Early American Newspapers, Series 1, 1690-1876 offers 350,000 fully searchable issues from over 710 historical American newspapers. Focusing largely on the 18th and early 19th centuries, this online collection is based on Clarence S. Brigham’s “History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820” and other authoritative bibliographies. Providing unprecedented access to the nation’s early periods, Early American Newspapers, Series 1 enables researchers to explore essential newspapers from 23 states and the District of Columbia.

Newspapers—the first draft of history
Early American newspapers, often printed by small-town printers, documented the daily life of hundreds of diverse American communities, supported different political parties and recorded both majority and minority views. In Early American Newspapers, users can limit searches to items that fall into such categories as news and opinion, election returns, letters, poetry, legislative information, prices, advertisements, matrimony notices and death notices. In addition, users can easily view, magnify, print and save items.

In cooperation with the American Antiquarian Society
The core of the Readex collection consists of American Antiquarian Society (AAS) founder Isaiah Thomas’ own collection of colonial and early national period newspapers and is supplemented by issues added by Thomas’ successors at the AAS. Numerous other institutions and historical societies have contributed to the collection, including the Boston Athenaeum, the Connecticut Historical Society, the Connecticut State Library, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the libraries of universities such as Brown and Harvard and private collections. This joint effort has led to the creation of a historical newspaper collection of unparalleled breadth and depth.

An Archive of Americana® collection
As part of America’s Historical Newspapers, Early American Newspapers, Series 1 shares a common interface with all other newspaper series from Readex. Additionally, all America’s Historical Newspapers series are cross-searchable with all other Archive of Americana® collections.