Overview
This is an index to more than 40 newspaper titles published primarily in Petersburg, Virginia from 1797 to 1877. Originally a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project, the index includes entries for births, marriages, deaths, property sales, and chancery suits, as well as articles regarding government, arts and leisure, economic news, education, religion, and slavery. Petersburg was incorporated as a town in 1784 and became a city in 1850.
Note: The Library of Virginia does not have all of the newspaper issues that are listed in the index. Please check the Title List for availability.
Search Tips
- Entries can be searched by article title, date, subject, newspaper title, type of article (e.g., editorial), genre (e.g., marriages), and film number.
- Using quotes around phrases may return fewer, more relevant results.
- Boolean operators OR, NOT and AND written in ALL CAPS may be used. By default, all search terms will be combined with the AND operator. To exclude terms, use the NOT operator before a term.
- Wildcards can be used to find variant spellings or words. The question mark (?) will match any one character. For instance, "Ols?n" will match "Olsen" or "Olson". The asterisk (*) will match any number of characters (including zero). "Ch*ter" will match "Charter", "Character", and "Chapter", and "Temp*" will match "Temptation", "Temple", and "Temporary".
Related Resources
These databases provide access to some of the indexed articles:
