Produced for over a century, more than 660,000 Sanborn maps chart the growth and development of more than 12,000 American towns and cities. Sanborn maps are large-scale plans of a city or town, drawn at a scale of 50 feet to an inch. They were created to assist fire insurance companies as they assessed the risk associated with insuring a particular property. The maps list street blocks and building numbers including numbers in use at the time the map was made and previous numbers.
Fold3 provides convenient access to military records, including the stories, photos, and documents of the men and women who served.
Full-text content and images from numerous newspapers from a range of urban and rural regions throughout the U.S. during the 1800s.
Search archives of several US newspapers individually or together, including Chicago Tribune, NYT, and WSJ, plus the Toronto Star (coverage years vary).
Provides researchers, genealogists, and scholars with searchable first-hand accounts and coverage of the politics, society, and events since 1851.
This historical newspaper provides searchable first-hand account of the politics, society, & events of Chicago & surrounding area; 1849-1996.
Obituaries can be a gold mine of information for the family historian! Where else might you find information about an individual's spouse, children, parents, siblings, surviving family members, date and place of birth, marriage and death, religious and social affiliations, education, community service, places of residence, hobbies and interests, maybe even a photo? Not all obituaries contain all of this information, but most will provide some additional clues to the life of your ancestor. Newspapers publish information that is of interest to those in the community, and the death of a community resident was and is news. Some entries may be only a simple notice of the death with just a name and date; others can be lengthy tributes penned by family members or friends. When no obituary is present, look for mortuary ads containing the schedule of upcoming funerals, lists of burial permits recently purchased, or even small ads placed by family members on the anniversary of a death expressing their continued sorrow over the loss of a loved one in the form of a short poem or quote.
