Texas Newspaper Treasures

I don't live (or specialize) in Texas, but a surprising number of my relatives did. This week I almost missed a very useful free resource in The Portal To Texas History -- the Texas Digital Newspaper Program, with 1153 titles from Abilene to Yorktown and from the 1820s to the present (although the holdings don't get going much until after the Civil War).

This time the town I needed was Palacios, on the Gulf Coast, and TDNP had over 4000 items. Few records compare to a searchable newspaper for getting up close and personal . . . sometimes a little more than we're ready for. We inherited a reasonable amount of family papers from this branch of the Mozleys, but nothing there prepared me for a detailed description of how a first cousin of my wife's grandfather lost his right arm in a hay baler in the fall of 1935.

Tips:

* The interface is unique but manageable.

* If you're looking for a particular title, either on their site or on The Ancestor Hunt's meta-site for digitized newspapers, don't forget that a great many newspaper names begin with "The."

* Unlike some newspaper sites, many post-1922 issues are readily available. Those interested in the post-WW2 "mini dark age" of sources, take note.