Research Guides: 19th Century U.S. History: 19th Century Newspapers & Magazines

Finding 19th Century Newspapers

If you are looking to see if USC has access to a specific newspaper, start by searching the Journals option on the Libraries' homepage and then enter the title of the newspaper for which you are looking to see if we have access to the publication online or in print

Databases that index historical newspapers:

19th Century U.S. Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Provides access to primary source newspaper content from the 19th century, featuring full-text content and images from 500 newspapers from a range of urban and rural regions throughout the U.S. The collection encompasses the entire 19th century, with an emphasis on such topics as the American Civil War, African-American culture and history, Western migration and Antebellum-era life, among other subjects.
Eight Centuries (formerly 19th Century Masterfile) This link opens in a new window
Indexes to journals, newspapers, books, documents, artwork, and images primarily from the 12th century through 1960. Includes multidisciplinary coverage of primary materials in the Humanities, Social Sciences, Engineering, History of Science, Law, Economics, Religion, Psychology, Government Documents, Visual Arts, Music, and the Physical Sciences.
America's Historical Newspapers, 1690-1998 This link opens in a new window
Part of Readex's Archive of Americana. Provides access to over 3,200 newspapers.
Collections include: Early American Newspapers Series 1-13 (1690-1922),; African American Newspapers, Series 1 & 2 1827-1998; and Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980.
C19: Nineteenth Century Index This link opens in a new window
Draws on indexes such as the Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue, The Wellesley Index, Poole's Index and Periodicals Index Online to create integrated bibliographic coverage of over 1.4 million books and official publications, 64,891 archival collections and 15.6 million articles published in over 2,500 journals, magazines and newspapers. C19 Index now provides integrated access to 10 bibliographic indexes, including over 300,000 records from the ongoing digitization of British Periodicals Collection.
California Newspaper Project (CNP) This link opens in a new window
The California Newspaper Project is an 18 year effort by the CBSR to identify, describe and preserve California newspapers.
Close to 9,000 California newspapers were inventoried in over 14,000 repositories throughout the state, 1.5 million pages of California newspapers were preserved and made available on microfilm, and 100,000 rolls of negative microfilm rolls are being processed for permanent storage at the UC Regional Library Storage Facilities.
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers This link opens in a new window
This site allows you to search and view newspaper pages from 1836-1922 and find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).
Historical Newspapers Online This link opens in a new window
Historical Newspapers contains four major historical resources.
Including: Palmer's Index to the Times which covers the period from 1790 to 1905 in The Times; The Official Index to the Times which takes the coverage forward from 1906 to 1980; The Historical Index to the New York Times which covers The New York Times from 1851 to September 1922; and Palmer's Full Text Online, 1785-1870, providing access to the full articles referenced in Palmer's index to the Times.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers and Magazines This link opens in a new window
This database provides access to 45 major national and international newspapers (1812-2012) including 9 African American Newspapers and 4 Jewish American newspapers. ProQuest's American Periodicals database is also included, providing access to 1,800+ popular magazines published between 1740-1940.

Also take a look at Marist College's extensive list of online 19th century periodicals

Reference books that index 19th century newspapers:

African-American Newspapers and Periodicals: A National Bibliography (1998) Covers publications from 1827 to 1990s
Antislavery Newspapers and Periodicals (1980) 5 vols.
A History of American Magazines (1958) 5 vols.
Index to Black Newspapers (1984)
Newspaper Indexes: A Location and Subject Guide for Researchers (1977) 3 vols. - Lists newspapers by county and state, with date ranges and depository designation
Newspapers: A Reference Guide (1987) This finding aid has information on newspaper indexes
The Wellesley index to Victorian Periodicals, 1824-1900 (1966) 5 vols.

