What is a primary source? video from Shmoop
Primary sources are materials created at the time of the topic you are researching, or by an eyewitness to the topic. Primary sources enable the researcher to get as close as possible to what actually happened during a historical event or time period. They are not a commentary about your topic but are the topic you are commenting about.
Primary sources may include:
Maps of all kinds: modern outline, political, thematic, topographic, scientific and animated maps, as well as tens of thousands of antique maps of the world, individual countries, U.S. states, and U.S. towns and cities, in an array of digital formats unavailable anywhere else.
Fold3 provides access to US military records, including stories, photos, and personal documents of those who served, revolutionary war - present.
HRC offers full text from leading history periodicals, historical documents, reference books, encyclopedias and non-fiction books, biographies of historical figures, historical photos and maps, and historical video.
Archives 1914-1918: during the First World War, 10 million people, service men or civilians, were captured and sent to detention camps.
For example, this search found: An appeal to impartial posterity. By Madame Roland, wife of the minister of the interior: or, A collection of tracts written by her during her confinement in the prisons of the Abbey, and St. Pelagie, in Paris http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1175595004
Available at The University of Michigan: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=evans;idno=N25929.0001.001