State House and Senate Journals
Researchers can follow actions related to petitions after they are sent from Colored Convention delegates to state legislatures.
State journals may provide information. If digitized, these journals are freely available on the web in digital collections such as the HathiTrust Digital Library and LLMC Digital.
- LLMC Digital (Law Library Microform Consortium)LLMC Digital's Browse Collections leads users to hierarchical categories or the option to search full text with keywords.
Petitions to State Legislatures
Digitized minutes of Colored Conventions, available at Colored Conventions.org, are a source for the full text of petitions written by convention delegates.
Petition Announcements in Newspapers
Newspaper readers watched for announcements about government actions. Use the databases listed on the 19th-Century Newspapers page in this guide to search for information about petitions.
Tips: It is helpful to have a date range and location in mind. If an announcement is not found, check the newspaper database's issue calendar to make sure the issues for this time period were digitized and added to the collection.
State Archives
Contact the state archives of the state being researched.to see if the archive holds material related to Colored Convention petitions to the state legislature.
U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates
- A Century of Law Making for a New Nation (1774-1875)From the Library of Congress, American Memory collection.
- U.S. Congressional Serial Set