Genealogy Resources
Explore your family history with our free online genealogy tools. You can use Ancestry Library Edition for free at any Library location. You can access our other free genealogy tools anywhere with an internet connection when you sign in with your Library account. For more information about our genealogy services, see our Genealogy page in Programs & Services.
Discover your ancestry
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Access nearly 249 million U.S. genealogical records from 1690 to the present, including obituaries, marriage and birth announcements, military records and other government documents.
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Interested in genealogy? We partnered with Ancestry.com to help you search billions of historical documents, photos, oral histories and more, from the 1500s to the present. This resource is available only in Library locations.
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Explore thousands of detailed maps chart the growth and development of Seattle, other Puget Sound communities and more than 12,000 cities and towns across the United States.
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Search the Family History Library catalog as well as digitized records, which include over 2 million rolls of microform and hundreds of thousands of books and maps related to family history and genealogical research.
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Explore these searchable and printable genealogy resources, including local and family histories, research guides and the complete U.S. Federal Census, 1790-1940. Powered by Ancestry.
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Curious about the past? Find full-text and full-image content from The New York Times, including articles, headlines, ads, obituaries and more. Contains full-text and images in PDF format of the New York Times from 1851 to three years before current year.
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Search fully digitized editions of The Seattle Times, and download and print full-text articles. Depending on the issue date, different formats of articles may be available. The Seattle Times Historical Archive (1895-1984) is made possible through a generous grant from The Seattle Public Library Foundation.