Ancestry Magazine

National news in Section A, local news in Section B. Religious items on Saturdays, senior news each Monday. It doesn’t take long to learn where to find certain news in your local paper. But searching old newspapers for insights into your ancestors’ lives isn’t as easy. They may be dusty and dirty, microfilmed and fuzzy, or missing altogether. Maybe the layout is haphazard or the print is smudged, small, or misspelled. No wonder genealogists are enthused about projects to digitize and index newspapers.

Whether you’re searching your local community newspaper collection at the library or online, a heads-up on what you’re likely to find about your ancestor is necessary to ensure your success.

Vital Statistics Hidden in the Details
For family historians, vital statistics listed almost haphazardly in a historical newspaper can be a great boon, but there are tips to effectively locate the data. Check the paper for milestone events, such as centenarian birthdays or fiftieth wedding anniversaries. Also, don’t miss birth or death announcements in the social items. Before maternity wards, a pregnant woman may have gone to her mother’ s or sister’s home to give birth. Often the child’s name and gender aren’t listed.

Remember that baptisms did not always involve infants, especially if siblings were baptized together. You may need to check newspapers in later months and years for a listing of a child’s baptism.

Marriage notices may mention the couple’s clothing, gifts received, wedding guests or attendants, and sometimes the couple’s occupation and residence. But beware if the paper says your ancestor obtained a marriage license; do not assume the marriage actually took place.

Obituaries are often lengthy paid notices, while a free death notice may be brief. The Washington (Pennsylvania) Reporter states: “Herrick–on Mar. 4, of consumption, Mrs. Rebecca Herrick, aged 48 years. Funeral Tuesday afternoon at 2:00 from her late residence, on Cherry Alley, near Mrs. Swan’s.” There is no mention of her seven children, her maiden name, or her divorce.

Obituaries may also contain errors. Look for every issue in which the obituary appeared to see if details were changed or added. Obituaries may differ between newspapers or between different issues of the same paper. The obituaries of collateral relatives can help pinpoint your ancestor’s death date.

Some obituaries will help you determine where the burial or cremation took place or they will inadvertently give you other places to search. Was the person buried locally or out of the area? Are other localities mentioned in the obit? The 26 October 1897 issue of the Chicago Daily Tribune’s notes the death of William Orr and adds, “Toronto, Hamilton and Ontario papers please copy.”

Two other clues may contain information. A Notice of Thanks will acknowledge friends, family, or the doctor who helped during a person’s final days. Some memorials appear on the death anniversary, or on a holiday such as Mother’s Day. They usually mention the death date, and they often include photos. You can sometimes identify family by the titles listed, e.g., “To a favorite sister, sister-in-law, and aunt” and by who placed the memorials, e.g., “Love, Betty, Bob, and Mary.”

Other Uses for Newspapers
Aside from vital statistics, newspapers can help family historians determine other information about the ancestor(s) in question.

Newspapers can help you determine the dates of your old photos. An advertisement in the Crown Point, Indiana, Register of 23 September 1863 says that H.A. Upthegrove opened a gallery for photographing and ambrotyping.

If you are seeking information about your ancestor’s neighborhood, newspapers can help you identify businesses that were in the area. If the furniture maker was also the undertaker, is the furniture store (and its funeral records) still there? Where did great-grandma shop? Are there extant account books?

What products were available for your ancestral family? Newspaper advertisements for patent medicines were popular. The Crown Point, Indiana, Register, 3 September 1863, printed the advertisement: “Dr. Sweet’s Infallible Liniment. The Great External Remedy for Rheumatism, Gout, Neuralgia, Lumbago, Stiff Neck and Joints, Sprains, Bruises, Cuts & Wounds, Piles, Headache and all Rheumatic and Nervous Disorders.”

If you’re lucky, you’ll find information about who moved away and to where. Old Peotone, Illinois, papers note that many citizens moved and established Peotone, Kansas, which no longer exists.

If you’re seeking legal information, newspapers can help you glean clues in legal notices such as sheriff’s sales, bankruptcies, and dissolution of businesses. Notices of probate and estate settlement mean a person has died, and they sometimes give the death date. You may also find mention of ship arrivals, passengers, naturalizations, hotel guests, unclaimed mail, tax lists, moves a nd relocations, orphan trains, and more. People seeking missing relatives often wrote letters to the editor or purchased classified ads.

Some surprising information may turn up in newspapers also, especially information about an event that occurred long before it showed up in the paper, e.g., “Fifty Years Ago This Week.” A 1939 paper ran a photo of my great-grandfather, who died twenty-seven years previously.

