Your Guide to Locating and Using Diaries, Letters, Personal Papers and Other Home Manuscript Sources

Whether in an attic or an archives, published or handwritten on brittle paper, there is nothing like the joy of finding a contemporaneous document that bears on your ancestor's life. Most such documents are created by an organizational entity the church, local government, military or courts. Sometimes however, we can unearth a privately created document.

These papers are often discarded, destroyed or lost over time, but those that survive tend to be in one of three places: in the hands of a family member or friend, in the hands of strangers or safely housed in an appropriate repository. Because they contain historical information, many such documents have been published and now are being posted on the internet.

Books, Articles, Tapes
On the Web

Finding what has remained in the family:
Petty. Directory of Family Associations. 4th Ed. (find in a library)

Finding Diaries

Arskey. American Diaries: An Annotated Bibliography of Published American Diaries and Journals. vol. 1 1492-1844 / vol. 2 1845-1980 (find in a library)

Cline. Women's Diaries, Journals, and Letters: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1989.

Forbes. New England Diaries, 1602-1800 (find in a library ) Includes published and manuscript diaries, as well as other resources such as account books; limited to New England families.

Havlice. And so to Bed: A Bibliography of Diaries Published in English

Matthews. American Diaries, an Annotated Bibliography of American Diaries Written Prior to 1861. 1945. (Find in a library) Lists only published diaries.

 

Finding what has remained in the family...

See if there is a family association. Lists can be found at Genealogy.com Family Associations Addresses and Web sites.

Kindred Trails Surname directory will point you to web sites centered around a single ancestor.

For other links, see Cyndi's list section on Family Associations and Newsletters

Find distant relatives on a surname query board.
Combined rootsweb/ancestry message board
Genealogy.com message boards

Google "XYZ family Association" or "Smith Family" or

Finding what is in the hands of strangers...

Search either of the two boards mentioned above for words such as "diary" "letters" or "photographs" -- sometimes people who find a diary post a query there.

E-Bay: try adding the words "antique" or "old" to diary, journal, bible, letters, etc.

Published and Online:

There are many published books that list diaries, both published and unpublished (see column to left)

More and more diaries are transcribed online now. Often these are diaries that were earlier published as described above. Links to several diaries published online can be found at Diaries, Memoirs, Letters and Reports Along the Trails West. and The Oregon Trail: Diaries and Trail of Hope: Overland Diaries 1846-1869 .

An example of letters that have been transcribed and online can be found at Terry's Texas Rangers. Like many letters that have been saved and collected, these were written during civil war years. The Virginia Military Instate has a listing of civil war letters, diaries and papers in the VMI Archives.

A nice collection of a variety of sources that have been transcribed online can be found at the Prince Edward Island Register's page of Diaries, Family Histories, Memoirs, etc.

Finding material in trusted repositories

See my separate page on Archives.

Articles on finding and using manuscript sources.

Carmack. Dear Diary: Discovering Your Female Ancestors

Diary Research: A Guide to Selected Library and Web Resources.

Hatcher. Finding Private Papers

Hatcher. Using Private Papers in Research

Prescott. Diaries and Letters of Our Ancestor

*****************************************

Bible Records are treated separately on this site.

 

This page last updated December 4, 2006
Return to Bobbies Genealogy Classroom