2658 East Main Road | Portsmouth, RI | 02871 | (401) 683-9457 | Hours

The library will close at 4pm on Tuesday December 31 and be closed on Wednesday January 1.  We will reopen on Thursday at 9 am.  Happy New Year!

Genealogy

We have many resources for genealogists.

Ancestry.com - use this in the Library.

Newspapers.comSearch various Newport newspapers for articles and obituaries from 1784 - 1977.  More than 500 other New England newspapers are also available, including historical Fall River papers.  Use this in the library or at home.

Portsmouth History Center Computer has:

    • Portsmouth High School Yearbooks (1967 - 2018)
    • The Sakonnet Times (1967 - 2020) 
    • The Portsmouth Times (2013 - 2020)
    • Various military, church, town and state histories
    • RI Vital Records
    • Local newspaper clippings about the Hurricane of 1938, 375th Anniversary of the town, Boyd's Windmill, and other topics.
    • Digitized volumes of the Genealogies of the Clarke, Hutchinson, Marbury, Porter and Wildbore families.

Books in the library can be found in the library catalog.  Our collections include more than 600 volumes on loan from the RI Genealogical Society and our local history collection.

The library has the Land Grants of Portsmouth and other local maps.  We also have the items from the Pierce Collection.