Were your ancestors in Arizona, California, District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Texas, Utah, Virginia, or Washington? If so, check out Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. The project goal is to digitize newspapers and place them on the Library of Congress website.

The first step is the digitizing of newspaper pages from 1880 to 1922, and over one million pages from the above states have been scanned and placed online. Eventually newspapers from 1836 to 1922 in all U.S. states and territories will be digitized and placed online.

Searches are easy. You select a state or a specific newspaper and enter search terms. If an obituary was published, you can find it. Other articles can be found, as illustrated by this article about John Skaggs in the 29 June 1906 Amador Ledger.

“John Skaggs, a pioneer & miner around here in early days, but who has been for many years a resident of the eastern states, is here on a visit to the scenes of his early gold-hunting. He mined in 1853 in & Jackson creek, and also around Volcano, and visited the latter town the first part of the week.”

Even if you don’t have someone in one of the digitized states, look anyway. Newspapers often reprinted unusual happenings from other newspapers. The 22 July 1906 issue of the San Francisco Call included a Portland, Oregon article.

“Gem Sticks to Gum on End of Pencil

Clever Scheme Enables Thief to Steal Valuable Diamond From Portland Store.

Portland, July 21.-  By an ingenious method entirely new to the local authorities one of the cleverest diamond thieves in the country is alleged to have secured a gem worth several hundred dollars from G. Heitkemper. A man known as G. M. Myers, but representing himself to be K. Reber of San Diego, Cal., called at Heitkemper’s store and after presenting his card asked to be shown some unset diamonds. A tray of stones was set on the counter for his inspection. He was exceedingly careful not to handle any of the gems with his hands, but used a lead pencil to segregate the diamonds. After looking over the contents of the tray he returned the pencil to his pocket and stated that none of the stones suited him. The fellow then took his departure and a gem went with him. He did the trick with the aid of gum on the end of the pencil.”

© 2004–2010

Connie Lenzen, CG^SM

10411 SW 41st Ave.

Portland, OR 97219

*CG, Certified Genealogist is a service mark of the Board for Certification of Genealogists, used under license by board-certified genealogists after periodic evaluation, and the board name is registered in the US Patent & Trademark Office.