North Carolina Societies and Archives

North Carolina Genealogical Archives | Historical & Genealogical Societies | Genealogical Publications |
North Carolina Newspapers |

The Repositories in this section are Archives, Libraries, Museums, Genealogical and Historical Societies. Many County Historical and Genealogical Societies publish magazines and/or news letters on a monthly, quarterly, bi-annual or annual basis. Contacting the local societies should not be over looked. State Archives and Societies are usually much larger and better organized with much larger archived materials than their smaller county cousins but they can be more generalized and over look the smaller details that local societies tend to have. Libraries can also be a good place to look for local information. Some libraries have a genealogy section and may have some resources that are not located at archives or societies. Also, take a special look at any museums in the area. They sometimes have photos and items from years gone by as well as information of a genealogical interest. All these places are vitally important to the family genealogist and must not be passed over.

North Carolina Genealogical Archives

 

It is wise to acquaint yourself with any repository which you might visit by writing to the appropriate archive or library in advance. Every repository has published materials that introduce its collections and research policy. State archives and historical agencies also have Internet sites that provide the same information. Some even have downloadable databases for some or parts of their collections.

  • State Library of North Carolina, 109 East Jones Street, Raleigh, NC 27601-2807; (919) 733-7222, (919) 733-3270
  • North Carolina State Vital Records Office, 1903 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-1903; (919) 733-3526
  • North Carolina State Archives, Office of Archives and History—State Library Building
     Public Services Branch, Mail Service Center 4614, Raleigh, N.C. 27699-4614
    Phone: (919) 807-7310, Fax: (919) 733-1354, [EMAIL]
    Its holdings consist of official records of state, county, and local governmental units, and copies of federal and foreign government materials. In addition to these official records are private collections, maps, pamphlets, sound recordings, photographs, motion picture film, and a small reference library. In all, the Archives houses over 50,000 linear feet of permanently valuable materials containing millions of individual items.
    Materials in the State Archives constitute by far the most valuable assembly of manuscript records and North Caroliniana in existence. Most of the records housed in the Archives are available for use only in the Search Room. A limited amount of indexed material can be searched for mail inquiries.
  • Library of Congress
  • University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27514
    In addition to an extensive list of publications coming from its press, the university houses the Southern Historical Collection and the North Carolina Collection, an exceptional and extensive collection of printed material on the state
  • Duke University, William R. Perkins Library, Durham, NC 27701
    This fine collection focuses on, but is not limited to, the southeastern part of the state
Libraries  
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Excerpts From the Book "The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy"

"Genealogists are generally positive and energetic, and most are ready to share their findings or research experience with anyone they can help. There are hundreds of genealogical societies at the grass-roots level. Knowledge of the genealogical community will place you in the midst of much activity, increase your productivity, and alert you to the importance of research standards and etiquette."
Sandra Hargreaves Luebking, Editor of FGS Forum

Historical & Genealogical Societies

 

Because family history research relies greatly upon records found at the county level, many local societies represent counties. Organizations also form around shared interests. Ethnic or religious origins account for many groups, such as the Polish Genealogical Society of America and P.O.I.N.T. (Pursuing Our Italian Names Together). Societies also form around common locales of origin for members’ ancestors; hence, the Palatines to America and Germans from Russia societies. To locate these and other societies, consult Juliana Szucs Smith’s The Ancestry Family Historian’s Address Book. It lists addresses, telephone and fax numbers, and Internet addresses of thousands of organizations throughout the United States.

For almost every state there is a state genealogical society, a state genealogical council, or both. In addition to their own work, state-level groups sometimes help coordinate the efforts of local societies within the state. Their publications, newsletters and quarterlies, supplement those produced by the local societies.

