Finding Primary Sources
The other boxes on this page offer a few suggestions and possibilities for primary source research but are only the beginning.
To discover primary sources generally, try these approaches:
- Scour the bibliographies and notes of relevant secondary sources such as articles, books, and dissertations on your topic. They are necessarily drawing on relevant primary sources. We may or may not have access then to those primary sources.
- Search in our catalog or in WorldCat and include these subject terms: Personal narratives, Facsimiles, Diaries, Correspondence, Sources. Alternately, try including document? [in our catalog] or document* [in WorldCat] as a key word for mentions of "documents" or "documentary" in the title or description.
Digital Collections
- The Portal to Texas HistoryDigitized letters, books, archival materials, and newspapers from Texas history. Dozens of collections and thousands of sources.
- Bexar Archives Online-- Briscoe Center for American History at UT AustinDocuments the "military, civil, and political life of the Spanish province of Texas from 1717 to 1792" with "over 5,000 original documents (23,000 pages) that have been digitized from microfilm. Researchers may browse, by year, the originals and translations, or compare an original and its translation side-by-side. Full-text searching of the translations is also supported.
- West Texas Digital ArchivesThis digital repository from the Abilene Library Consortium contains photographs, newspapers, yearbooks, letters, oral histories, periodicals, manuscripts, journals, documents, maps, audio files, and more.
You can browse or search its content. - Tejano VoicesOral histories presenting the personal recollections of 173 Tejanos and Tejanas and their struggle against racial discrimination in post-World War II Texas
- Texas Slavery ProjectThe Texas Slavery Project examines the spread of American slavery into the borderlands between the United States and Mexico in the decades between 1820 and 1850." Has a good amount of primary source texts, database, and maps.
Newspaper collections
We have microfilm and digital newspaper collections of many different titles & eras. For detail, please see the Newspapers page of our general primary sources guide.
Notable Print Items Here
- The La Salle expedition to Texas : the journal of Henri Joutel, 1684-1687
- Diary of the Alarcón expedition into Texas, 1718-1719 / by Fray Francisco Céliz ; translated by Fritz Leo Hoffmann.
- Mary Austin Holley : the Texas diary, 1835-1838
- Letters of hard times in Texas, 1840-1890 / compiled by David Holman ; with an introduction by Joe B. Frantz.
- Documents of Texas History is a one-volume collection of over 120 primary source documents. Copies of the older edition are on both the Loan Shelves and Reference Shelves. The newer edition is on the Reference Shelves.
- The personal correspondence of Sam Houston.
- The news from Brownsville : Helen Chapman's letters from the Texas military frontier, 1848-1852
- The Civil War in west Texas and New Mexico : the lost letterbook of Brigadier General Henry Hopkins Sibley
For location and availability information, search in our catalog.
Microform collections
These collections are primarily located on the 2nd floor, in cabinets near the back staircase, and are arranged there alphabetically by collection title.
- Texas as a Province and Republic 1795-1845
- An excellent collection of valuable primary source material relating to the early growth of Texas, including its time as Spanish province, its colonization by Americans, its revolution, and its annexation by the United States.
- A detailed bibliography is on a bookcase near the Periodicals service desk.
- Microfilm
- National Archives : Records of the Work Projects Administration
- 1. Central Correspondence 1935-1944, State Series Texas
- 2. Selected Documents Relating to Road Construction in Texas
- Microfilm. Two rolls altogether.
- County Tax Rolls
- Potter County tax rolls from 1879-1921 and Randall County tax rolls from 1881-1921.
- Microfilm. 16 reels. (Most also include other counties.)
Statistics
- Historical Statistics of the United States This link opens in a new windowA compendium of statistics from over 37,000 data series -- three times more than in the previous edition -- and dozens of new topics, among them slavery, American Indians, and poverty. Other topics include migration, health, crime, the Confederate States of America, population demographics, religion, business, and education. There are also many essays by recognized experts to put the topics in context.
More on Primary Sources
For more on primary sources from Cornette Library, please see our detailed guide.