The first-hand documents and records that anchor the Liberty Line archive.
Deeds and land records, church membership and minute books, federal and state census returns, military service and pension files, cemetery and probate records, newspapers of the period, and personal papers or memoirs written by the people involved.
Primary research draws on the Central Rappahannock Regional Library's local history collection, the Library of Virginia, the National Archives, Fredericksburg's city and courthouse records, and the archives held by Shiloh Baptist Church and other local congregations.
Enslaved people were frequently recorded only by first name, or listed as property in a bill of sale rather than named at all. Where the primary record is silent, Liberty Line says so directly rather than filling the gap with assumption.