Digital Newspaper Project

Collin County Newspaper Digitization Project

2023 CCGS received a grant from the Collin County Historical Commission to digitize the next batch of newspapers. We thank CCHC for their support!

2022 News!CCGS Receives Grant to Digitize McKinney Examiner Newspapers

In June 2022, the Collin County Historical Commission awarded CCGS a $5,000 grant to digitize the McKinney Examiner newspapers for the years 1959 to 1967. This grant allows CCGS to continue to work with the University of North Texas Digital Newspaper Program to digitize historical Collin County newspapers and place them online at the Portal to Texas History website for researchers everywhere to use.

Currently the bound McKinney Examiner newspapers are being stored at the Collin County History Museum, which graciously allowed CCGS to pursue this project. CCGS members Janice Quick and Jan Thatcher picked up the bound newspapers from the Collin County History Museum on September 9, 2022, and delivered them to UNT.

As genealogists, we know the value of newspapers in learning more about our families and the communities in which they lived and participated. We chose the McKinney Examiner newspaper because it provided extensive coverage of numerous communities across Collin County.

Thank you to the Collin County Historical Commission, the Collin County History Museum, UNT Digital Newspaper Program, and CCGS members for making this happen!View all McKinney Examiner newspapers previously digitized by CCGS as a result of CCHC grants:

https://texashistory.unt.edu/explore/partners/CCGS/browse/?fq=untl_collection%3AMKEX

2021: CCGS receives $4000 grant from the Collin County Historical Commission to digitize additional newspapers.

​2020: CCGS received a $3000 grant from the Collin County Historical Commission to digitize McKinney Examiner newspapers from 1935, 1936, 1940, 1943, and 1945.
These newspapers are available online at the University of North Texas (UNT) “Portal to Texas History” website in the Spring 2020.
Thank you Collin County Historical Commission for making this possible.

In 2009 CCGS partnered with The University of North Texas’ (UNT) “Texas Digital Newspaper Program” http://tdnp.unt.edu to digitize and make available online to a worldwide audience the contents of six microfilm rolls of the McKinney, Texas newspaper, The Democrat, from the years 1884-1904 and one microfilm roll of incomplete runs of the Daily Gazette, Democrat, McKinney Examiner and McKinney Gazette (years ranging from 1880 to 1936). This is a total of 5047 newspaper pages whose content can then be found via search engines like Google or through direct searches free of charge at The Portal to Texas History Web site:

https://texashistory.unt.edu/explore/partners/CCGS

We chose UNT since they are the lead institution in digitizing Texas’ newspapers and UNT complies with national standards set by the Library of Congress for the National Digital Newspaper Program. UNT also highlights partner institutions on their Website.

A special thank you to The Collin County Historical Commission whose initial grant award in 2009 to CCGS of $4,000.00 helped to fund the beginning of preserving these historical newspapers.  Additional awards spanning several years have been granted towards the success of this project.

A description page of first series digitized newspapers for Collin County Count*

Reel 1 (Misc. titles 1880-1936) 392
Reel 2 The Democrat 1884-1890 934
Reel 3 The Democrat 1890-1893 645
Reel 4 The Democrat 1893-1896 632
Reel 5 The Democrat 1896-1898 923
Reel 6 The Democrat 1899-1902 438
Reel 7 The Democrat 1902-1904 1083

Total $5047 *Initial Estimate, actual counts may vary

These initial sixteen titles, the McKinney Democrat-Gazette Collection on the Portal to Texas History spans 54 years, from 1880-1934. Published from 1884 to 1906, The Democrat comprises the bulk of the McKinney titles, of which nearly the entire run is available. The newspapers are all free to search to our community. Currently the CCGS digital files on the Portal to Texas History have been used nearly 300,000 times. These files were accessed close to 34,000 times in 2018. Over 16,00 visitors have viewed these records to date for 2019.

The following newspaper titles have now been digitized and are available to search for free. We are continually searching for Collin County newspapers to have digitized.

Click here to search all the Collin County digitized newspapers

The Democrat
1880-1909

The Weekly Democrat-Gazette
1900-1929

The Plano Star Courier
1910-1929

The Frisco Journal
1910-1939

The Democrat-Gazette
July – December 1906

The McKinney Gazette
1880-1889

The McKinney Examiner
1900-1939

The Daily Courier
1890-1909

The Daily Gazette
1890-1909

Collin County Mercury
May & October 1888

The Lion Roar
1934-1935

The Semi-Weekly Courier
August 1899

McKinney Weekly Democrat-Gazette
February 1934

The McKinney Advocate
April 1880

The Southern Jerseyite
October 1920

Additional newspapers will be digitized as they are located.
If you know of Collin County newspapers that need to be digitized please contact us.

CCGS is a 501(c)(3) corporation.
Your donations are tax deductible.

We are committed to preserving the history of Collin County!

With the support of our volunteers and donors, we will continue to work to digitize historical newspapers from McKinney (there are 68 total rolls just from McKinney) as well as other Collin County community papers!

HOW YOU CAN HELP!
Send a tax deductible donation to:

CCGS – Digitization Project
Attn: Treasurer
PO Box 865052
Plano TX 75086-5052
Please write: Digitization Project on your check.

Or make a donation online by clicking the Donation link below.
Be sure to note it is for the Newspaper Digitization Project.​

CCGS is a 501(c)(3) corporation.
Your donations are tax deductible.

We appreciate your support to preserve Collin County History!