Research Request Forms
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh can provide limited research services for patrons seeking birth and death records, naturalization records, obituaries, and other documents. Below is a description of the records we hold. If what you need is not on the list, please use our General Questions form, and a staff member will follow up with you for more information.
The Library has birth registers for the following locations and time periods. These are not birth certificates, but they contain the same type of information and are the official civil record of a person’s birth.
- City of Pittsburgh (1870-1905)
- Allegheny City (1885-October 1907)
- Allegheny County (1893-1905)
- Sewickley (1896-1905)
- McKeesport (1892-1905)
- Wilkinsburg (1899-1905)
The Library has death registers for the following locations and time periods. These are not modern death certificates, but they contain the same type of information and are the official civil record of a person’s death.
- City of Pittsburgh (1870-1905)
- Allegheny City (1875-May 1907)
- Allegheny County Probated Deaths (July 1874-1903)**
- Sewickley (April 1894-1907)
- McKeesport (April 1877-1905)
The Library holds many newspapers for the Pittsburgh area, and we are able to offer a limited obituary lookup service.
If you know the person’s date of death, we will check local newspapers for the obituary based on that date. If you do not know the date of death, we will check our death notice index (1786-1913 and 1963-1998). Obituaries from 2001-present can be searched on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s online archive.
The Library has several collections of marriage-related records, but we do not hold official copies of licenses issued by Allegheny County. If you are researching a marriage record, the library has the following information:
- Marriage Notice Index (1786-1910, based on notices published in local newspapers)
- Minister’s Returns, City of Pittsburgh (Feb. 1875-June 1886, miscellaneous months)
- Index to Allegheny County Marriage Licenses Volumes 1-14 (1885-1925)
- Marriage License Docket Volumes 1-70 (1885-1905)
For certified copies of licenses, or records outside of the dates held by the Library, please refer to the Allegheny County Department of Court Records’ website.
The library holds copies of naturalizations performed in local/county courts prior to 1906. We can search the following indexes by surname.
- Allegheny County courts (1790-1906). Copies of these records can be provided by the Library or Western Pennsylvania Genealogical Society.
- U.S. District Court (1820-1930)
- Circuit Court (1820-1911)
Naturalizations performed after 1906 were handled by the U.S. Government. Some records are available to search on Ancestry.com, but the National Archives and Records Administration’s Philadelphia branch can perform an index search, and if it holds the record, issue a certified copy. The records held by NARA generally cover 1906-1991. Requests for records dating 1991 and later must be directed to U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services.
The Library holds Pittsburgh and Allegheny City directories from 1813-1975, with telephone directories up to 2012, along with a small collection of city directories for surrounding communities.
The Library holds numerous local newspapers, but the papers are on microfilm and are not searchable by subject or name (aside from the limited death notice and marriage notice indexes). To search for a newspaper article, please provide the article’s publication date (within 10 days) and the paper in which it was published.
If you need help with research not related to one of the resources listed on this page, please let us know how we can help.