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Saturday, August 7, 2010

Researching Your Family Using Online Public Library Resources and Other Free Databases

While researching ancestors in New Jersey, Indiana and Missouri their online public library databases have been a great resource. I have found information on them that I could not find on Ancestry.com and newpaperArchives.com. I found death notices, marriage announcements and other interesting stories just from searching their online newspaper archives. I found a newspaper article on my grandfather when he was around two years old he had started a fire in their house! There was also plenty of social information like who visited who and who was sick. I had one family member that was always mentioned in the social section she was always visiting somebody or involved in church functions. You can even print the articles out.

Here is what these Libraries had to offer:

The New Brunswick free public library has holdings that include newspaper clippings, books, pamphlets, slides, microfilms, city directories, photographs, post cards, maps, manuscripts, and letters. They also have the New Brunswick Daily Times from December 27, 1871 to August 27, 1916 that have been digitized to allow online searching.

The Tipton County Public Library has the complete Tipton Newspapers from 1852- 1971 digitized and the database is fully searchable by keyword and date. The Library also has a searchable vital records index that includes marriage, obituary and cemetery records. Other online resources include Tipton County history books and the Tipton History photo collection.

The Genealogy Center of the Allen County Public Library has searchable vital records including; cemetery, obituary and other death event records, history, court and courthouse records, institutional, military, school and government records.

Missouri has great digital archives; you can even download a death certificate! The Missouri Death Certificate Database contains death records created after 1910 and over 50 years old, that information is available online through a searchable index that links to a digitized image of the original death certificate that you can print out. Death certificates before 1909 are available on microfilm at the Missouri State Archives. Missouri Digital Heritage

Fifteen States have already made their older death certificates available online Arizona, Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Vermont and West Virginia and several more states are in the process of doing the same.

Chronicling America is enhancing access to America's historic newspapers. This site allows you to search and view newspaper pages from 1860-1922 and find information about American newspapers published between 1690 to present. You can view newspaper pages from the following states: Arizona, California, District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Washington.

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).

For more information on searchable death indexes and records including probate indexes and cemetery and burial records listed by state and county click the link below:

1 comment:

Lori H said...

Great information. These free databases are a lifesaver for those of us on limited budgets. The Ohio death certificates have been so valuable to me. Before the free access, I would have had to pay $20 per certificate. There is just no way that I could have done that.
Thanks for sharing!