Historic newspapers · Illinois

Illinois historic newspapers: 90,334 free digitised pages

Name: Illinois historic newspapers (Chronicling America)
Creator: Library of Congress
License: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

Everything below is what the Library of Congress holds online for Illinois in Chronicling America, counted on 2026-10-07. The pages are free to read and searchable by name; an obituary or a marriage notice here is often the only record of a date before civil registration.

Titles with the most digitised pages

Newspaper	Years	Pages online
Dziennik Chicagoski (Chicago [Ill.])	1890–1971	9,322
Rock Island Argus (Rock Island, Ill.)	1893–1920	8,197
The Cairo Bulletin (Cairo, Ill.) 1???-		4,002
The Daily Worker (Chicago, Ill.; New York, N.Y.)	1924–1958	3,484
Chicago Daily Tribune (Chicago, Ill.)	1872–1963	3,222
Chicago Tribune (Chicago, Ill.)	1864–1872	2,885
The Rock Island Argus (Rock Island, Ill.)	1877–1885	2,601
East St. Louis Daily Journal (East St. Louis, Ill.)	1918–1932	2,453
The Ottawa Free Trader (Ottawa, Ill.)	1843–1916	2,328
Rassvet = the Dawn (Chicago, Ill.)		2,317

Counties

Cook 36,661 pages
Rock Island County 17,974 pages
Cook County 11,247 pages
Alexander County 6,279 pages
Saint Clair 5,018 pages
New York 4,953 pages
La Salle County 3,362 pages
Fulton 2,912 pages
Alexander 2,434 pages
Salt Lake County 1,658 pages

Cities

Chicago 47,746 pages
Rock Island 17,974 pages
Cairo 8,713 pages
East Saint Louis 5,018 pages
New York 4,953 pages
Ottawa 4,334 pages
Canton 2,912 pages
Salt Lake City 1,658 pages
Minneapolis 1,644 pages
Saint Paul 1,644 pages

By decade

1730 to 1739 2 pages
1740 to 1749 2 pages
1750 to 1759 2 pages
1760 to 1769 2 pages
1770 to 1779 2 pages
1780 to 1789 2 pages
1790 to 1799 2 pages
1800 to 1809 3 pages
1810 to 1819 30 pages
1820 to 1829 362 pages
1830 to 1839 630 pages
1840 to 1849 1,182 pages
1850 to 1859 1,810 pages
1860 to 1869 7,015 pages
1870 to 1879 11,688 pages
1880 to 1889 7,720 pages
1890 to 1899 11,286 pages
1900 to 1909 12,762 pages
1910 to 1919 21,017 pages
1920 to 1929 10,776 pages
1930 to 1939 3,525 pages
1940 to 1949 526 pages
1950 to 1959 230 pages
1960 to 1969 136 pages

Languages

English 80,979 pages
Polish 12,586 pages
German 4,218 pages
Lithuanian 3,135 pages
Russian 2,498 pages
Slovenian 1,279 pages
Croatian 724 pages
Czech 413 pages

Ethnic press: Polish, African American, German, Lithuanian, Russian, Irish, Slovenian, Czech

Search them by name

Provara's free records search sends one name to these pages and to every other public archive it can reach at once, and returns each hit with its citation. Search Illinois newspapers by name, free, or browse the collection on loc.gov.

Save what you find to a tree — start free with 1M research tokens

Figures are the Library of Congress's own counts for its Chronicling America collection, fetched from loc.gov and refreshed daily; newspaper pages are public domain and the metadata is CC0. Provara states nothing here about any person.