HSTY 201: American History to 1877: Home

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What is a Primary Source?

Primary sources in historical research are usually defined as first-hand accounts, data or other information that are produced by witnesses or even participants in what is being described.  We usually think of primary historical sources as texts, such as letters, dairies, reports, minutes from conferences and so on. There are also book-length first person narratives, for example

• Democracy in America, the famous 2-volume account of his travels and observations of a young America, by the 19th-century French politician and historian Alexis de Tocqueville, or
• autobiographies such as The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.              

Notice that both of these examples are modern files presented online. They are not original artifacts. When historians have original artifacts to study, they study not only the words, but  the paper, the ink, the typeface, the binding, the comments written in the margins and any other physical aspect of the artifact. For our purposes, the primary source you are using is the text, isolated from the artifact. 

Visual primary sources include photographs, maps, works of art and video. Of course video is widely available for modern events, such as the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon presidential debates. But students have also found video going back as far as the 1900 hurricane that destroyed Galveston Island.

This guide will help you find primary sources from United States history. For help finding secondary books, look at the final tab, "Finding Books." 

As always, if you have any questions about your research please ask a librarian, using the contact information on this page.