Searching Atlanta, Georgia Newspapers



Georgia StateEveryone might assume the City of Atlanta has been around as long as the United States has existed, but not so. Not until the southern train terminus was established in 1837, did any type of community exist in the area.  It was originally just named ‘Terminus’, then in 1843 renamed Marthasville and by 1845 finally named Atlanta. The first newspaper was started in 1846.  Over the next decade several other newspapers opened and then closed and a couple others merged. With the American Civil War, many newspapers were closed. By 1865 and the end of the war, numerous newspapers started in Atlanta. It was the Atlanta Constitution paper that emerged as the dominate newspaper, but that did not stop other newspapers from being created over the years.

For anyone with ancestors from Atlanta or its surrounding areas, having an opportunity to examine a collection of spanned images of these newspapers is very important in their research.  The Atlanta Historic Newspapers Archive which is part of the Georgia Historical Newspapers (plus the Digital Library of Georgia) has made a collection of 67,000 images available online.
The archive of Atlanta newspapers covers from 1847 to 1922 with fourteen different newspapers in the database.  There is a good search engine where just a certain newspaper can be listed, as well as a year.  The search box has you place a surname, a town, an event; whatever you may need to locate information.

The results will be listed with the name of the newspaper, date of the article and a page number.  Click on the desired article to read the scanned paper.

The Atlanta newspapers are not the only ones offered online by the Digital Library of Georgia.  There is a link to find additional papers for other cities. Athens, Georgia has searchable newspapers covering from 1827 to 1922. For Macon, Georgia the issues of the Macon Telegraph covering from 1826 to 1908 are online.  The Columbus Enquirer has issues from 1828 to 1890.

To view these varied articles a DjVu browser plug-in does need to be downloaded to your computer, but a link is provided on the site.

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