GENEALOGICAL RESOURCES
Newspapers

Old newspapers are one of the best sources of information about everyday life in the past. Several websites where Southern California newspapers can be accessed at no charge are listed below. 

photo: QHGS Blogger’s family files

TORRANCE PUBLIC LIBRARY Digital Archives:

The Torrance Public Library has made available on its website a collection of resources related to the city’s history. The newspaper database covers the period from 1913 through 1969. The database includes the following newspapers: The Torrance Press, originally The Peninsula Press (1949–1964), and The Torrance Herald (1914–1969). Click on the link in the search results to open a full-page image of the original newspaper in PDF format.

Start your research in these papers at http://www.torranceca.gov/libraryarchive/.

WHITTIER PUBLIC LIBRARY Digital Archives:

The Whittier Newspaper Collection contains digitized issues of various Whittier newspapers dating back to February 23, 1888: the Whittier Daily News, the Whittier Register, and the Whittier News.

Access this collection at http://digi.whittierlibrary.org/wpl/index.html.

CALIFORNIA DIGITAL NEWSPAPER COLLECTION:

The California Digital Newspaper Collection is a project of the Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research (CBSR) at the University of California, Riverside. This collection contains 72,729 issues comprising 603,681 pages and 6,876,356 articles. It is a freely accessible repository of digitized California newspapers from 1846 to the present. You may search by newspaper title, by date or by subject. At present there are 53 newspapers featured. This site is especially good for researching the San Francisco Bay area pre- and post-earthquake. It also has an excellent collection of papers from Sacramento which often reference San Francisco events.

Access these newspapers at http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc.

RESEARCH TIP: If you cannot find articles about your ancestor in his “home town” paper due to fire, flood, or other disaster that may have destroyed the copies you need, try looking in a nearby town’s newspapers. For example: early 1900s editions of San Francisco papers are difficult to find due to the 1906 earthquake and fire which destroyed many records. However, papers in Sacramento often carried news from surrounding cities, and San Francisco births, marriages and deaths were often listed in editions of the Sacramento newspapers. Don’t be afraid to branch out—you may find just what you’ve been looking for in the next city.