Genealogy
One of the Newton Public Library and Museum’s most popular departments is the Genealogy section. People from throughout the United States visit the library each year to use the genealogy materials. Our collection includes family histories, church histories, Jasper County Cemetery records, one microfilm reader and a microfilm reader/printer, census records on microfilm, and local newspapers dating back to 1866.
A nice addition to the Genealogy Department is a Jasper County wall map dated around 1890 donated by a family from Ohio.
There are maps of Jasper County, tourism booklets showcasing events in Illinois, & cookbooks from Historic National Road Yard Sales.
Books on Jasper County and Jasper County Veterans are on display.
A new online addition to Genealogy is a digitized documentary collection of newspaper clippings during the World War II era. This collection
of wartime experiences of Jasper County men serving from 1941-1945 is entitled “With The Colors”: Jasper County, Illinois Servicemen Overseas
1941-1945. You may search the database by date, name, or key words. In 2014, the Library Board launched a project through Eastern Illinois
University to digitize a scrapbook clipping collection. EIU History graduate student Tyler Custer undertook the job of scanning hundreds of delicate newspaper clippings. The scans were collated into text searchable format and uploaded onto an EIU server. They are now available
to researchers in Jasper County and around the world. The website is castle.eiu.edu/newtoncollection/index.php.