Genealogy Tools
Ancestry Library Edition
Find your ancestors in census records, immigration lists, probate information, and thousands more record sets. Includes digitized city directories for Denver and Colorado, as well as digitized yearbooks. Available at any Denver Public Library location.
American Ancestors (Formerly New England Ancestors)
Search census records, genealogies, military records, vital records, maps, and more for over 1.4 billion names. Available only in the Central Denver Public Library
Includes access to the new 10 Million Names project dedicated to recovering the names of the estimated 10 million men, women, and children of African descent who were enslaved in America between the 1500s and 1865.
MyHeritage
Available from home with a Denver Public Library card. Search and browse billions of records from across the globe, including census records and voter lists, public records, online directories, family trees, court records, and more.
Fold3 Library Edition
Fold3 Library Edition provides convenient access to official military records with deep first-person content from the people who served, including bios, photos, letters and more. An ever-growing database, it contains more than 500 million searchable records from the Civil War onward, from trusted archives such as the U.S. National Archives and U.K. National Archives. Includes additional record sets, like city directories. Available with library card
Periodical Source Index (PERSI)
Use the Periodical Source Index (PERSI) to search for surnames and topics within genealogy journals. Then check our catalog to see if the library collects that journal. This index is maintained by the staff of The Genealogy Center of the Allen County Public Library, and has over 3.1 million citations.
Digital Public Library of America
Find primary sources and more! Digitized collections include oral interviews, photographs, maps, correspondence, and much more. Browse by topic, or search for the name of a person, place, organization, or event.
The National Archives holds Federal records including passenger lists, naturalization paperwork, military records, census records, millions of maps and drawings, aerial photographs, film, photographs, and sound recordings. A small percentage of their collection has been digitized and is accessible online, with more content being digitized often. View the Record Group Explorer to access digital collections and visualize record group organization.
Where to Write for Vital Records
Find the correct contact information for where to request vital records.
Newspapers
Newspapers.com
Newspapers.com offers full-page images and searchable full text of millions of pages from almost 20,000 (and growing) historical newspapers dating from the late 1600s into the 2020s. It contains full runs and portions of runs of known, regional, and state titles to small local newspapers in the U.S. and other countries. Available with library card
HeritageHub (formerly America's Obituaries and Death Notices)
Explore your family history with the collection of U.S. obituaries and death notices for in-depth genealogical research from 1704 – today. Includes coverage from all 50 states, hard-to-find content from the mid 1900’s, and original obituary images. Search by name of deceased or keyword in a growing list of newspapers, including the Denver Post ( 1894-1922, 1989-Current) and Rocky Mountain News (1860-1925, and 1990-2009). Available with a library card
Examine major movements from the Harlem Renaissance to Civil Rights, and explore everyday life as written in the Chicago Defender, The Baltimore Afro-American, New York Amsterdam News, Pittsburgh Courier, Los Angeles Sentinel, Atlanta Daily World, The Norfolk Journal and Guide, The Philadelphia Tribune, Cleveland Call and Post, and Michigan Chronicle. Available with a library card.
Access World News (NewsBank)
International and U.S. news from thousands of newspapers, media and online sources. Choose the world, a region, country, state or city. Search hundreds of papers nationwide and Denver news sources, including the Denver Post back to 1989. Available with library card
Access an index of obituaries and funeral notices that appeared in the Denver Post or Rocky Mountain News from 1913 to 2016. Obituaries after 2016 are available from HeritageHub.
Statewide index of approximately 50,000 non-Denver obituaries mostly from the 1970s through 1990. Researchers may request a copy of the full-text obituary through the Western History and Genealogy Department.
Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection
Includes more than 740 newspapers published across Colorado from 1859 up to 2023, and includes papers published in English, German, Italian, Japanese, Slovenian, Spanish, and Swedish. Coverage includes The Rocky Mountain News from August 27, 1860 to December 31, 1953, excluding 1931-46.
Ancestor Hunt Links to Digitized Newspapers
Navigate and search thousands of free, digitized newspapers for the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, and the Caribbean. Links are updated often. Use Ancestor Hunt to find free digitized collections of yearbooks, school records, tax records, and more.
Chronicling America by the Library of Congress
Search through free digitized newspapers. Use the “U.S. Newspaper Directory, 1690-Present” database to discover which newspapers were in print for specific places and times, and see which libraries and archives have holdings of those newspapers.
Maps and Land
Sanborn Maps from Proquest
Browse historical maps for the states of Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico. These maps show the town at the time the map was created, and illustrate information about buildings including materials the building was made of, size, shape, and any additional structures on the property, as well as the development of town as subsequent maps were published. This database provides Sanborn Maps in black and white. To see the maps in color, use the Library of Congress’ collection or ask a librarian about viewing a print copy. This database is available with a library card.
The Library of Congress has made a large collection of digitized Sanborn Maps freely available online. Maps are in color, view this key to understanding the Sanborn Maps.
Bureau of Land Management General Land Office Records
Search for land patents, tract books, survey plats and field notes and more.
Dave Rumsey Historical Map Collection
Access more than 129,000 digitized maps from across the globe. Includes rare maps, timelines, aerial photographs, and more.
Passenger lists, Immigration, and Naturalization
Passenger and Immigration List Index from Gale Directory Library Search for an immigrant arriving in the United States. View the print series at the Central Library. Ask a librarian for details.
Search 65 million records for passengers who arrived through Ellis Island. Browse through the oral history library to discover immigrants’ stories of leaving their homes, traveling, being admitted through Ellis Island, and traveling onward to their new homes.
Digitized Books and More
Discover digitized books, journals, newspapers, and reports that are in the public domain.
Digitized collections of more than 60 academic and research libraries from countries worldwide. Find histories, genealogies, directories, governmental reports, and more in this digital library of more than 18 million digitized items.
Find millions of books, audio recordings, videos, images and more. Excellent for finding county histories.
Population Groups Bibliographies
- Colorado: Catalog Results | PDF
- African American: Catalog Results | PDF
- Hispanic: Catalog Results | PDF
- English: Catalog Results | PDF
- Irish: Catalog Results | PDF
- Scottish: Catalog Results | PDF
- Scots-Irish: Catalog Results | PDF
- Welsh: Catalog Results | PDF