Historians and archivists know a secret that most of us do not: that vast stores of primary documents about North America’s Colonial era lie untouched and unseen in repositories throughout the United States and Canada.

Psst, I wanna tell you a secret.  My mother got me hooked on genealogy…well, it’s kind of an off again on again relationship, but when it’s on, it is so ON!  The best stuff I ever found were the biographical snippets of people from town dairies, and if there is more than that in colonial record keeping I am looking forward to it.  Apparently, these materials will finally be digitized and collected in one place to search:  A Colonial goldmine | Harvard Gazette.

Even if you don’t like the family searching, it’s fascinating to learn about history through individual accounts.