation of many private and publisher's collections, some acquired from the St. Louis Public Library, some later purchases by former music librarian Elizabeth Krause at book fairs, etc., some given more recently by University trustee Eric P. Newman among others.