Historical Newspapers, Birth, Marriage, & Death Announcements, 1851-2003

Source Information

Newspapers are great sources of vital information. They can be used to supplement and verify information found in other vital records and are especially useful as vital record substitutes when actual vital records are either inaccessible or non-existent. This database is a collection of birth, marriage, and death announcements for the following years and major newspapers:

• The New York Times (1851-2003)
• The Los Angeles Times (1881-1985)
• The Boston Globe (1872-1923)
• The Chicago Defender (Big Weekend and National Editions) (1921-1975)
• The Chicago Tribune (1850-1985)
• The Hartford Courant (1791-1942)
• The Washington Post (1877-1990)
• The Atlanta Constitution (1869-1929)

Note: There may not be records for all three vital events included in this database for each newspaper and year combination. Also, the above listed newspaper titles are the modern titles. Many newspapers have changed titles over the years and some of them included the words “weekly” or “daily” depending on how often it was printed. For example, the “Hartford Courant” used to be called the “Connecticut Courant.” You will see some of these historical titles in this database.

These newspapers were indexed using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. Search results will provide links to images of the original newspapers.