Georgia Periodicals, Newspapers, and Manuscript Collections
This entry was originally written by the Johni Cerny and Robert S. Davis for Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources.
Periodicals
Two historical periodicals include Georgia Historical Quarterly, published by the Georgia Historical Society, and Atlanta History: A Journal of Georgia and the South, published by the Atlanta Historical Society, which has also published general indexes.
A host of periodicals regarding Georgia genealogy is currently being published, including Georgia Genealogical Society Quarterly (Atlanta: Georgia Genealogical Society, 1964-present). The Georgia Genealogical Society will soon issue the past issues of its quarterly in a word-searchable CD-ROM disk. The Georgia Archives and the FHL have copies of these periodicals and others.
Newspapers
The Georgia Archives and the University of Georgia Libraries in Athens have the largest newspaper collections. Other university, public, and genealogical libraries have smaller collections. Consult holdings for titles.
The Georgia Newspaper Project of the University of Georgia Libraries has to date microfilmed over 8,000 reels of Georgia newspapers. This collection is not available on interlibrary loan, but copies can be purchased. The FHL, Georgia Historical Society in Savannah, the Georgia Archives, and the University of Georgia Libraries in Athens have extensive indexes to the Savannah newspapers (1763'1845). Savannah newspapers (1850'98) are abstracted and indexed in a Works Projects Administration (WPA) publication called Annals of Savannah. Indexes have also been published for early Augusta and Milledgeville newspapers. Many other Georgia newspapers have published and indexed abstracts to marriage and death notices. A statewide reference is Mary B. Warren, Marriages and Deaths from Extant Georgia Newspapers, 2 vols. (Danielsville, Ga.: Heritage Papers, 1968 and 1972), covering 1763 to 1829. Tad Evans and Elizabeth Evans Kilbourne have published more than 100 volumes of abstracts of Georgia newspapers.
Manuscripts
Georgia has more than 100 manuscript repositories, many of which have excellent local sources. See Robert H. Warnock, Georgia Sources for Family History (Atlanta: Georgia Genealogical Society, 1995).
The Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscripts Library of the University of Georgia Libraries in Athens and the Georgia Historical Society in Savannah have Georgia's most extensive manuscript collections.
Leon S. Hollingsworth's genealogical card file was microfilmed by the R. J. Taylor Jr. Foundation in 1978. Recently refilmed, the 45,000 three-by-five cards in this collection reference people from thousands of original source records in Georgia. Notations include an abstract of the information and citation of the original source. The collection is both a name file and place-name index. The collection is available at the FHL and for purchase from Reprint Co., Box 4501, Spartanburg, SC 29304. Hollingsworth's research files are only available for use by researchers at the Georgia Archives. The Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscripts Library of the University of Georgia has the similar, but much earlier, James A. LeConte Genealogical Collection on microfilm.
