Archive.org is a Genealogist's Gold
Mine... and it's FREE!
I'm astonished that more people aren't
talking about this.
I'd been to Archive.org a time or two over the years to look up old versions
of websites on their neat, little Way Back Machine. (Way Back Machine is an
archive of websites as they've appeared on the web since the late 90's. You can
literally look at what a particular site's home page looked like way back in
1999 if you want to! Just about ANY site!)
I was not aware, however, that Archive.org has been quietly building one of
the best online FREE libraries in existence. And I hate to say it, but they've
got the Google books database beat.
On Archive.org, you can find old texts such as the Hotten's Lists of
Original Persons of Quality (something you'll pay quite a bit to search on
Ancestry.com)or the Calendar of State Papers (the
British version of the colonial records for English dealings with its colonies
around the world through about 1738, not available on Ancestry.com) and you have
so many options for digging into their contents. Here are my favorite options:
Click right on the animated image of the
book pages to open an online version of the actual book -- scanned and ready
for you to either flip the pages, page by page, by simply clicking on either
the right or left page depending on whether you want to go forward or
backward, or you can use the search box to the right of the book reader and
find specific words or names in the book. Even use partial spellings if you
want. The search works great!
If you find a volume is particularly
useful, you can typically go back to the main page for that volume and you
have options for how you can download that particular book. I recommend
downloading it as a PDF, because you're able to still view the book exactly
as it was published in its scanned form, but you're also able to do word
searches within the PDF, as Optical Character Recognition (OCR) has been
done on the text so the book is still fully-searchable even once you
download it to your PC. That's something the books on google do NOT offer.
Here are some examples of some great resources
on Archive.org:
The original lists of persons of quality; emigrants; religious
exiles; political rebels; serving men sold for a term of years; apprentices;
children stolen; maidens pressed; and others who went from Great Britain to
the American Plantations, 1600-1700 : with their ages and the names of the
ships in which they embarked, and other interesting particulars; from mss.
preserved in the State Paper Department of Her Majesty's Public Record
Office, England (1874) - by John Camden Hotten
The History of North Carolina (by Connor, Boyd and Hamilton) - 1919 -
v. 1. The colonial and revolutionary periods,
1584-1783, by R. D. W. Connor.--v. 2. The federal period, 1783-1860, by W.
K. Boyd.--v. 3. North Carolina since 1860, by J. G. de R. Hamilton.--v. 4-6.
North Carolina biography, by special staff of writers
(BRITISH)
Calendar of State Papers -
The British equivalent of the Colonial Records, this link will bring up all available
volumes on Archive.org. Please note this list of volumes available and what
you'll find in each one so you won't have to go clicking aimlessly through
all the volumes to find the one you want to search (Note: Some of these
volumes are focused on the East Indies, China, Japan and Persia, so unless
you have family from that part of the world, those may be ones you want to
skip.):
[Vol.l] [America.and
West Indies,] 1574-1660.- [Vol. 2] East Indies, China and Japan,
1513-16- Vol. 3] East Indies, China and Japan, 1617-1621.- [Vol.
4] East Indies, China and Japan, 1622-24.- [Vol. 5] America and
West Indies, 1661--[8.- [Vol. 6] East Indies, China and Persia,
16--[629.- [Vol. 7] America and West Indies, 1669-[674.- [Vol.
8] East Indies and Persia, 1630-16 [Vol. 9] America and West
Indies, 1675-1676,da, 1574-1674.- [Vol. 10] America and West
Indies, 1677-1680.- [Vol. 11] America and West Indies,
1681-1685.- [Vol. 12] America and West Indies, 1685-1688.- [Vol.
13] America and West Indies 1689-1692.- [Vol. 14] America and
West Indies, 1693 - 14 May, 1696.- [Vol. 15 America and West
Indies, 15 May, 1696 - 31 Oct., 1697.- [Vol. 16] America and
West Indies, 27 Oct., 1697 - 31 Dec., 1698.- [Vol. 17] America
and West Indies, 1699; with addenda, 1621-1698.- [Vol. 18]
America and West Indies, 1700.- [Vol. 19] America and West
Indies, 1701.- [Vol. 20] America and West Indies, Jan. - Dec. 1,
1702.- [Vol. 21] America and West Indies, Dec. 1, 1702-1703.-
[Vol. 22] America and West Indies, 1704-1705.- [Vol. 23] America
and West Indies, 1706 - June, 1708.- [Vol. 24] America and West
Indies, June, 1708-1709.- [Vol. 25] America and West Indies,
1710 - June, 1711.- [Vol. 26 America and West Indies, July, 1711
- June, 1712.- [Vol. 27] America and West Indies, July, 1712 -
July, 1714.- [Vol. 28] America and West Indies, Aug., 1714 -
Dec., 1715.- [Vol. 29] America and West Indies, Jan., 1716 -
July, 1717.- [Vol. 30] America and West Indies, Aug., 1717 -
Dec., 1718.- [Vol. 31] America and West Indies, Jan. 1719 -
Feb., 1720.- [Vol. 32] America and West Indies, March, 1720 -
Dec., 1721.- [Vol. 33] America and West Indies, 1722-1723.-
[Vol. 34] America and West Indies, 1724-1725.- [Vol. 35] America
and West Indies, 1726-1727.- [Vol. 36] America and West Indies,
1728-1729.- [Vol. 37] America and West Indies, 1730.- [Vol. 38]
America and West Indies, 1731.- [Vol. 39] America and West
Indies, 1732.- [Vol. 40] America and West Indies, 1733.- Vol.
41. America and West Indies, 1734-1735.- Vol. 42 America and
West Indies, 1735-1736.- Vol. 43 America and West Indies, 1737.-
Vol. 44. America and West Indies, 1738 V. 45. America and West
Indies, 1739
