Search Commodity & Stock Prices in Newspapers 1690–2010

Search Commodity & Stock Prices in Newspapers 1690–2010

The prices of stocks and commodities have played a pivotal role in shaping the economy in which our ancestors lived throughout history. Find historical prices on stocks, bonds, commodities and more financial instruments in newspapers.

Enter your ancestor's name below and we'll search market prices in newspapers to help you learn more.

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  1. Historical Stock Prices in Newspapers
  2. Commodity Price Charts in Newspapers
  3. Historical Prices of Goods in Newspapers
  4. Historical Bond Prices in Newspapers

  1. Stock Price Tables
  2. Commodity Price Charts
  3. Prices of Goods Tables
  4. Historical Bond Prices

  1. Newspapers have been publishing stock price tables since the beginning of the stock exchange markets. These stock prices help us track the financial performance of public companies and gauge market sentiment over time.

    You can find historical stock prices for all major U.S. stock exchanges in our newspaper archives including the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the NASDAQ. Research stock price tables in newspapers and discover more about the financial past of our country's publicly-traded companies.

  2. Newspapers have been publishing price charts for commodities such as foods, energies and metals since the 1700s. These price charts in newspapers are useful tools to investigate how commodities have evolved economically through the years.

    Find commodity price charts from major U.S. commodities markets such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) online. These historical commodity charts include agricultural products such as livestock, wheat, cotton, sugar, rice and grain; precious and semi-precious metals like gold, silver and copper; and energy commodities like oil, electricity and gas.

  3. Newspapers publish prices of goods tables in their commercial and financial sections, allowing us to explore the fluctuations of these prices in the U.S. over time. The prices of these goods are important because their cost determined how much of our ancestors' money was spent on food and other basic necessities, which in turn directly affected their quality of life.

    These historical prices can reveal inflation and deflation, giving us insight into the economic effects of events such as wars or financial downturns that correlated with the changing prices of goods. For example, the Southern Bread Riots in April 1863 were caused by the rising prices of food products due to shortages caused by the American Civil War.

  4. Bond price tables are frequently published in the financial and commercial sections of newspapers, often right alongside stock prices because the two investment vehicles are closely related.

    These bond market news articles help us track the history of bond prices and yields over time and discover investor sentiment in the U.S. financial markets. Find historical price data and newspaper articles on bonds of all types in our online archives, including: corporate, government, and savings bonds.

Prices Found in Newspapers:

  • Stocks

  • Bonds

  • Commodities

And many more!

U.S. Commodity & Stock Market Prices History

The prices of stocks and commodities have set the economic climate of the United States throughout our country's history, directly affecting the quality of life of our American ancestors. The prices of commodities and stocks are key determinants in the consumer cost of goods and services, shaping the economy in which our ancestors lived and did business.

Newspapers have published commodity and stock price charts since the beginning of the exchange

markets, long before Wall Street became synonymous with "financial markets." You can research historical prices on stocks, bonds, foods, energies, metals and other goods dating back to the 1700s in our newspaper archives. Discover news articles about America's financial past and learn more about the prices that set the economic tone of the times in which our ancestors lived.

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Historical Newspaper Archives Search Tips

Newspaper Archives Last & First Name Search

  • Using both name search fields returns newspaper articles in which the surname is automatically "near2" the first name.
    • This means the newspaper archive search engine automatically finds occurrences of the first and last names within two words of each other.
    • This helps to find occurrences of middle names or initials in the newspaper articles, without having to enter or remember them.
  • The "near2" search command is not order specific—meaning your newspaper search will retrieve the person's name no matter in what order it is mentioned: the first name then last name or the last name then first name.
    • This search default is intended to bring you the most occurrences of the name you are searching for in the online newspaper archives.
  • However, if the person's name is popular, like Smith, try using some of the available search options such as location, date range, and keyword, in order to narrow your search to the specific Smith you are looking for (see below).

Using Advanced Search in the Newspaper Archive Database

  • There are two keyword search boxes to narrow your search for newspaper articles: "Include keywords" box and "Exclude keywords" box (see below).
  • Use the Date search box to enter a specific date or date range of the newspaper content you want to search online.

Using Keywords & Quotation Marks to Search Newspapers

  • All the searches for historical newspaper articles are full-text keyword searches against OCR-generated ASCII text.
  • By using the "Include keywords" box and/or "Exclude keywords" box, you can narrow or expand your online newspaper article search.
  • Put phrases in quotes like "John Adams" in the "Include" keyword box to limit the newspaper article search to that exact name—versus using the last/first name search that brings back results matching John near2 Adams.
  • If you find too many names in the newspaper archive search results, narrow your search even more by typing names or places you do NOT want in your search in the "Exclude" box.

Using Boolean Operators to Search Newspaper Archives

  • Use AND, OR, ADJx (order specific), NEARx (order non-specific) and Wildcards, such as "?" and "*")

Broaden or narrow newspaper search queries

  • by emptying filled-in fields to broaden your search, or filling in empty fields to narrow your search.

Display newspaper search results in different ways, such as:

  • Best matches (this is the newspaper search default)
  • Oldest items (based on newspaper publication dates)
  • Newest items (based on newspaper publication dates)
  • Once changed, the selection will remain the default until you change it again.

Search Newspapers by Date Range

  • If you know the date of the newspaper content you are seeking, then use the "Date" search box.
    • Enter a specific date or a date range—a variety of date formats are accepted.
    • Examples: June 2, 1804, or 1804 - 1849, or June 1804 - August 1949.

Using Colonial English Variant Spellings to Search Old Newspapers

  • Many of the newspapers in the historical newspaper archives are very old, and the searches must deal with Colonial English.
  • The long "s" character was almost identical to the "f" in many texts.
    • When searching old newspaper articles on words containing the letter "s," use the "?" wildcard in place of the "s."
    • Note: this can occur whether it is the first letter, a letter within a word, or at the end of a word.
    • The double "s" is in words like Massachusetts needs to be replaced with two wildcards in historical newspaper searches.

Examples of Searching for Old Newspaper Articles with Colonial English

Modern Spelling Colonial Spellings Suggested Search
Spanish Spanifh Spani?h, ?pani?h
Boston Bofton Bo?ton
Massachusetts Maffachufetts Ma??achu?ett?
  • In addition, type was set by hand for early American newspapers and printers did not always have enough pieces of type to include all of the letters in a word. This resulted in letters being omitted, or sometimes letters that looked similar were used as substitutions.
  • Much of this historic newspaper material did not use standard spellings.
  • Examples of some conventions that were common in old newspapers:
    • Use of name variants - Smith or Smythe
    • Use of "e" in word endings - Chesapeake or Chesapeak
    • Dropping the letter "h" - Philadelphia or Philadelpia
  • Examples of irregular vowel usage:
    • clerk - cleark
    • color - colour
    • Delaware - Deleware
    • Elijah - Elifha
    • Israel - Ifreal - Ifral
    • Jehovah - Javovah
  • Examples of letter e to word endings
    • Brown - Browne
    • Chesapeake - Chefopeak or Chefopeake
    • Clark - Clarke
    • highways - highwayes
  • Examples of interchanging use of the letters "i" and "y"
    • adjoining - adjoyning
    • Pennsylvania - Pensilvania or Penfilvania
    • rails - rayls

Colonial Newspaper Search Notes

  • If in doubt, use wildcards such as the question mark "?" or the asterisk "*" in your colonial newspaper search.
  • A question mark is a single-character wildcard and an asterisk multi-character (allows for up to 5 characters) wildcard.