Archival Links
See also: Archival Links: Maps / Paleography / Printed Document Collections / Spanish Colonial Archives: Structure
The links below include a wide range of archival and library sites, some of which have digital imagery, and others of which only include descriptive catalogs of holdings. At the bottom of the page are additinal links to pages where information about permission to reproduce documentary imagery in publications. I also have separate pages on Historic and Modern Maps, Paleography, Printed Document Collections, and a distilled Quick Archival Research Links. I have also developed detailed instructions for first-time users of several of the most important Spanish archival websites (with indices of primary sources and online document imagery), which can be found on my Primer on Using Online Colonial Spanish Documentary Sources. I will continue to add to this site as new online archival sites become available.
In addition, a freely-available book that has excellent resources for Spanish archival research is linked below:
Barnes, Thomas C., Thomas H. Naylor, and Charles W. Polzer
1981 [2021] Northern New Spain: A Research Guide. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Subordinate Pages
Map Links / Printed Document Collections / Paleography / Online Archive Primer / Quick Archival Research Links
Other Links Pages: General / Writing / Journals / Archival / Archaeology / Organizations
Categories below:
Colonial Archival Repositories
Spanish (Spain / Mexico / Cuba / Guatemala / United States / Other) / French / British / Other Colonial
Post-Colonial and Mixed/General
State and National / Printed / Maps / Newspapers / Miscellaneous / Permissions
Spanish Colonial Archival Repositories
PARES (Portal de Archivos Espanoles) (inventory and Search Engine, including extensive digitalized document imagery from many public archives in Spain, such as those below; see the appropriate section of my Primer on Using Online Colonial Spanish Documentary Sources for detailed instructions on how to utilize this important website; see also the search engine for the Censo-Guía de Archivos de España e Iberoamérica below; see also my Research Aids page for an inventory of Florida legajos)
Biblioteca Virtual de Defensa (searchable database of digitized documents held in archives of the Spanish Ministry of Defense, including many maps and other documents relating to Spanish Florida; see also the overall catalog at Red de Bibliotecas de Defensa)
Biblioteca Digital Hispánica (searchable image database from the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, including manuscripts, maps, and historical book; see also the catalog as well as the PDF Inventario General de Manuscritos)
Biblioteca Digital Real Academia de la Historia (searchable database of digitized documents held at the Spanish Royal Academy of History)
Archivo General de Indias (Sevilla)
Archivo General de Simancas (Simancas, Valladolid)
Archivo Histórico Nacional (Madrid)
Archivo General Militar de Madrid / also here (Madrid; description of holdings here)
Archivo Cartográfico y de Estudios Geográficos del Centro Geográfico del Ejército / also here (Madrid; description of holdings here)
Museo Naval (Madrid; description of holdings here)
Archivo General de la Marina "Álvaro de Bazán" (Viso del Marqués, Ciudad Real; description of holdings here)
@rchivAWeb (search engine for the 11 archives of the Junta de Andalucia, including provincial archives for Sevilla, Cádiz, and others; few links to digitized documents)
Archivo Histórico Provincial de Sevilla (important source for New World history including the Archivo de Protocolos de Sevilla, with detailed inventories of holdings and a downloadable Catálogo de los Fondos Americanos del Archivo de Protocolos de Sevilla)
Archivo Real y General de Navarra (includes a search engine but no digitized imagery yet)
Archivos Históricos de la Diputación Foral de Gipuzkoa (notarial archive of Gipuzkoa in the Basque country, available in Spanish; includes search page for digitized and undigitized documents)
Archivos de Euskadi (Basque archives hub; includes search page for both digitized and undigitized documents)
Gobierno de Canarias: Consulta de Documentos de Archivo (search page with access to an online catalog of documents in the Canary Islands)
Archivo de la Cámara Oficial de Comercio, Industria y Navegación de Sevilla (descriptive listing of documentation available at the little-used archive relating to shipping and maritime trade during the colonial era)
Institucion Colombina (web page, including searchable catalog, for the various libraries and archives associated with the Archbishopric of Seville, and the Cathedral of Seville; includes the surviving original library of Christopher Columbus and his son Fernando)
Fondo Antiguo (searchable page containing digitized rare books in the collection of the Universidad de Sevilla)
Fototeca: Sección Planimetría (digital images of early 20th-century photographs of architectural plans from the Archivo General de Indias; maintained by the Laboratory of Art of the University of Seville in their Fototeca, which includes a wide range of other imagery including some other handwritten colonial documents).
