Early government publications have a great deal of information. Many older U.S. documents are NOT in the Catalog so other sources need to be consulted. This is a list of some of the pre-1900 U.S. sources available for your research.
Indexes
Checklist of United States Public Documents, 1789-1909 - Located on 2nd Floor, Government Documents Index Shelves.
The 1909 Checklist has documents published from 1789-1909. It provides the SuDoc numbers and the Serial Set volume numbers.
