U.S. History

Colonial North American Primary Sources

This is a guide to scholarly research and primary source collections related to United States history. Subpages include Boston history, Indigenous people's histories, Caribbean history, as well as African American History.

Colonial North American in Primary Sources

This page provides access points for different digital collections related to the colonial history of the North American Continent.

Access points are divided into "Broad Digital Collections," which are large enough to be relevant to almost any project. Further collections are divided into groups by source--including government document and the law or newspapers--as well as by topic--including "Europeans in North America" and "Jesuits in North America."

What's on This Page

This page has a lot on it. You can use the following anchors (links down the page) to jump straight to a relevant box.

Map of North American in 1774

Caption:
Bowles, Carington. “North America, and the West Indies; a New Map, Wherein the British Empire and Its Limits, According to the Definitive Treaty of Peace, in 1763, Are Accurately Described, and the Dominions Possessed by the Spaniards, the French, & Other European States. the Whole Compiled from All the New Surveys, and Authentic Memoirs That Have Hitherto Appeared.” Map, ca. 1:5,500,000. London, 1774. Library of Congress. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3300.ar009900.

Databases A-Z

Temporary Box

Broad Digital Collections

JSTOR Images This link opens in a new window
A database of more than 1.3 million digital images. It covers many time periods and cultures and represent architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, etc. Users are required to create a personal account to access this database off campus.

Canadiana
"The Canadiana Collections contain content created over five centuries that tell an incomplete, oftentimes distorted and, sometimes harmful, story of Canada."
Open Access.

Colonial America (Adam Matthew) This link opens in a new window
Modules 1-5, covering "Early Settlement, Expansion and Rivalries," "Towards Revolution," "The American Revolution, " "Legislation and Politics in the Colonies," and "Growth, Trade and Development." Collection will eventually include the full 1,450 volumes of documents from The National Archives, UK, covering the period 1606 to 1822. Full-text searching across all manuscript documents using Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR).
Colonial State Papers This link opens in a new window
Papers concerning English activities in the American, Canadian, and West Indian colonies, 16th-18th centuries.
Digital Public Library of America This link opens in a new window
Aggregates digital collections from around the U.S. and offers excellent tools to discover and explore them. Contributing institutions provide access to photographs, government documents, newspaper clippings, books, and other forms of ephemera. Focuses on 17th to 21st centuries.
Eight Centuries This link opens in a new window
Full text documents focused on the United States from the 17th to the 20th centuries from the Library of Congress (Making of America), the British Library, Harvard Libraries, and more. These documents include scholarship (journal articles), music, law, and more.

Gallica
Interface in English and French (and other major, European languages). Majority of the content in French.
France's fantastic digital library from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Digitized periodicals, images, recordings, and more. Covers two millenia with particular strength from 1500 to the present.
Open Access.

HathiTrust This link opens in a new window
A digital repository for the nation's research libraries, HathiTrust brings together the digitized book and serial collections of major universities and other partner institutions, a significant portion of which is in the public domain and available full text. Boston College's status as a partner makes it possible for members of the Boston College community to download any of the out-of-copyright items as PDFs.

Library of Congress Digital Collections
Digitized collections from the Library of Congress, includes manuscripts, books, photos, maps, audio recordings, and more.
Smithsonian Institution's Digital Collections
Search over 16 million records of museum objects, archives and library materials including more than 5.1 million online images, audio & videos and blog posts.

World Digital Library This link opens in a new window
The World Digital Library is a Library of Congress project sponsored by UNESCO. Items in this digital library, including books, manuscripts, photographs, maps and sound recordings, are individually described and searchable in seven languages. Most countries and regions around the world are represented.

Broad Digital Collections on Colonial North America

Canadiana

Colonial America (Adam Matthew) This link opens in a new window
Modules 1-5, covering "Early Settlement, Expansion and Rivalries," "Towards Revolution," "The American Revolution, " "Legislation and Politics in the Colonies," and "Growth, Trade and Development." Collection will eventually include the full 1,450 volumes of documents from The National Archives, UK, covering the period 1606 to 1822. Full-text searching across all manuscript documents using Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR).
Early Encounters in North America This link opens in a new window
Thousands of letters, diaries, memoirs, and accounts documenting the relationships among peoples in North America from 1534-1850.
Early English Books Online (EEBO) This link opens in a new window
Digital versions of key 15th through 17th century printed texts.

JCB Archive of Early American Images
A database of more than 7,000 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.

Making of the Modern World This link opens in a new window
Digitized Goldsmiths'-Kress Collection, drawn from the University of London and Harvard's Baker Library. Offers primary sources focused on "the dynamics of Western trade and wealth that shaped the world from the last half of the 15th century to the mid-19th century." Part II includes a supplement that extends coverage to 1914.

Medieval and early modern studies
The breadth of sources provided within this collection is extraordinary, from sources concerning the Black Death to the Restoration of the English monarchy and the Glorious Revolution. Also contains a selection of Spanish writing on the Americas.

Sources: Law and Gov't Docs

Avalon Project at Yale University
International documents in law, history, and diplomacy.

