LibGuides: Primary Sources for United States History: Colonial Period to 18th Century

Colonial Period to 18th Century

American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection This link opens in a new window
Contains books, pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers, periodicals, music, and graphic arts material printed in what is now the United States, as well as manuscripts and a substantial collection of secondary texts, bibliographies, and digital resources and reference works related to all aspects of American history and culture before the 20th century. Date coverage is 1684-1912.
Arte Público Hispanic Historical Collection: Series 1 This link opens in a new window
Focuses on U.S. Hispanic history, literature, and culture from colonial times until 1960. This resource is indexed and searchable in Spanish and English.
Arte Público Hispanic Historical Collection: Series 2 This link opens in a new window
Manuscripts, books, and newspapers on Hispanic-American civil rights, religion, and women’s rights from the 18th - 20th centuries.
Black Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window
Black Thought and Culture is a landmark electronic collection of approximately 100,000 pages of non-fiction writings by major American black leaders—teachers, artists, politicians, religious leaders, athletes, war veterans, entertainers, and other figures—covering 250 years of history, including letters, speeches, prefatory essays, political leaflets, interviews, periodicals, and trial transcripts.
Colonial State Papers, 1574-1757 This link opens in a new window
Offers insight into the colonial history of North America and the West Indies. It includes the National Archives collection CO 1-- papers that were presented to the Privy Council and the Board of Trade during 1574-1757.
Congressional Hearings Digital Collection (1824-2003) This link opens in a new window
The Congressional Hearings Digital Collection is a collection of published and unpublished hearings held by Congress. Congressional committee hearings may be classified into four types: legislative, oversight, investigative, and confirmation.
Early Encounters in North America This link opens in a new window
Documents the relationships among peoples in North America from 1534 to 1850. The collection focuses on personal accounts and provides unique perspectives from all of the protagonists, including traders, slaves, missionaries, explorers, soldiers, native peoples, and officials, both men and women.
Manuscript Women's Letters & Diaries This link opens in a new window
This collection brings together 105,000 pages of the personal writings of women of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.
North American Indian Thought & Culture This link opens in a new window
Brings together more than 100,000 pages, many of which are previously unpublished, rare, or hard to find. The project integrates autobiographies, biographies, Indian publications, oral histories, personal writings, photographs, drawings, and audio files for the first time.
Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture, and Law This link opens in a new window
Essential legal materials on the history of slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world.
Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 This link opens in a new window
A resource for students and scholars of U.S. history and U.S. women's history. Organized around the history of women in social movements in the U.S. between 1600 and 2000.

Collections on the Web:

Colonial North America at Harvard Library
"When complete, the project will make available to the world approximately 700,000 digitized pages of all known archival and manuscript materials in the Harvard Library that relate to 17th- and 18th-century North America."
HathiTrust Digital Library
HathiTrust is a fully digital library of more than 17 million items, mostly books, from academic and research libraries. All books in the public domain are 100% viewable.
Hispanic Reading Room (Library of Congress)
The Library of Congress's Hispanic Reading Room collects digital exhibits and primary sources related to Latinx history in the U.S.
JCB Archive of Early American Images
"A database of graphic representations of the colonial Americas, from Hudson Bay to Tierra del Fuego, drawn entirely from primary sources printed or created between 1492 and ca. 1825." From the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, Rhode Island.
Massachusetts Historical Society
Portal to the digitized collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, including materials on John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, as well as the colonial period and the American Revolution.
Native Northeast Portal
"Native Northeast Portal contains primary source materials by, on, or about Northeast Indians from repositories around the world. Documents are digitized, transcribed, annotated, reviewed by the appropriate contemporary descendant community representatives, and brought together with scholarly annotations and academic/community commentary into one edited interactive digital collection."
Printed Ephemera: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera
From the Library of Congress, "the collection contains, among other materials, posters, playbills, songsheets, notices, invitations, proclamations, petitions, timetables, leaflets, propaganda, manifestos, ballots, tickets, menus, and business cards" dating from the 17th century to the present.
Slave Voyages
"This digital memorial raises questions about the largest slave trades in history and offers access to the documentation available to answer them. European colonizers turned to Africa for enslaved laborers to build the cities and extract the resources of the Americas. They forced millions of Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas, and from one part of the Americas to another. Analyze these slave trades and view interactive maps, timelines, and animations to see the dispersal in action."