UPDATED! Delaware Newspapers
Paper! Paper!
By members Mike Miscoski and Reese Robinson
To add color to your family history, look at newspapers published at the time and in the location where your family lived. You will be pleased with the stories of friends and neighbors, accounts of births, marriages, deaths, and the occasional news item.
This article updates a January 2016 First State Genealogist article about the Delaware newspapers available to members from multiple resources. The number of newspapers has dramatically increased since 2016. Here you’ll find information on currently available newspaper resources, including a new database of more than 500 newspapers and where to find them.
Genealogy Bank
Genealogy Bank offers a 7-day free trial, has an annual subscription, and may offer a 1-month subscription. Their collection includes 59,000+ paper issues in 114 papers from 15 cities in Delaware. The oldest is the Delaware Gazette (1785), while their largest collection is the Delaware State News (20,866 issues; 1945-2018).
Newspaper Archive
Newspaper Archive offers a 7-day free trial, has an annual subscription, and may offer a 1-month subscription. Their collection includes 32,000+ issues in 83 newspapers from 11 cities in Delaware. The oldest is the Wilmington Mercury (1798), while their largest collection is the Evening Journal (10,574 issues; 1888-1923).
Newspapers.com
Newspapers.com is perhaps the premier site for research access to newspapers. Most importantly, it is an integral part of the Ancestory.com system, making it easy to save your clippings to your Ancestry tree. It offers a 7-day free trial and two subscription types: Basic or Publisher Extra, which includes more newspapers and unlimited access.
Their collection includes 3,380,000+ pages in 84 papers from 17 cities in Delaware. The oldest is the Wilmington Mercury (1798), while their most extensive collection is The News Journal [actually a cluster of 8 different newspapers] (2,048,000+ pages; 1871-2024).
FindMyPast and MyHeritage
The FindMyPast collection of 2,404 newspapers is focused on England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, and the rest of the world. This latter group includes two US newspapers, but none from Delaware.
MyHeritage offers the Delaware News and the Sunday Morning Star, but more importantly, in March 2024, it introduced a new newspaper resource: OldNews.com.
OldNews.com
OldNews.com is the newest newspaper research resource. At launch, the website included newspapers from the U.S., Canada, U.K., Austria, Germany, Czechia, the Netherlands, and Australia. OldNews.com offers a 7-day free trial and an annual subscription. However, they do not openly declare the number of newspapers, the years covered, or the number of issues/pages. Our research indicates that OldNews includes about 101 papers from 12 cities in Delaware.
OldNews is integrated with MyHeritage, meaning that, at this writing, MyHeritage and OldNews.com users can use their log-in credentials across both platforms.
Chronicling America
Chronicling America is the free newspaper collection of the Library of Congress. They currently include 111 papers from 15 cities in Delaware. This collection provides images of newspaper pages and is OCR imaged. With Search and “Advanced Search” functionality, you can search for words, names, and phrases. Additionally, a new beta collection with enhancements is still under development. See the link for the Beta interface below.
Google News Archive
Google News Archive, an extension of Google News, had a short life (2006-2011). The service is free, but it includes only four Delaware newspapers: The Cape Gazette, the Sunday Morning Star, The Star, and the Wilmington Morning Star.
Many Other Newspaper Resources
There are many resources for researching Delaware genealogy and history via newspapers, including:
- Delaware Newspapers Research Guide at the University of Delaware
- Delaware Online Historical Newspapers Summary via The Ancestor Hunt
- List of Newspapers in Delaware from Wikipedia
- Delaware Newspapers from Family Search
- United States Newspapers from Family Search
- Chronicling America (Beta version) from the Library of Congress
- Directory of U.S. Newspapers in American Libraries from the Library of Congress
- Newspapers on Film from the Delaware Public Archives
- Library Catalog – Newspapers from the Delaware Historical Society
- Your Guide to Using Newspapers for Genealogical Research
Newspaper database
See below for how to make the most of your database search.
