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Genealogy Resources

Newspapers

Newspapers play a vital role in genealogical research. While giving a daily account of the events in a community, the newspaper may include details on the life of an ancestor and his neighbors. The immediate use of the newspaper for the genealogist lies in coverage of deaths, including obituaries, notices, burial permits, cemetery plot purchase, probate or legal notices, news of accidents or injuries, or local society events and stories. Newspapers cover marriages, including licenses, local society news, engagements, and anniversary announcements. Also covered are birth announcements giving information on parents and siblings.  Additional information that can be found in land transfers or sales and property taxes. Some other sources includes: news stories, coverage of accidents and disasters, estate sales, tax sales, society news, lodge and club activities, school event, business advertisements, year end summary of deaths, accidents and tragedies, list of churches and their ministers, pastors, etc., railroad and ship arrivals, and stories that help tell about the world in which people lived.

The Library of Congress has the largest newspaper collection in the country. The library maintains one of the most extensive newspaper collections in the world. It is exceptionally strong in US newspapers, with 9,000 titles covering the past three centuries. With over 25,000 non-US titles, it is the largest collection of overseas newspapers in the world. Beyond its newspaper holdings, the Serial and Government Publications Division also has extensive collections of current periodicals (70,000 titles).

The State Historical Society of Wisconsin holds the second largest newspaper collection in the nation. More than 15,000 titles from the United States and Canada from the late 17th century to today's New York Times. The collection is national in scope with strengths in colonial newspapers, ethnic and labor newspapers, and papers from the major cities. Wisconsin predominates with from three-fourths of all the issues published in Wisconsin. See Newspapers in the State Historical Society of Wisconsin: A Bibliography with Holdings.

  • Accessible Archives Inc. Subscription site. Primary Source Material from
    18th & 19th Century Periodicals.
     
  • America's First Newspaper. America's first continuously-published newspaper, the Boston News-Letter published its first issue on April 24, 1704. John Campbell, a bookseller and postmaster of Boston, was its first editor, printing the newspaper on what was then referred to as a half-sheet. It originally appeared on a single page, printed on both sides and issued weekly.

  • America's Historical Newspapers, Readex. This growing collection of fully searchable historical American and Hispanic American newspapers is the most extensive resource of its kind. With nearly 2,000 titles from all 50 states. ($$- Requires paid subscription)
     
  • America's Newspapers. Local, regional, and national U.S. newspapers searchable nationwide or by state. Must be accessed through a public library onsite or online, depending on your library. From Newsbank. (Requires subscription)
     
  • America's Obituaries 1977 to current (GenealogyBank subscription site)
    Obituaries contain helpful information such as names, dates, places of birth, death, marriage and family information. Over 26+ million obituaries make this the most complete collection from the 20th and 21st centuries - includes over 1,000 U.S. newspapers. New content added daily.
     
  • Ancestry. com -- Historical Newspapers, Birth, Marriage, & Death Announcements, 1851-2003. This database is a collection of birth, marriage, and death announcements from several major U.S. newspapers for a variety of years. Images of the original newspapers are included. Subscription product. This database was acquired from the ProQuest Historical Newspapers collection.
     
  • Ancestry's Historical Newspaper Collection. ($$ - Requires paid membership)
     
  • Ancestry's Newspaper Obituary Database - A huge collection of millions of obituaries from over 100 newspapers from around the world. ($$ - Requires paid membership)
     
  • Archiver Unbound is the premiere place to go for information: an archive portal of newspapers, magazines, journals, and other special content. From ProQuest.
     
  • Arndt, Karl and May Olson. German-American Newspapers and Periodicals, 1732-1955. 2nd edition. Heidelberg, Germany: Quelle und Meyer, 1965.
     
  • Associated Press History. History and archives.
     
  • Bell & Howell Information Company. Catalog of Newspapers on Microfilm.
     
  • Bibliography of Iowa Newspapers. Iowa City, Iowa: Iowa State Historical Society, 1979.
     
  • A Brief History of Newspapers. By Phil Barber.
     
  • Brigham, Clarence S. History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820. 2 vols. 1947. Reprint, Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1962. Guide to early American newspapers and the location of their extant issues. Available in larger libraries.
     
  • Brigham, Clarence S. "Additions and Corrections to History and Bibliography of American Newspapers." Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 72 (1971), pp. 15 ff.
     
