Digital Primary Sources

The digital collections of the Library of Congress contain a wide variety of primary source materials useful to genealogical and family history research including manuscripts, images (photographs, architectural drawings, images of homes and buildings), maps, historic newspapers, and more.

The Library of Congress manuscript collections are rich in materials useful to doing family history research. In addition to digitized primary sources, you will also find a large number of finding aids providing detailed descriptions of these widely diverse collections.

Finding Aids

From the Manuscript Reading Room homepage, you can select "search across all finding aids" and enter your ancestor's name. The results will list collections in which someone with that name appears as a subject. Keep in mind that not all manuscript collections are available in digital form online.

Digitized Collection Materials

The following digitized manuscript collection materials can be helpful in locating information about your ancestor.

American Colony in Jerusalem, 1870 to 2006

View the American Colony in Jerusalem Collection
This collection focuses on the personal and business life of the colony from the waning years of the Ottoman Empire, through World War I and the British Mandate, and into the formation of the state of Israel. It includes draft manuscripts, letters, postcards, telegrams, diaries or journals, scrapbooks, printed materials, photographs, hand-drawn maps and ephemera. Most collection items are in English, with some material in Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, and Swedish.

Civil War Diaries

View Civil War Diaries
This page displays a number of digital collections at the Library of Congress containing diaries for the American Civil War era. Diaries can be a very useful source when tracing your ancestors.

Federal Writers Project (WPA) Interviews with Formerly Enslaved Americans

View the Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938 Collection
This collection contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) of the Works Progress Administration, later renamed Work Projects Administration (WPA). At the conclusion of the Slave Narrative project, a set of edited transcripts was assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves.

Gladstone Collection on African Americans' Military Service

View the William A. Gladstone Afro-American Military Collection
This collection spans the years 1773 to 1987, with the bulk of the material dating from the Civil War period, 1861-1865. The collection consists of correspondence, pay vouchers, orders, muster rolls, enlistment and discharge papers, receipts, contracts, affidavits, tax records, miscellaneous military documents, and printed matter. Most items document African Americans in military service, especially the United States Corps d'Afrique and the United States Colored Troops, which were organized during the Civil War. Also included are many documents concerning slavery and various other Civil War documents that mention African Americans. The Revolutionary War items are primarily pay vouchers to Connecticut blacks who served in the Continental Army. World War I is represented by the papers of Lieutenant Edward L. Goodlett of the 370th Infantry, 93rd Division. Printed matter includes nineteenth-century speeches and writings on slavery, government orders, broadsides, and twentieth-century booklets and journal articles for scholars or collectors.

Special Essay on Suffragists

Was my female ancestor a suffragist?
This special FAQ focuses on resources useful in identifying suffragists. Suffragists fought for the right of women to vote. The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave them that right, was ratified on August 18, 1920.

Did any of your relatives live in a historic home?

You can learn more about the property and its stories from these collections, which contain thousands of images, drawings, and documents of homes and buildings.

Digitized Collection Materials

Gottscho-Schleisner Collection

View the Gottscho-Schleisner Collection
This collection comprises over 29,000 photographs primarily of architectural subjects, including interiors and exteriors of homes, stores, offices, factories, historic buildings, and other structures concentrated chiefly in the northeastern United States.

Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey

View the Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey Collection
The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) collections are among the largest and most heavily used in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. This collection documents achievements in architecture in the United States and its territories through a comprehensive range of building types, 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.

Horydczak Collection

View the Horydczak Collection
This collection documents the architecture and social life of the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, including exteriors and interiors of commercial, residential, and government buildings, as well as street scenes and views of neighborhoods.

Library of Congress map collections can help you locate your ancestors in a particular time and place. For instance, some show landownership, others offer detailed information about the buildings on a block in a city or town.

Digital Collection Materials

Cities and Towns

View the Cities and Towns Collection
This category includes maps that depict subjects ranging from 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 Maps

View the Civil War Maps Collection
This collection brings together materials from three premier repositories: the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, the Virginia Historical Society, and the Library of Virginia.

Military Battles and Campaigns

View the Military Battles and Campaigns Collection
This category contains maps showing campaigns of major military conflicts including troop movements, defensive structures and groundworks, roads to and from sites of military engagements, campsites, and local buildings, topography and vegetation. Some of the maps are manuscripts drawn on the field of battle, while others are engraved including some that have manuscript annotations reflecting the history of the battle or campaign. Browse this category by location.