Making of Modern Law: Foreign Primary Sources 1600-1970: parts 1 and 2 This link opens in a new window
Historical legal codes, statutes, regulations, and commentaries on codes from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and other countries in northern Europe. Included are crucial sources of historical statutes and regulations for the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, sourced from the law libraries of Yale, Harvard, and George Washington University.
Making of Modern Law: Primary Sources, 1620-1970 This link opens in a new window
Published records of the American colonies, documents published by state constitutional conventions, state codes, city charters, law dictionaries, digests and more.

Records of the American Colonies
Published documents--legislation, court proceedings, records, correspondence, etc.--from the 13 original colonies and their predecessors on Hathi Trust.

Sources: Maps

BnF Gallica: Maps
Thousands of maps from the 12th to the 21st centuries. Heavy emphasis on Europe but includes excellent global coverage (including 3d globes).
David Rumsey Historical Maps Collection: The Americas
More than 2,000 maps of the Americas (North, Central, and South) from the 16th to the 20th centuries.
JCB Map Collection
More than 1,000 digital facsimiles of maps of the North American continent from the 16th to the 19th century from the John Carter Brown Library.
LOC Maps
More than 37,000 maps available through the US Library of Congress with collection focus between 1600 and the present.
Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection
Fantastic collection of maps of places around the world hosted at the University of Texas at Austin. These maps are facsimiles of their historical collection as well as drawn from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and Army Map service as well as Aeronautical Charts. Includes links to other sites with maps by country.
Topographical Collection of King George III
The British Library's more than 18,000 digital images of historic maps, views and texts from the Topographical Collection of King George III. In the public domain.
UM Clark Library Digital Maps
This collection contains images of maps from the Stephen S. Clark Library for Maps, Government Information and Data Services' map collection. 1317 images/descriptions are openly available with excellent metadata.

Sources: Newspapers

17th and 18th Century Burney Newspapers Collection This link opens in a new window
The newspapers and news pamphlets gathered by the Reverend Charles Burney (1757 - 1817) represent the largest single collection of 17th and 18th century English news media. The 700 or so bound volumes of newspapers and news pamphlets were published mostly in London, however there are also some English provincial, Irish and Scottish papers, and a few examples from the American colonies, Europe and India.

Topics: Colonial Publications

America's Historical Imprints This link opens in a new window
Digitized early American monograph, pamphlet, and broadside collection. Includes American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series I; Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800 & Library Company of Philadelphia Series I Supplement; Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819 & Library Company of Philadelphia Series II Supplement.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) This link opens in a new window
Full text of significant English and foreign-language titles printed in Great Britain, along with thousands of important works from the Americas.
English Historical Documents This link opens in a new window
Online version of the primary source British history documents multi-volume series. Over 5,500 documents from 500-1914 including American Colonial Documents.

Topics: Europeans in North America

For this topic, we recommend you also explore the links under "Broad Digital Collections."

America in Records from Colonial Missionaries This link opens in a new window
British Archives Online provides American material from the archives of the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 1635-1928. Missionaries in North America, as elsewhere, were often the only people recording and submitting regular reports of events from remote English-speaking communities around the world.

Digital Paxton
This digital collection is dedicated to covering the Pennsylvania massacre and providing a window into colonization, print culture, and Pennsylvania on the eve of the American Revolution.

European Views of the Americas This link opens in a new window
Searchable bibliography of printed records about the Americas written in Europe before 1750. Covers the history of European exploration as well as portrayals of Native American peoples.

Exploring America's Dutch Heritage
The New Netherland Institute is making available digitized versions of translations and transcriptions of documents relating to New Netherland. Written in an archaic hand, these seventeenth-century documents were damaged by fire and water, but they are our best source of knowledge about the former Dutch colony.
more...less...
New Netherlands Institute
New France Archives
In 2004, France and Canada put documents online reproduced in their entirety using the latest digitization technologies, and making them accessible to a broad public about the establishment of French communities in North America.

Topics: Jesuits in North America

Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Jesuits
A specialty encyclopedia on people, places, and ideas in the history of the Society of Jesus.
Cambridge History of Christianity
A nine volume set in digital online format from the first years of the tradition to the end of the 20th century.
The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents 1610 to 1791 (Creighton)
his site contains the entire English translation of the The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, originally compiled and edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites and published by The Burrows BrothersCompany, Cleveland, throughout the latter part of the nineteenth century. Each file represents the total English contents of a single published volume. The original work has facing pages in the original French, Latin or Italian, depending on the author.
Jesuitica Portal
Gateway to a digital collection of materials related to the Jesuits at BC. Includes official publications, letters and other documents by prominent Jesuits, histories of the society, and much more
Oxford Bibliographies: Jesuit
An annotated bibliography of the history of the order.

For Additional Help

For additional recommendations, contact your History Liaison, Erin, at erinkate.scheopner@bc.edu or schedule an appointment.

O'Neill Library

Bapst Library

Burns Library

Educational Resource Center

Law Library

Social Work Library

Theology & Ministry Library

O'Connor Library

Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies

U.S. History

Colonial North American Primary Sources

Colonial North American in Primary Sources

What's on This Page

Map of North American in 1774

Temporary Box

Broad Digital Collections

Broad Digital Collections on Colonial North America

Sources: Law and Gov't Docs

Sources: Maps

Sources: Newspapers

Topics: Colonial Publications

Topics: Europeans in North America

Topics: Jesuits in North America

For Additional Help