North America

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Last Updated: 26 May 2022

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NORTH AMERICA

  • Map Collections in the United States and Canada: A Directory. Edited by David K. Carrington & Richard W. Stephenson. New York: Special Libraries Association, 1970.
  • 1836 Mixed-Blood Census Register: Ottawas and Chippewas of Michigan Treaty of March 28, 1836
  • A People’s Archive of Police Violence in Cleveland – “A People’s Archive of Police Violence in Cleveland collects, preserves, and shares the stories, memories, and accounts of police violence as experienced or observed by Cleveland citizens.”
  • A Red Record – “A Red Record documents lynchings in the American South, starting with North Carolina.”
  • ‘A Shaky Truce’: Starkville Civil Rights Struggles, 1960-1980 – “The site narrates the unique history of Starkville, Mississippi’s civil rights struggles with particular emphasis on the local fight for school desegregation. African Americans fought for equal rights and freedom on the streets and in the schools of every Southern town during the Jim Crow Era. Yet each community and its residents have their own stories to tell about how local individuals organized, protested against inequality, and fought for equal employment, school desegregation, and voting rights. Through the use of digitized archival documents and oral history interviews, ‘A Shaky Truce’ highlights Starkville’s story and the voices of its participants in order to position this town and its people as critical reflections of this national movement.”
  • A Tale of Two Plantations: Enslaved Families in Virginia and Jamaica – “This website displays research into the lives of 431 enslaved people in seven multi-generational families at Mesopotamia plantation in Jamaica and Mount Airy plantation in Virginia.”
  • Accessible Archives: African American Newspapers – “This enormous collection of African American newspapers contains a wealth of information about cultural life and history during the 1800s and is rich with first-hand reports of the major events and issues of the day, including the Mexican War, Presidential and Congressional addresses, Congressional abstracts, business and commodity markets, the humanities, world travel and religion. The collection also provides a great number of early biographies, vital statistics, essays and editorials, poetry and prose, and advertisements all of which embody the African-American experience.”
  • African Activist Archive Project – “The African Activist Archive is preserving and making available online the records of activism in the United States to support the struggles of African peoples against colonialism, apartheid, and social injustice from the 1950s through the 1990s.”
  • African American Civil War Soldiers – The goal of this site is to “improve our knowledge of the African Americans who fought for freedom in the American Civil War, to provide descendants of the soldiers with access to information on their ancestors, and to present students of history with primary documents from a pivotal moment in African American history. To do this we are building a comprehensive database of the estimated 200,000 soldiers who formed the United States Colored Troops (USCT).”
  • African-American Odyssey
  • Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy: 1719-1820
  • Alcatraz Inmate Lists – “This list will be of special interest to scholars and genealogists seeking information on who was imprisoned on Alcatraz. Many entries are annotated and there is a list of famous prisoners for those wishing to find out about Al Capone, Alvin Karpis, and others.”
  • American Panorama: An Atlas of United States History – “American Panorama is an historical atlas of the United States for the twenty-first century. It combines cutting-edge research with innovative mapping techniques, designed to appeal to anyone with an interest in America history or a love of maps.”
  • American Prison Newspapers, 1800-2020: Voices from the Inside
  • Arizona Department of Corrections Historical Prison Register – “Search 100 years of prison admissions in this free searchable database of prisoners admitted to Arizona territorial and state prisons prior to 1972. Additional historical background on the prisoners, plus a database of life imprisonment and death sentences from 1875-1966, is also available online.”
  • Atlas of Historical County Boundaries – “The Atlas presents in maps and text complete data about the creation and all subsequent changes (dated to the day) in the size, shape, and location of every county in the fifty United States and the District of Columbia. It also includes non-county areas, unsuccessful authorizations for new counties, changes in county names and organization, and the temporary attachments of non-county areas and unorganized counties to fully functioning counties. The principal sources for these data are the most authoritative available: the session laws of the colonies, territories, and states that created and changed the counties.”
  • Binns Genealogy 1790/1800 Virginia Tax List Censuses – “Here you will find FREE online images and indexes of the Virginia Tax Lists (Land and/or Personal Property Tax Lists) for each of the individual counties and cities that would have been included in the Federal Censuses. These tax list images and indexes are used to reconstruct the 1790 and 1800 censuses.”
  • Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions – “Clergy and religious women, who taught and evangelized among Native Americans, routinely submitted photographs to the editors of The Indian Sentinel, 1902-1962, a fundraising magazine published by the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions. These photographs comprise the bulk of the pre-1970 images in the collection, from which the digital images were selected.”
  • Castle Garden – “Castlegarden.org is a free database…[that] contains and makes available eleven million records of immigrants who arrived at the Port of New York from 1820-1892.”
  • Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP) – “The CGP is the finding tool for federal publications that includes descriptive information for historical and current publications as well as direct links to the full document, when available.”
  • Colorado State Archives – “Colorado State Archives exists to ensure the preservation of the State’s permanent legal records and information and to promote their use by the citizens of Colorado. They are the legal repository for selected historical and contemporary records and information generated by state and local governments in Colorado.”
  • Connecticut State Library
    • Connecticut Death Records Index – “This index allows researchers to find the name, place and date of death for individuals who died in Connecticut between 1897 through 2001.”
    • Connecticut Military Service Personnel Photograph Index – “One of the most striking collections housed in the Connecticut State Library is a small group of five boxes of photographs found in the Connecticut War Records Department collection of records. These photographs, which also includes some newspaper clippings, letters, and memorials, depict over 700 images of military service personnel who served primarily in World War II but include some later images of those who fought in the Korean conflict as well. These images range in style from official studio portraits of men in crisp military uniforms, to civilian snapshots including recent graduation pictures taken in happier times.”
    • Connecticut Nurses Census 1917 – “The census forms may given basic details such as birthplace, age, marital status, maiden name, and current residence, as well as more specific information such as the name of the nursing school attended, medical specialty, and year of licensure. This census included the registration of both female and male nurses.”
    • Fitches Home for Soldiers – “Veterans’ files from the Fitch’s Home for Soldiers. Coverage: Mostly Civil War veterans, with some Spanish American War veterans.”
    • Hartford, Connecticut Courant Index 1764-1799 – “The Connecticut Courant Index, 1764-1799 contains thousands of entries searchable by Name, Town, or Subject taken from a slip index found in the History & Genealogy Reading Room of the Connecticut State Library. It includes advertisements by name of merchant or tradesmen, though not by individual items for sale. Names of specific articles offered for sale may be found under Merchants in (name of town), Druggists in (name of town), etc.”
    • Noble Pension Records – “Records relating to Civil War and Spanish American War Veterans.”
    • Wethersfield State Prison Records – “Warrants of Commitment for prisoners. Coverage: 1800-1903.”
    • World War I Military Service Questionnaire Database – “Military Service Questionnaires, from World War I veterans and families of deceased veterans. Coverage: 1919-1920.”
  • Digital Commonwealth: Massachusetts Collections Online – “This site provides access to photographs, manuscripts, books, audio recordings, and other materials of historical interest that have been digitized and made available by members of Digital Commonwealth, a statewide consortium of libraries, museums, archives, and historical societies from across Massachusetts.”
    • Anti-Slavery (Collection of Distinction) – “In the late 1890s, the family of William Lloyd Garrison, along with others closely involved in the anti-slavery movement, presented Boston Public Library with a major gathering of correspondence, documents, and other original material relating to the abolitionist cause from 1832 until after the American Civil War. The Anti-Slavery Collection contains about 40,000 pieces of correspondence, broadsides, newspapers, pamphlets, books, and realia spanning a 35-year period.”
  • Digital Public Library of America
  • The Duke Collection of American Indian Oral History – “The Duke Collection of American Indian Oral History online provides access to typescripts of interviews (1967-1972) conducted with hundreds of Indians in Oklahoma regarding the histories and cultures of their respective nations and tribes.”
  • Duke University Libraries: Duke Digital Collections – “Digitized historic photographs, advertisements, texts & more from Duke’s unique library collections.”
    • American Slavery Documents – “The American Slavery Documents Collection contains an assortment of legal and personal documents related to slavery in the United States. Nearly all of the documents are singular and otherwise unrelated to the other, but as a composite, the collection brings to light the details of the lives and deaths of free and enslaved African Americans during the Antebellum and early Reconstruction Eras. The type of materials include bills of sale, manumission papers, emancipation notes, bonds, auction notices, and other assorted items. The documents represent nearly all of the states of the American south including: North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi, but a few documents are from northern states like New York and New Jersey.”
    • Behind the Veil – The Behind the Veil Oral History Project “seeks to record and preserve the living memory of African-American life during the age of legal segregation in the American South, from the 1890s to the 1950s.”
  • Enslavement to citizenship: African Americans in Irish Slaveholder records 1670-1865 – “As African American families research their family trees, they have identified Irish names in their families, Irish names among those who enslaved their families and even Irish genetic ancestry when they undergo DNA testing. Equally, Irish people have begun to identify African American cousins through DNA testing. This points to a large unexplored history. Enslavement to citizenship is a public history project which seeks to identify Irish slaveholders and overseers in the U.S.A. but more importantly to find the names of African American families hidden in the records of Irish slaveholders prior to 1865. This project is dedicated to making it easier for African American families to access information about their ancestors, so that families can be reunited.”
  • Free African Americans of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware – “The history of the free African American community as told through the family history of most African Americans who were free in the Southeast during the colonial period.”
  • Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes: Black Indians – “The data posted to this site are resources for the Freedmen Descendants of the Five Civilized tribes, a means to locate information particular to the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Cherokee, and Seminole Freedmen of Indian Territory/Oklahoma.”
  • Harvard Library Government Directories
  • Historic Map Works – “Historic Map Works’ map collection includes United States Property Atlases, Antiquarian Maps, Nautical Charts, Birdseye Views, Special Collections (Celestial Maps, Portraits, and other historical images), Directories and other text documents. Our map collection numbers over 1,662,928 individual images for you to explore.”
  • Homicide in Chicago 1870-1930 – “The history of homicide in Chicago, 1870-1930, based on over 11,000 Chicago Police Department homicide reports.”
  • Indiana Archives and Records Administration
  • Library of Congress
    • Bain Collection – “The collection richly documents sports events, theater, celebrities, crime, strikes, disasters, political activities including the woman suffrage campaign, conventions and public celebrations. The photographs Bain produced and gathered for distribution through his news service were worldwide in their coverage, but there was a special emphasis on life in New York City. The bulk of the collection dates from the 1900s to the mid-1920s, but scattered images can be found as early as the 1860s and as late as the 1930s.”
    • Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers – “Search America’s historic newspaper pages from 1777-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.”
    • Cities and Towns – “This category includes maps that depict individual buildings to panoramic views of large urban areas. These maps record the evolution of cities illustrating the development and nature of economic activities, educational and religious facilities, parks, street patterns and widths, and transportation systems.”
    • Civil War – “Explore the faces, places and events of the U.S. Civil War through photographs, prints and drawings. The Prints & Photographs Division holds thousands of images relating to the Civil War, found in many different collections. This category allows research across those collections.”
      • Civil War Glass Negatives and Related Prints – “Provides access to about 7,000 different views and portraits made during the American Civil War (1861-1865) and its immediate aftermath.”
      • Civil War Maps – “Brings together materials from three premier collections: the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, the Virginia Historical Society, and the Library of Virginia. Among the reconnaissance, sketch, and theater-of-war maps are the detailed battle maps made by Major Jedediah Hotchkiss for Generals Lee and Jackson, General Sherman’s Southern military campaigns, and maps taken from diaries, scrapbooks, and manuscripts all available for the first time in one place. This presentation contains approximately 2,240 Civil War maps and charts and 76 atlases and sketchbooks that are held within the Geography and Map Division, 200 maps from the Library of Virginia, and 400 maps from the Virginia Historical Society.”
    • Country Studies – “Contains the electronic versions of 80 books previously published in hard copy as part of the Country Studies Series by the Federal Research Division. Intended for a general audience, books in the series present a description and analysis of the historical setting and the social, economic, political, and national security systems and institutions of select countries throughout the world. Most books in the series deal with a single foreign country, but a few cover several countries or a geographic region. The series includes several books on countries that no longer exist in their original configuration—such as Czechoslovakia, East Germany, the Soviet Union, Sudan, and Yugoslavia.”
    • Detroit Publishing Company – “Includes over 25,000 glass negatives and transparencies as well as about 300 color photolithograph prints, mostly of the eastern United States. Subjects strongly represented in the collection include city and town views, including streets and architecture; parks and gardens; recreation; and industrial and work scenes.”
    • Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives – “The photographs of the Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information Photograph Collection form an extensive pictorial record of American life between 1935 and 1944. The collection encompasses the images made by photographers working in Stryker’s unit as it existed in a succession of government agencies: the Resettlement Administration (1935-1937), the Farm Security Administration (1937-1942), and the Office of War Information (1942-1944). The collection also includes photographs acquired from other governmental and non-governmental sources, including the News Bureau at the Offices of Emergency Management (OEM), various branches of the military, and industrial corporations. In total, the collection consists of about 175,000 black-and-white film negatives and transparencies, 1,610 color transparencies, and around 107,000 black-and-white photographic prints, most of which were made from the negatives and transparencies.”
    • Harris & Ewing Collection – “The Harris & Ewing, Inc. Collection of photographic negatives includes glass and film negatives taken by Harris & Ewing, Inc., which provide excellent coverage of Washington people, events, and architecture, during the period 1905-1945.”
    • Highsmith (Carol M.) Archive – “Photographs of landmark buildings and architectural renovation projects in Washington, D.C., and throughout the United States.”
    • Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey – “The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) collections are among the largest and most heavily used in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. The collections document achievements in architecture, engineering, and landscape design in the United States and its territories through a comprehensive range of building types, engineering technologies, and landscapes, including examples as diverse as the Pueblo of Acoma, houses, windmills, one-room schools, the Golden Gate Bridge, and buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.”
    • National Photo Company Collection – “This collection documents virtually all aspects of Washington, D.C. life.”
