Old Fulton NY Post Cards

There are some odd things about the Old Fulton NY Post Cards site. First of all, despite the name, it has nothing to do with old postcards. Second, it's full of strange animations. A goldfish floats around the screen, and there's a head with spider legs that crawls about. There are sounds (such as a cannon and fireworks) that play at random moments, and you can't turn them off.

But these odd things are just the wrapping around the true content of the site, which is 17 million pages of scanned, fully searchable pages of old New York state newspapers. All completely free. There aren't even any ads. If you like doing historical research, it's a goldmine. The site has been around for a while, but I just discovered it last month, and it's now become one of my favorite sites.

fulton

The really strange thing about the site is that it's been put together by one guy, Tom Tryniski, who runs the site off of servers in his home. To put this in perspective, Tryniski has managed to put together an online newspaper archive that's larger than the Library of Congress's newspaper archive. Much larger. And far more comprehensive.

Anyway, I've been finding all kinds of old hoax-related material on it, which is why I'm so excited about it. For instance, I found the original text (warning: pdf) of the man-eating tree of Madagascar hoax, published in the NY World on April 28, 1874, which I posted about last month.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg. I've been finding the original texts of lots of old newspaper hoaxes -- stuff that I don't think anyone has seen for over 100 years. I'll be posting some of my finds in the next few weeks.

Miscellaneous

Posted on Mon Dec 19, 2011



Comments

Wow. Exciting! I look forward to all the articles.
Posted by Tah  on  Mon Dec 19, 2011  at  10:53 PM
Thanks for pointing out that site. I've been looking up old college football stories (hey, it's that time of year).

I also love looking at the ads.
Posted by George P Burdell  on  Wed Dec 21, 2011  at  08:03 AM
I have been researching my family history since 1973 and "inherited" 3 scrapbooks of old postcards from my husband's family in the Fulton, NY area. It took me 6 months to organize them by names and dates and begging at my local library's genealogy room for help.

My library friend Loretta came upon this site by researching a name and I have put together a rather impressive family history/genealogy from reviewing app. 2,000 articles. The fact that I can enlarge the articles and print them adds to my resources. I may not be able to find a birth or marriage certificate, but the society pages of past newspapers "knows all and tell all".

This site has been my greatest asset in a 5 year search of family details.

I check weekly for updates.

THANKS from KY

PS Mutual friends from Hannibal speak highly of TOM

Posted by Pat Blanchard  on  Sun Apr 22, 2012  at  10:50 AM
"There are sounds (such as a cannon and fireworks) that play at random moments, and you can't turn them off."

Sure you can -- the standard 'loudspeaker' icon is at the far right of the screen; click it to see the slider. Which is, um, marked 'Boo!'
Posted by Paul Havemann  on  Fri Apr 12, 2013  at  08:58 PM
i love this site, i saw it before at the historical societies, i have been able to see my family in society pages, like weekly, i had many of their dates, births and vitals, but not too much on what they actually did, and the hard work of their lives, i love it, i have never printed, that would take forever, but i do enjoy the reading very much, and just seeing them i feel like i know them through the papers, like so many of you on here. lov it, thank you
celster mccall
Posted by carlene elster mccall  on  Fri Oct 18, 2013  at  03:50 PM
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