Michigan Resource: Digital Newspapers

More and more records are becoming digitized, which is a fabulous thing! I love being able to look for items while in my warm and cozy home instead of driving a few hours in this cold snowy weather. Keeping in mind that the majority of my record hunting does involve driving a few hours away or sending letters out, I love when I find resources that allow me to research from home.

Newspapers are a big part of my genealogy work as I get a lot of family information from obituaries and I find it very important to know what was happening in the area my ancestors lived while they were living there. So the Michigan Digital Newspaper Portal is a very exciting resource! It comes from my Alma Mater, Central Michigan University, so I’m also a bit proud 🙂

Not every newspaper database here is free (nor are all counties/cities represented) but the list will tell you if it’s a free site or a pay site. The pay sites can vary from newspaperarchive.com to genealogybank.com to sites that can only be viewed with a library card for that library.

Either way, this is a great resource to look into. For me, if I find I am looking for papers that can be found here all linked to one place (like genealogybank.com) then I consider getting a subscription to the website. So this is good to see if another subscription would be worth it or not.

Also, if you’re interested, Indiana has their own digital site for Indiana newspapers. Again, not every county/city is represented but it’s a great resource to keep for later as it’ll continue being added to – and these are free!