Corpus Léxico de Inventarios: (searchable database of colonial-era inventories created by the Universidad de León and the Real Academia Española; the default search is by "Texto completo;" searching with the box "Consulta lematizada" checked captures different potential spellings of terms entered, and the reverse is true if the box is left unchecked)
Archivo General de la Nacion (main page of the Mexico City archive, which includes a fully searchable Guide to holdings; see the appropriate section of my Primer on Using Online Colonial Spanish Documentary Sources for detailed instructions on how to utilize this important website).
AGN Archivos Desde Casa (PDF with links to many regional archives within Mexico)
Archivos y Manuscritos, Biblioteca Nacional de México (archival and manuscript collections of the Mexican National Library; includes the Archivo Franciscano)
Biblioteca Nacional de Antropología e Historia (homepage of the archival collections that include the Fondo Franciscano; search page here)
Archivo General de Notarias de la Ciudad de Mexico (AGNCM; index and detailed transcriptions of the notarial archive for Mexico City by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México - Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, with separate search engines for 16th-century and 17th-century collections, including many contracts and inventories of goods; search by checking the box "Resumen" and then entering search terms in Spanish)
Mexican Notarial Records - Full Text Search (an AI-powered text search for digital documents in the Family Search collection; includes many other records)
Archivos Notariales de la Universidad Veracruzana (detailed and well-organized index of the 16th-19th-century notarial archives of three major colonial cities of Xalapa, Orizaba and Córdoba in the State of Veracruz in Mexico, including complete indices by types of notarial instrument, geographic names, and personal names, and many digital images of original documents online)
Codex Mendoza (beautifully digitized online 16th-century document with Spanish text and Aztec imagery)
Florentine Codex (includes images, transcriptions, and modern Spanish translations of the Nahuatl and English translations of the Spanish, for all 41 chapters of Book 12)
Archivo Nacional de la Republica de Cuba (main page of the Havana archive, with only general text inventories of holdings; often extremely slow or incomplete in loading)
Archivo General de Centro América (main page of the archive in Guatemala, with only general information on holdings)
Library of Congress, Manuscript Division (includes digitized microfilm images of the complete East Florida Papers collection (see finding aid), mostly relating to East Florida during the Second Spanish Period from 1783-1824; also includes the LOC Hispanic Division, with a comprehensive inventory of microform and other holdings of documentary records collected by earlier researchers from a wide range of Spanish archives)
Slave Societies Digital Archive (extensive digital imagery of of wide range of original ecclesiastical and other documents, including St. Augustine, Florida, as well as several churches in and around Havana, Cuba, and many other locations in Cuba; some selected transcriptions also available; there are also some better-organized links to these files, as well as some othertranscriptions, at the Cuban Genealogy Club; project site maintained by Vanderbilt University).
P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History (main page of the best collection of Spanish Florida primary sources this side of the Atlantic; includes an excellent Guide to Researching in Florida's Colonial Papers: Florida's Colonial Period, which includes the information on specific collections below, and much more)
Florida Legajos from the Archivo General de Indias
John Batterson Stetson Collection (the card index organized by year is here)
John Hann Digital Archive
East Florida Papers
Family Search (an LDS genealogy/family history site) has a large amount of digitized microfilm images of Florida and other Spanish colonial records available online for registered (free) users; these include Spanish land grant archives, 1764-1844 and Spanish Florida land records, 1764-1849. I am posting links to individual microfilm reels on a separate Famiy Search page.
