LibGuides: History Research Guide: Primary Sources

Primary Sources Examples

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archaeological artifacts
art
autobiographies
birth certificates
buildings
census material
congressional/parliamentary hearings and reports
correspondence
county records
diaries
documentary photographs
government documents
inscriptions
interviews
journals
letters
manuscripts
maps
memoirs
news sources
oral histories
organizational minutes
personal narratives
posters
recordings
records of organizations
speeches
tombstones
treaties
voting records

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Primary Sources

Primary sources are first-hand accounts of an event or time in history that has yet to be interpreted by another person. Examples of primary sources include: diaries, journals, letters, interviews, speeches, memos, manuscripts and other first-person accounts. memoirs and autobiographies. Please use this as a starting point for primary source research.

Online Primary Sources

American Colonists' Library
A large collection of historical works that contributed to the formation of American politics, culture, and ideals. Arranged chronologically, the resources include material from classical times through the 18th century.
American Historical Documents
Text of 47 treaties, speeches, historical accounts and governmental documents that trace U.S. history from the settling of the continent to the founding of the country to the Civil War and early twentieth-century international relations.
American Journeys
Travel along with famous explorers when you browse more than 18,000 pages of eyewitness accounts of North American exploration, from the sagas of Vikings in Canada in AD1000 to the diaries of mountain men in the Rockies 800 years later. Read the words of explorers, Indians, missionaries, traders and settlers as they lived through the founding moments of American history. View, search, print, or download more than 150 rare books, original manuscripts, and classic travel narratives from the library and archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society.
American Leaders Speak: Recordings from World War I
Consists of 59 sound recordings of speeches by American leaders from 1918-1920. The speeches focus on issues and events surrounding WWI and the subsequent presidential election of 1920
American Notes: Travels in America, 1750 to 1920
Comprises 253 published narratives by Americans and foreign visitors recounting their travels in the colonies and the United States and their observations and opinions about American peoples, places, and society from about 1750 to 1920.
America's Historical Documents
A collection of historical American documents from the National Archives.
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1777-1963
Community Service Society Photographs
Community Service Society Photographs is an online presentation of almost 1400 photographs (and a few illustrations) from the Community Service Society Records at Columbia University's Rare Book & Manuscript Library. They offer representations of urban poverty, unsafe tenement housing, inadequate hygiene in public areas, and other pressing social issues in late-19th- and early-20th-century New York. The images range from the 1880s through the 1950s.
Digital History
Browse more than 600 annotated documents written by George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and many others dealing with American politics, diplomacy and social history.
Earliest Voices
Presents some of the most significant voices captured during the first fifty years of sound recording, 1877-1927: William Jennings Bryan, Eugene Debs, Thomas Edison, Samuel Gompers, William McKinley, William Taft, and Booker T. Washington.
Federalist Papers
The Federalist, commonly referred to as the Federalist Papers, is a series of 85 essays written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison between October 1787 and May 1788.
Immigration to the United States, 1789-7930
Collection of selected historical materials that document voluntary immigration to the US from the signing of the Constitution to the onset of the Great Depression.
Making of America
The Cornell University Library Making of America Collection is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction.
New York Public Library Digital Collections
700,000 images digitized from the The New York Public Library's vast collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs and more.
World Digital Library
Collection of print and visual resources.