  • British Library Newspaper Library. The national archive collections in the United Kingdom of British and overseas newspapers.
     
  • Catalogs of Newspaper Holdings on the Internet. From the Library of Congress.
     
  • CRL Catalog (via telnet) The Center for Research Libraries' Online Public Access Catalog (385,000 records). Includes monographs, newspapers, serials, archival materials in microform, acquisitions records, and serial check-in records. Login and password are both "guest."
     
  • CRL Databases Webbed subsets of the above catalog. Includes Foreign Newspapers and the Ethnic Press.
     
  • Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. This site allows you to search and read newspaper pages from 1900-1910 and find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).
     
  • Connelley, William E. History of Kansas Newspapers: A History of the Newspapers and Magazines Published in Kansas from the Organization of Kansas Territory, 1854, to January 1, 1916. Topeka, Kansas: Kansas State Printing Plant, 1916.
     
  • Cyndi's List of Newspapers. This is the largest and most complete list of newspaper-related websites on the Internet. The websites linked here are worldwide, but mostly U.S., with a few for Canada, and a few for European countries. Newspaper sites are listed in alphabetical order, rather than by their places.

  • Family Search Labs Research Wiki.

  • FootNote. Newspapers. ($$- Requires paid subscription).

  • Gale Directory of Publications and Broadcast Media (formerly Ayer Directory of Publications). Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1869- (annual). Currently published newspapers listed by state and city, with the year established and the address. Available in many libraries.
     
  • GenealogyBank. Subscription site. Historical Newspapers.   1690 - 1977 
    Quickly find names and keywords in over 106+ million articles, obituaries, marriage notices, birth announcements and other items published in more than 500,000 issues of over 2,300 historical U.S. newspapers. New content added monthly. America's Obituaries   1977 to current. Obituaries contain helpful information such as names, dates, places of birth, death, marriage and family information. Over 26+ million obituaries make this the most complete collection from the 20th and 21st centuries - includes over 1,000 U.S. newspapers. New content added daily.
     
  • Genealogical Data from Colonial New Haven Newspapers. Genealogical.com.

  • GenealogyBank Newspapers. Source list.

  • Google News. News Archive Search.
     
  • Gregory, Winifred. American Newspapers, 1821-1936: A Union List of Files Available in the United States and Canada. 1937. Reprint, New York: Kraus Reprint Corp., 1967. American newspapers and the location of their extant issues, beginning where Brigham’s guide ends. Available in larger libraries.
     
  • Guardian and Observer Digital Archive -- UK National Newspapers. This archive will eventually contain the digital reproduction of every page, article and advert published in the Guardian (since 1821) and the Observer (since 1791 – the oldest Sunday paper in the world). For this launch the archive covers the period of 1821-1975 for the Guardian and 1900-1975 for the Observer as we are still working on digitizing the remaining material. From early 2008 onwards the entire archive up to 2003 will be available – more than 1.2m pages covering all major historic events over 212 years as reported at the time.
     
  • Historic Newspaper Archives. Original newspapers from around the world.
     
  • Historical Newspapers.   1690 - 1977  (GenealogyBank subscription site)
    Quickly find names and keywords in over 106+ million articles, obituaries, marriage notices, birth announcements and other items published in more than 500,000 issues of over 2,300 historical U.S. newspapers. New content added monthly.
     
  • Historical Newspapers and Indexes On The Internet - USA A Genealogy Research Guide. This portal part is part of the Genealogy Research Guides series. This is not an extensive list of newspaper sites, but it is well organized (by state). 
     
  • History Buff's Home Page. By the Newspaper Collectors Society of America.
     
  • The History of Printing and Printing Processes. From Mary Bellis.
     
  • History of the National Newspaper Association. The National Newspaper Association was founded as the National Editorial Association on February 19, 1885 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Fifty newspaper men and two women answered the call of Benjamin Briggs Herbert, publisher of the Red Wing (MN) Advance-Republican, to form a non-profit association to promote the common interests of newspapers.
     
  • HotSheets.com - Links to newspapers.

  • ICON: International Coalition on Newspapers/ Newspaper Digitization Projects.   This page highlights and links to past, present, and prospective digitization projects of historic newspapers. The focus is primarily on digital conversion efforts, not full-text collections of current news sources.

