Although newspapers are quite a well-known resource for genealogists, I still hear people say, “Oh, my family didn’t do anything newsworthy” or “The place where my family lived was really small and it didn’t have a newspaper.”

Both of those assumptions are very wrong because, as I’ve said in the past, newspapers were the social media of the day. EVERYTHING got in the newspaper and those really small towns that didn’t have a paper were often included in the news columns of a nearby larger town.

While historical newspapers might help with your research, for the most part, newspapers didn’t start including lots of local news items until later in the 1800s. The 1900s were pretty much the heyday because most local papers today don’t include items like engagement announcements and results of local sports teams. The social news used to be published for free.

Here are nine excellent reasons to seek out those newspapers, which might well be found on subscriptions sites such as Newspapers.com and Newspaperarchive.com, but it is well worth a month’s subscription to scour the papers for news of your family.

1. Vital records – Births, marriages and deaths were shared with the community. I have the news clipping announcing my own birth at the local hospital. I also remember the fun at finding out my second grade teacher was getting married. My Nana read the obituaries every day. By the time I was ten, I was aware that Nana’s family lived in UjakUdol, Slovakia so I started reading the obits, too, and excitedly told her whenever the person who passed away was from Ujak. This is a real treasure trove for places that either didn’t formally record these events or else had a courthouse fire.
2. Social News – The Ladies’ and Men’s Clubs, Scouts, church events, school plays and fundraisers were all in the social pages of the paper. I even found out that Nana was in a church group that I didn’t know about in the early 1940s. Going on vacation or returning home? You’ll find that in the social columns, too.
3. Military Service – The paper always carried news of servicemen on active duty. During the wars, battles were mentioned, wounds, MIA, and bravery awards were duly reported, as were the dates entering and leaving military service. Think of the lost WWII records – the newspaper can help fill the void of information.
4. Health Status/Accidents – HIPA definitely wasn’t around in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Every serious illness, hospitalization, surgery, job-related events and accidents were news items to be published.
5. Politics – Aside from national and state politics, local political news was a popular feature. Who was running for office? Town debates were held, delegates were chosen to attend conventions, and Election Day results all made the front page. One of my husband’s ancestors was mentioned in an Ohio article that identified the town Copperheads – Southerners living in the North, but supporting the Confederacy during the Civil War. He probably wasn’t very well liked at the time.
6. School News – I’ve already mentioned school news in the social events columns, but in addition to school plays, new teachers were introduced to the community and those retiring thanked for their service. Even in the late 1900s, newspapers published the names of every single graduate of every high school, public and private, in the area. Sports was obviously a popular topic, as were special awards and honors earned by students.
7. Court Dockets – A variety of court information was required to be published. Everything from public fighting to drunkeness to traffic accidents and theft made the news. Divorce wasn’t easy to obtain in many places, so if a couple filed, that was huge gossipy news for friends and neighbors. More mundane items like real estate transactions and notices of probate also had to be published for public knowledge.
8. Want Ads – Don’t overlook the want ads! Information about jobs, rooms for rent, and items being bought and sold make for interesting reading. When I was about 12, my parents let me place a want ad in the paper to sell my bicycle as we had moved from Passaic with nice flat blocks to Wayne and our house was perched on a hillside. Here’s an extra tip – when searching newspapers, be sure to include addresses of interest and phone numbers. Sometimes, ads only included a phone number or address.
9. Lastly, but certainly not least, if you are lucky, you might find a photograph of your ancestor. They won’t be the best quality, but it will surely depict a special event in his or her life, otherwise, there would be no need for a photo with a news article.

Happy Hunting!

With the ever-expanding digitization of newspapers, this resource is becoming a genealogical fountain of family history information that might otherwise have been lost to time. Really, what better way to experience the lives of our ancestors than to read about them in the newspaper?

Successful searching depends on several factors, so today, I’d like to share several tips to increase the probability for success.

