THE ASTORIA ARCHIVE · Open this section in the Archive
The family shelf: the census and draft records, the family-search collections, and where the town's directories and yearbooks stand. Historical records only: the dead and the documented, nothing on living people beyond what public directories already print. Where a record stands at another archive instead of on this shelf, the reason prints with it.
The federal record, searchable by name: census pages, photographs, and documents. The 1950 Census name index lives here.
Access: Free to search.
Every name in the 1950 census, indexed and free: the family historian's first stop for this county's families.
Access: Free.
The deeper family records: census images, vital records, and the county's paper trail, free to search.
Access: Free, and viewing the record images requires a free FamilySearch account.
The genealogical library the public library subscribes to: census records, family and local histories, and research guides reaching back to the 1700s, opened with an Astoria Public Library card.
Access: Free with an Astoria Public Library card: the card number is the key.
NewsBank's obituary archive: United States obituaries and death notices from 1704 to today, the genealogist's first stop for a death date and a family's names.
Access: Free with an Astoria Public Library card.
The Astoria city directories and the high school yearbooks stand with the Clatsop County Historical Society, in Astoria, and in full online in the Society's digital archive on the Internet Archive: the city directories and the school yearbooks, free to read. The Archive links to the collections themselves, at the Society's own archive. The census also closes the paper record in the Reading Room's chapter on maps, photographs, and records.
Clatsop County
The county's memory keeper, in Astoria: 35,000 historic photographs by the Society's own count, diaries from the 1840s, city directories, maps, and Finnish and Native American family history materials. Its scanning center has put more than 42 local collections on the Internet Archive, 4,357 items, free to read: the city directories and the school yearbooks among them, in full.
Access: Its digital archive is free on the Internet Archive. The photograph collection itself has no public database; photographs reach the public inside the Society's journal, its exhibits, and credited republications, and the rest is research in person: for photographs, ask the archivist. For a visit: one society pass covers the society's three town museums, the Heritage Museum, the Flavel House, and the Oregon Film Museum; ask at any of them. The Heritage Museum is entered by a few stairs, and an elevator inside serves its floors.
Clatsop County
The Society's own digital archive: more than 42 local collections and 4,357 items, free to read: the city directories and the school yearbooks in full, its journal Cumtux, church records, the Clatsop Plains records, and more, gathered by its scanning center since 2018.
Access: Free to read. Rights sit with the Society and with each item's own record.
Clatsop County
The town directories in full text, from the 1890s forward: Astoria, Warrenton, Seaside, and the smaller towns, naming residents, businesses, and addresses year by year.
Access: Free to read. Editions published before 1930 are public domain.
Clatsop County
The high school yearbooks of Astoria, Warrenton, Seaside, Knappa, and Jewell, in full: The Zephyrus among them, from the 1890s forward.
Access: Free to read. Editions published before 1930 are public domain.