If nothing else, newspapers will provide historical and social context for your ancestors’ lives. How did a community respond to national events? The society news often reported who visited, who traveled, and who was sick. You may find that a newspaper published news that occurred in towns forty miles away, or across county or state lines.

Some papers will publish a yearly review, usually in the December or January issue. Among the “Annals of 1897″ (Terre Haute, Indiana, Gazette, 1 January 1898), were national and international items such as:

Among the local events were:

Old Newspapers Present Challenges
Not all newspapers provide the information we are seeking for our research projects. Sometimes a woman is mentioned only under her husband’s name. The Peotone, Illinois, Vedette, 29 January 1920, states, “Mrs. James H. Fletcher, of Hood River, Ore., arrived in Peotone Friday eve ning. She wished to be at the bedside of her mother, Mrs. M. D. Morrison, who is seriously ill. Owing to her advanced age little hope is held of her recovery.”

Newspapers haven’t always been written in the same manner we write today. Sometimes newspapers would print “the 13th inst.” (instant meaning this month) or “the 13th ult.” (ultimo meaning last month) instead of listing the month and the day. Or it would say “of this city” instead of naming the city.

Newspaper microfilms may contain gaps. I saw one roll of papers published in April 1865 that does not contain the issue announcing Lincoln’s assassination. Someone had removed it from the bound volume long before the microfilming was done.

You’ll note in your newspaper research that the world was a different place at the time your ancestors were alive. Following is a list of some of the things you won’t find in a historical newspaper.

Political correctness. The “Annals of 1897″ notes, “Oct. 1, Charles Webb, a mulatto, arrested for a murder at St. Louis.”

Objectivity. In the Cicero, Indiana, Gazette (6 January 1876), the editor accuses Melissa Chew of stealing thirty dollars and adds, “She will probably be arrested this week.” On 27 January, the editor reports that Melissa, an “impudent, iron-faced, watery-eyed, stupid-looking woman has instituted lawsuit against the editor of the Cicero Gazette for saying that she was suspicioned of having stolen $30…”

Your ancestor–if he or she disagreed with the editor. If Uncle Andy was a Republican, you may not find him mentioned in a paper titled The Democrat.

Your ancestor in a large metropolitan newspaper. Uncle Andy may not have rated a mention, but consider where Andy was a “big fish in a small pond:” community newspapers, ethnic or religious press, and trade publications. If Uncle Andy was a stonecutter in Chic ago’s Hyde Park community, he was more likely mentioned in the Hyde Park Herald (founded in 1882) than in the larger Chicago Tribune. If Andy was Polish, he might have appeared in the Polish language Dziennik Chicagoski (Polish Daily News), founded in 1890. If he was well-known in the Roman Catholic community, he may have been mentioned in the archdiocesan paper, The New World, founded in 1892. And Andy might be mentioned in Stone in America, founded in 1887 by the American Monument Association to publish news of the North American memorial stone industry.

Finding Historical Newspapers
Some newspaper offices have “morgues” of back issues. Check public or academic libraries and genealogical or historical societies in localities of interest. The State Historical Society of Wisconsin and the Library of Congress also have large collections.

If you’re searching online, be sure to visit the Ancestry.com Historical Newspaper Collection.The collection currently has images of entire newspapers from the western frontier, the Midwest at the turn of the century, and The New York Times. The collection is taken from a variety of newspapers dating from 1851 through 1923. You can read more about The Ancestry Historical Newspaper Collection on the following pages.

Similarly, The United States Newspaper Program involves the federal government and all states to locate, catalog, and preserve on microfilm those newspapers published in the United States from the eighteenth century to the present. The site links to all state projects.

Printed resources include Clarence Brigham’s History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690—1820; Winifred Gregory’s American and Canadian Newspapers, 1821-1936: A Union List of Files Available in the United States and Canada; and the Library of Congress p ublication Newspapers in Microform. Ayer Directory of Publications, (now Gale’s Directory of Publications and Broadcast Media), is an annual multi-volume set that identifies current papers and tells when the paper was founded.

Newspaper bibliographies exist for many states or ethnic groups. An extensive bibliography is in Chapter 12 of The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy (Ancestry, 1992).

As the digitizing and indexing of newspapers continues, researching the printed page will become a paper trail instead of a paper trial. Now, if we can only find those missing issues.

Linda Herrick Swisher is the Public Information Coordinator at the Hammond (Indiana) Public Library. She has served as an officer or committee chair in local, state, and national societies, and has lectured locally and at two FGS conferences.