Newspapers can sometimes be an underused resource for genealogy. However, newspapers can provide much information you may not find elsewhere.
The first principles of family history are researching specific questions working backward in time and practicing whole family genealogy for information on siblings that may apply to your direct descendant. By broad definition, a newspaper is a publication that is printed on a very regular basis, is a primary source of information, is intended for the general public, and has some formatting characteristics, such as a masthead, etc.
When searching newspapers be aware of the proper time and place of events as looking for a record in a county that wasn’t created until much later would be frustrating to say the least. What will you find in newspapers?
News articles, reprints of news articles, ads, editorials, social columns, life events, obituaries, and historical articles. Any of these could contain information on an ancestor. Did your ancestor own a shop? You may find a display ad about it. Did you ancestor help put the town they lived in “on the map?” There may be a historical article on them.
In a previous blog we talked about how newspaper articles helped find an ancestor. More than one avid researcher has located an elusive ancestor in the newspapers.
Life Events
We mentioned you can find life events in the newspaper. It was common to see a list of births from hospitals in the newspaper many years ago. Not today, but you may find a reference to an ancestor’s birth in one of the older (say, 1800s to early 1900s) newspapers. Marriages were also listed as reported by the minister who performed the ceremony.
In the early 20th century, you may also find actual news articles on the wedding. Divorces may also be listed in the early days of newspapers as they were rarer than they are now. Obituaries are another source of information you can find in the newspaper. Most of us are familiar with this particular type of information as they are still published today.
Ethnic Newspapers
Not only general newspapers, but there are also many ethnic newspapers that focus on one group, German, Italian, African American, etc. You can find information on culture, traditions, and people in these publications. Example of ethnic newspapers in the U.S. include La Gazzetta Italiana: The Italian American Voice.
Foreign Newspapers
Your search for ancestors in U.S. newspapers is just the beginning. Remember that other countries have newspapers as well which may contain information about your ancestors and their life in another country. W3newspapers is one place to find digitized German newspapers.
Finding Records
So where can you find these records? There are obituary websites and databases such as Legacy.com (for more recent records), and ObitsArchive.com ($). FindAGrave volunteers may post an obituary on a memorial. Many newspapers have their own database which you can access from your local library or a personal subscription, if they offer one.
Other free sites include Chronicling America (from the Library of Congress), state and local sites, and Google News Archive. Other sites (not necessarily free) are Ancestry, FamilySearch, Newspapers.com, GenealogyBank, FindMyPast, and MyHeritage.
FamilyFinders