  • IFLA - USA Directory of Newspaper Collections.  This Directory originates with a Survey carried out recently by the former Round Table on Newspapers of IFLA, to secure information relating to National newspaper collection policies and procedures. This directory is being given wider circulation by the IFLA Newspapers Section to disseminate knowledge of newspaper collections.

  • International News Archives on the Web (Special Libraries Association).
     
  • Internet Public Library Newspapers - Access to current newspapers. Choose by country and state.

  • Jeffrey A. Bockman's Links for Genealogical Research on the Internet,  
     
  • Lathem, Edward. Chronological Tables of American Newspapers, 1690-1820. Barre, Massachusetts: American Antiquarian Society and Barre Publ., 1972.
     
  • Legacy.com - Hosts the obituary sites of more than 200 leading U.S. newspapers.
     
  • Library of Congress. Newspaper Archives and Morgues.
     
  • Library of Congress. Newspapers in Microform. The list of newspaper titles includes the latest microfilm projects as part of the national microfilming projects, as well as microfilmed titles from much earlier.

  • Library of Congress/ Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading Room.

  • The Linotype Machine: Thomas Edison Called It the "Eighth Wonder of the World." University of Richmond.
     
  • London Gazette. The official newspaper of record in the United Kingdom. Includes legal notices, including insolvency notices, required by law to be published in London. Available online from 1900.
     
  • Mercer, Paul. Bibliographies and Lists of New York State Newspapers. Albany, New York: University of the State of New York, 1981.
     
  • Miller, John W. Indiana Newspaper Bibliography. Indianapolis, Indiana: Indiana Historical Society, 1982.
     
  • Milner, Anita Cheek. Newspaper Indexes: A Location and Subject Guide for Researchers. 3 volumes. Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1977-82.
     
  • Mirrorpix Digital Archive (The Daily Mirror -- London). Mirror Archive is a new website from The Daily Mirror that allows you to find stories from our archives - dating all the way back to 1903 and the beginning of the 20th Century. Subscription site.
     
  • Mott, Frank Luther. American Journalism: A History of Newspapers in the United States through 260 Years. Rev. edition. New York: Macmillan, 1950.
     
  • NameTraq. This web site identifies surnames in the news. It searches more than 1600 news sources and includes more than 25,000 surnames in the United States.
     
  • National Endowment for the Humanities Newspaper Program. The United States Newspaper Program is a cooperative national effort among the states and the federal government to locate, catalog, and preserve on microfilm newspapers published in the United States from the eighteenth century to the present.
     
  • Newseum - Newspaper Front Pages. Read today's headlines from more than 300 U.S. and international newspaper front pages.

  • Newsbank. In addition to meeting the news and information needs of public libraries, schools, universities and several other organizations, NewsBank offers the general public convenient Web-based access to select market-leading resources for research. NewsBank’s direct-to-consumer services feature unlimited, 24/7 Web-based access and powerful search capabilities that enable consumers to quickly and easily pinpoint information from tens of millions of current and archived articles. ($$- Requires paid subscription)
     
  • NewsIndex, a global search engine for newspaper archives.
     
  • Newspaper Abstracts - Its goal is to become a complete resource for family history research using newspapers.  The site continues to grow with an average of over 350 new items added each month and currently contains over 19055 abstracts and extracts from historical newspapers.
     
  • NewspaperArchive.com - Search an online database of scanned newspapers of over 73 million pages from US & Canada. This is the largest historical newspaper archive online. ( $$ - Subscription site).
     
  • Newspaper Collection at the State Library of Victoria Australia. The Library's Newspaper Collection is one of the largest in Australia. It has an extensive range of Victorian metropolitan, suburban and regional newspapers, as well as selected interstate and international papers.
     
  • Newspapers at the National Library of Canada. The new Library and Archives Canada website integrates the former National Library of Canada and National Archives of Canada websites.
     
  • Newspapers in Microform, United States, 1948-1983, 2 vols. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1984. Bibliography of American newspapers that have been reproduced on microfilm. The years in the title refers to the years of data collection, not to the years of publication of the newspapers. Available in larger libraries.
     
  • Newspaper Indexes. From RootsWeb. So far, the listings span a hodgepodge of papers from 15 states.
     
  • Newspapers Mailing Lists. By John Fullers on RootsWeb.

  • Newspapers.com.

