Gale National Library Week Offers Access to Historical Newspapers

Taneya Koonce Uncategorized

The Gale Cengage company is offering a wonderful treat during the next two weeks.   From now until April 24th, several databases will be available free of charge in celebration of National Library Week.

Several databases will be available, the one most likely to be of highest interest for most genealogy researchers is Gale News Vault becuase of its vast collection of historical newspapers.  The database includes both US & UK newspapers and has more than 10 million pages available.

For North Carolina — the following newspapers and ranges are available in the 19th US Century Newspapers subset of  Gale News Vault:

  • News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) from 1880-1899 –  close to 6,000 issues
  • Raleigh Register from 1800-1899 – more than 3500 issues
  • Fayetteville Observer from 1816-1899 – more than 3,000 issues
  • Daily Register (Raleigh, NC) from 1850-1861 – more than 500 issues

Remember, newspapers often covered items over a wide geographic area so you’ll want to be sure to especially check for news in counties near to where the paper was published.   For example, the Raleigh Register newspaper covered news from across the state — here’s an 1858 excerpt of an account on the death of Mr. George Hensley of Madison County (all the way on the other side of the state) who unfortunately met his demise due to an accidental gun discharge after a bear hunt.

Published in the Weekly Raleigh Register - Wednesday, January 27, 1858; Issue 10; col D

If you have research interests in other states, you’ll certainly wish to download the title list from the 19th Century US Newspaper collection as there are papers for many states.

To access the materials, choose from the drop down menu in the widget below.  Happy Hunting!

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P.S.  — hat tip to my friend Billie of the TNGenWeb Project for letting me know of this!

FYI, here are some other newspaper resources: