Many but not all genealogists are aware of the American historical newspapers that 
are being digitized. When I first heard of the endowment and structure of the funding that created the program, I thought it was too good to be true. How many times had I wished that I had access to old newspapers without having to travel to distant libraries in hope of finding them.? The U.S. Newspaper Program was the answer to one of fondest wishes.
The program is funded by an endowment by the National Endowment for the Humanities and by support from the Library of Congress, states and universities nation wide.
The newspapers are easily access through the Library of Congress site “Chronicling America Historic American Newspapers” but a university or library in each state has a website that hosts the newspaper images for each respective state.
The Chronicling America site allows easy searching by state, newspaper title, language, ethnicity, labor press and even material type.
State sites have a variety of designs that may not be as easily searchable as Chronicling America although some are very user friendly.
If you haven’t searched these historical newspapers for information about your family yet or even recently, take some time to do so. The collections continue to grow. Hopefully, funding for the project will remain in place until all old the old newspapers have been digitized and are part of the collection.
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