THIST 456 North American Regions: Mississippi River Valley - Allen: Locating primary sources
What is a primary source?
Primary sources include documents or artifacts created by a witness to or participant in an event. They can be firsthand testimony or evidence created during the time period that you are studying.
Primary sources may include diaries, letters, photographs, newspaper articles, government documents, poems, novels, plays, and music. The collection and analysis of primary sources is central to historical research.
Online Primary Sources for the Mississippi Valley
More primary sources: government documents, magazines, and newspapers
Primary Source Example (found in UW Libraries Search -- see below)
Although this ebook in its current form was published in 2001, it was originally published in 1909 and is definitely a primary source for the time period from 1854-1863
Old Times on the Upper Mississippi: Recollections of a Steamboat Pilot from 1854 to 1863 by George Byron Merrick chronicles the entire panorama of steamboat life he experienced in the mid-1800s, where he started as a cabin boy and worked up to cub pilot on the mighty Mississippi. Originally published in 1909, MerrickOCOs narrative matches lively stories about gamblers, shipwrecks, and steamboat races with rich descriptions of river life and steamboat operations."
General Collections for U.S. History
- American History OnlineMajor site for links to primary sources on African Americans, Asian Americans, education, Civil War, immigration, music, Native Americans, and more.
- American Memory ProjectMajor database of historic photographs, government documents, pamphlets, etc. from the Library of Congress.
- Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and DiplomacyDiverse collection of materials from Yale University with an emphasis on U.S. and diplomatic history.
- Early American Imprints, 1639-1800 This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new window
Books, pamphlets, broadsides and rare printed materials. Covers materials printed to 1800.
- Gilder Lehrman Institute of American HistoryMore than 60,000 documents detailing the political and social history of the United States held at the NY Historical Society.
UW Libraries Search with Tips
Tips for Searching:
Once you've run a search, use the "Refine My Results" options on the left side of the page. It's a quick way to drill down to the most useful results without paging through a lot of items you're not really interested in. Options often include:
- Resource type (examples: book, article)
- Library (example: UW Tacoma)
- Creation date
- Language
- Topic
- Classification LCC (Library of Congress call numbers)
Search Terms for Primary Sources
Terms useful for locating primary sources in the UW Libraries Catalog:
- sources
- personal narratives
- correspondence
- letters
- diaries
- journals
- interviews
- sermons
- documents
- papers