Larry Parker wrote recently to describe an online resource that he discovered. While not well organized, the resource can be a gold mine for anyone research ancestors. Larry writes:
“I stumbled on a google listing for part of a website http://geneseo.advantage-preservation.com/ which hosts scanned, old newspapers from Geneseo, Illinois, where my great great grandparents had lived between 1855 and 1900. The newspaper page images are somewhat searchable. I say somewhat due to what I consider to be poor quality images, without grayscale. (Advantage Preservation calls those starkly black or white images “bitonal”. I call them crappy looking.) Every pixel seems to be either black or white. However, the scanned newspaper pages were usually readable.
“I did a site search for my ancestor’s name, without success. However, I knew his date of death, so I searched page by page through an issue or two, and I was able to find a 1912 obituary for him, which was printed even though he hadn’t lived in Geneseo for the last 12 years of his life. I was thrilled with the new-to-me information that told me where he had been between the 1840 and 1860 censuses. He had been a 49er for three years! I also found an obit for his wife and brother, and a brief marriage announcement. The man’s obit also gave me new information which informed me who his two youngest children had married and where they then (1912) lived.
“I was so happy finding all of that fantastic information, that I decided to dig hard on the internet for other scanned and hosted newspaper sections of the Advantage Preservation website.”
Larry then obviously spent many, many hours to compile the links into a list, and sent the list to me for inclusion in this newsletter. It is a list not only of Illinois newspapers, but also of many states and counties which have entities (usually libraries) that have had newspapers and documents (or the microfilm they were already on) scanned and hosted by A-P.
Click here to view the file that Larry Parker compiled.
15 Comments
Here’s four more:
IOWA
Buena Vista County
Entity: Newell Public Library
Primary newspaper: The Newell Mirror; 1879-1981
Other newspapers or databases available: 2
URL: http://newell.advantage-preservation.com/
Entity: Storm Lake Public Library
Primary newspaper: Pilot Tribune; 1986-2012
Other newspapers or databases available: 21
URL: http://stormlake.advantage-preservation.com/
Entity: Sioux Rapids Bulletin Press
Primary newspaper: 1943-1999
Other newspapers or databases available: 7
URL: http://siouxrapids.advantage-preservation.com/
Plymouth County
Entity: Le Mars Public Library
Primary newspaper: Le Mars Globe-Post; 1891, 1893, 1894, 1896-1910, 1922-1969
Other newspapers or databases available: 16
URL: http://lemars.advantage-preservation.com/
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After clicking on one of those subdomains, Chrome users need to click on Help, and follow the instructions to change Chrome’s default pdf viewer, so as to be able to see the newspaper images. Or use a different browser.
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University of Pennsylvania Libraries has a listing of digitized newspapers, by state, here: http://guides.library.upenn.edu/historicalnewspapersonline
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And I have worked on this set: http://www.rrlcnewspapers.org/
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Thank You!! I’m always thrilled to have a new newspaper source. I wasn’t aware of these. Thank you also putting them in a nice format!
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Thanks Larry. Readers may want to check out Kenneth Marks who has an extensive list of online newspapers by State on his blog The Ancestor Hunt – . http://www.theancestorhunt.com/.
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This is great work, thanks for sharing!
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Don’t forget the Wyoming Newspaper Project (Wyonewspapers.org). This is perhaps one of the best newspaper sites around. Most of the state’s newspapers are digitized up to 1922.
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Here is an additional Iowa resource for Dickinson County Newspaper Archives found here:
http://dickinsoncounty.newspaperarchive.com/
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WOW!! THANK YOU! I just found a treasure chest of newspaper clippings about my Ristrim family in wide-spot-in-the-road Iowa. And that is just a start.
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You can add another one to the list for Maine – Fort Fairfield, ME by the Fort Fairfield Public Library, we just finished all the papers from 1863 to 1981. You can find them here http://fortfairfield.advantage-preservation.com/
From the librarian
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Also if anything is unreadable you can email me with the year, date, page number and article location to library@fortfairfield,org and I will be glad to take a digital photograph of the article and email it to you.
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I am in need of a link that doesn’t seem to work for me. I read ALL of Dick Eastman’s newsletters – sometimes it take time before I get to them. I guess I waited too long to read this one. “Click here” to view the file that Larry Parker compiled … didn’t link up. I got a dropbox error. Geek Squad just re-installed Windows 10 and moved my files from 2 storage sights back into computer and back so that all 3 locations would be equal. Since it looks like I have an issue because of the download from the dropbox to my computer, is there a way to get this “Click here” link … or the list of digitized newspapers list with their links that Larry Parker compiled and made available?
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There are now 282 links. Another website posted my list on February 3rd:
http://www.theancestorhunt.com/blog/big-update-advantage-preservation-now-hosts-282-free-newspaper-collections-with-1000s-of-historic-newspapers#.WMIiAoWcG9I
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I had copied the file back when Dick first wrote the article. I have added it to my dropbox as a word doc for anyone who wants to down load it. I believe I also added all the links from the comments above, as well as all of the newspapers from here in Maine.
You can find it here – http://bit.ly/digitizednewspapers
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