Primary Sources

BECOME A GOOD RESEARCHER! When you know what kinds of sources are available to you, you can find exciting stories, facts and photographs which can make history come alive!

A PRIMARY SOURCE is an ORIGINAL WORK of a person. A PRIMARY SOURCE tells you a person's ideas in his or her own words. You can gather first-hand information about people, events, topics, or places that a person may have written about years ago. When you are a good researcher you become an eyewitness to history! When you use first-hand eyewitness accounts to help you write a story, book, paper, or film, you are creating a secondary source. Two examples of PRIMARY SOURCES are letters and diaries. Try to identify other examples in the activity below.

ARE YOU A GOOD RESEARCHER???

Read the following examples of sources. Place a check by the ones that are PRIMARY SOURCES. Be careful! Some of these are difficult!

____1. Diary kept by John Smith, a soldier in the Confederate Army, published in a collection

Alabama papers

____2. Photograph of George Washington Carver taken in 1898

____3. Biography of George Washington

____4. Newspaper article about the assassination of President Kennedy written on November 23, 1963

____5. Television mini-series about President Franklin Roosevelt's life

____6. Scrapbook kept by Mrs. Mary Smith in 1883 with copies of recipes and household hints

____7. Photograph album containing pictures of classmates at Tuskegee University in 1923

____8. Letter written by Emily Smith to her friend Paula Jones, May 3, 1826, describing her trip by wagon from North Carolina to Huntsville, Alabama and the log cabin her father was building

____9. Article about Martin Luther King, Jr., in People Magazine, 1988

____10. Information about Creek Indians in World Book Encyclopedia

____11. Cassette tape of an interview with Dr. James Lee describing his life as a doctor in Montgomery County during the 1920's

____12. The Story of Alabama, a textbook by Virginia Van der Veer Hamilton

____13. Matthew Mason's will, 1896

____14. Map of Alabama drawn by John LaTourette, 1841

____15. Minutes from the 1898 organization of Dexter Avenue United Methodist Church published in a play in 1988

For more information contact:

The Alabama Department of Archives and History

Attention: Curator of Education

P.O. Box 300100

Montgomery, AL 36130-0100

Visit our web site at http://www.archives.state.al.us/