As you continue working on your family history, you may notice that your family moved around--sometimes frequently and long distances! In the past, genealogy enthusiasts had to travel to these records.
With some collaborative efforts and technology, genealogy has never been easier than it is today! All thanks to the efforts of heritage organizations contributing copies of their records and time. Family historians can travel across countries and oceans virtually to access these records!
Primary source newspaper content from the 19th century, featuring full-text content and images from numerous newspapers from a range of urban and rural regions throughout the U.S., with an emphasis on such topics as the American Civil War, African American culture and history, Western migration, Antebellum-era life and overseas developments as reported by American papers.
This resource is available to CLP cardholders only.
An historical newspaper database which contains newspapers from every state and 7 foreign countries- over 2,434 titles. The archive’s newspapers date from 1759 to the present.
This resource is temporarily available remotely.
Explore local history with this full-text archive of The Pittsburgh Courier. Covers the years 1911-2002.
This resource is available to CLP cardholders only.
The Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project makes available more than one hundred years of Jewish newspapers published in Pittsburgh. Digitized page images capture daily life in Pittsburgh from the 1890s to 2010, with particular focus on Jewish communities. The Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project is composed of the Jewish Criterion (1895-1962), the American Jewish Outlook (1934-1962), the Jewish Chronicle (1962-2010), and the Y-JCC series (1926-1975).
Search the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette archives from 1786 – 2003.
This resource is available to CLP cardholders only.
View the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in digital microfilm from January 2009 to the present with a 3-month delay.
This resource is available to CLP cardholders only.
Ancestry.com keeps growing, but how can you find your ancestors on the huge and ever-changing site? In this workbook, an essential companion to the Unofficial Guide to Ancestry.com , you'll learn how to use Ancestry.com to its full advantage with detailed guides to searching Ancestry.com's digitized records.
Discover your ancestry on FamilySearch.org, the world's largest free genealogy website. This fully-updated in-depth user guide shows you how to find your family in the site's databases of more than 3.5 billion names and millions of digitized historical records spanning the globe. Learn how to maximize all of FamilySearch.org's research tools--including hard-to-find features--to extend your family tree in America and the old country.
For many enthusiasts pursuing their family history research, the online world offers a seemingly endless archive of digitized materials to help us answer the questions posed by our ancestors. In addition to hosting records, however, the internet also offers a unique platform on which we can host our research and lure in prospective cousins from around the world, to help build up a larger shared ancestral story.
The most complete and current guide to successful online genealogy
Conduct effective genealogical research using the experttechniques and innovative tools in this fully updated, bestselling resource. Genealogy Online , Tenth Edition reveals new research breakthroughs, such as DNA testing, and covers the latest ancestry-related websites, blogs, networks, and social media services.
Ancestry is one of the most well-known virtual genealogy resource. It is a comprehensive source of information for conducting genealogical and local history research. Ancestry can be accessed from any library in Allegheny County.
Here is a list of what you may find on Ancestry:
Most of the 1890 census has not survived, but some secondary schedules (lists) did, and they are available on Ancestry.com.
This site is completely free to use from anywhere, and it’s a gold mine for anyone researching Allegheny County. There are so many local records here (such as Allegheny County marriage dockets, birth & death records, and deeds) that it is perhaps a better source for Pittsburgh research than Ancestry. The trick is that many of those local records are not indexed, meaning they will not show up in a general search. Instead, use the Catalog under the Search menu, then search by place to see the list of Allegheny County data sets. Once you’re in the catalog record, you can scroll through the digitized microfilm frame by frame.
FamilySearch is also a great source for European records, so if you’ve been digging for ancestors from across the pond, you can’t skip this site. New records are added every week, so it’s also worth checking back periodically, and searching the catalog, even if you don’t find the right record today.
While this site is free to use, you will need to create an account to access the database.
FamilySearch offers the following Pennsylvania specific collections:
Select birth records for Western Pennsylvania from about 1870-1906 are available on FamilySearch, but many are not indexed, meaning records will not appear in standard search results. Users should use the Catalog search to find the records and look through the digitized records.
Select death records for Western Pennsylvania from about 1870-1906 are available on FamilySearch, but many are not indexed. Users have to use the Catalog search feature to find the records and look through the digitized images. See the Birth Certificates section for the link to our YouTube video and other helpful guides created by our genealogy and local history librarians!
The marriage license dockets from 1885-1905 and 1937-1950 are online on FamilySearch.org. See Birth Certificates section for a link to a how-to YouTube video.
County-court naturalization records before 1906 are online at FamilySearch.org. They are not indexed in a publicly available way.*
*Use the Catalog Search feature to find them.
For dual citizenship applications: the library can provide a certified and notarized copy of the record.
Ebooks and eAudio on genealogy are available for free with your library card through Libby, Hoopla or Ebsco. You may install a free app for Libby or Hoopla on your device through your app store. A Libby search can be done directly through the app, or through our library Overdrive site Overdrive Genealogy . Hoopla also has a great selection of items Hoopla Books on Genealogy You may also visit our site at Eresources at CLP for help.
US military records, including the stories, photos, and personal documents of the men and women who served, as well as access to naturalization records/indexes, city directories, historical newspapers and more.
Multiple volume searching of 1500 reference works from Genealogical Publishing & Clearfield Companies. Sources include essential “how-to” works that help to build a good family tree; colonial period works identifying early American settlers and chronicling American immigration; royal and noble ancestry; histories and source records of Native American tribes.
This resource is available to CLP cardholders only.
This multilingual family history research database includes billions of historical documents from 48 countries, millions of historical photos, public records, indexes, and additional resources that span the past five centuries.
Four series of passenger lists containing over 6 million names of immigrants from Germany, Italy, Russia and the famine years of Ireland.
The Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps are hosted by Penn State University Libraries.
The University Libraries' Donald W. Hamer Center for Maps and Geospatial Information has a near complete collection of Sanborn Fire Insurance maps for the state of Pennsylvania. The digital collection will continue to grow as maps come out of copyright.
This database is hosted externally by Penn State University Libraries.