Primary Sources - History - Colonial and Early U.S. History

Online Primary Sources

Selected online digitized sources:

Early American Imprints (Series I and II)
This collection is a definitive resource for teaching and researching the Early National Period in American History. It includes full text, digital images of books, pamphlets, broadsides and periodicals published in America from 1639-1800 (Series 1) and 1801-1819 (Series II). Both series cover subjects ranging from history, literature and culture to politics, government and society.
American Periodicals
This collection includes digitized images of American magazines and journals ranging from special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, trade journals, children's and women's magazines, and many other historically significant periodicals.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online
This collection includes digital versions of works published or printed during the 18th centurary in England and other English-speaking places around the world. It contains full texts of primary source materials in history, geography, literature, language, religion, philosophy, social science, fine arts, music, architecture, medicine, science, technology, and law, as well as general reference works.
Early English Books Online
Early English Books Online (EEBO) contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700 - from the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the tumult of the English Civil War.
Nineteenth Century British Pamphlets
Online access to the most significant British pamphlets from the 19th century held in UK research libraries. Focus is on the political, economic and social issues of the time.

Colonial charters, grants and related documents (Avalon Project)

Maps: exploration and discovery / American Revolution (American Memory)

Maps of the Middle Atlantic Region to 1850 (New York Public Library)

Plymouth Colony Archive Project

Virtual Jamestown

Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery

Slave Voyages

France in America (Library of Congress and BNF)

Salem Witch Trial Documentary Archive

Records of the American colonies (Hathi Trust)

Canadiana

Early Americas Digital Archive

Archive of Early American Images

Indians of the Midwest (Newberry Library)

The American Constitution - a Documentary Record (Avalon Project)

Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention (American Memory)

Founders Online (papers of Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison and Adams)

Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1873 (American Memory)

Works of Jonathan Edwards (Yale)

The Early Caribbean Digital Archive

Papers of the War Department (1784-1800)

Winthrop Family Papers (Mass. Historical Society)

Revolutionary era Boston newspapers

Native Northeast Portal (primary source materials by, on, or about Northeast Indians from repositories around the world)

Primary Sources at OU's Archives and Special Collections

The rare books collection at the University Archives and Special Collections contains original books and pamphlets documenting colonial and early U.S. history.

For example, the collection includes

several books by and about Thomas Jefferson as well as manuscripts.
George Heriot's Travels Through the Canadas (1807) and other books documenting colonial wars and indigenous populations

Search for them in OneSearch, limiting your results to the location facet: "Special Collections."

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18thConnect
Portal to digital primary and secondary sources on the long 18th century.

Assistant Professor, Archives and Special Collections Librarian

Emily Ruth Benoit

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Subjects: Arabic, Chinese, English, Film Studies and Production, French, German, History, Italian, Japanese, Modern Languages, Spanish

Library OneSearch

History - Colonial and Early U.S. History

Online Primary Sources

Primary Sources at OU's Archives and Special Collections

To Go Further

Assistant Professor, Archives and Special Collections Librarian