Births

• Muscogee County Birth Register Database, 1890 – 1900*

Cemeteries/Burials

• Columbus Consolidated Government, Cemetery Records – Covers interments for city-owned cemeteries (Linwood, Riverdale, Porterdale and East Porterdale).  A work in progress.
• African-American Cemeteries – Covers Muscogee, Chattahoochee, Harris, Marion, Schley and Sumter Counties in Georgia and Russell County, Alabama.
• Muscogee County Cemeteries – List of cemeteries in Muscogee County, with location information, posted by the Chattahoochee Valley Cemetery Society.
• Find-A-Grave – Includes entries (some with photographs) for various cemeteries in Muscogee and surrounding counties.
• Historic Linwood Cemetery – Burial records for the oldest cemetery in Columbus.  Website offers two files – one for new sections and one for old.

Deaths/Obituaries

• African-American Obituaries – Covers Muscogee, Chattahoochee, Harris, Marion, Schley and Sumter Counties in Georgia and Russell County, Alabama.
• Columbus,Georgia,  Newspapers Obituary Project, 1872-1918*
• Columbus Ledger-Enquirer Obituary Database, 1990 – 2005*
• State of Georgia. Indexes of Vital Records for Georgia: Deaths, 1919-1998.  Atlanta, GA: Georgia Health Department, Office of Vital Records, 1998 – available at www.ancestry.com

Maps

• Columbus, Georgia, Bird’s Eye View Map, 1886 – Part of the Library of Congress Collection
• Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, Columbus, Georgia, 1885 – 1921 – Digitized by the Digital Library of Georgia, a GALILEO initiative
• Muscogee County Map, 1866 — Shows districts and lot numbers.  Digitized by the Georgia Department of Archives and History’s Virtual Vault Project

Marriages

• Muscogee County Marriage Books, 1835-1921 – Search “Muscogee” at http://cdm.sos.state.ga.us/cdm4/countyfilm.php

These are the digitized copies of the actual marriage books.  No searchable database of names.  Bride and groom indexes are sometimes included in the individual volumes.  Digitized by the  Georgia Department of Archives and History’s Virtual Vault Project.

Military Records

• Confederate Pension Applications, 1879 – 1960 – Contains 2 separate databases of Georgia pension files.  A project of the Georgia Department of  Archives and History’s Virtual Vault.

Newspapers

• Columbus Enquirer Archive, 1828 – 1890 – Digitized copies of the main Columbus paper with an accompanying searchable database.  Some gaps in coverage. Created by the Digital Library of Georgia, a GALILEO initiative.
• Columbus Newspapers, 1858 – 1923 – Contains scanned images with gaps in the coverage.  Searchable database.  This is a fee-based       service.
• Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, 1993 – Present

This resource is available from three different sources:

• The Columbus Public Library’s NewsBank subscription
• CSU Libraries’ America’s Newspapers subscription – Accessible to the general public on campus via the CSU GALILEO webpage
  
• The web page of the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer – Click on “Archives” button

NOTE:  The NewsBank product is searchable, but it does not contain scanned images.  These are text-only articles, with no photographs.  The subscription at the Columbus Public Library may be accessed online by users with a Columbus Public Library library card.  It is also available at all Columbus Public Library branches to patrons on site.

The America’s Newspapers subscription at CSU Libraries is available to CSU faculty, students and staff through their CSU Cougarnet accounts.  Others may use the database on site at either of the two CSU Libraries, Main and Music.

Out-of-town researchers may be able to locate libraries in their areas that subscribe to  NewsBank and/or America’s Newspapers, and, thus, gain access to modern-day Columbus newspapers online.

Those without access to the above-named databases can go to the website for Columbus Ledger-Enquirer cited above, which offers free searching of its archive.  Researchers can retrieve citations for articles at no charge.  However to obtain a copy of an article there is a             charge of $2.95.  Of course, once an article citation is obtained, the researcher can consult  microfilm (if it is available) or submit an Interlibrary Loan through his/her own library (if the microfilm copy is not available).