1. I know several people who say “I use “X” Company” all the time. That’s great, but it’s important to cast a wider net than just one company because NO single company offers exactly the same newspaper database as any other company. Yes, some companies offer exclusive access to a single newspaper, BUT town inhabitants (particularly towns near larger cities) often had access to two, three or more regional newspapers. I can tell you from personal experience that all newspapers do not print the same stories and some newspapers print a longer article that has been edited and shortened by another newspaper. Cast your research net wide to determine how many newspapers were published in your location of choice in the time frame that meets your research needs.
2. Chronicling America is an excellent free database of historical newspapers published pre-1930 with some newspapers published as late as 1963. However, there are two handy tabs on the home page that most people don’t notice:

The first tab is All Digitized Newspapers 1770-1963. NOTE: This doesn’t include every newspaper that has been digitized – it ONLY includes digitized newspapers available on Chronicling America. Using this search feature makes it very easy to determine whether or not a newspaper for your location of interest is available on this website.

The second tab enables a researcher to determine what newspapers are extant for which geographical locations that might have been home to our ancestors.

After clicking on that second tab, US Newspaper Directory, 1690-Present, I searched for Passaic, New Jersey. Be aware that many/most of these newspapers are NOT in Chronicling America and are much more likely to be found in one of the subscription websites, assuming that they have been digitized:

There are 123 hits that came up! If I limited my search to the Passaic Herald News, I would be missing out on the chance that something about my family members might have been published in a Clifton or Paterson newspaper.

IMPORTANT: This list does not included every known newspaper that was/is published in the United States. Here is an excellent example:

I next searched “Calais, Maine” and thirteen hits came up. However, and this is a big however, the major newspaper published in the Calais area, from the 1830s right up to today, is The Calais Advertiser, which isn’t even listed here. I’ve heard that this newspaper is being digitized this year, but I am still waiting patiently for it to appear somewhere!

3. To repeat myself, casting a wide net is important. Use general search engines to determine local resources that might house digitized newspapers.

Here are several examples of what might be found:

• NYS Historic Newspapers
• Virginia Chronicle
• The Ancestor Hunt
• California Digital Newspaper Collection
• Missouri Digital Newspaper Project

Some of the newspapers in these collections will also be found on subscription websites, but others can only be accessed online through the website. It’s well worth the time to seek out smaller databases.

4. Now, let’s say you’ve found a newspaper of interest, perhaps on Newspapers.com. First, before jumping down the rabbit hole, giddy with excitement, take a moment to click on PAPERS.

Now, enter the name of the newspaper in which you are interested. I know The Herald News has been around “forever” and let’s say I am looking for an obituary notice for my great grandmother who died in Passaic in 1926.

Well, I won’t be finding that obituary in The Herald News because this collection ranges from 1932-2023. It may be that this newspaper began publication in 1932, but it’s also possible that this company doesn’t have a complete run of all issues.

5. Once you are at the newspaper search page, hoping to find that genealogical gold, how do you search? Hint: If you only try a surname by “the way it’s always been spelled,” you might be missing out on many hits. Remember that not only is it possible that the news person receiving the information might have misspelled a name, OCR (the technology used to scan and index newspapers) sometimes scans poorly preserved pages and therefore words are mis-indexed. For example, the surname Sabo is also spelled as Szabo and Sabol. When letters like ct, th, sh and other combinations are OCR scanned, they sometimes scan in a blurry image and ct might be indexed as d. Therefore, keep in mind that you might need to be creative with your search terms.

6. Lastly, in addition to people names, search for addresses, business names and even school names. My grandmother used to rent out the back room upstairs in the 1940s and 1950s and had quite a few tenants. When I searched for our street address, I not only found the classified ads she placed when looking for a new renter, I found a couple of stories naming tenants who were mentioned in a news article.

I hope these tips have given you some new ideas for efficient ancestor searching in newspapers.