20+ Free Newspaper Archives You Can Search From Your Phone For Genealogy & More

Once upon a time, before the internet existed, you had to read articles in newspapers and magazines. On paper. And when you wanted to go back in time and find an old article, you had to go to a library and go through their periodicals. But now we have online newspaper archives.

You can often just go online to find old newspaper articles. Whether you’re looking for a specific article or just want to browse what people were thinking about in 1907, there are quite a few newspaper archives online that store scans or images of old newspaper pages and clippings.

Why Use Newspaper Archives?

Old newspaper archives are more than just a look into the past—they’re a practical tool for a bunch of different reasons. If you’re working on genealogy, for example, newspapers can help fill in blanks where government records don’t exist. 

You might find wedding announcements, obituaries, or even little mentions of your relatives in the local “society” pages. Students and teachers often use them for research projects, since newspapers can give you a firsthand look at how people thought and talked about big events in real time.

It’s also a great way to get a glance at the world your ancestors lived in. What was happening? What did they worry about or celebrate? 

Even if you’re just curious about a certain place or event, browsing old newspapers can be a fun way to see how much (or how little) things have changed.

How to Search Newspaper Archives Effectively

If you dive right into an archive without a plan, it’s easy to get overwhelmed—there are thousands of papers and millions of pages out there. Here are some tips to help you find what you want faster:

• Be specific with your search terms. If you know a name, date, or event, use that. Try different spellings and nicknames—people’s names weren’t always spelled the same way in old papers.
• Narrow by date or location. Most sites let you filter by year, city, or even the specific paper. If you know your great-grandfather lived in Cleveland in 1922, start there.
• Use quotation marks for exact phrases. If you’re looking for “World’s Fair 1939,” put it in quotes so you don’t get articles about every world fair ever.
• Try browsing. Sometimes you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for until you see it. Start with a big event or a famous date and see what comes up.

Free Online Newspaper Archives

If you’re looking for even more places to search old newspapers without paying, here are several other free resources worth checking out. Each one has its own focus—some are huge national collections, others are local or themed—but all of them let you search or browse at no cost.

Veridian

Veridian searches everyone else’s archives for you. They connect you to the archives of well over 3,000 newspapers, so this one service could be all you need. It’s certainly a good starting point.

Chronicling America

Run by the Library of Congress, Chronicling America is one of the largest free collections of American newspapers on the web. You can search by state, date range, and even by newspaper title. They’ve got millions of pages from 1777 to 1963, and they’re always adding more.

Library of Congress Digital Collections

Besides Chronicling America, the Library of Congress Digital Collections houses a range of digitized historical newspapers, including ethnic and foreign-language papers published in the U.S. You can filter by subject, location, and date.

Wikipedia Newspaper List

Wikipedia has an incredible list of local papers from around the world which have their own archives online. This is a great source for local papers when you already have an idea where you need to be looking.

Google News Archives

Google News Archives allows you to search for certain topics online or browse their collection of scanned newspapers.  It’s a good collection.

The results are all PDFs in frames, so you can’t download them. But you can link to them (just copy the link and store it in a doc file, Evernote, etc.) for easy future reference.

Green Free Library

GreenFreeLibrary is a free searchable database of a select set of local papers. That’s the one downside – they don’t have that many different papers, which can limit their usefulness on searches for local information.

You search for a topic, and you get search engine style results describing all the available articles to read. They’re in PDF form – when you click on an article you want to read, it opens in a frame at the bottom of your page.

This frame works just like a PDF tab opening in your browser, but it’s faster. You can zoom in as far as you need to, even more than 100%, and scroll to get all around the page.

Fulton History

Fultonhistory.com (sometimes called “Old Fulton NY Postcards”) is a massive archive of mostly New York State newspapers, but it also has papers from other places. The search tool looks old-school, but it’s powerful—and the collection is huge.

The Portal to Texas History

The Portal to Texas History offers free access to nearly 2 million pages from Texas newspapers (as well as other historic documents). It’s great for local research, genealogy, or Texas history projects.

California Digital Newspaper Collection

The California Digital Newspaper Collection (CDNC) provides free access to hundreds of California papers, some dating back to the 1840s. It’s fully searchable and easy to browse by date or title.

Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection

The Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection features over 1 million digitized newspaper pages from across Colorado. Search by keyword, date, title, or town.

Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections

The Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections includes more than 100 Illinois newspapers and covers a wide range of years for many communities across the state. All content is free to search and view.

New York State Historic Newspapers

New York State Historic Newspapers offers millions of pages from over 500 newspapers covering almost every county in New York. It’s a great resource for anyone with connections to the state.

