52 Weeks of Online American Digital Archives and Databases: Alabama

This is the first post in a weekly series of Online American Digital Archives and Databases found for free at state, county, municipal, college and university history, library, and archive websites, as well as public and private library and museum sites, and historical and genealogical society sites.

3DFlags.com

There are amazing digital archives resources on the Internet these days. Of course, these are only a tip of the iceberg in comparison to what these archives have in printed and microform resources on site. For the state of Alabama, I started listing many of the goodies at each of these websites, and just gave up; it was literally a couple of hours to list the treasures! Here's what you can hope for: letters, diaries, photographs (people and places), postcards, yearbooks, reports, histories (printed and oral), records (vital, census, military), oral histories, audio files, online videos, newspapers, directories, etc. Sound interesting? Check them out! And don't be put off by the fact that your ancestors didn't attend the universities listed here. The university archives contain much information about people and places within the state, whether or not they pertain to the universities themselves.

Alabama Department of History and Archives (ADAH) - http://www.archives.alabama.gov/searchcoll.html

Auburn University Digital Library - http://diglib.auburn.edu/browse.html

Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections - http://www.bplonline.org/resources/Digital_Project/Collections.asp

University at Alabama, Birmingham Digital Collection - http://contentdm.mhsl.uab.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=%2Foralhistory

University of Alabama Libraries Digital Collections - http://content.lib.ua.edu/digital/about.php

University of Alabama School of Law Special Collections - http://www.library.law.ua.edu/spcoll/colls.htm

University of North Alabama Digital Collections - http://www.una.edu/library/about/collections/digital.html

Note: You can search across all the above collections at AlabamaMosaic. 

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Lawrence County Archives - http://www.lawrencecoarchives.com/pages/files_available.html - probate, deed, and marriage record indexes

Madison County Records Center - http://www.co.madison.al.us/mcrc/ -  marriage records indexes from 1809 to 1899

Mobile County Probate Court - http://www.mobilecounty.org/probatecourt/recordssearch.htm - real estate, marriage, election, estate claims, unclaimed property records indexes

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Check out my Alabama Historical Online Directories page.