Arizona Newspapers

United States U.S. Newspapers  Arizona  Newspapers

Overview
Newspapers publish marriage, divorce, death, and funeral notices, and obituaries. Notices include names, dates, and places. Marriage and death notices may contain maiden names and names of parents and other living relatives.

Newspapers also publish articles of local interest that often cover religious and social events in the community and include the names of people involved. Some newspapers serve several communities and devote columns to the everyday happenings in the area. Newspapers also include legal notices, estate sales, and advertising for local businesses.

One strategy for using newspapers in research, is to select a time period for which your ancestor lived and begin by looking for obituaries as well as birth, marriage, and death notices. Read all the articles which were generated in the county where your ancestor lived, especially articles which give information about the church and schools where your ancestor may have attended.

Libraries and Archives
The Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records has copies of newspapers dating from 1860. The Arizona State University Library, University of Arizona Library and large public libraries also have good collections of Arizona newspapers. The Family History Library has not acquired copies of the papers. A guide to locating early newspapers from the territorial era is:

Estelle Lutrell, ''Newspapers and Periodicals of Arizona, 1859-1911. ''Tucson, Arizona: University of rizona,1950. (Family History Library ).

Newspaper Directory

 * The U.S. Newspaper Directory, 1690-Present is a national directory from the Library of Congress of over 140,000 newspaper titles. The directory provides a list of libraries from around the country that have the newspapers in their collections.
 * Arizona Newspapers features a list of links to Arizona newspapers currently online.

Digital Issues Online

 * NewspaperArchive.com ($) has a collection of digitized Arizona newspapers online. This database is free at some libraries under the name AccessNewspaperArchive.
 * Graham Guardian Newspaper (Safford, Ariz.) 1895-1923 is available for searching Online. Click Browse Issues tab.
 * Mohave County Miner Newspaper (Mineral Park, A.T. [Ariz.]) 1882-1918 is also available.
 * Safford Rattler (Safford, Ariz.) 1896-189? is available Online.
 * Arizona Digital Newspaper Program. Search 31 Arizona historical newspapers online.
 * University of Arizona, University Libraries, Historic Mexican and Mexican American Press
 * Digital Archives of the Casa Grande Public Library
 * Densho Digital Archive, Gila News - Courier, published by the inmates at the Gila River concentration camp, Arizona, from 1942 to 1945.
 * Arizona Memory Project -- you may have to dig a little to find the newspaper collections
 * Little Cowpuncher, Rural School Newspaper of Southern Arizona
 * Special Collections at the University of Arizona Libraries
 * Northern Arizona University Cline Library Special Collections and Archives

Indexes

 * The Arizona Republic provides a free online obituary search database from 2002 to the present at: Obituaries Arizona Central
 * The Mesa Public Library will perform an obituary search for persons whose obituary appeared in the Arizona Republic from 28 May 1890 to 31 December 2009. Exact death date must be included. Request forms are available on their website: Mesa Public Library

Web Sites

 * Chronicling America
 * NewspaperArchive ($)