Read All About It!

From Google Newspaper Archive

In the days before the Internet (remember them?), a key source of family history information was newspapers, particularly local ones that published announcements of births, marriages and deaths.  Nowadays, such proclamations are often made on social media, and you are more likely to find out about the latest addition to your family via Facebook than by a notice in the paper.

However, our ancestors were firmly in the analogue age and not only used newspapers to communicate life events, but may have featured in articles about their achievements, successes, and perhaps even notoriety.  Depending on the publication and date, you may find information about your relatives’ exams, graduations, military career, court appearances, community service, employment and more.  You may even come across photographs of family members as they celebrated wedding anniversaries or were involved in important local events.

But, you may say, how does that help when I live too far away from my ancestors’ home town to visit their local newspaper archive?  This is where the Internet comes in.  One of the best online free sources is Google Newspaper Archive which holds digital images of the original publications.  It covers many areas of the world and you can search the whole archive by keyword, such as the town or county of interest, or the name of your ancestor if it was sufficiently unusual.  I tend to identify a town, select a newspaper title and narrow down through the decades, months and weeks to a date range where there may be a reference to a family member.  If, for instance, your relative was a clergyman, you might find him mentioned many times in family announcements as well as in reports of parish meetings and church events.

Other free online newspaper archives include

·       The Gazette – a UK official government publication beginning in 1665. This includes reports of bankrupts, civilian and military awards, marriages, and wills.

·       Trove – a searchable Australian collection of digital images.

·       Welsh Newspapers Online – National Library of Wales’ online archive of 15 million articles.

·       National Library of Scotland eResources – these include many digitised newspaper collections. Free registration allows Scottish residents to search and view images.