Come explore the Poughkeepsie Journal on Newspapers.com! The Poughkeepsie Journal is the oldest paper in New York State and one of the oldest in the country. With a Newspapers.com Basic subscription, you can see issues from 1785 through 1922; or, with a Publisher Extra subscription, access the years previously listed and additional issues from 1922 to May 2016.
You may notice on the browse menu for the Poughkeepsie Journal that it seems like Newspapers.com is missing years between 1860 and 1941; however, these issues of the Poughkeepsie Journal can actually be found under the title the Poughkeepsie Eagle-News (which is also on Newspapers.com), as the paper was going by variations of that title during those years.
The Poughkeepsie Journal was founded in 1785 was a weekly paper until 1860. It would undergo many name changes over the years, including the Country Journal, the Poughkeepsie Journal & Eagle, the Poughkeepsie Eagle, the Poughkeepsie Eagle-News, and Poughkeepsie New Yorker. The name was changed to the Poughkeepsie Journal in 1960, a return to the name it had held for a few decades in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
From its inception, the Poughkeepsie Journal coved state, national, and international news, and since its issues go back 230 years, that’s a lot of history you can explore! The paper also covered news specific to Dutchess County and the Mid-Hudson River Valley. So if you have ancestors from this area, the Poughkeepsie Journal is a particularly valuable resource.
You never know what you might find in the Poughkeepsie Journal. It might be a marriage or death notice for an ancestor you’ve been looking for, or photographs you’ve never seen of family members. You might even find anecdotes about your ancestors, such as this piece from 1785 about a woman who died at age 108 and maintained her good health until the end, knitting, mending clothes, and walking the 2 miles to her daughter’s house right up until her death.
Get started searching or browsing the Poughkeepsie Journal here.