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North Carolina Genealogical Publications

 

[ See specific county page for individual county list ] A host of excellent periodicals regarding North Carolina genealogy have been or are currently being published, including The North Carolina Genealogical Society Journal (Raleigh, N.C.: North Carolina Genealogical Society, 1975–present) and North Carolina Genealogy, formerly The North Carolinian (Raleigh, N.C.: W. P. Johnson, 1955–75). These two periodicals provide an extensive array of instructive articles and transcriptions of original source material, making it important for the researcher to keep abreast of their contents. The North Carolina Department of Archives and History and the FHL have copies of these and other periodicals of interest to the researcher.

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North Carolina Newspapers

 

North Carolina Gazette, the first newspaper published in North Carolina, appeared in August 1751. Other newspapers followed. The most extensive collection of early North Carolina newspapers on microfilm is at the North Carolina State Archives; however, many other public and academic libraries have newspapers on microfilm.

Over 2,000 newspapers have been published in North Carolina since the North Carolina Gazette first appeared in New Bern in 1751. From January 1991 through March 1999, the North Carolina Division of Archives and History and the State Library of North Carolina coordinated the North Carolina Newspaper Project (NCNP), an extensive program to locate, catalog, and microfilm existing North Carolina newspapers. Through the efforts of project staff, over 3,000,000 newspaper pages have been microfilmed. NCNP, a part of the United States Newspaper Program, was partially funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and coordinated by the Library of Congress. The NCNP funding ended in 1999 and the project is no longer active. Any newspapers not microfilmed and cataloged during that time are not included in our listings. Most newspapers which began publication after 1970 will not be listed either.

What is Now Available

  • Newspapers have been identified for all of North Carolina's 100 counties.
  • Selected titles from each county have been microfilmed by the State Archives. Not all newspaper titles have been filmed, due to limited funding. Only those newspapers cataloged and/or microfilmed at the time of the NCNP are listed here. Newspaper titles are no longer being added to our list.
  • Some North Carolina newspapers have been microfilmed by commercial companies.

What is Not Available

  • Newspapers in original paper form
  • Topical indexes of the newspapers microfilmed
  • Searching by personal names or subjects

How to Start

The best place to begin your research is at your local library. The librarian can assist you with your search, identify where newspapers are located, and provide information about resources in your area; e.g., whether or not a local history or genealogical group has indexed the county's paper.

Selected information is also available on the Internet:

Your local library can help you identify libraries in the state that have microfilm copies of newspaper titles filmed by the State Archives or by commercial companies.

Interlibrary Loan

Many newspaper titles on microfilm are available through interlibrary loan (ILL), a cooperative program for lending materials among libraries. The State Library of North Carolina lends its microfilm through ILL, but all ILL requests must come through a library. Microfilm and other library materials are never mailed to the patron's home.

Interlibrary Loan Procedures for Borrowing Microfilm

  • Contact your local library
  • The interlibrary loan librarian or reference librarian should be able to help you
  • Microfilm will be loaned only through libraries

While records of birth, marriage, and death are the most commonly sought and the most consistently helpful records, only the genealogist’s imagination and resourcefulness limit newspapers’ usefulness in supplying clues about historical events, local history, probate court and legal notices, real estate transactions, political biographies, announcements, notices of new and terminated partnerships, business advertisements, and notices for settling debts.

Newspapers can provide at least a partial substitute for nonexistent civil records. For example, a person’s obituary may have appeared in a newspaper even when civil death records for that person do not exist. And newspapers are an important source of marriage records, particularly in those states where civil recording of marriages was essentially nonexistent until the twentieth century.

Unlike official records, newspapers are not limited to a particular geographical area. They often include reports of the weddings of local citizens (even those that occurred in a neighboring county or another state), and they sometimes report visits of geographically distant relatives or the visits of former local residents. They often published death notices of individuals who had left the area long before but who still had local family or friends as well. In each case the newspaper account can identify the date and place of an event, thus opening the possibility of turning up additional documentation in other sources.

The first step in searching a newspaper is to identify those which served the area of interest and which have survived. The three most necessary tools are bibliographies (What was published?), inventories of library and depository holdings (Where is it?), and indexes (How do I find what I want in it?).

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