I'm delurking here for a moment, because this post struck a strong chord for me. In the mid 1980's, I was working on a senior thesis for my undergraduate history degree. I was researching an abortive uprising in the Frederick MD area during the American Revolution. The conspirators were betrayed and caught before they could be effective. Eventually they were hanged. A number of them confessed and there were original extant trial records--but I couldn't find them. I started in Frederick, went to Annapolis, the Library of Congress, the National Archives and finally, about a week before the thesis was due, I found them at the Baltimore Museum of History (if my memory of the name of the institution is correct). When they brought me the box and I opened it and held the papers and read the signatures and the scrawled "X"'s of the dead Tory plotters... the whole incident became real, immediate and visceral in a way that all the other research had not achieved.