Illinois Newspapers on Microfilm

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Illinois, has a wonderful collection of Illinois newspapers on microfilm. Many of these are not available in digital format. This webpage contains links to Illinois newspapers organized by county, town, and time period. Film can be purchased or ordered via interlibrary loan.

Indian Land Cessions in the United States, 1784-1894

This set of online maps from the American Memory Collection at the Library of Congress contains detailed drawings showing Indian Land Cessions between 1784 and 1894.

Missouri Death Certificates from 1910-1963

The Missouri State Archives has death certificates form 1910-1963 online. It's been a while since we mentioned this and periodically the site extends the ending year of the database.

Old Yearbooks Online?

Have a relative who attended college? See if the college itself has put their old yearbooks online. Look at the school's alumni page or library website to see if there are links to digital copies. If you can't find them, try emailing the alumni office to see if they know if older yearbooks are available online. You may be surprised.

English Handwriting "Courses"

Need to brush up on your ability to read English? Here are two sites that may help:

• English handwriting 1500-1700
• Reading old handwriting 1500-1800 (from the National Archives-UK)

Databases at the New Brunswick Provincial Archives

The Provincial Archives of New Brunswick has a variety of online searchable databases on their site including city directories, marriage and death records, land records, and more. The site is accessible here.

My May/June 2014 Trip to the Family History Library

If you've been thinking of joining me in late May and early June for a week of research at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, there's still room for a few more on my trip. Additional details are in this blog post.

Links to Free Newspapers

I mentioned this on Rootdig earlier today, but thought that readers here may be interested in Penn Libraries list of online digital newspapers.

How Complete is That Newspaper Image Database?

Do you know how complete that online database of digital newspapers really is? If a site indicates they have coverage of the Lazytown Leader from 1880 until 1900, do they have all the issues of that daily newspaper or only a smattering? It may be that there are months where no papers are online or only a few issues are digitized.

And this may be the case even if a microfilm copy of the entire set of newspapers exists.

The reason you can't find that obituary for 12 November 1890 may be because there are no online images from November of 1890.