Searching For Your Ancestors in Historic Newspapers

249 Pages·2014·3.63 MB·English

by  Claudia C. Breland

Searching for Your Ancestors in Historic Newspapers
Claudia C. Breland
Copyright © 2014 Claudia C. Breland
Genealogy and Online Research
Gig Harbor, Washington
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without proper written permission from the author. The
only exception is a reviewer; a reviewer may quote brief passages in a review
Title page image: The Omaha Sunday Bee, 6 February 1916; digital image;
Chronicling America (http://www.chroniclingamerica.loc.gov: accessed 3 Sept.
2014).
ISBN-13: 978-1500407094
ISBN-10: 1500407097
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014915792
Contents
Introduction
Treasures in Newsprint
Obituaries
Birth Announcements:
Engagements and Marriages:
Criminal Activity
Shipwrecks
Golden Wedding Anniversaries
Family Reunions
Divorces
Hotel Stays
Military Service
Letters from Loved Ones
The Latest Fashions
Organization and Society Meetings
Religious Gatherings
Bankruptcy
Weather Reports
Ship arrivals
Land Sales
Military Pensions
Journal Entries
Social History
Research Tips
Quick Tips for Newspaper Research:
Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
Finding the Newspaper You Need
WorldCat:
Benzie County (Mich.) – Newspapers
FamilySearch Wiki
U.S. GenWeb:
Online Searchable Death Indexes
Ancestor Hunt
Directories:
Citing Your Sources
Free Newspaper Databases
Chronicling America
Google News Archive
Newspaper Search Engines
Elephind
Mocavo
Recent Obituary Websites
Legacy.com
ObitsArchive
Burned Counties, Burned Newspaper Offices
Subscription Databases
Ancestry
Newspapers.com
Fold3
GenealogyBank
Find My Past
Paper of Record
Icon: International Coalition on Newspapers
Join a Society, Receive Access to Paid Databases
Libraries and Their Resources
Nationwide Databases
Local History Indexes
Microfilm and Interlibrary Loan
Newspapers on Microfilm
How to Read a Library Catalog Entry
Allegan County (Mich.) - - Newspapers
Using Interlibrary Loan
State by State Listing
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
District of Columbia
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Puerto Rico
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
U.S. Virgin Islands
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming
International Newspapers
Afghanistan
Argentina
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Brazil
Bulgaria
Burma
Canada
Caribbean
China
Croatia
Cyprus
Cuba
Denmark
Egypt
Estonia
Europe
Faroe Islands
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Ireland
Hungary
India
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Latvia
Liechtenstein
Luxembourg
Mexico
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Singapore
Slovenia
Spain
Switzerland
United Kingdom
Vietnam
About the Author
Introduction
If you’ve done some research on your family history, and have never looked for
your ancestors in historic newspapers, you’re missing out on an important
resource. Not only will newspapers provide missing names, dates, places,
relationships and events, but they will also provide a glimpse into what your
ancestors’ lives were like, in recent times and in the distant past.

No one needs to tell you that genealogy research has changed dramatically in the
last few years. Thousands of pages of historic newspapers are being digitized
and placed online. But if you’ve looked at those databases and haven’t found the
names you’re researching, you haven’t exhausted all the possibilities. What
about the newspapers that exist only on microfilm? What about the libraries and
historical societies that provide indexes (and sometimes scanned images) on
their websites? What about the libraries that have card files filled with
newspaper clippings? What about the finding aids that can tell you what
newspapers were published in 1890 in the county or state your great-great-
grandparents were from?

What I hope to show you in this book is all the resources that are available for
tracking down those newspaper articles. Newspapers carry more than just
obituaries, and I have illustrated some of the fascinating items I have found in
over forty years of research. There are obituaries, birth notices, marriage (and
divorce) announcements, shipwrecks, family reunions, bankruptcies, crime
reports, and wedding anniversaries.
Here you will find information about free genealogy databases, and a list of
subscription websites and how to use them. I have provided a listing of the
genealogy societies that include, as part of their membership benefits, remote
access to some important resources such as Early American Newspapers or
NewspaperArchive.

For all the newspapers that are digitized and online, there are thousands more
waiting on rolls of microfilm in libraries, archives and universities across the
country. I’ll tell you how you can find those, and how to order them through
interlibrary loan.

More and more public libraries are setting up Local History and Genealogy