About
I love old newspapers and have been indexing & capturing information from them for several years. In 2010 I decided to better organize my work. I created a database and am now contributing this to the NCGenWeb Project.
Note: My indexing is NOT fully comprehensive. I've gleaned names from articles that I personally feel have more value for genealogy & family history research, so I have focused on vitals (births, marriages, deaths), interesting news stories, and articles where family relationships are mentioned (e.g. "Mrs. C.J. WALKER visited her niece, Mrs. R.F. BLAKELY"). I usually do not index advertisements, sports information, court information, etc. Sometimes the full-text of the article will be included in this database - sometimes only a summary will be provided. Newspapers are excellent sources of information and what is represented here is merely the tip of the iceberg of what is available in them.
DATABASE COVERAGE - Papers often covered more than just their native county; often including items on people in surrounding counties. Keep this in mind as you consider the coverage.
Alamance County
- Alamance Gleaner - deaths, marriages & news from 1881. Issues from 1881-1910 in Google News Archive
- Mebane Leader - January 1911 issues have been abstracted. Newspaper available online at digitalnc.org
- Davidson Dispatch - indexed 5 issues from November - December 1889. View more issues at the Google News Archive.
- Chatham Record - a few issues indexed from September 1878 - March 1879. Newspaper available online at digitalnc.org
- Fayetteville Observer - deaths & marriages from 100+ issues of 1857 & 1875. About 240 issues from 1939-2002 are freely available online in the Google News Archive.
- Henderson Times-News - extracts from a few issues of 1961 & 1963; including deaths & marriages. About 7,000 issues spanning the 1950s-2005 are freely available online via Google News Archive. Please note that some issues are labeled incorrectly as being from 1900s-1940s.
- Kinston Free Press - deaths from 1895-1928. Not fully inclusive due to gaps in the microfilm I own. For other extracts, please visit my Kinston Free Press website.
- Charlotte News - information extracted from Jan 1-3, 1911 issues. See all issues from 1911 online at the DigitalNC.org website.
- Daily Journal - info extracted from Feb 1877 issues of this Wilmington newspaper. Several issues are available online at Google News Archive.
- Polk County News - deaths, marriages and extracts from about 6 issues of 1902. About 600 issues from 1902-1926 are freely available online in the Google News Archive.
- Deaths reported in the Raleigh Register newspaper from 1799-1851. These are captured from Carrie Broughton's Marriage and death notices from Raleigh register and North Carolina State Gazette (1966). The print publication is 6 volumes covering 1799-1893. I have permission from the State Library of North Carolina and the North Carolina State Archives to include that information in this database. If you'd like to see the original publication, it is available online.
- Raleigh News and Observer - so far, I've only indexed the Jan 1, 1899 issue. But, I will continue with time.
- Roanoke Beacon -- deaths, marriages and some extracts from 1889-1899; Feb-Mar 1901. Not fully inclusive due to gaps in the microfilm. For additional extracts, visit my Roanoke Beacon Index site.
FIELD DEFINITIONS - As you use the database, it may be helpful to know what each field represents:
- Name - names are entered in "lastname, firstname" format. Any terms you enter will be searched for a match in the string, not necessarily just what you've entered. For example, a search for "Ambrose" will return "AMBROSE, Woodson" and "ARNOLD, Ambrose".
- Name Type - gives you a sense of the context of each person - if the person was the one that died, it will be labeled "Decedent," if the person is must mentioned it will be "Mentioned." Other options are Bride & Groom.
- County - may include more than one county; generally each county of relevance to the news item.
- Article Type - the type of article - whether a birth announcement, a news item, a death announcement/obit, legal notice, etc.
- Paper Date - the date of the paper; not necessarily the date of the event.
FINDING MORE ABSTRACTS
For more abstracts/extracts from North Carolina newspapers, try:
- Checking the individual county pages of the NCGenWeb Project
- DeathIndexes.com - collections of NC online sources for deaths/obits
- NC Newspaper Extracts Bibliography - on the FamilySearch Research Wiki
Last updated: June 9, 2013