Free Newspaper Archives in the USExplore 250 Years of US Newspaper Archives, Free of Charge
History, Politics, War, Sports, Family Background, and Plain Old Everyday News
NorthEast
Some of the earliest newspaper archives in the US are found along the East coast, home to the original thirteen colonies where it all began. Here are the best free newspaper archives from the NorthEastern US.
Maryland
The
Marlyland State Archives, mostly 1800's. Sporadic coverage of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Archives are browseable by date, but there is no full text searching.
Massachusetts
Barnstable Patriot (1830-1930), the Hyannis Patriot, and the Sandwich Observer (all on Cape Cod, MA). Full text search, courtesy of the Sturgis Library.
Provincetown Banner and The
Advocate, 1918 and 1931-67 (1935 missing). Full text search, and image retrieval.
New Hampshire
New Hampshire Gazette, the first newspaper printed in New Hampshire. Formerly housed at the University of NH website, this now only seems to be available at the Wayback machine. There is only a single edition here, and it's 4-pages at that, but it's from 1756, and worth a visit.
New Jersey
Cranbury Press,
Cranbury, NJ, from 1886-1926, from the archives of the Cranbury Historical and
Preservation Society.
Atlantic
County, NJ (includes Atlantic City), 1860-1923
Red Bank Register, (Middletown, NJ)
1878-1947. Full text searching available. The site anticipated expanding the collection through 1991.
South Amboy
Citizen, 1910-1944. Browse by date, but no text searching. Page images available.
New The New Brunswick Daily Times and other papers, 1871-1908.
New York
Brooklyn Daily Eagle,
1841-1902 One of my favorite newspapers...a great glimpse into nineteenth century New
York.
The New York Times
archives, 1853-current. One of the world's great newspaper archives. All papers before 1923 and after 1987 are available free of charge, but there's a fee for any dates in between.
Northern New York newspaper
archives, 1844-2004 There's a scattered assortment of interesting newspapers here, but they can only be
searched one paper at a time.
Suffolk County, Long Island, NY, 1830's-1906, A surprisingly diverse
collection.
New Old New York State
Historical Newspaper Pages, 18th-20th centuries. An odd collection to be sure, but with more than 10 million newspaper pages from across NY, it's certainly a valuable one. Take a look at the FAQ for a
description of the collection.
New Rochester area newspapers, from Monroe County Library, ca
1800's. A small collection with a difficult search interface. Try this search as an alternative. Papers can be
browsed, and once opened as a PDF, can be text searched.
Pennsylvania
Philadelphia
Inquirer Civil War Archive, 1860-1865 The war from a Northern perspective.
Lancaster County,
PA Newspaper Archives, 1816-1889, and 1915-2001. Several online newspaper archvies,
including the oddly-named Columbia Spy.
Tioga County,
PA Newspaper Archives, 1838-2006. From Wellsboro, PA, courtesy of the Green Free Public Library.
Penn State Newspaper
Archives. There are several collections here, including their Civil
War collection, along with archives of student newspapers, and an assortment of articles from Lancaster
Farming from the 1950's onward.
Smethport, PA newspaper
archives, McKean County, 1833-1977. A broad collection from Pennsylvania mining country, made available by the Hamlin memorial Library.
Pennsylvania Digital
Archive, including the Nazareth Item (1891-1975) and the new Holland Clarion in
Lancaster County (1873-1950), There are many other digitized archives here as well in the varied but unfortunately, not very well-described collection.
Pennsylvania
Civil War Newspaper Archives, 1831-1877. Assorted papers including eight archived papers from Gettysburgh. Full page images
and full text search.
The Chester, PA newspaper archives, 1876-1976, includes the Chester Times, Delaware County Daily Times, and others.
New Access Pennsylvania Digital
Repository. There is a lot here, though the collection is not well described. 19th and early 20th century newspapers along with other digital materials. To zero in on the newspapers, used Advanced Search, enter newspaper and choose Description as the field to search
on.
New Ambler
Gazette, 1894-1931. Courtesy of the Wissahickon Valley Public Library in
Montgomery County, browseable by date.
Other NorthEast Archives
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