Tufts University Has Digitized the Southern Historical Society Papers

In an article which mentioned airplanes over the trenches at Petersburg, I also found some exciting news about the Southern Historical Society Papers.  I did not realize they had been placed online at Tufts University’s Perseus Digital Library.  Here’s a link to Volume 1.  If all else fails, just do a search for “southern historical society papers” and you’ll be able to access any of Volumes 1-37 online.  It’s a bit of a quirky navigation structure, but it’ll do wonders for my ability to add accounts from the SHSP to The Siege of Petersburg Online, something I’ve struggled with a bit.  I’ve been working with a badly OCRed set of PDF files looking for Petersburg materials, so I can’t wait to find some time to dig through this new version of the Papers soon.

Comments

4 responses to “Tufts University Has Digitized the Southern Historical Society Papers”

  1. Fred Ray Avatar
    Fred Ray

    Brett, they’ve been on CD for quite some time, but of course this is free. Searching the CD is easier, tho.

    Some issues of Confederate Veteran are on Google books.

    1. Brett Schulte Avatar

      Fred,

      I knew they were on CD, but I hesitated to buy them because I wasn’t sure if the OCR used resulted in accurate text or half-gibberish. I mentioned the SHSP online because it looks like someone went through and proofread the text. Now I may end up eating my words, because I only glanced briefly at Volume 1, but it looks promising.

      Nice find on the Richmond paper. More and more newspapers are showing up free on the internet. It’s a gold mine of interesting information for researchers and authors. My biggest issue is going to be finding not the letters from soldiers during the war, but anecdotes written after the war. All search functions are not created equal, and I’d hate to miss an article on Fort Gregg, for instance, because I searched for “fort gregg” and the article used ft. gregg instead. Patience is a virtue I’ve found when trolling through old newspaper articles!

  2. Fred Ray Avatar
    Fred Ray

    I see they also have the Richmond Times-Dispatch in searchable form.

    http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/collection?collection=Perseus:collection:RichTimes

  3. Richard Lee Lyons Avatar
    Richard Lee Lyons

    3/24/17

    Does anyone have any info of CSA troops who served as scouts in Loudoun, Fairfax,Fauquier counties VA during the C.W. I have 15 men who were Loudoun Co. Arty mn who I have no records for after the 1862 re-organization of CSA Arty. My conjecture is that they were sent home to play farmer during the day and scout during the night.

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