  • North Carolina Digitization Project. In 2009, the North Carolina State Archives completed a project to digitize newspapers from it's collection that were, up until that time, only available on microfilm. These materials include papers dating from 1752-1890s from cities like Edenton (1787-1801), Fayetteville (1798-1795), Hillsboro (1786), New Bern (1751-1804), Salisbury (1799-1898), and Wilmington (1765-1816) - a total of 23,483 digital images that are keyword searchable.
     
  • OldenTimes.com. Features old newspaper articles from or about Connecticut and Connecticut families. 
     
  • Online Newspapers from Around the World. From the Internet Public Library.

  • Onlinenewspapers.com.

  • Palmer's Index to the Times (London), 1790-1905. Vadus Kraus Reprint Ltd.
     
  • Paper of Record. Has more than 21 million scanned images of newspapers from the U.S., U.K., Canada, Mexico, France, Ireland, Spain and Australia. Subscription site.
     
  • Parsons, Henry S. A Checklist of American Eighteenth Century Newspapers in the Library of Congress. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1936.
     
  • Personal Name Index to the New York Times Index, 1851-1974. Succasunna, New Jersey: Roxbury Data Interface.
     
  • Proquest Archives An archive portal of newspapers, magazines, journals, and other special content.
     
  • ProQuest Historical Newspapers Online. ($$- Requires paid subscription). Available at larger libraries.
     
  • Readex. Review articles and informational pieces about the Early American Newspaper Collections.
     
  • Renkiewicz, Frank and Anne Bjorkquist. A Guide to Polish American Newspapers and Periodicals in Microform. Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota: University of Minnesota, 1988.
     
  • The Scotsman Digital Archive. The history of The Scotsman, first published in Edinburgh in 1817, is featured at this subscription site.
     
  • Setterdahl, Lilly. Swedish American Newspapers. Rock Island, Illinois: Augustana College Library, 1981.
     
  • Shurtliff, Joan. "Newspapers, Technology, and What They Mean to a Genealogist." NGS NewsMagazine 34, 1 (January-March 2008): 31-34.

  • SLA News Archives. This page links to news archives, information about archives that have changed because of the New York Times, Co. vs. Tasini ruling, and resources about archiving the news.

  • SmallTownPapers. Newspaper pages from small towns across America. Lists over 320 small town newspapers you can read free every week. Free site.
     
  • The Stars and Stripes (in France) -- 1918-1919. From February 8, 1918, to June 13, 1919, by order of General John J. Pershing, the United States Army published a newspaper for its forces in France, The Stars and Stripes. This online collection, presented by the Serial and Government Publications Division of the Library of Congress, includes the complete seventy-one-week run of the newspaper's World War I edition.
     
  • Szucs, Loretto Dennis and Sandra Hargreaves Luebking, editors. "Newspapers Sources by State." The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy. Salt Lake City, Utah: Ancestry Publishing Co., 1996. pp. 428-438.
     
  • Stamm, Patricia. "Black and White and Read All Over." National Genealogical Society News Magazine (April/May/June 2005)
     
  • Thatcher, Linda. Guide to Newspapers Located in the Utah State Historical Society Library. Salt Lake City, Utah: Utah State Historical Society, 1985.
     
  • Trager, James. The People's Chronology: A Year-By-Year Record of Human Events from Prehistory to the Present. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1992.
     
  • U.S. News Archives on the Web, the most comprehensive list on the Internet (maintained by
    the Special Libraries Association).
     
  • United States Newspaper List (N-NET)

  • USNPL - Listing and links of U.S. and world newspapers.
     
  • US Newspaper Program Web Sites List (from the National Endowment for the Humanities)  The United States Newspaper Program is a cooperative national effort among the states and the federal government to locate, catalog, and preserve on microfilm newspapers published in the United States from the eighteenth century to the present.

  • Wikipedia - List of Online Newspaper Archives. This is a list of free and pay wall blocked digital online newspaper archives. Most were scanned from microfilm and stored in gif or similar format until converted to text with optical character recognition (OCR). The OCR in most cases is used to create the index of searchable text, but some newspapers don't allow access to the OCR-converted text until it has been proofread. Older newspapers are still in image format, and newer newspapers are available as full text that can be cut and pasted. Most text is in ASCII, some are using Unicode for diacritical marks not available in ASCII.

  • Wilson, Thomas B. Notices from New Jersey Newspapers, 1781-1790. Lambertville, New Jersey: Hunterdon House, 1988.
     
