Primary Sources

’n Gevangene werksaam in die tuin

What Are Primary Sources?

• Contemporary accounts of an event

• Written or recorded by someone who experienced or witnessed the event

• As, or just after it happened

• Well after the event

’n Gevangene werksaam in die tuin

“It had been by no means easy to flee into the mountains and to help set up what…should have become a partisan band affiliated with the Resistance movement Justice and Liberty. Contacts, arms, money and the experience needed to acquire them were all missing.”

-Levi, 13

Types of Primary Sources

Westminster E31/2/1

Official Records - information created or received as the result of an activity - saved, or preserved for evidence

Domesday Book, 1185-1186, Commissioned by William the Conqueror, King of England and Duke of Normandy

2nd century Latin will. Most wills were still written in Greek. Even more remarkable is that all Latin wills were done on clay tablets rather than papyrus

Hemmingway’s will, written in his own hand on September 17, 1955.

Wills

Photographs

Left: Correspondence between Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Feb. 23, 1944, FDR Presidential Library and Museum, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/psf/box37/

Right: Photograph of damage at 10 Downing St from bombing, dated Feb. 20, 1944, FDR Presidential Library and Museum, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/psf/box37/folo335.html

Correspondence

Diary of Jennie Andrews; entries about her late son Hiram; husband Orlando's activities; unwlecome house guests. October-November, 1876

River Falls MSS CO: Gerrish family papers, 1876-1909

Diaries

“One has to completely humiliate oneself to be what the Beatles were, and that's what I resent. I mean I did it, I didn't know, I didn't foresee; it just happened bit by bit, gradually, until this complete craziness is surrounding you and you're doing exactly what you don't want to do with people you can't stand, the people you hated when you were ten.”

- John Lennon, excerpt from an interview with Rolling Stone, 1970.http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/johnlennon/albums/album/171014/review/5942069/plastic_ono_band

Interviews

• Probates

• Deeds

• Homesteads

• Patents

• Court records

• Mining Records

• Works of Literature

• Audio and Video Recordings

•Data collected by researchers (fieldnotes etc.)

Other Types of Primary Sources

• Foundations upon which historical scholarship is built

• Don’t Speak Clearly (Interpretation needed)• Select, Organize, Interpret…

CRU-30a Raymond of Poitier, 1136-1149AD, bil. denier, Obv. portrait facing right with ruler's neck piercing circle, RAIMVNDVS around, Rev. cross with "Antiochie" around.

Hiberno-Norse Silver Penny

Using Primary Sources

Top Left: Birth Certificate of Mordchai Simakowsky of Mir/Emanuel Simon

Bottom Left: Inspection Card Mordchai Simakowsky of Mir/Emanuel Simon

Below: Proof of U.S. CitizenshipMordchai Simakowsky of Mir/Emanuel Simon

Creating a Narrative

• Interpretation or analysis of an historical event or phenomenon

•Journal Articles

•Scholarly or Popular books

•Reference Works

•Textbooks

Secondary Sources

Discipline Primary Source Secondary Source

Art Original artwork Article critiquing the piece of art

History Slave diaryBook about the Underground Railroad

Literature PoemTreatise on a particular genre of poetry

Political Science

TreatyEssay on Native American land rights

TheatreVideotape of a performance

Biography of a playwright

Summary