These indexes cover 1841-1939 (for information on later years, see the bottom of this page).  They are in PDF format, and viewing them requires the free Adobe Acrobat Reader.  If you do not have Adobe Acrobat Reader, you may download it at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html. For easier reading of these indexes, be sure to use the magnification options and scroll bars in Adobe Reader.

Due to the condition of the original indexes, these files have not been subjected to optical character recognition (OCR) and therefore are not keyword searchable. Bookmarks have been provided to assist researchers in finding entries of genealogical interest. Please note that the list under the “deaths” subject heading does not include suicides, murders, accidents or other deaths by violence. Articles regarding such deaths are instead indexed under the person’s name. Likewise, divorces are usually found under the names of the parties involved.

Copies of some early newspapers were no longer available at the time of indexing, so there are no indexes for the years 1846-1848 and only partial indexes for some years prior to 1890.

At this time, there is still no general index to the Akron Beacon Journal for the years 1940-1983.  NewsBank’s America’s Newspapers database provides text-only access to the Akron Beacon Journal from 1984 to the present.  This database can be accessed from any library in the ASCPL system, as well as from other libraries that subscribe to America’s Newspapers, and is available remotely using your library card.

Some Summit County newspapers have been digitized.  GenealogyBank.com includes the Summit County Beacon from 1877-1889.  While you need a personal subscription to read the complete articles online, you may search the database to identify articles that can then be found using our microfilm.  In addition, the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America project provides free access to many issues of the the Akron Daily Democrat from May 1, 1899-December 31, 1902.

Researchers who cannot visit the Library to access the Akron Beacon Journal may contact us to order copies.  Please limit each order to five items and submit only two orders per month.  For those needing a large number of copies or more extensive newspaper research, Special Collections maintains a list of genealogists for hire that we can mail or email upon request.