wdt_ID | wdt_created_by | wdt_created_at | wdt_last_edited_by | wdt_last_edited_at | Count | Source | City | Title | Alternate Title(s) | Years Covered | From Year | To Year | Issues/Pages | Collection |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | delgensocorg | 2024-10-17 09:52 PM | delgensocorg | 2024-10-17 09:52 PM | 1 | Ancestry.com | Georgetown | The Union | Georgetown Union | 1865 - 1865 | 1865 | 1,865 | 150 Records / 38 Issues | Newspaper Category |
2 | delgensocorg | 2024-10-17 09:52 PM | delgensocorg | 2024-10-17 09:52 PM | 2 | Ancestry.com | Wilmington | Wilmingtonian and Delaware Advertiser | 1826 - 1827 | 1826 | 1,827 | 334 Records / 82 Issues | Newspaper Category | |
3 | delgensocorg | 2024-10-17 09:52 PM | delgensocorg | 2024-10-17 09:52 PM | 1 | Genealogy Bank | Wilmington | Advance | 09/22/1900 – 09/22/1900 | 1900 | 1,900 | 1 | Newspaper Archives | |
4 | delgensocorg | 2024-10-17 09:52 PM | delgensocorg | 2024-10-17 09:52 PM | 2 | Genealogy Bank | Wilmington | Advertiser | 11/22/1879 – 12/20/1879 | 1879 | 1,879 | 3 | Newspaper Archives | |
5 | delgensocorg | 2024-10-17 09:52 PM | delgensocorg | 2024-10-17 09:52 PM | 3 | Genealogy Bank | Wilmington | Advertiser | 11/22/1879 – 01/17/1880 | 1879 | 1,880 | 5 | Newspaper Archives | |
6 | delgensocorg | 2024-10-17 09:52 PM | delgensocorg | 2024-10-17 09:52 PM | 4 | Genealogy Bank | Wilmington | American Watchman | 06/19/1809 – 01/08/1828 | 1809 | 1,828 | 1514 | Newspaper Archives | |
7 | delgensocorg | 2024-10-17 09:52 PM | delgensocorg | 2024-10-17 09:52 PM | 5 | Genealogy Bank | Wilmington | American Watchman | 01/11/1822 – 03/12/1822 | 1822 | 1,822 | 18 | Newspaper Archives | |
8 | delgensocorg | 2024-10-17 09:52 PM | delgensocorg | 2024-10-17 09:52 PM | 6 | Genealogy Bank | Wilmington | Blue Hen's Chicken | 08/03/1849 – 05/09/1851 | 1849 | 1,851 | 4 | Newspaper Archives | |
9 | delgensocorg | 2024-10-17 09:52 PM | delgensocorg | 2024-10-17 09:52 PM | 7 | Genealogy Bank | Hockessin | Brandywine Community News | 01/09/2011 – 03/22/2013 | 2011 | 2,013 | Obituaries | ||
10 | delgensocorg | 2024-10-17 09:52 PM | delgensocorg | 2024-10-17 09:52 PM | 8 | Genealogy Bank | Wilmington | Business Index | 05/24/1876 – 08/05/1876 | 1876 | 1,876 | 8 | Newspaper Archives |
Notes about how to search the database and learn more
1. Click a row within the table to see all data, including alternate titles.
2. If you apply a filter:
- General information:
- Filters limit the table displays.
- The ‘Source’ and other columns may not display dates, pages, or connections. Blank fields will display ‘Unknown’.
- ‘Years Covered’ column:
- Within the ‘Years Covered’ filter, only search by year (e.g., 1889). The whole date is not required.
- Filter behavior:
- A filter may not work as expected. It is advisable to use the ‘Source,’ ‘City,’ or ‘Title’ before applying the ‘Years Covered’ filter.
- Example: Searching for the city of ‘Wilmington’ will find 106 entries. Applying a ‘From date’ of ‘1886’ will reduce the search results to 30. Applying a ‘To date’ of ‘1889’ will reduce the list to 11. Note: You may see years outside of the filter dates.
- Table search and filters:
- Combining a general search with a filter will narrow down the number of matches. For example, a search for ‘Wilmington’ in City will result in 305 newspapers. By adding ‘Farm’ in Search, 26 newspapers will be listed.
- Handling Unknown Fields:
- Filtering on ‘Years Covered’ will not display blank or ‘Unknown’ fields.
Updated 22 November 2024