Newspapers of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, etc.



newspapers Over 26 million newspaper pages, mostly covering the 19th century, that is what is available online — Free of charge – from Fulton History. Nothing better for information of a specific time period than the local newspapers from hometowns and regions.

This Fulton site originally started with just the New York state newspapers, but has added newspaper in digital format from states such as Ohio, North Carolina, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Connecticut. Not every newspaper in each of these states is added yet, but more come online each month. It starts off with the New York papers. Note the next set of pages numbers at the top and process. The sixth section has newspapers from the states beyond New York. You see the newspaper name, location and the years covered. Call up one you are interested in and folders appears with individual years. Click on a specific year and then in PDF format each newspaper is available. Give it a few moments to download so that you can view it. Use the buttons at the bottom center – place mouse pointer down there and you can enlarge the viewing page. You can save the page to your computer or print it. Click on the PDF ‘tools’ icon so you have even more selections, like doing a search for a key word or name in the page. It will highlight the word you were searching.

If not sure which paper to search, use the general search box. Place the key word or a surname and see how many come up. I did ‘Everhart’ and over 500 pages appeared. Keep in mind the word can also apply to products, not just people. Even placing a full name – place it as full or exact phrase, can show you individuals with the same name in different locations – very interesting. Also don’t be surprised with name covered in different hometowns – news stories could be carried in newspapers in other states, even with the event occurring in the hometown state.

Here is an example using my great grandfather’s name, Joseph Groff.  It was Dec. 28, 1888, listed in a PA newspaper:

“The clothing of a 16-month-old child of Joseph Groff, of this city, Westminster, Maryland, was this morning set on fire by its 3-year-old brother during the temporary absence of their mother. The child was horribly burned and died.”

This previously unknown event will need to be investigated.

< Return To Blog

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.