Rochambeau Map Collection

View the Rochambeau Map Collection
This collection contains cartographic items used by Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau (1725-1807), when he was commander in chief of the French expeditionary army (1780-82) during the American Revolution. The maps were from Rochambeau's personal collection, cover much of eastern North America, and date from 1717 to 1795.

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps

View the Sanborn Maps Collection
Created for a very wide range of cities and towns from about the mid-1850s to the mid-1950s, these often contained detailed information about a specific building and the buildings surrounding it. The Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps Online Checklist provides a searchable database of the fire insurance maps published by the Sanborn Map Company housed in the collections of the Geography and Map Division. The online checklist is based upon the Library's 1981 publication Fire Insurance Maps in the Library of Congress and will be continually updated to reflect new acquisitions. Browse the collection by location.

You may search the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog for photos of individuals or groups.

As a general rule, we have found that, when hoping to find an image of an ancestor who did not have a famous name, it may help to search using terms for something larger with which your ancestor was connected: did he arrive on a ship or serve on a ship? Fight in a battle, or on a battlefield? Help build or work for a railroad? Own or work for a business, or participate in a strike?

Even if the search results do not include an image of your ancestor (and if they do, your ancestor is most likely not identified by name), it will give you a visual sense of that larger world of which your ancestor was a part.

Digital Collection Materials

Van Vechten Collection

View the Van Vechten Collection
This collection consists of 1,395 photographs taken by American photographer Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964) between 1932 and 1964. The bulk of the collection consists of portrait photographs of celebrities, including many figures from the Harlem Renaissance. Browse the subject index to locate five images for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives

View the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives Collection
The images in the Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Collection are among the most famous documentary photographs ever produced. Created by a group of U.S. government photographers, the images show Americans in every part of the nation.

Detroit Publishing Company

View the Detroit Publishing Company Collection
This collection of photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company Collection includes over 25,000 glass negatives and transparencies as well as about 300 color photolithograph prints, mostly of the eastern United States.

Daguerreotypes

View the Daguerreotypes Collection
The Library's daguerreotype collection consists of approximately 600 photographs dating from 1839 to 1864. Portrait daguerreotypes produced by the Mathew Brady studio make up the major portion of the collection.

Historic newspapers can be extremely useful in genealogical research. Through a partnership with the National Endowment of the Humanities, this vast collection of historic newspapers fully searchable through the Library's website. Additional newspaper collections are available online.

Digital Collection Materials

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers

View the Chronicling America Collection
The Chronicling America collection offers digitized historical newspapers from around the United States between 1789 and 1963.
You may select a state and particular years within which to search, and then enter a family name and click Go. Or you may also enter a search term with which an ancestor might have been connected, for example "Titanic" or "Gettysburg."
Directory of U.S. Newspapers in American Libraries
This directory of newspapers published in the United States since 1690 can help identify what titles exist for a specific place and time, and how to access them. Use the options below to select a particular place and time, using keywords to locate specific titles. Titles currently listed: 156,720.

Japanese-American Internment Camp Newspapers

Japanese-American Internment Camp Newspapers, 1942 to 1946
Produced by the Japanese-Americans interned at assembly centers and relocation centers around the country during World War II, these newspapers provide a unique look into the daily lives of the people who were held in these camps.

The Veterans History Project (VHP) collects and preserves the remembrances of American war veterans and civilian workers who supported them. Some of these are transcribed interviews; some audio only; some audio and video. Not all materials listed have been digitized.

Search the Veterans History Project
The best way to locate specific people is to use this search form.
You may search by a veteran's name, or by conflict, by branch of service, and more.

Genealogy and Family History Research: A Guide to Online Resources

Digital Collections: Ask a Librarian

Digital Primary Sources

Finding Aids

Digitized Collection Materials

American Colony in Jerusalem, 1870 to 2006

Civil War Diaries

Federal Writers Project (WPA) Interviews with Formerly Enslaved Americans

Gladstone Collection on African Americans' Military Service

Special Essay on Suffragists

Digitized Collection Materials

Gottscho-Schleisner Collection

Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey

Horydczak Collection

Digital Collection Materials

Cities and Towns

Civil War Maps

Military Battles and Campaigns

Rochambeau Map Collection

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps

Digital Collection Materials

Van Vechten Collection

Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives

Detroit Publishing Company

Daguerreotypes

Digital Collection Materials

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers

Japanese-American Internment Camp Newspapers