Florida Archives, Societies & Publications

It is a good idea to familiarize personally with just about any repository in Florida that you simply might travel to by communicating with to the best suited archive or library in advance.

Most, if not all, Florida repositories have written and published content that present its collections as well as research policy.

Florida archives and historical organizations usually have On-line sites that provide equivalent details. Several also contain down loadable data for some or parts of their collections.

List of Florida Archives

List of Florida Libraries & Museums

List of Florida Historical & Genealogical Societies

For almost every state there is a state genealogical society, a state genealogical council, or both.

In addition to their own work, Florida groups many times help coordinate the efforts of local societies throughout the Florida.

Their unique publications, newsletters and quarterlies, supplement those created through the area societies.

Regional and State Societies

County, Township and City Societies

Religious and Ethnic Societies

Ethnic Societies

Florida Newspapers & Publications

Florida Genealogical publications (magazines, newsletters, periodicals, books, etc.) contain all types of invaluable information about specific ancestors, whole lineages and families, places in time, and about all sorts of genealogical records and repositories.

Newspapers

A Tory announcing that the American Revolutionary War had ended published the first Florida newspaper in 1783.

When Spain took over control of Florida again, that newspaper was shut down. Once Florida became part of the United States again, in July of 1821, St. Augustine became home to the Florida Gazette.

Almost every library in the state, both large and small, has some newspapers on file. Larger libraries tend to have bigger collections.

The George A. Smathers Library and the P. K. Yonge Library in Gainesville have two of the largest newspaper collections, along with the University of Florida. In 1944, an effort started to collect and preserve newspapers from each Florida county.

There is now a Florida Newspaper Project website, which researchers can access for more information.

The following repositories also have large newspaper collections:

Historical libraries and Universities across the South hold manuscript collections that include information about Florida. Many public manuscript collections also exist. Researchers should check the National Union Catalog of Manuscripts for more information.

Periodicals

Genealogical journals provide you with plenty of sources of information and facts, they are generally overlooked by genealogy and family history researchers and genealogist in looking around for family history.

Many regional and county genealogical and/or historical societies produce periodicals which have records relating to the region or vicinity they operate.

Frequently these publications have articles involving records that are not obtainable somewhere else.

  • The Florida Genealogist:published by the Florida State genealogical Society , is the only genealogical periodical of statewide coverage

Books