Old newspapers in Quincy and on your desktop

I'm a big fan of Michael John Neill, not because he's from western Illinois too, but because he weaves genealogy lessons so neatly into the stories of his own ongoing research. In this recent post on his rootdig.com site, he points out that while many big-name pay-for-view genealogy sources have collected old newspapers and made them searchable, they aren't the only place to look.

All genealogy is local. Neill reports that the Quincy Public Library in Adams County, Illinois, has "scanned old Quincy area newspapers from the microfilm, and created a digital database that can be searched."

And all genealogy is global: if you're lucky enough to have research targets in western Illinois between 1835 and 1890, you can search for them here. (Oops, "Please note that the Archive may not function properly using Mozilla Firefox.") FYI, the first paper they have for this old river town is the 17 Apr 1835 issue of the Illinois Bounty Land Register.