Texas History: Primary Source Collections Online

Taken in 1903 and 1907, these 255 gelatin silver prints were originally published in American Lumberman, a weekly trade journal. The majority of the shots document lumber production activities near Diboll in East Texas, including log cutting, transportation, sawmills, and kilns. The collection also provides a glimpse of everyday life in a company town and in the logging camps. (Univ.of North Texas)

Maps for eight years spanning 1922-1955. (Houston Public Library)

3900 large-format drawings documenting park development and construction activities by the CCC in Texas from 1933-1958. (Texas State Library and Archives Commission)

An Annotated Comparative Analysis by George D. Braden, et. al. (1977) (Texas State Law Library)

Weekly Czech language newspaper from West, Texas. Online issues span 1920-1948.

Includes data from 1923 to present. (Texas Department of Criminal Justice)

Documents in law, history, and diplomacy. (Yale Law School)

Texas Seaport Museum has compiled the nation’s only computerized listing of immigrants to Galveston, Texas. The database includes names of passengers and members of their traveling parties, age, gender, occupation, country of origin, ship name, dates of departure and arrival, and destination in the United States. Information is also provided for a small number of ship arrivals. The ship database includes ship name, type of ship, master, home port of ship, arrival date at Galveston, port of departure, destination port, tonnage, number of immigrants, ship owner, and citation source. (Texas Seaport Museum)

Digitized primary documents are scattered throughout this exhibit site. (Texas State Library and Archives Commission)

Audio recordings and transcripts of interviews with Asian Americans native to Houston. (Rice Univ.)

City Council Minutes: 1840-1847, 1865-1869, 1872-1875, and 1875-1878. Revised Code of Ordinances, 1904, 1914, and 1922. (Houston Public Library)

City directories spanning approximately 1866 to 1923. Provides information on government entities, banks, churches, schools, benevolent societies, local businesses, and private citizens. (Houston Public Library)

A journal of Houston's Jazz Age. Read more about the history of the publication in this article in Houstonia magazine.

Spanning 1888-1956 (not inclusive of all years). (Houston Public Library)

The Houston Metropolitan Research Center is part of the Houston Public Library and is the Special Collections and genealogy / digital resources portion of the HPL.

A weekly Italian language newspaper that was published in San Antonio and Galveston between 1907 and 1913. Galveston, Houston, and San Antonio each had growing communities of Italians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (Univ. of North Texas, Portal to Texas History)

The Indianola Immigrant Database seeks to record the individuals and families that reached Texas through that ill-fated port of Indianola on the Texas coast. Most historical accounts relate that there were thousands of people who immigrated through the port of Indianola but there were never any official passenger lists for this port. The Indianola Immigrant Database is an effort to record Indianola immigration via family history, printed histories, and other sources that are often provided by descendents. (Victoria Regional History Center (VRHC) at the Victoria College/Univ. of Houston-Victoria Library)

John Herrera practiced law in Houston from 1943 to 1986 and was a leading civil rights advocate for Mexican Americans in Texas. This collection contains the private and public papers of John J. Herrera, 1940s-1970s, with an emphasis on his civic, business, and political activities. (Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library)

Includes oral histories, newspaper clippings, photocopies of secondary source materials, brochures, newsletters, and photographs either created, gathered, or maintained by Barnes. Dates range from 1830-1991, bulk 1920-1991. (Rice Univ.)

Late 19th-century compiled research on the Texas Revolution. (Texas State Library & Archives Commission)

Documents in law, history, and diplomacy. (Yale Law School)

Reflects a wide range of families and individuals through photographs and documents that capture business and work experiences, festivals and community events, daily life and individual achievements. (Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library)

The archive will eventually contain almost 30 years of the station's news footage from 1950 to 1979 and the original broadcast scripts, available on the Portal to Texas History; digitization has begun with the fall of 1956. "The Texas News" program on what was then WBAP-TV was the first newscast in Texas and the Southwest. (Univ. of North Texas)

Biographies of all of the governors of Texas, complete with official portraits, timeline of events, revealing documents, and rare photos. (Texas State Library and Archives Commission)

Contains a variety of collections related to the history of Houston and Texas, including early Houston histories; Houston area land records; Houston Asian American oral histories; Houston waterways collection; Port of Houston records; and more. (Rice Univ.)

Various Sanborn fire insurance maps for cities across Texas. (Univ. of Texas)

Revisions of 1879, 1895, 1911, and 1925. (Texas State Law Library)

Digitized primary documents are scattered throughout this exhibit site. (Texas State Library and Archives Commission)

"This book provides biographical sketches of noteworthy African Americans in Texas, and advice on how African Americans can lead fulfilling lives." (Houston Public Library)

Official service record files from the Adjutant General's Office and alphabetical files created by other agencies... related to an individual's service in a military unit. Information in a file varies considerably; may include measurements of uniforms, payments for mustering-in, warrants of authority, individual equipment records, general orders, oaths of allegiance, pay vouchers, powers of attorney, and discharge verifications.
Names listed in the index do not represent all people who served in the various units, only those represented in the records described above. If an individual is not found in the index, it should not be assumed that they did not serve.
(Texas State Library and Archives Commission)

In addition to the site's current information, the archive contains all the Almanacs from 1857 to 1989.
(Texas State Historical Commission)

Digital papers from cities all across Texas, 1829-1953 (dates are currently scattered). Free from University of North Texas; part of Library of Congress' Chronicling America project.

Interactive maps illustrate data on slavery in Texas' history. (Univ. of Virginia)

Texas Week was the first weekly magazine to be devoted entirely to the State of Texas. Founded right after WWII, its focus was on capturing the post-War normalization of the State – culturally, politically and structurally. (Univ. of North Texas, Portal to Texas History)

Digitized primary documents are scattered throughout this exhibit site, relating to David G. Burnet, Sam Houston, Mirabeau B. Lamar, and Anson Jones. (Texas State Library and Archives Commission)

Digitized primary documents are scattered throughout this exhibit site. (Texas State Library and Archives Commission)

Various collections highlight history of Houston, Galveston, & Texas.

Collections from a wide range of institutions, including the 12th Armored Division Memorial Museum, the Howard Payne University Library, and the Abilene Public Library, including oral histories, city directories, cemetery records, and much more. (Abilene Library Consortium)

"In the 19th century, Texas artisans & artists created ceramics, furniture, textiles, metalworks, photographs, paintings, and works on paper in this growing region... Their lives, practices, and products are captured in the census records, city directories, newspapers and primary sources included in the Hill Archive." (Museum of Fine Arts Houston)