Librarian
Petitions
For all of these, remember to limit dates to 1787 - 1850
Google Sheet: "Native American Petitions" & "Antislavery Petitions Massachusetts" (Harvard University)
- Native American Petitions: "A collection of digitized historical petitions relating to Native American political activity in the northeast region of the American continent."
- Antislavery Petitions Massachusetts: "A collection of digitized historical Massachusetts petitions relating to anti-slavery and anti-segregation activities."
- Using Google Sheets - Filter ViewsThis short YouTube video will take you through how to create a Filter View in Google Sheets! Data - Filter View - Create a new temporary filter view
- Hints for reading cursivePointers about common ways English used to be written, and some examples.
- Google Docs: Text to Speech (voice typing)Info on how to dictate text in a Google Doc
More petitions
- Early Washington DC, Law and FamilyThis site documents the challenge to slavery and the quest for freedom in early Washington, D.C., by collecting, digitizing, making accessible, and analyzing freedom suits filed between 1800 and 1862, as well as tracing the multigenerational family networks they reveal. Cases - Browse Petitions for Freedom
- St. Louis Freedom Suits / Legal Encoding Project (WUSTL)Includes transcriptions of selected cases, and information about people involved. At the center of the collection are the “freedom suits” where enslaved African Americans challenged the legality of their captivity long before the Emancipation Proclamation. Browse Circuit Court records. Or Search for the term "petition", and then look up the case name in the Circuit Court page scans.
- Colored Conventions ProjectDigitized records from the “Colored Conventions” (gatherings of African Americans across the United States and Canada) from 1830 until after the Civil War. They brought Black men and women together for political meetings at the state and national level, and in a decades-long campaign for civil and human rights. Basic search for "petition." More info on finding context/effect of petitions.
- National Archives: Petitions and Memorials, 1805 - 1951 (digitized items)Digitized petitions submitted to Congress between 1805-1951. Some of the petitions ask Congress to respect the rights and dignity of Native Americans and African Americans; others concern national parks and other public land. Many contain transcriptions. More petitions, all years, on all topics.
Researching Petitioners & Context
- African American Biographical Database This link opens in a new window
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(Searches through citations and the full text)
Contains biographies of thousands of African Americans, 1790 - 1950. Content now included as a part of ProQuest Black Studies. - Ancestry.com Library Edition This link opens in a new window
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Genealogical records, census data, military records, photos, and historical maps from Ancestry.com. International coverage with particular strength in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Dates of coverage vary by collection. - America's Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
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(Searches through citations and the full text)
Contains the full text and images from historical American newspapers, 1690 - 1922. Also includes sub-collections of African American Newspapers, Ethnic American Newspapers, and Hispanic Newspapers. Languages covered include English, Spanish, Yiddish, French, German, and Japanese. - America's Historical Imprints This link opens in a new window
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(Searches through citations and the full text)
This digital collection contains books, pamphlets, broadsides, and ephemera published in America from 1652-1900, all full-text searchable. - Readex AllSearch This link opens in a new window
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(Searches through citations and the full text)
Search across all of Carleton's Readex collections at once. Includes historical newspapers, government documents, books, ephemera, history of science and artificial intelligence, and the like. - Newspapers.com This link opens in a new window
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Newspapers dating from the early 1700s into the 2000s. Contains full runs and portions of runs of well-known, regional, and state titles as well as small local newspapers in the United States and other countries. - Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new window
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(Searches through citations and the full text)
Search across newspapers and digitized collections of primary sources from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, including ECCO: Eighteenth Century Collections Online, NCCO: Nineteenth Century Collections Online, The Making of the Modern World, The Times of London, The Illustrated London News, the Times Literary Supplement, The Economist, and many more. Covers 1604 - present (varying by source).
Justice Department (Judicial)
- HeinOnline This link opens in a new window
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Traditional legal materials (reported cases, statutes, government regulations, academic law reviews, commercially produced law journals and magazines, and classic treatises), historical, governmental, and political documents, legislative debates, legislative and executive branch reports, world constitutions, international treaties, military history, and reports and other documents of international organizations. - Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
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(Searches through citations and the full text)
Access to the full text of newspapers (foreign and domestic), as well as business, legal, medical, and reference publications.
- Nexis Uni - Supreme Court decisions since 1790
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This link takes you directly to searching Supreme Court Cases in Nexis Uni. - Reporter of the Decisions of the Supreme CourtClear list of Supreme Court Reporter abbreviations.
- Landmark briefs and arguments of the Supreme Court of the United States: constitutional law (1793-)For selected cases, contains transcripts of briefs and oral arguments.
- Material authored by the US Supreme Court (Hathi Trust)Includes court digests, court reports, and reports of specific cases that were argued in front of the US Supreme Court.
- Supreme Court @ National Archives (Record Group 267)Search within original copies/scans of Supreme Court documents. Note that NexisUni may have cleaner presentation of the text. Index of the collection.
- U.S. Supreme Court Reports - online1991 to present are available here.
- Material authored by any Supreme Court - US, State, and some International (Hathi Trust)Includes court reports, decisions, etc. This search can be narrowed by adding a specific state into the Author search (i.e. Author = Connecticut "Supreme Court").
Supreme Court Yearbook by Case summaries, term overviews, and key case analyses of the U.S. Supreme Court. Covers 1989 - current.
NOTE: You can also search across all of the CQ Political Reference Suite titles.
- U.S. CourtsOfficial directory of U.S.federal courts and their websites.
- U.S. Courts OpinionsA pilot project to provide digital records for select Appellate, District, and Bankruptcy courts. 2004-present.
- Caselaw Access ProjectAccess to the cases (including state-level cases) and their associated metadata. They currently offer five ways to access the data: API, bulk downloads, search, browse, and a historical trends viewer.
- American Prison Newspapers 1800-2020 This link opens in a new window
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Hundreds of periodicals from across the country into one collection that will represent penal institutions of all kinds, with special attention paid to women's-only institutions.
