Chronicling America

Mary Beth Newbill | Southern History Department, Central Library

Historic newspapers have always been a staple of genealogical research. They provide such gems as obituaries, legal notices, advertisements, and tantalizing glimpses of life in another time and place. However, locating them and gaining access to them can be challenging. While genealogists have always relied on microfilm, digitized newspapers are becoming more widely available. Thanks to the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities, researchers have access to two valuable tools in their quest for historic newspapers. Chronicling America is available free of charge and consists of over 3,000 digitized newspapers and a comprehensive list of papers published in America from 1690 to present. This article and the accompanying video will explain how genealogists can use Chronicling America for their research.

The digitized newspapers cover the years 1789–1963. This collection includes select issues of over 3,000 titles. It is searchable by date, state, title, and keyword. Once you’ve entered your search terms, you can click on the image of the newspaper that contains your keyword and read the digitized page. Keep in mind that although a title might be contained in Chronicling America, its full run may not be there. Some titles have only a few issues that have been digitized. You can see how much of a newspaper is available by clicking on the link that says “All Digitized Newspapers, 1789–1963” on the homepage. You can choose a state from the dropdown menu or download the complete list of titles. By looking at the number of issues included and the earliest and latest date, you will know what the coverage is for each title. Also helpful is the additional information that Chronicling America provides for some of the newspapers. This will tell you what its geographic focus was, where the newspaper was published, and give you a history of the paper.

The second database in Chronicling America is the Newspaper Directory, 1690–present. This is a list of over 156,000 newspapers published in the United States beginning in 1690. It contains all of the bibliographic information such as dates, frequency, language, and more. It even provides helpful notes about the newspaper’s history. The nicest feature, though, is the link to libraries and other institutions that have copies of the paper. This is very helpful for genealogists who want to determine if there is any newspaper coverage for the place and the period of time that they are researching. Knowing which libraries have copies in their collection can be almost as helpful as having access to the online version.

I hope you’ll spend some time exploring Chronicling America and add it to your research toolkit. Remember, online databases are always changing as new content becomes available. If what you are searching for isn’t there today, check back often and see what’s new.