Digital Collections - State Archives of North Carolina

State Archives of North Carolina Landing Page

Do you have family ties to North Carolina? Early North Carolina records are available digitally at the State Archives of North Carolina web site. Digital collections include early newspapers, family Bible records, War of 1812 pay vouchers, cemetery transcriptions, marriage records, estates, guardianships, and more.

 To search North Carolina Family Records Online, start at the State Archives of North Carolina and click on the link to Digital Collections and Publications in the green "For the Public" box.  (Or bookmark the page!)

State (US) Digital Archives

Websites like FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com are not the only ones to offer digital content helpful in family history research. Many US states have their own digital collections of old newspapers, vital records, historic photos, military records, voter registrations, probate files, and more.

The Library of Congress published a comprehensive list of state digital archives last week in the article 71 Digital Portals to State History on their digital preservation blog, blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation (keep scrolling down until you see the title).

Whether your ancestors were from Alaska or Florida or somewhere in between, there may be records about their lives in a state digital archive. And you can search them for free, from home!

Alabama On-Line Digital Collection

If you have ties to Alabama, check out the on-line collections at archives.alabama.gov. Collections particularly helpful in family history research include:

• 1867 Voter Registration
• Civil War Service Database
  
• Index to City Directories (1837-2006)
• Index to Church Records Collections
• Newspapers on Microfilm
• Confederate Officers Photograph Albums

Use the Alabama Department of Archives and History site to find out what newspapers have been microfilmed, then arrange to view the microfilms through the public library Interlibrary Loan program.

There may be a Confederate Civil War Pension file, and finding the soldier's regiment and company are key to finding the right pension file.

The search mechanism finds only those entries that have exactly that same string of characters. In the case of a last name, that string of characters can be the whole name, or just part of a name (e.g., searching for "Lay" will yield "Lay, Layden, Layet, Layton, etc.). Because names can be misspelled, try a variety of spellings when you search.

If you find someone you're interested in researching, make note of the Regiment and unit, then go back and search for that regiment and unit (no specific person's name). That way you can see the names of all the soldiers in that unit.

Searching Digitized Books

Searching published genealogies is a good way to find out what research has already been done on your family line. Published county and town histories often include biographical information about early settlers, prominent families and community leaders. But how do you know if your ancestor was mentioned in a book? How would you go about finding out what books had information about your family's county or society?

County histories and published genealogies were generally printed in small quantities, so finding a copy available today could be challenging. If you were fortunate enough to find a book about your family or your family's county, it was fairly tedious to search for information about one particular individual: many such books did not include an every-name index.

When books are digitized, not only are they more accessible, searching them also becomes far easier and more effective. Then when you do find something, you can print a copy for your records, or save the image to your computer. Research has never been more convenient, effective, and inexpensive. (It’s hard to beat FREE!)

FamilySearch.org now includes a digital collection of more than 25,000 family, society, county and town histories. Some of these histories are one-of-a-kind typescripts that were once only available on microfilm. Google Book Search is a digital collection that includes thousands of college alumni publications, legal reviews, county histories, and more. Some books with no preview available on Google Book Search are available fully digitized on FamilySearch.org.

To see a state-by-state, county-by-county listing of what published histories are available, check out P. William Filby’s A Bibliography of American County Histories. In the "view inside this book" Google Book search box, type the county and state where your ancestor lived. Filby's Bibliography "opens" to the page listing publications available for that county.

Armed with that information, open a new browser window and check to see if the book is available at either Google Book Search or FamilySearch.org. The search mechanisms and collections differ, so your search strategies will be different depending on which site you're searching.

• With Google Book Search, enter your ancestor's name and the county and state as a single search criteria, for example "Lorenzo Bird Atchison Kansas" (without the quotes).
  
  
• At FamilySearch.org, click on [Search Records], then [Historical Books]. Enter the county and state in the Title field. If you find a book that you're interested in searching, click to select it, then enter your ancestor's name within the "Search this object" box.

Good luck, and happy hunting!