UWF University Archives and West Florida History Center (main page, which includes a Guide to Manuscripts and Special Collections to holdings, as well as some online Digital Content)
St. Augustine Historical Society Research Library (main page, including a searchable catalog of library holdings, including many microfilms of original Spanish records; includes the original John Batterson Stetson Collection of photostats from the Archivo General de Indias now curated here; the Stetson Collection card calendar for the years 1512-1763 is available online)
Historic St. Augustine Research Institute (main page of the archive, which holds 950 reels of microfilm; no online index or imagery)
Florida Historical Society, Library of Florida History (main page for the library; also includes a searchable catalog)
Unearthing St. Augustine's Colonial Heritage (a digital repository of records including historic photographs)
Mark F. Boyd Collection (finding aid to the research collections of Mark Boyd, housed at the University of Miami Libraries Special Collections department in Coral Gables; includes itemized list of historical documents)
Bancroft Library Guide to the Archivo General de Indias (well-organized finding aid to AGI materials in the Bancroft collections, with brief text descriptions of each document in their holdings)
Diocese of Louisiana and the Floridas (digitized records of predominantly Second Spanish Florida between 1786-1803, but including a few others as early as 1576; maintained by the University of Notre Dame Archives)
The Historic New Orleans Collection (includes contributions to the Louisiana Digital Library, as well as a catalog of 27 reels of microfilm taken from the Fondo Floridas collection at the Archivo Nacional de Cuba)
French Colonial, Spanish Colonial, and Nineteenth-Century Louisiana Documents, Tulane University Digital Library (digitized original manuscripts in French, Spanish, and English)
New Mexico Digital Collections (contains many digitized microfilm from the Archivo General de Simancas of military records relating to the regiments of Luisiana and Habana, within which were the batallions that served in West Florida and East Florida during the Second Spanish Period, particularly the 1780s and 1790s)
Documentary Relations of the Southwest (searchable database of archival sources; includes some Florida references)
Europeana (centralized search engine for "Europe's digital cultural heritage" hosted by the European Union; includes many Manuscript sources from Spain, France, and other nations; easy links to location of original imagery at host institution)
Censo-Guía de Archivos de España e Iberoamérica (Spain-based searchable index for many colonial Spanish archives across the Spanish empire)
The Guaman Poma Website (digital imagery and full transcription of El Primer Nueva Corónica y Buen Gobierno, by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, dating to 1615 but with extensive hand-drawn illustrations of Spanish clothing and material culture typical of the 16th-century colonial era).
French Colonial Archival Repositories
Gallica (extensive searchable database of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, including Manuscripts, Maps, and Books)
France in America (Library of Congress website with extensive online primary source material)
La France en Amérique (Bibliothèque Nationale de France website with extensive online primary source material)
New France, New Horizons (digital online archive of French colonial sources developed by the Direction des Archives de France, Library and Archives Canada, and the Canadian Embassy in Paris)
Louisiana Digital Library (extensive selected imagery of manuscript documents, such as their Pintado Papers collection of Spanish land plats and other records)
Records of the French Superior Council (1714-1769)
Early Louisiana French Correspondence
French Colonial, Spanish Colonial, and Nineteenth-Century Louisiana Documents
Louisiana State Museum Historical Map Collection
Archival Materials (extensive and well-organized collection of digital imagery and bibliographic source references for French colonial Louisiana, maintained by Vin Steponaitis at UNC-Chapel Hill; includes pages below:)
Early Maps of the American South
Colonial Louisiana: Historical Narratives
Colonial Natchez: Early French Documents
Canadiana.org (centralized initiative to preserve access to Canadian documentary heritage, including many subsites below:)
Héritage (searchable online collection of primary documentary images from microfilm)
Early Canadiana Online (searchable imagery of print documents online)
Canadiana Discovery Portal (searchable portal to a range of online Canadian archival collections)
Haldimand Papers (microfilmed transcriptions of manuscript records online; a useful index can be found here)
Archives de France (central portal for many French archives)
Archives (another portal maintained by the French Ministry of Culture)
Archives Nationales (French national archives)
Archives nationales d'outre mer (French overseas archives)
Les Archives diplomatiques du ministère des Affaires étrangères (French diplomatic archives)
Service historique de la défense (French military archives)
Fonds d'archives numérisés de la Loire-Atlantique(lots of original text and map documents)
British Colonial Archival Repositories
Colonial America and Colonial Caribbean (subscription-only access to digitized imagery of the entire CO-5 series from the UK National Archives)
Discovery: The National Archives (UK) (searchable digital imagery from the British National Archives, though full images only available by purchase; see the Catalogue of the Colonial Office for more detail on colonial records)
British Library (many digital holdings, including Archives and Manuscripts and specifically Digitised Manuscripts)
UK Hydrographic Office (includes archive)
British History Online (searchable digital database of printed primary and secondary sources)
Other Colonial Archival Repositories
Library of Congress (searchable catalog for digitized Manuscripts, Maps, and many other media including Newspapers, as well as their Chronicling America searchable U.S. newspaper compilation from 1777-1963)
National Archives (US) (searchable catalog of digitized material)
Digital Library of the Caribbean (searchable digital imagery of a range of media)
Archive of Early American Images (extensive and searchable collection of maps, prints, and other documents digitized by the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University)
Florida Online: British East Florida (several sets of transcribed documents from Florida's British Period, including Letters to Governor James Grant, 1764-1769, and translations of British-Period Spanish letters from Havana regarding Relations with the Uchiz Indians, 1771-1783; hosted by the University of North Florida).
