historical documents
Archived primary sources
Historical documents are records from the past that serve as primary sources for understanding events, people, and conditions of earlier times.
The term encompasses official papers like treaties, constitutions, and legal records, but also letters, diaries, photographs, and newspapers.
The National Archives preserves historical documents from the founding of the republic.
In legal and academic contexts, authenticity matters—a historical document carries evidentiary weight that a later account cannot.
- primary sourcesFirsthand historical evidence
- diariesPersonal daily records
- handwritten lettersMail composed manually
- illuminated manuscriptsHand-adorned medieval book pages
- census dataCollected demographic statistics
charters · artifacts · inscriptions · codices · land deeds · historical essays · indentures · treaties · letters · scrolls · tax records · ship manifests · contracts · court records · papal bulls · birth certificates · marriage licenses · legislative acts
- nonfiction anthologiesessay collections, political writing, cultural criticism, personal essays
- museum collectionsart collections, art collection, paintings, antiquities, historical artifacts
- library servicesyouth services, bookmobiles, reference desk, reference librarian, mobile libraries
- digital librariesebooks, digital libraries, virtual libraries, digital catalogs, e-library
- government documentswhite paper, laws, federal records, gazette, constitutions
- library collectionsrare books, manuscripts, medieval manuscripts, illuminated manuscripts, first editions
historical documentsforgeries
Fraudulent imitations of originals
counterfeit documents · fraudulent documents · hoaxes · falsified records · planted evidence
historical documentsoral traditions
Culture transmitted through speech
oral histories · archaeological artifacts · folk memory · eyewitness accounts · monuments