Public Historical Documents
More Primary Sources to Enhance Your Historical Fiction
Newspapers, directories, maps and even cookbooks have incredible details for your historical fiction.
Accurate Historical Settings
Your readers should be transported to another time, and every detail must breathe truth. Try categorizing the details that exist in life and use that as a basis for your research. These categories might include speech, clothing, food, transportation, occupations, architecture, technology, local places, and world events and places.
Primary sources are created or used at the time of your historical story, and are vital to discover these details. Your character, or people like your character, kept diaries, wrote letters, and may have had photographs and / or paintings of themselves or their homes.
In addition, here are some these other public sources from the era to help you set the scene or give you a new plot twist:
Newspapers include social and political articles which give not only reports of events, but a glimpse of what was important to the local readership. When did the telegraph come to town? What was the outcome of the murder trial? What’s the tone of the election articles? Even if your characters weren’t directly involved in these things, this is what they were talking about.
Depending on the era, you’ll also find birth notices, obituaries and wedding stories, down to what type of cake was served. Advertisements can show items, prices and fashions. Look for miscellaneous tidbits such as proverbs, humor, and wanted or lost & found ads. For real people, newspapers may have interviews or hometown reminiscences of your historical character.
City Directories list businesses, heads of households, their address, and their occupation. Is a shoe store next to a meat market? Who lives upstairs from the harness maker? The directories also include membership lists of social and business organizations, and advertisements that can help you determine what a city is like at a particular point in time.
Census Records list not only names and ages of family members and servants, but occupations, whether they owned or rented their home, if they could read or write, were in school, and / or how many slaves they owned, all depending on the year of the census. You can see how many families shared a building, how many acres a farmer worked and what his land was valued, or how many of a mother’s children were still living. If you’re not looking for a particular family, it can give you a glimpse into household life in particular neighborhoods.
Almanacs give information about the weather, crops, advice for farmers and a myriad of other details, along with proverbs and other sayings to add flavor to your novel.
Maps can show anything from the layout of your town, to what business occupied which building, to the physical geography and landmarks of your area (creeks, mountains, etc.). Was traveling to Grandma's difficult? How long by foot? By horse? Maps can also show migration trails, giving you an idea of where your character’s family would have come from and what hardships they went through to get there.
Cookbooks aren’t something you normally think of when you research, but they can be invaluable for accurate food and cooking information. Does a woman mix biscuits with handfuls or cups of flour? Does a pioneer “receipt” show that gooseberries or wild plums were commonly available? Was Crisco shortening in use, or did they use lard or butter? And if you’re lucky, you may find handwritten notes in the margin.
For information on personal sources, read Primary Historical Research: Personal Sources Include Diaries, Photos and Artifacts.
For information on how to locate these personal and public primary sources, read Finding Historical Fiction Sources.
