Connecting the Dots
You get into family history to learn more about the people who made you who you are. Putting names on a pedigree chart and reviewing census records are just part of the process. Telling the story of your ancestors is another.Forms, like a marriage license or a birth certificate, paint a basic structure —who, what, where, and when. But newspaper clippings, especially when dropped into a heritage scrapbook, color in the why and the how. You, and the people who view the scrapbook, see the whole picture of your ancestors, not just a couple of lines.
Image or Ambiance
You want anyone who looks at your heritage scrapbook to leave knowing more about your ancestors, right? What they did, how they did it, what life was like “back in the day.”
Newspaper clippings, like those available in the Historical Newspaper Collection at Ancestry.com, can help provide the answers. They come in two varieties: those that specifically mention your ancestors and those that set time or place. Either adds to your ancestor’s story; both take up the slack for treasures missing from your own files.
Newspaper clippings add to existing mementos. Maecy Palkki already had a photo of her grandparents, Arthur and Luella Peterson (figure 1). By adding a newspaper clipping noting their voyage on the Queen Elizabeth, Palkki highlighted their adventurous side and while also giving the viewer a sense of period-specific culture (figure 2).
Newspaper clippings fill in gaps. To accommodate for missing family photos, Liz Hartman added a published wedding announcement of her grandparents’ marriage to her scrapbook page (figure 3). Susanne Haring incorporated news clippings to augment her own personal journaling (figure 4) and increased the effect of the article by hand-copying another source.
Newspaper clippings create a setting. Rather than focusing on clippings about a specific family member in her heritage scrapbook, Anastasia Tyler built transitional pages to give her readers a better sense of place and time—in this example, 1930s America—in a chronologically-arranged scrapbook (figures 5). Each sub sequent decade is also marked by appropriate clippings.
How to Do It
Let’s face it—we make heritage scrapbooks because our ancestors are noteworthy. Isn’t it worth checking to see if they were newsworthy, too?
Find out if your ancestors made the news by searching the Historical Newspaper Collection at Ancestry.com just like you would any other collection. Remember, however, you’ll be searching over 6 million newspaper pages from more than four hundred different publications in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, some dating back to the 1700s. You get text and images.
Not sure where to start? The following steps will get you on your way to adding newsworthy tidbits to your heritage scrapbook:
Finding Records
- Log into Ancestry.com and click on the “Search Records” tab.
- Click on the “Newspapers & Periodicals” tab on the right-hand side of the page (located in the “More Records” box).
- Enter information about the person you’d like to find in the search boxes. a.) To perform a general search for your ancestor, enter his or her first and last name on the “Best Matches” tab. b.) To perform a more selective search, choose the “Exact Matches Only” search tab; you may enter more specific informat ion including birth and death place.
- To search for newspapers from a specific hometown or geographic area, scroll down to the “Search Individual Newspapers & Periodicals Databases” box and select the desired newspaper.
- To search for a broad category, for example clippings of football in 1910, choose the “Historical Newspaper Collection” link. Enter your subject in the “keywords” box, or enter dates, locations, and specific names to produce more refined search results.
- After you perform a search, you will be presented with a list of matches from various newspapers. Clicking on a match will take you to a page containing additional information about that search result. Click on the link to view the associated image and the “print” icon to review print options. Experiment with paper styles, types, and techniques including colors, prints, vellums, or even fabric appliqués to change the overall effect of a printed news clipping.
- As you create your page, remember to document and date your sources including photos and newspaper clippings. Numerous good places for noting dates and sources exist in scrapbooks including the back of the scrapbook page or on a handwritten image key placed in a small, decorative “Sources” envelope incorporated into the page layout. Future family historians will be glad you did.
Making Headlines
Whether you want to set the time or place, announce a historical event or a social gathering, or even show your ancestors in vivid black-and-white, adding news clippings to your scrapbook provides another glimpse of lives worth remembering. For you, the scrapbook designer/family historian, incorporating the news is easy. And for the person who views your heritage scrapbook, today or tomorrow, news clippings may provide the extra! extra! that makes a family line fall neatly into place.
Jeanie Croasmun is Senior Editor of Ancestry Magazine.
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