The staff of the Cobourg Public Library work hard to acquire all books that pertain to Cobourg, Hamilton Township and when possible, other communities within Northumberland County. Along with general histories, there are shelves of materials including: Family Histories ; Local Architectural Conservation Advisory Committee (LACAC) information and, directories.
Guides
In our Local History room, researchers will find an assortment of guides to help with international research. There are also genealogical dictionaries, handwriting guides, directories for various organizations, research techniques and various forms for pedigree charts, ancestral charts, and family group records, etc
Photographs
Our photograph collection consists of over 800 photos that have now been digitally scanned for easy access and reproduction. They are available on the Internet : http://images.ourontario.ca/Cobourg/
Newspapers
The Cobourg Public Library has one of the most complete sets of the local newspaper in existence. A number of microfilming projects undertaken over the years have allowed our patrons to access the first issues from 1831 to present day. Miscellaneous copies of the Cobourg Advertiser and Gazette are also on microfilm. An additional bonus to researchers are the newspaper indices. This ongoing project has now created an index for all papers from 1831-1919 and from 1985 to the present day. The index from the year 2000 to present, is actually available online http://cobourg.news.halinet.on.ca/. We also have an index to the Northumberland News beginning January 2007 to present. Although the articles themselves are not on the web due to Copyright laws, once the date and page are located, patrons are welcome to come visit us and view the newspapers on microfilm.
Census Records
Housed in our Local History room is the complete set of census data for Northumberland County from 1842-1901. The 1911 census can easily be accessed online through one of our Local History terminals. Also available are earlier assessment and collector's rolls for most of Northumberland County. A number of these years are accompanied by indices.
LACAC designated properties from both Cobourg and Hamilton Township are in bound volumes, as is the complete set of 'Curlew'.
Along with this, you will find Tweedsmuir histories, Victoria College histories, phone books, poll books and a very extensive Archival Documents collection with over one thousand clippings, documents, etc. that are indexed by subject and/or name.
CemSearch Database
One of our most used resources is the CemSearch database compiled and maintained by Ron Smith and a large group of volunteers from the Lakeshore Genealogical Society. This database can be accessed by all three of our Local History computers.
This database includes records taken from old cemetery transcripts that used to be in hardcopy, plus many new and updated cemeteries and their records and makes the information easy to access using either cemetery or surname search techniques.
CemSearch includes almost all of Northumberland County's active, inactive and abandoned cemeteries, and most of those of the surrounding counties.
