HISTORY 201: The Historian's Craft: American Revolutions (Fall 2023) : Archives
Online Archival Collections
- American Founding Era CollectionThe American Founding Era Collection contains the annotated, full-text searchable set of the personal papers and manuscripts of the founders of the American Republic. The collection includes the papers of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Dolley Madison, James Madison, John Marshall, Andrew Jackson, Charles Pinckney, the Pickney family, Gouverneur Morris, and the People of the Founding Era collection.
- Colonial AmericaColonial America includes all 1,450 files of the CO 5 class at The National Archives, UK. The collection consists of more than 70,000 manuscripts documenting the early-modern Atlantic world and colonial North America. The collection includes the original correspondence between the Board of Trade and Secretaries of State and the English, later British, colonies in North America and the Caribbean.
- North American Women's Letters and Diaries, Colonial to 1950A collection of published and unpublished women's diaries and correspondence, drawn from more than 1,000 1,300 sources, including journal articles, pamphlets, newsletters, monographs, and conference proceedings, mostly in copyright.
- Slavery & Anti-Slavery: A Transnational ArchiveArchival collection documenting the transatlantic slave trade, the global movement for the abolition of slavery, the legal, personal, and economic aspects of slavery, and the dynamics of emancipation.
- Indigenous Peoples: North AmericaEnabling exploration of the political, social, and cultural history of native peoples from the sixteenth century well into the twentieth century, Indigenous Peoples: North America illustrates the fabric of the North American story with unprecedented depth and breadth. This database facilitates inquiry into the culture and heritage of indigenous people through access to sources from both American and Canadian institutions, as well as direct-from-source from newspapers from various tribes and Indian-related organizations.
- American Indian ExperienceThe American Indian Experience is a portal and full-text online library of more than 150 titles; hundreds of primary documents and images, including treaties, speeches, traditional tales, and captivity narratives with contextual annotation; a wealth of maps and photographs; and hundreds of vetted Web sites.
- Fold3Historical primary documents featuring U.S. city directories, naturalization records, and Revolutionary War Pensions. Collections include: History and Genealogy Archives, African American Archives, Native American Archives, and Revolutionary War Archives.
- America and Great Britain: Diplomatic Relations, 1775-1815Diplomatic and official governmental correspondence between North America and Great Britain during the entire of the American Revolution, including over 8,000 pages of primary source material documenting aspects, both military and political, leading to the independence of the thirteen colonies as well as ongoing diplomatic relations during the early years of the Republic.
- Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures, and the EnvironmentA collection of primary texts that provide evidence of encounters between Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans in the New World. The texts focus on illustrating how humans interacted with each other and the environment.
On This Page
This page provides links to online archival collections.
But what, exactly are archives? Unlike materials held in libraries, which have all been published (meaning, they were created with the intention of making many copies available to many people), archives are unpublished material. They are evidence of everyday life and business created for a purpose other than having them used by outside people. Archives can be any format of material, such as letters, diaries, meeting minutes, photographs, or tweets. Archival collections are kept together in groups based on their creator.