  • Wilson, Thomas B. and Dorothy A. Stratford. Notices from New Jersey Newspapers, 1791-1795. Lambertville, New Jersey: Hunterdon House, 2002.
  • World Newspaper Archive, Readex. Representing the largest fully searchable collection of historical newspapers from around the globe, the World Newspaper Archive was created in partnership between Readex, a division of NewsBank, and the Center for Research Libraries to advance research opportunities across a wide range of academic disciplines. To include historical newspapers published in Africa, Europe, Latin America, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and other regions, this expansive resource can be cross-searched with America's Historical Newspapers for unprecedented coverage of the people, cultures, issues and events that have shaped world history. ($$- Requires paid subscription).
     
  • World Vital Records. The historic newspaper databases come from NewspaperArchive.com and SmallTownPapers.com. ($$ - Subscription product).
     
  • Wynar, Lubomyr R. and Anna T. Wynar. Encyclopedic Directory of Ethnic Newspapers and Periodicals in the United States. Littleton, Colorado: Libraries Unlimited, 1976.

Newspapers by State

California
Colorado
Georgia
Illinois
  • Illinois Newspaper Project -  Find your newspaper and what library holds it, and from there you can order the microfilm of it via interlibrary loan. To date, 10,115 newspaper titles are cataloged and listed on the Illinois Newspaper Project website. You can search by county, by city, by newspaper title, by year of publication, and by repositories. Some Illinois repositories hold newspapers from other states.
Indiana
  • Indianapolis Newspaper Databases assorted years and coverage 1848-1991 - includes the Indianapolis Herald, Indianapolis Journal, Indianapolis News, Indianapolis Sentinel and the Indianapolis Star
Kentucky
Maine
Maryland
  • Wright, F. Edward. Western Maryland Newspaper Abstracts: A Compilation of Items Taken from  the Available Newspapers of Hagerstown and Frederick. 2 volumes. Silver Spring, Maryland: Family Line Publications, 1985.
Massachusetts
  • Genealogical Column of the Boston Transcript, 1906-1941: Index. Microfiche at Allen County, Indiana Public Library.
  • Gutgesell, Stephen, editor. Guide to Ohio Newspapers, 1793-1973. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio Historical Society, 1974.
  • Harris, Ruth-Ann and Donald M. Jacobs, and Emer O'Keefe. The Search for Missing Friends: Irish Immigrant Advertisements Placed in the Boston Pilot. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1989-96.
Minnesota
Missouri
  • Historic Missouri Newspaper Project. The purpose of this project was to scan at least ten years of at least five historic Missouri newspapers and provide indexing for those issues.
  • Missouri Newspapers on Microfilm at the State Historical Society of Missouri. Columbia, Missouri: State Historical Society of Missouri, n.d.
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
  • Lingenfelter, Richard E. and Karen Rich Gash. The Newspapers of Nevada: A History and Bibliography, 1854-1979. Reno, Nevada: University of Nevada Press, 1984.
New Jersey
New York
North Carolina
  • Jones, Roger C. Guide to North Carolina Newspapers on Microfilm. Raleigh, North Carolina: Department of Cultural Resources, Division of Archives and History, 1982.

  • North Carolina Digitization Project. In 2009, the North Carolina State Archives completed a project to digitize newspapers from it's collection that were, up until that time, only available on microfilm. These materials include papers dating from 1752-1890s from cities like Edenton (1787-1801), Fayetteville (1798-1795), Hillsboro (1786), New Bern (1751-1804), Salisbury (1799-1898), and Wilmington (1765-1816) - a total of 23,483 digital images that are keyword searchable.
Ohio
  • Clegg, Michael Barren  et al. Ohio Newspaper Abstracts Series, Volumes 1-5. Decorah, Iowa: Anudsen Publishing Co., 1981-1987.
Pennsylvania
South Dakota
Tennessee
  • The Tennessee Newspaper Project - Newspaper Holdings Survey. The Tennessee Newspaper Project sent a newspaper holdings survey to almost 900 Tennessee institutions (libraries, historical societies, court houses, newspaper publishers offices, museums, etc.) in 1994. The survey was conducted to begin gathering information on American newspapers held in Tennessee. Information collected from the survey was entered into an in-house database and most of the information is available to public through a searchable version of the database on the web.
Utah
  • Utah Digital Newspapers. Over 500,000 pages have been digitized, with an every-name/keyword index to the entire collection.
Virginia
Washington
Wisconsin