University Libraries: HIST 368: Frontier in U.S. History: 19th C. Newspapers and Books

American Notes

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19th Century Newspapers

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers

Searchable content of American historic newspapers from 1777-1963, as well as U.S. Newspaper Directory for finding information about American newspapers published between 1690-current.
New York Times, Historical, 1851-2020

Full text of the newspaper from 1851-2017.
Times of London Digital Archive, 1785-1985

Full text coverage of the newspaper from 1785-1985.

Colorado's Historic Newspaper Collection
Provides full-text of newspapers covering 1859-1923.
Frontier Scout
Covers 1864-1865. The first newspaper known to have been published in northern Dakota Territory was the Frontier Scout issued at Fort Union on July 7, 1864

19th Century Books, Pamphlets, and Magazine Articles

To find books in Hathi and Making of America, you need to use appropriate keywords:

For Type of Source try:	For Location try:
Diary	Frontier
Journal	West
Narrative	Plains
Memoir	Rockies
Account	State Name

Hathi Trust
In Advanced Search, type in source type and west. Limit to years 1800-1890. When results are retrieved, limit to subject West (U.S.). Provides access to full-text e-books and journals from the 19th century.

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E-text of books from 80 partner libraries. Many books are full-text with no restrictions. Excellent source for books published pre-1923. Also includes government reports.

American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals, Series 1-5: 1684-1912

Digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals, documenting the life of America's people from the Colonial Era through the early 1910's.

American Journeys: Eyewitness Accounts of Early American Exploration and Settlement
"American Journeys contains more than 18,000 pages of eyewitness accounts of North American exploration, from the sagas of Vikings in Canada in AD1000 to the diaries of mountain men in the Rockies 800 years later."
American Notes: Travels in America, 1750-1920
253 published narratives by Americans and foreign visitors recounting their travels in the colonies and the United States and their observations and opinions about American peoples, places, and society from about 1750 to 1920. Also included is the thirty-two-volume set of manuscript sources entitled" Early Western Travels, 1748-1846."

To locate resources beyond the ones listed below, search Google and use the type of source from the list above and add the state or location. You may need to narrow the results by adding "archive" or "digital" or "e-text" to your search.

First American West: Ohio River Valley 1750-1820
Drawn from 15,000 pages of "books, periodicals, newspapers, pamphlets, scientific publications, broadsides, letters, journals, legal documents, ledgers and other financial records, maps, physical artifacts, and pictorial images."
Pioneering the Upper Midwest: Books form Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, ca. 1820-1910
"first-person accounts, biographies, promotional literature, local histories, ethnographic and antiquarian texts, colonial archival documents, and other works."
"California as I Saw It:" First-Person Narratives of California's Early Years, 1849-1900
Consists of the full texts and illustrations of 190 works documenting the formative era of California's history through eyewitness accounts.
Trails of Hope: Overland Diaries and Letters, 1846-1869
"Collection of the original writings of 49 voyagers on the Mormon, California, Oregon, and Montana trails who wrote while traveling on the trail." Also contains maps, photographs, watercolors, and sketches.
Prairie Settlement :Nebraska Photographs and Family Letters
Over 3.000 photographs from 1886-1912 and 3,000 letters of the Oblinger family from 1873 on.
Pacific Northwest Historical Documents Database
Collection of original, diaries, letters, reminiscences and political documents from the early settlement of Washington. Most materials are in the Manuscript collection.
Indian-Pioneer Papers Collection: Oklahoma
"The Indian-Pioneer Papers oral history collection spans from 1861 to 1936. It includes typescripts of interviews conducted during the 1930s by government workers with thousands of Oklahomans regarding the settlement of Oklahoma and Indian territories, as well as the condition and conduct of life there."
Broadsides and Printed Ephemera
Covers all aspects of American life including the western land rush. The Printed Ephemera Collection at the Library of Congress is a rich repository of Americana containing, among other materials, posters, playbills, songsheets, notices, invitations, proclamations, petitions, timetables, leaflets, propaganda, manifestos, ballots, tickets, menus, and business cards.

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and encompasses key events and eras in American history
Making of America
Digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction, located at the University of Michigan and Cornell University