Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Chronicling America - a Genealogy Goldmine

If you're researching your family history in the United States during the years 1836-1922, you need to know about Chronicling America. Chronicling America is a a partnership between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for Humanities through the National Digital Newspaper Program.

Through this program, various institutions in each state are awarded grants to help select and digitize about 100,000 pages of historic newspapers. Each year, more newspapers and more years are added, giving historians and family history researchers more access to information that has previously been limited to those able to physically visit a library or archive, or pay for someone to copy the article for them.

I love digging through this treasure trove of information. I found out that one of my great great grandfathers had a series of restaurants and bars, and that a distant cousin died on a cruise ship in Nova Scotia in 1911. I've found wedding and birth announcements, flowery obituaries, county fair winners, hotel visits by out of town relatives and articles on elections.

What will you find? Well, you won't know until you start searching. Let me know what you discover. It's out there, just waiting for you to find it.

I'm off to continue uprooting my family tree!
Susan

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