Wisconsin Historical Society Newspaper Archive

The Wisconsin Historical Society has a searchable database with access to many Wisconsin newspapers at no charge. Some papers are available only on-site, but many are online.

Maryland State Archives: Maryland Newspapers

The Maryland State Archives provides a list of digitized Maryland newspapers that are free to search and read.

DigitalNC – North Carolina Newspapers

DigitalNC is a project from the University of North Carolina that hosts hundreds of North Carolina newspapers online, covering a broad range of dates and towns.

The Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive

The Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive offers over 17 million pages from Pennsylvania newspapers freely available online.

The British Newspaper Archive (Free Section)

If you’re interested in UK news, The British Newspaper Archive offers some free-to-view content (though most requires a subscription). You can still search for headlines and see snippets for free.

Trove

For Australian newspapers, Trove from the National Library of Australia is fantastic. Coverage goes back to the early 1800s and it’s all free to search and read.

Welsh Newspapers Online

Welsh Newspapers Online includes over 15 million articles from Welsh newspapers published between 1804 and 1919. It’s searchable in both English and Welsh.

The National Library of Scotland – Scottish Newspapers

The National Library of Scotland provides free access to many Scottish newspapers, including The Scotsman and The Glasgow Herald archives.

The Times Digital Archive (Select Years)

Some libraries offer free access from home to select years of The Times (UK), so it’s worth checking your library’s digital resources page.

Local Libraries

Many local libraries offer access to newspaper archives—sometimes even ones you can’t get to online from home. Some libraries subscribe to paid databases like ProQuest or Newspapers.com, which you can use on-site with your library card. Check your library’s website or ask a librarian what they have.

Paid Options: What Do You Get?

If free options aren’t working for you, you can always consider paying. Most paid newspaper archives charge because they spend money digitizing and maintaining huge collections. Here’s what sets them apart:

• Bigger collections. Paid sites often have more papers and more years available.
• Better search tools. You get advanced filters—by date, keyword, location—and sometimes even OCR (optical character recognition) so you can search the actual text of articles.
• High-quality images. Pages are usually scanned at better resolutions, so they’re easier to read and download.
• Downloadable PDFs. You can save articles for later or print them out.

Here are some good ones to check:

NewspaperArchive

NewspaperArchive.com has a lot to choose from, and you can browse or search for what you want in several different ways. There’s a monthly subscription fee to read the articles. For free, you can do a search to find out if they even have what you’re looking for.

New York Times

New York Times has archives online, and they’re mostly free for subscribers. There are trial options for non-subscribers.

Newspapers.com

Newspapers.com has one of the largest online collections—mostly US papers but also some international ones. It’s especially good for genealogy because you can clip articles and save them to family trees on Ancestry.com (they’re owned by the same company).

PressReader

PressReader covers more modern newspapers and magazines from all over the world. You’ll need a subscription, but some libraries offer free access with your library card.

ProQuest Historical Newspapers

Used mostly by universities and libraries, ProQuest has deep archives of major US papers like The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, and others. Access usually requires a library login.

Understanding Copyright and Access to Newspaper Archives

When you’re searching through old newspapers, it’s important to know that copyright rules can affect what you find and what you can do with it. Most newspapers published before 1923 are in the public domain in the United States.

That means you can use, share, and even republish them without worrying about legal issues. However, newer papers—especially those from the last 100 years—might still be under copyright.

Some archives only show snippets or previews if the article is still protected by copyright. That’s one reason why some services charge a subscription fee: they pay for the rights to give you access.

If you’re planning to use material for more than just personal research—like publishing it or putting it on a website—be sure to check the rights for each article.

Tips for Finding Obituaries and Vital Records

Many people turn to newspaper archives looking for obituaries, marriage announcements, and birth notices. Here are a few extra tricks to help:

• Try Different Sections: Obituaries aren’t always in the same part of the paper. They might be listed under “Deaths,” “Memorials,” or even hidden in the classifieds.
• Search Using Family Connections: Obituaries often mention relatives. If you can’t find someone directly, try searching for their spouse or children.
• Look Around Key Dates: If you know roughly when someone died, check the days before and after. Sometimes publication was delayed.

If you’re not finding what you need, consider reaching out to local historical societies or genealogical groups. They sometimes have index cards or other records that aren’t online.

Using Social Media and Crowdsourced Projects

Social media can be a great resource for tracking down old news. Many communities have Facebook groups dedicated to local history, where members will help look up old articles or point you toward archives you didn’t know about.

Reddit has subreddits like r/Genealogy and r/AskHistorians where you can ask for tips. There are also crowdsourced projects like Newspaper Navigator, which uses artificial intelligence to help organize and search newspaper images from the Library of Congress.

Volunteers help transcribe articles and tag photos, making it easier to find what you’re after.