    • Panoramic Maps – “The majority of items presented here are documented in PANORAMIC MAPS of Cities in the United States and Canada, second edition (1984), by John R. Hébert and Patrick E. Dempsey. Hébert and Dempsey compiled a checklist of 1,726 panoramic maps of U.S. and Canadian cities, the bulk of which were done by Albert Ruger, Thaddeus Mortimer Fowler, Lucien R. Burleigh, Henry Wellge, and Oakley H. Bailey who prepared more than fifty-five percent of the panoramic maps in the Library of Congress. Additional panoramic maps will be added to this presentation as they are acquired by the Geography & Map Division.”
    • Popular Graphic Arts – “About 15,000 historical prints (ca. 1700-1900) created to document geographic locations or popular subjects and sometimes used for advertising and educational purposes. Most are by American printmakers (e.g., Baillie, Currier & Ives, Sachse & Co.), but publishers in many other countries are also represented (e.g., Antonio Vanegas Arroyo). Subjects vary widely, from city and harbor views, street scenes, and manufacturing plants to genre scenes, historical events, religious iconography and portraits.”
    • Railroad Maps, 1828 to 1900 – “Contains 623 maps chosen from more than 3,000 railroad maps and about 2,000 regional, state, and county maps, and other maps which show “internal improvements” of the past century.”
    • Sanborn Maps
    • Stereograph Cards – “The Prints & Photographs Division’s holdings include images produced from the 1850s to the 1940s, with the bulk of the collection dating between 1870 and 1920. The online images feature cities and towns around the world, expeditions and expositions, industries, disasters, and portraits of Native Americans, presidents, and celebrities.”
    • Transportation and Communication – “These maps document the development and status of transportation and communication systems on the national, state, and local level. Transportation maps can depict canal and river systems, cycling routes, railway lines and systems, roads and road networks, and traffic patterns. Communication maps illustrate the location and distribution of telegraph routes, telephone systems and radio coverage.”
  • Men Executed at Fort Smith (Arkansas): 1873 to 1896
  • The National Archives and Records Administration – “The National Archives holds historical U.S. government documents (federal, congressional, and presidential records) that are created or received by the President and his staff, by Congress, by employees of Federal government agencies, and by the Federal courts in the course of their official duties.”
    • Atlanta Federal Penitentiary Case Files – “The United States Penitentiary in Atlanta did not open until 1902, but inmate case files contain documentation from as early as 1880 for prisoners who had been previously incarcerated by the federal government in other locations.”
    • Census Records – “The National Archives has the census schedules on microfilm available from 1790 to 1940, and most have now been digitized…Family researchers generally find it most helpful to begin with the most current census and work backwards as a strategy for locating people in earlier generations.”
    • Immigrant Records – “Among the billions of historical records housed at the National Archives throughout the country, researchers can find information relating to immigrants from the late 1700s through the early 2000s.”
  • Official 1950 Census Website – “The 1950 census records were released by the U.S. National Archives on April 1, 2022. This website provides full access to the 1950 census images, including population schedules, enumeration district maps, and enumeration district descriptions.”
  • Old Fulton New York Post Cards
  • The Ottawa and Chippewa of Michigan: 1870 Census, 1908 Durant Roll and the 1910 Durant Supplemental Roll
  • Partial 1818 Chickasaw Census Roll
  • Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) – “The Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) service provides electronic public access to federal court records. PACER provides the public with instantaneous access to more than 1 billion documents filed at all federal courts.”
  • The Statue of Liberty – Ellis Island Foundation – “In 2001 the Foundation opened the American Family Immigration History Center at Ellis Island, which contains a searchable database of passenger manifests for Ellis Island and the Port of New York between 1820 and 1954. The database is also available online.”
  • They Had Names: African Americans in Early Records of Liberty County, Georgia
  • The USGenWeb Census Project
  • Utah Division of Archives and Records Service – “The purpose of the State Archives is to assist Utah government agencies in the efficient management of their records, to preserve those records of enduring value, and to provide quality access to public information.”
  • Utah Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel Database, 1847-1868 – “The Pioneer Database project began more than 30 years ago as staff at the Church History Library began to explore ways to help researchers better understand the experience of the Latter-day Saints as they crossed the plains to the Great Basin between the years 1847 and 1868. The database now contains information on more than 61,000 pioneers and 384 wagon and handcart companies.”
  • Washington State Archives – Digital Archives – “The Washington State Digital Archives is the nation’s first archives dedicated specifically to the preservation of electronic records from both State and Local agencies that have permanent legal, fiscal or historical value.”
    • Walla Walla Penitentiary Records – “This database contains extracts from the Record of Penitentiary Convicts of nearly 10,000 inmates housed in the Walla Walla State Penitentiary from 1887-1922.”
  • World War II units & histories American units