Genealogy Bank



The genealogy web site of GenealogyBank is an online genealogical resource from NewsBank, Inc. It features a wealth of exclusive material which include obituaries, newspapers, books, African-American data, pamphlets, Social Security Death Index, military and government documents.

In the newspaper collection it carries more than 4,400 newspapers with approximately 568 million articles from all 50 U. S. states. Besides hometown news, there are photos, advertisements, illustrations, letters and letters to the editor. Newspaper articles are good primary sources used in research. Many times information will be carried as a firsthand account of an event in the local newspaper that won’t be found in any other sources.

The obituaries and other articles in the newspapers go back to the early 1700s from small towns, rural communities to larger cities. The variety of books, with some 12,000 selections, cover from the listing of merchants in colonial Boston, to available patent medicines sold in the 1880s to church sermons and advertisements. An interesting feature are the collection of advertising cards with the book collection.

The historical documents can date back to the 1780s. These government documents included military records, casualty lists, Revolutionary and Civil War pension requests, widow’s claims, orphan petitions and land grants. Over 2 million entries are part of the historical documents.

Added recently is a fully searchable and expanding collection of newspapers which provide details about the daily lives of millions of African-Americans from 1827-1999. No other online source provides such a detailed snapshot of the African-American experience. Some of the family history records to be found across the U.S. include obituaries, military records, advertisements, editorials and illustrations.

The Social Security Death Index is also at GenealogyBank. It includes names, birth dates, death dates, and locations. The Social Security Death Index (SSDI) contains more than 87 million death records for individuals with United States Social Security numbers.

The collection of databases are available online with a paid subscription. They offer a monthly membership as well as a discounted annual membership.

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