For the past 6 months I have been creating articles that contain links to both Free and Subscriber based online historical newspapers for the United States. Each article focuses on one single state (and the District of Columbia).

In total there are around 10,000 historical newspapers that are available online and the links are included in these articles. All publication dates for each newspaper are not online and of course not all newspapers ever published in America are either.

The Library of Congress in their Chronicling America site lists over 150,000 titles that have ever been published. To date the Chronicling America site has over 1,300 titles to search via their site. A small percentage for sure, but there are some "big name" newspapers that are included, and many of the 150,000 publications had a very short life - either one or two years or even shorter.

The Google News Archive has an even larger number of titles available online. And their links have been included in the articles.

Several states have state-wide online databases, whether sponsored by a state agency or university or not. For example, The Fulton Postcards site for New York has over 900 titles. The Portal To Texas History has nearly 600 titles and there is the University of Florida site that also has several hundred publications available online. Even Wyoming, a small state population-wise has over 300 titles available in their online newspaper database. And many states have either state-wide databases or county based ones, not to mention those housed by historical societies and local libraries in many of the states.

Below is a list of all 50 state articles (and DC).  Below this list are some links to special American newspaper collections that are not based on a single state.

I encourage you to take advantage of these links and find interesting articles and stories about your ancestors. In other words - click on the links below, proceed to the article and find the links that may be of interest to you.

Please note that any article that includes links to free or other newspaper research sites are accurate at the time of publication. Collection updates may occur (as well as dead links) in the future, both of which are out of my control. It is not the intention of the author (me) to maintain a complete or constantly updated list for all time. In other words, please don't yell at me if this is not 100% complete and/or accurate forever.


Links By State (Online Historical Summaries)

• Alabama 
  
• Alaska 
  
• Arizona 
  
• Arkansas 
  
• California 
  
• Colorado 
  
• Connecticut 
  
• Delaware 
  
• District of Columbia 
  
• Florida 
  
• Georgia 
  
• Hawaii 
  
• Idaho 
  
• Illinois 
  
• Indiana 
  
• Iowa 
  
• Kansas 
  
• Kentucky 
  
• Louisiana 
  
• Maine 
  
• Maryland 
  
• Massachusetts 
  
• Michigan 
  
• Minnesota 
  
• Mississippi 
  
• Missouri 
  
• Montana 
  
• Nebraska 
  
• Nevada 
  
• New Hampshire 
  
• New Jersey 
  
• New Mexico 
  
• New York 
  
• North Carolina 
  
• North Dakota 
  
• Ohio 
  
• Oklahoma 
  
• Oregon 
  
• Pennsylvania 
  
• Rhode Island 
  
• South Carolina 
  
• South Dakota 
  
• Tennessee 
  
• Texas 
  
• Utah 
  
• Vermont 
  
• Virginia 
  
• Washington 
  
• West Virginia 
  
• Wisconsin 
  
• Wyoming 
  

Special Collections

• African-American Online Historical Newspapers Summary 
• Farming Newspapers 
  
• Irish-American Historical Newspapers Summary 
  
• Jewish-American Historical Newspapers Summary 
  

I would suggest bookmarking the Newspapers! page on this website and visiting it regularly. Additional articles that are either informational or contain links are constantly being added. Also there are tutorials available for many of the newspaper research sites.

Good luck and happy hunting!

There are a bunch of different documents and records that the genealogist and family historian can utilize to find out more about one's ancestors, no matter whether they be related to life event dates or locations or include other information.

I have found that funeral and memorial books hold a ton of interesting information, much more so then one might initially consider. Some memorial books are quite ornate and leather bound, but many are quite simple and have less than 6 pages (at least the ones from the mid to late 20th century for my family).

Here is a sampling of one from the service of one of my ancestors, followed by a list of the types of information that can be gleaned from these pages.  

Let's go through the pages one by one and see what is available to us for research:

• Name of the deceased - Often the complete name including middle name is provided. For women, sometimes the maiden name and married name is written, but sometimes just the married surname.
• Birth Date
• Birth Location
  
• Death Date
  
• Death Location
  
• Age - often expressed in years, months, and days.
  
• Parents Names
• Grandparents Names
• Members of the Deceased's Family -  usually very helpful information, especially if there is no obituary.
• Obituary - I have one memorial for my great grandmother that has her obituary pasted in the memorial book.
• Location of Services
• Officiating Clergy
• Place of Interment
• Date of Interment
• Friends and Flowers -  this is the "holy grail" in my opinion for information in these books. If you are familiar with collateral research and especially Elizabeth Shown Mills' FANs  (Friends, Associates, and Neighbors) - you know how useful this research can be. Also you know that having these people's names listed as attendees at a funeral service mean that somehow they knew the deceased. Maybe they were a co-worker, or a neighbor, or a relative or friend of one of the deceased's children. That information is certainly useful when trying to find a census record when the deceased's last name has been butchered by the census taker or the indexer. Maybe for land plats they were their neighbors as well. Maybe by researching a co-worker you can discover their occupation. And lots of other "side-door" research and analysis of these names may bear fruit on the actual person that you are researching.

Beyond all of this information - maybe their favorite hymns were sung. Also one or two of their favorite poems were included in the book. All of this adds richness to our understanding of the life of the deceased - not just the dates and typical family tree information.

What other information have you discovered in memorial books from your family?