Quakers, Slavery, and the Underground Railroad: Find primary sources

Indentifying Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Sources (Research Guide from UNC-W's Randall Library)

Making Sense of Evidence (Guides to using different types of primary sources from History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web)

Reading, Writing, and Researching for History: A Guide for College Students, by Patrick Rael

2.b. How to Read a Primary Source

7.a. Presenting Primary Sources in Your Paper

Example Documents and Digitized Sources Available Online:

• Documenting the American South
• North Carolina Quakers and the Civil War
• The Friend of Man (1836-1842 weekly newspaper of New York State Antislavery Society)

Example Full-Text Subscription Databases with Primary Sources Available to Guilford students:

	African-American Newspapers : the 19th Century  Provides full text of the entire collection of five African-American newspapers published in the 19th century.
	America's Historical Newspapers via NewsBank Early American Newspapers features cover-to-cover reproductions of hundreds of historic newspapers, providing more than one million pages as fully text-searchable facsimile images. For students and scholars of early America, this unique collection -- based largely on Clarence Brigham's "History and Bibliography of American Newspapers,1690-1820" -- offers an unprecedented look back into the extraordinary history of the United States -- the story of its people, ideals, commerce and everyday life.
	Digital Library on American Slavery  The Digital Library offers a searchable database of detailed personal information about slaves, slaveholders, and free people of color. Designed as a tool for scholars, historians, teachers, students, genealogists, and interested citizens, the site provides access to information gathered and analyzed over an eighteen-year period from petitions to southern legislatures and country courts filed between 1775 and 1867 in the fifteen slaveholding states in the United States and the District of Columbia.
	New York Times Historical Newspaper via ProQuest Company This database offers nearly three million pages of digitized full-text and full-image newspaper articles covering the entire publishing history of the newspaper, from 1851 to 2007. The full-text articles can be viewed in its original context. Researchers can locate news stories, editorials, photos, graphics, and advertisements. Also, researchers can use basic keyword, advanced, guided, and relevancy search techniques to pinpoint the information they are seeking. They can browse through issues page by page, as one would browse a printed edition. Search results lists provide bibliographic information, including date, issue, article headline, page number, and byline (where given).
	North American Women's Letters and Diaries via Alexander Street Press Over 150,000 pages of published letters and diaries plus 4,000 pages of previously unpublished materials depicting the personal experiences of hundreds of women. Contains materials from Colonial times to 1950.
	Sanborn Maps North Carolina via NCLive Sanborn Maps for the state of North Carolina provides digital access to 11,173 large-scale maps of 158 North Carolina towns and cities. Users have the ability to easily manipulate the maps, magnify and zoom in on specific sections, and compare maps from different years.

[Go to Databases (Alphabetical) for direct links and a full list of online databases at Guilford]

Use the Library Catalog to locate print sources such as published letters or diaries. These sources will often be shelved along with secondary sources in the main part of the library. Key terms to use in searching to limit the search to primary documents include "correspondence" and "diaries." 

Examples:

• The underground railroad; a record of facts, authentic narratives, letters, etc.... / by William Still
  Call Number: E450.S85 1970
  
  
• Manumission Society of North Carolina.  Minutes of the N.C.Manumission Society, 1816-1834.  The University of North Carolina press, 1934. [Quaker] F251 .J28 v.22

These same search methods can also be used through WorldCat to expand your search to additional publications which may be available to you through Interlibrary Loan. Limit to the book format to locate items more likely to be available to you or leave the format open to also include listings for manuscript collections with more restricted use.