The Atlantic World and the Dutch: North America (web site on sources for Dutch colonialism; see also the National Archives of the Netherlands)
Digital Commonwealth: Massachusetts Collections Online (great gateway to a wide range of archival and library collections available digitally online; includes a great map interface to zero in on content relating to specific locations around the US and the rest of the world)
Internet Archive Text Archive (searchable digital imagery of historic books located in a variety of different collections, including Project Gutenberg, which contains text-only OCR scans of a wide range of historical books).
World Digital Library (great centralized source for a diverse range of digital imagery, including scans of many colonial-era books and maps)
Munich Digitization Center (searchable digital imagery of historic books and maps from the Bavarian State Library)
Vatican Library: Manuscripts (catalog and some Digital Imagery; also see the main Vatican Library catalog page)
U.S. State and National Archives
Florida / Georgia / Alabama / Mississippi / Louisiana / South Carolina / National Archives / Library of Congress
See also the complete list of documents digitized by commercial partners of the National Archives.
US Census Imagery (access through Family Search with free account registration; for instructions issued to census-takers for each census, see Census Instructions; for printed census abstracts, see links on my Printed Document Collections page; for maps showing county boundaries as they evolved, see examples here for Florida, Georgia, and Alabama)
1790 / 1800 / 1810 / 1820 / 1830 / 1840 / 1850 / 1860 / 1870 / 1880 / 1890 / 1900 /1910 / 1920 / 1930 / 1940
Chronicling America (searchable imagery of U.S. Newspapers between 1777 and 1963)
Florida Memory (digitized records at the State Library and Archives of Florida)
Georgia Archives Virtual Vault (digitized records at the Georgia Archives)
ADAH Digital Collections (digitized records at the Alabama Department of Archives and History)
Printed Document Collections
On a separate page I am collecting a wide range of links to digitized printed document collections that contain unedited transcripts of manuscript sources in several languages.
Maps and Land Records
On a separate page are links to sites that focus primiarily on historic and modern maps.
Newspapers
Florida Digital Newspaper Library (site hosted by the University of Florida Digital Collections)
Catalog of Digital Historical Newspapers, aka NewspaperCat (includes U.S. and Caribbean newspapers; site hosted by the University of Florida Digital Collections)
Georgia Historic Newspapers (part of the Digital Library of Georgia)
Chronicling America (Library of Congress collection of digitized newspapers in the U.S. through 1963; searchable by state e.g. Florida)
Newspapers.com (a subscription-only collection)
Harvard Library Guide to Newspapers and Newspaper Indices (an excellent and comprehensive set of links)
Miscellaneous History & Archive Pages
Internal Pages
Colonial-Era Spanish Language Resources (my own web page with an assortment of links to historical Spanish-Spanish and Spanish-English dictionaries and grammatical texts dating between 1726 and 1848)
Colonial-Era Spanish Law (my own web page with links to digitized versions of original published summaries of laws pertaining to Spain's colonies, dating to between 1681 and 1791)
Colonial-Era Spanish Catholic Liturgical Calendar (my own web page with extracted transcriptions and original imagery from Roman Breviaries dating to between 1542 and 1738)
Colonial-Era Recipes (my own web page with translations of selected Spanish recipes from the colonial era)
Colonial-Era Weights and Measures (my own web page with tables of equivalencies and conversions of a wide range of Spanish colonial-era weights and measures)
Primer on Using Online Colonial Spanish Archival Sites (my own web page with detailed instructions for using thePARES Search Engine for the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, Spain, and the Online Guide to the Archivo Histórico Nacional in Mexico City)
External Pages
ArchiveGrid (great cross-referenced search engine including inventories of many archives in different locations)
Southeastern Native American Documents, 1730-1842 (a wonderful online collection of digitized document images from various archives, searchable or browsable by date, type, collection, or institution)
Vocabulario de Comercio Medieval (a very useful compilation of antiquated terms of material culture dating to the early Spanish colonial era, from the research of Miguel Gual Camarena during the 1970s, hosted by the University of Murcia)
Google Books (a massive and growing searchable digital repository of scanned historical books, including many of importance for understanding the Spanish colonial world; see the appropriate section of my Primer on Using Online Colonial Spanish Documentary Sources for detailed instructions on how to utilize this important website).