19th Century Newspapers & Magazines

19th Century U.S. Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Features full-text content and images from 500 newspapers from a range of urban and rural regions from 48 states and the District of Columbia (no newspapers from Nevada or Washington). The collection encompasses the entire 19th century, with an emphasis on such topics as the American Civil War, African-American culture and history, Western migration and Antebellum-era life, among other subjects
African American Newspapers: The 19th Century (Accessible Archives) This link opens in a new window
(from Accessible Archvies) This collection of African-American newspapers contains a wealth of information about the cultural life and history during the 1800s, and is rich with first-hand reports of the major events and issues of the day, including the Mexican War, Presidential and congressional addresses, Congressional abstracts, business and commodity markets, the humanities, world travel and religion. They also contain large numbers of early biographies, vital statistics, essays and editorials, poetry and prose, and advertisements all of which embody the African-American experience. Newspapers include: Freedom's Journal, The Colored American, The North Star, The National Era, Provincial Freeman, The Christian Recorder, and Frederick Douglass Paper
African American Newspapers (1827-1998) This link opens in a new window
(From Archive of Americana/Readex) Provides online access to approximately 270 U.S. newspapers, from more than 35 states, chronicling a century and a half of the African American experience
American Periodicals 1740-1940 This link opens in a new window
Includes digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals published from colonial days to the dawn of the 20th century. Titles range from Godey's Lady's Book to Benjamin Franklin's General Magazine and America's first scientific journal, Medical Repository; popular magazines such as Vanity Fair and Ladies' Home Journal; regional and niche publications; and groundbreaking journals like The Dial, Puck, and McClure's
America's Historical Newspapers, 1690-1998 This link opens in a new window
Dates covered: 1690-1998 (From Readex/Archive of Americana) - Includes Early American Newspapers, Series I & II, 1690-1900; African American Newspapers, 1827-1998; Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980; Louisiana newspapers

Arizona Digital Newspaper Program
Dates covered: 1859-1978
Brooklyn Daily Eagle Online
Dates covered: 1841-1902

California Digital Newspaper Collection This link opens in a new window
A Freely Accessible Repository of Digitized California Newspapers from 1846 to the Present.
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Dates covered: Fulltext - 1836-1922
Directory: 1690-present Sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress, this site allows you to search and view over 600 newspapers from 25 States and the District of Columbia from 1836-1922. Can also search the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.

Chronicling America: California Newspapers (1873-1913)
Newspapers include:

- Los Angeles Daily Herald (1873-1876), Daily Los Angeles Herald (1878-1884), Los Angeles Daily Herald (1884-1890), Los Angeles Herald (1890-1893), The Herald (1893-1898), Los Angeles Herald (1905-1910)

- Imperial Press (4/20/1901-10/26/1901), The Imperial Press and Farmer(1901-1903), The Imperial Press (1903-1905), Imperial Valley Press and The Imperial Press (1906-1907), and Imperial Valley Press (1907-1910).

- The Morning Call (1890-1895), The San Francisco Call (1895-1913), The Call-Chronicle-Examiner (4/19/1906),The San Francisco Call and Post (1913)

- Amador Ledger (1900-1910)

- Sacramento Daily Record-Union (1880-1891), The Record-Union (1891-1899)
Colorado's Historical Newspapers Collection
Dates covered: 1859 - 1923
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Currently includes more than 500,000 digitized pages, representing 163 individual newspaper titles published in Colorado from 1859 to 1923.
Georgia Historic Newspapers
Dates covered: 1750-1925
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Contains issues of three important historic Georgia newspapers: the Cherokee Phoenix, the Dublin Post, and the Colored Tribune. Currently the only paper being added to this resource is the Cherokee Phoenix.
Godey's Lady's Book
Dates covered: 1840-1882, 1892-1898
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Key 19th-century publication geared towards women

Hispanic American Newspapers (1808-1980) This link opens in a new window
(from Archive of Americana) This Readex database covers Hispanic American newspapers from 22 U.S. states, searchable by dates and "eras", article types, languages, place of publication, and newspaper title
Searchable by dates and "eras", article types, languages, place of publication, and newspaper title.
Illustrated London News Historical Archive (1842-2003) This link opens in a new window
With its debut in 1842 the Illustrated London News became the world's first illustrated weekly newspaper, sparking a revolution in journalism and news reporting. This collection contains over 260,000 full color pages, and is fully searchable and browseable.
The publication presented a vivid picture of British and world events - including news of war, disasters, royalty, social affairs, the arts and science. Containing over 260,000 full colour pages, fully searchable and browseable, the ILN Historical Archive 1842-2003 provides users with unprecedented access to the entire run of this unique historical record.

