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Personal Accounts: Letters, Diaries, Oral Histories
Some of the sources on this page were written by historical figures and ordinary people. Others, especially oral histories, are those people remembering their lives and experiences.
American Civil War: Letters and Diaries
Contains 100,000 pages of letters, diaries and memoirs written 1861-65, by more than 2000 authors.
American Founders Online: An Annotated Guide to Their Papers and Publications
Serves as a single access point to websites offering the personal papers and publications of the American Founders. From the Library of Congress.[Full Description]
Bracero History Archive
Oral histories and artifacts pertaining to the Bracero program, a guest worker initiative that spanned the years 1942-1964
California as I Saw It: First-Person Narratives of the Early Years
Covers years 1849-1900. Site consists of the full texts and illustrations of 190 works documenting the formative era of California's history through eyewitness accounts
Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive
Searchable databases include the Mississippi Digital Library, oral history transcripts, and manuscripts and photographs. [Full Description]
Documenting the American South:
Search or browse full text sources on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period through the early 20th century: slave narratives, other first person narratives, literature, life during the Civil War and African American churches.
California Odyssey: Dust Bowl Migration Archives
Transcripts of oral history interviews with California residents who migrated to the San Joaquin Valley from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas between 1924 and 1939. Also photographs & bibliographies.
Early Encounters in North America
This release contains 1,482 authors and over 100,000 pages of material: letters, diaries, memoirs and accounts of early encounters in North America. The collection is centered on present-day Canada and the U. S. with limited coverage of Mexico.
Eleanor and Harry
The Correspondence between Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. 1945-1959.
John Muir Correspondence, 1856-1914
Digital images of the correspondence of John Muir from 1856-1914, which include letters to and from notable figures in scientific, literary, and political circles of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Manuscript Women's Letters and Diaries
This collection (when complete) will bring together 100,000 pages of the personal writings of women of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, drawn from the extensive holdings of the American Antiquarian Society
Nevada Test Site Oral History Project
Documents the remembered past of persons affiliated with and affected by the Nevada Test Site during Cold War nuclear testing. Transcripts, selected audio and video, photographs and images, from University of Las Vegas Special Collections Library
North American Women's Letters and Diaries
More than 150,000 pages of diaries and letters of over 1300 women, colonial period through 1950. Includes biographies and extensive annotated bibliography of the sources in the database.
On-Line Archival Collections, Center for Women's History and Culture
Digitized primary sources written by women slaves, spies, feminists, and more. From Special Collections Library at Duke University.
Oral History Interviews and Transcripts from the UC History Digital Archive
Transcripts of nearly 60 oral history intereviews conducted at UC Berkeley, Santa Cruz and Los Angeles
Oral History of the U.S. House of Representatives
Interviewees include a wide variety of House employees: House Officers, Member aides, committee staff, support staff, family of Members, and select former Representatives.
Presidential Recordings Program
Tapes secretly recorded between 1940 and 1973 by Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, along with relevant research materials. (The majority of tapes are from the Nixon Administration)
Suffragists Oral History Project
Profiles and transcribed interviews with twelve leaders and participants in the Woman's Suffrage Movement. Project directed by the Bancroft Library's Oral History Office, Berkeley.
The Sixties : Primary Documents and Personal Narratives
1960 - 1974. More than 70,000 pages of letters, diaries, and oral histories, plus more than 30,000 pages of posters, broadsides, pamphlets, advertisements, audio and video materials. Also interpretive essays by historians
Vietnam Project : The Oral History Project
"The mission of the [Vietnam] Oral History Project is to create and preserve a more complete record of the wars in Southeast Asia by preserving, through recorded interviews.."
Voices from the Days of Slavery: Former Slaves Tell Their Stories
Interviews of 23 individuals born into slavery between 1823 and the early 1960s, recorded between 1932 and 1975. Includes transcripts and streaming audio of the recordings. From the Library of Congress American Memory program