Newspapers are an intricate piece of the puzzle in
discovering your ancestors and the details of their lives. Information that can
be found in newspapers such as birth, marriage and death notices can provide a
connection of family lines and find missing family members. They may also prove
helpful in finding the maiden names of female ancestors.
As you build your tree,
you will begin to realize that there’s more to genealogy than accumulating the
names and dates of birth/death of your ancestors. Newspapers will help you fill
in the details of your ancestors’ daily lives.
Some of the information
available in newspapers that will help you recreate your ancestors’ lives are:
social events, local organizations they were involved in, accidents (fire, car,
disputes) and accidental deaths (weather events, car, train, etc), political
office they may have run for or held, legal notices (divorce, law suits,
bankruptices, etc.), real estate transactions, businesses they may have owned
or worked for, trade associations they may have belonged to or held office in,
religious affiliations (social events & history celebrations), school
activities they participated in, missing person reports, local disasters,
epidemics and the simple day to day events that were included in many small
town newspapers.
As you accumulate the
newspaper clippings that tell the story of your ancestors, be sure to include
these as sources on your family tree (online or software program) for future
generations to discover.
Following is a list of
websites that provide newspaper clippings. You will most likely discover that
you’ll need to search on multiple websites depending on where your ancestors
lived. Start with the free sites to see what is available before purchasing a subscription. NOTE: Keep in mind that more newspapers are
being digitized daily, so if you don’t find anything on the free sites now –
keep checking back for newly added newspapers.
FREE SITES:
Library
of Congress - Chronicling America
has a comprehensive collection of historic newspapers from all over the U.S. - http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/
Elephind has
3,450 newspaper titles - http://elephind.com
Free
Newspaper Archives -http://www.freenewspaperarchives.us/
The
Ancestor Hunt links to libraries in every state that
contain digitized newspaper clippings. -
http://www.theancestorhunt.com/blog/search-40-million-historic-us-newspaper-pages-for-free#.WZMG7VGGOUn
Digital
Historical Newspaper Wiki includes foreign newspapers, too - https://familysearch.org/wiki/en/Digital_Historical_Newspapers
SUBSCRIPTION
SITES:
Newspapers.com
is available through Ancestry.com at a reduced rate if you are an Ancestry
subscriber - http://newspapers.com.
Ancestry.com
also provides some newspaper clippings in their basic subscription service.
Check the ‘catalog section’ for availability – http://www.ancestry.com
Genealogy
Bank
contains historical newspapers & articles for all 50 states. 7,000
newspaper titles as far back as 1690 - https://www.genealogybank.com/explore/newspapers/all
DIRECTORIES:
The
Online Historical Newspaper website is a directory by state that
lets you see which websites contain newspapers for the area you’re searching
in. Some of the websites will be free and some will require a subscription.
Note: It was selected as one of the “Family Tree Magazine 101 Best Websites
2017” - https://sites.google.com/site/onlinenewspapersite/Home
United
States Newspaper Wiki by Family Search – The Family Search
Wikis are always an excellent place to start when learning how to research a
specific place or method of genealogy research. This wiki is no exception. A
good explanation and list of links is a good starting point - https://familysearch.org/wiki/en/United_States_Newspapers
OTHER
BENEFICIAL SITES:
The following two sites contain a tremendous amount of
information which will aid in searching for more information related to your
ancestors. Make a note of these two sites because they will become invaluable
as time goes on and more records are digitized and placed online.
Digital
Public Library of America is in its beginning stages but it
already contains 16,847,543 items from libraries, archives and museums across
the United States. The beauty of this site is that it is bringing information
from thousands of sources together and providing a link to it on their website.
For instance, you can find a number of documents on the Mennonites in
Pennsylvania which is contained in the University of Virginia holdings. You
might only think of searching in
Pennsylvania museums, archives, etc., but other information might be available
in other states archives. This website
gives you access to all of
the documents (that have been digitized) wherever they might be located. As
time goes on, this will become a fabulous website for locating information
- http://dp.la
Digital State Archives are rapidly digitizing their holdings such as
documents, photographs, videos, oral
histories, music, deed, artifacts, court records, slave emancipation
records, newspapers, reports, military records and more. They are a great
resource for information and this website provides a directory to the archives
in each state - http://www.digitalstatearchives.com/
