Mardi Gras: Primary Sources

The University of Louisiana Lafayette's Digital Library includes a comprehensive repository of recorded and transcribed materials on French in Louisiana, as well as the Upper Mississippi River Valley, French Canada, the West Indies, and Africa.

Archive collection from the LSU Libraries.
Access to the complete list of newspapers via the Title, Parish, Decade, Historically Black, or Multi-Language Titles links on the left. Browse newspapers from Louisiana and other states at Chronicling America.

The National Archives has selected thousands of primary source documents to bring the past to life as classroom teaching tools from the billions preserved at the National Archives. Use the search field to find written documents, images, maps, charts, graphs, audio and video in their ever-expanding collection that spans the course of American history.

Louisiana, the "Pelican State," was named in honor of King Louis XIV. The primary sources in this set document key moments in the state’s story, and provide opportunities for students to explore that rich history further.

The Louisiana Digital Library (LDL) is an online library of more than 144,000 digital items from Louisiana archives, libraries, museums, and other repositories, making unique historical treasure accessible to students, researchers, and the general public in Louisiana and across the globe. The items in the Louisiana Digital Library are as diverse and interesting as the people and places in Louisiana, with photographs, maps, manuscript materials, books, oral histories, and more documenting the state’s history and culture.

Spotlight, theme-bases resources, today in History, Social Studies, etc.

A collection of records from the University of NOTE: Major Update is Pending. South Florida's library holdings, other library holdings, academic archives, plantation journals, public records, Freedman's Bureau records, early church records, oral histories, family bible records, Internet research and information contributed by genealogy researchers, historians and community members.

For over 50 years, the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University in New Orleans has developed and housed archives that document the modern Civil Rights Movement.

Biographies: The Atlantic Slave Data Network (ASDN) is a database of information on the identities of enslaved people in the Atlantic World. ASDN collates data on individual slaves meticulously collected by researchers over the past 20 years, including Gwendolyn Midlo Hall's Louisiana Slave Database 1719-1820.

This index is a joint effort of the Historic New Orleans Collection and the New Orleans Public Library staff and volunteers. It was copied from the card index located in the Louisiana Division of the New Orleans Public Library Main Branch, and references obituaries and death notices published in various New Orleans newspapers from 1804 through 1972 and biographical information published in early Louisiana biographical compilations.

ere you'll find record collections, history, and genealogy resources to help you trace your Louisiana ancestors

These databases are made available by the Louisiana State Archives, a division of the Office of the Louisiana Secretary of State. These are searchable databases for Louisiana death records more than 50 years old, Orleans Parish birth records more than 100 years old, and Orleans Parish marriage records more than 50 years old.