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