Local History & Genealogy

Research Guides

Local History and Genealogy Research Guide- This is an external site created by library staff to help you with your research.

A Guide for Using the Local History Website

Iredell County Historic Photographs

The library has an extensive collection of historic photographs of Iredell County, including over 100,000 photographs of people and places, over 230 yearbooks for schools in Iredell County, personnel letters, historic maps and publications.

Click Here to view our historic photograph collection.

Local History Collection Indexes

View indexes of collections held in the Iredell County Public Library’s Local History room.

Click Here to view our indexes.

Local History Resources

Ancestry Library Edition	Ancestry Library Edition provides access to billions of historical documents, millions of historical photos, plus local narratives, oral histories, indexes and other resources in over 30,000 databases that span from the 1500s to the 2000s. For a limited time, Ancestry Library Edition can be accessed remotely using your library card number.
Digital Sanborn Maps	Sanborn fire insurance maps chart the growth and development of thousands of America towns and cities across a century. Genealogists and local historians,will find the maps a valuable tool.
Heritage Quest Online	Heritage Quest Online is a comprehensive treasury of American genealogical sources—rich in unique primary sources, local and family histories, convenient research guides, interactive census maps, and more.
Newspaper Archive	The world's largest online newspaper archive, including Statesville newspapers from 1874 to 1977.
North Carolina Digital Heritage Center	The Iredell Citizen newspaper (1998-2008), Iredell County School Scrapbooks (1970-1981), Mitchell yearbooks, and more can be viewed at the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center which is a statewide digitization effort to preserve local and state history and to make them accessible to the public. Cultural institutions from across the state contribute items to be digitized and published online. The Iredell County Public Library has made its contributions through the years and continues to do so.
Historic North Carolina Digital Newspaper Collection	North Carolina Collection from Newspapers.com. 3.5 million pages of digitized content from over 1,000 NC county newspapers.
Statesville Record & Landmark	Statesville Record & Landmark from 2007 to the current issue via NewsBank.
Genealogical Society of Iredell County	The collection of the GSIC is located in the Genealogy Room in the library and many of their inventory has been indexed. Both society members and library staff are able to assist with navigating the physical and digital collections.

Local History Blog

Iredell Citizen Newspaper Lives

On April 15, 1998 a new newspaper hit the streets in Iredell County. The paper was called the Iredell Citizen created, published and edited by Robert “Bob” Plyler. Volume 1, Number 1, began its run with the headline, “Hello Iredell” in large black...
Death of 'Mr. Troutman' Jimmy Alley leaves hole in community

There is an old saying that when an old person dies it’s like a library burning down. That was certainly the case when Troutman’s Jimmy Alley passed away on April 3, 2021 at the age of 91. I always thought of Jimmy as “Mr. Troutman.” Whenever I...