Targeted searches: Pre-1830 ( Spanish / French / English ) / Pre-1600
American Memory (the searchable Library of Congress website with a range of historical resources)
Archivos Digitales (a great listing of online digital archival collections in many languages; hosted by the Spanish-language site Archivistica.net)
Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes (a useful search engine with reference information, online transcriptions, and digital imagery of many historical publications)
500 Años de México en Documentos (a wide assortment of transcriptions of original documents from every decade throughout Mexican history)
CubaGenWeb (a useful site containing scanned PDF files of the Cuban genealogy magazine Revista, as well as a good overview of and links to historical sources for Cuban genealogy and history)
Early Americas Digital Archive: Web Gateway (an excellent selection of online texts from a variety of different sources)
The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, 1610 to 1791 (massive online collection of transcribed late 19th-century translations of French Jesuit documents relating to North America, including French Canada and Louisiana, originally edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites).
American Journeys: Eyewitness Accounts of Early American Exploration and Settlement (a collection of online translations and transcriptions, sponsored by the Wisconsin Historical Society; includes some Florida sources, many from older translations)
University of Florida Digital Collections (links to a variety of online digital archival material)
Florida History Online (an assortment of online resources about Florida history, including several extensive sets of documentary transcriptions and translations, focusing principally on Florida's British Period and later)
PALMM (main page of the "Publication of Archival Library and Museum Materials" site for Florida libraries, including a wide variety of sources from historical texts and maps to mid-20th-century aerial photo series)
Smithsonian Collections Search Center (search engine for a wide range of texts and images on file at various Smithsonian repositories, including DeSoto Expedition Commission materials, etc.)
Papers of the War Department, 1784-1800 (searchable online collection of a wide range of early American manuscript documents, including Indian Affairs documents relating to Second Spanish Florida)
EmersonKent.com (extensive digital collection of historical and modern maps, documents, and other historical resources from around the world, including many relating to Spanish colonial efforts in North America)
The History Cooperative (extensive nonprofit resource center with a range of journals and other materials of interest)
West Florida Genealogy Library (great genealogy and local history collection owned by the West Florida Genealogical Society and housed at the West Florida Public Library)
17th and 18th Century Paleographic (and other) Resources Online (great collection of useful links; hosted by Yale University)
Early Modern Resources (diverse site focusing on the period from 1500-1800)
Cyclopaedia (searchable digital scan of the original 1728 Cyclopaedia: An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences by Ephraim Chambers; hosted by the University of Wisconsin)
Ecclesiastical Calendar Calulator(reliable site to calculate historical dates for Easter, as well as a table showing the related dates for other important Catholic feast days, which were commonly used instead of numerical dates in historical texts from the Spanish colonial era)
Calendar Calculator (an easy-to-use date calculator that shows the day of the week for any date in history, including Gregorian (post-1582) and Julian calendars, as well as several other more exotic calendar systems)
Calculate Duration between Two Dates (great calculator for calculating the number of days, months, etc. between specific dates)
Six Millenium Catalog of Phases of the Moon (tables organized by century, including all four phases of the moon throughout every year of the colonial era).
Universalis (current Roman Catholic liturgical calendar, focusing on Breviary use)
Saints.SPQN.com (comprehensive and easily-navigated site with information on Roman Catholic saints, whose feast days were commonly used instead of numerical dates in historical texts from the Spanish colonial era)
La legislación colonial española de Indias (good site in Spanish with historical details regarding legislation in the New World, including the full facsimile text of the Recopilacion de Leyes de los Reynos de las Indias de 1680)
Chronological Listing of Tropical Cyclones affecting North Florida and Coastal Georgia 1565-1899 (great site with information regarding hurricanes and tropical storms during the Spanish period and later)
Convert-me.com (good source for modern unit conversions, including a few generalized "Old Spanish" measures such asDistance and Length and Area).
Multilingual Archive Terminology (useful compilation by the International Council on Archives)
ExploreSeville.com (excellent site in English detailing many facets of life in Seville, from hotels and food to sightseeing and festivals)
Map and Manuscript Image Reproduction Permission Links
The links below are to pages that either provide attribution or citation information for publicly available digital imagery, or that provide information and documents or forms that need to be filled out to request formal permission to reproduce maps or other manuscript document as images in books, articles, theses, etc. (and in some cases to request high-resolution copies, with applicable fees).
United States
Library of Congress: Manuscripts
United Kingdom
Spain
Archivo General de Indias (information about ordering digital copies here)
Mexico