Making of America - 19th Century Journals and magazines
Provides scanned copies of 991 volumes of 22 popular American magazines and journals published between 1815-1900
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Titles include:
The American Missionary (1878 - 1901); The American Whig Review (1845 - 1852); The Atlantic Monthly (1857 - 1901); The Bay State Monthly (1884 - 1886); The Century (1881 - 1899); The Continental Monthly (1862 - 1864);
The Galaxy (1866 - 1878); Harper's New Monthly Magazine (1850 - 1899);
The International Monthly Magazine (1850 - 1852); The Living Age (1844 - 1900); Manufacturer and Builder (1869 - 1894); The New England Magazine (1886 - 1900); The New-England Magazine (1831 - 1835); New Englander (1843 - 1892); The North American Review (1815 - 1900); The Old Guard (1863 - 1867); Punchinello (1870); Putnam's Monthly (1853 - 1870); Scientific American (1846 - 1869); Scribner's Magazine (1887 - 1896); Scribner's Monthly (1870 - 1881); The United States Democratic Review (1837 - 1859)
North Carolina Newspaper Digitization Project (1751-1898)
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A project of the North Carolina State Archives, this collection contains over 23,000 pages from newspapers. Click on the link "Newspapers Included" to see the current list of titles from 6 towns. The runs are mostly short, sometimes with only 2 or 3 issues from one paper. Advertisements are included, including indexing of the text. In addition to browsing, you can search by keyword, year, or a particular newspaper

NewspaperARCHIVE.com This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text access to over 6,000 American, British, Canadian and several other international newspapers with coverage between 1607-present.
Over 200 of these newspapers are from California, including the Oakland Tribune, the Bakersfield Californian and the Berkeley Daily Gazette.

New York State Historic Newspapers
Dates covered: 1795-2011
Oregon Historic Newspapers
Dates covered: 1860-1922
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46 newspapers have been digitized so far, with over 180,000 pages made available.
Pennsylvania Civil War Newspapers
Dates covered: 2/23/1831 - 2/14/1877
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Contains all of the words, photographs and advertisements from selected newspapers published in the years before, during and after the U.S. Civil War

Periodicals Archive Online (PAO) This link opens in a new window
Dates covered: 1665-2000 An archive of 700 digitized journals published in the arts, humanities and social sciences, providing researchers with access to more than 300 years of scholarship, spread across a wide variety of subject areas.
The database spans more than two centuries of content, 37 key subject areas, and multiple languages.
ProQuest Civil War Era This link opens in a new window
Dates covered: 1840-1865 Provides access to the full run of eight newspapers from 1840-1865 and nearly 2000 pamphlets from the Slavery and Anti-Slavery Pamphlets and Civil War Pamphlets collections.
Materials were specifically selected for regional and diverse perspectives they offer; newspapers include Richmond Dispatch, Charleston Mercury, New Orleans Times Picayune, Boston Herald, New York Herald, Columbus State Journal, The Kentucky Daily Journal, and the Memphis Daily Appeal. Pamphlets come from two important collections: Slavery and Anti-Slavery Pamphlets from the Libraries of Salmon P. Chase & John P. Hale and Civil War Pamphlets 1861-1865.

Utah Digital Newspapers
Dates covered: 1850-1969
Access to over 50 digitized Utah titles. Added to monthly
Washington State Historic Newspapers
Dates covered: 1852-2010
Wyoming Newspaper Project
Dates covered: 1849-1922
All of the newspapers printed in Wyoming between 1849 and 1922 are available in this this searchable and browsable collection.
List of 19th Century Periodicals (freely) available online
from Marist College