This next record group for beginning and experienced genealogists alike has only become widely used in the past two decades, in the age of the Internet. This is when old newspaper records became easily accessible to anyone from home, with sites like Ancestry.com, Newspapers.com, and GenealogyBank.com having digitized images of old newspapers from across the country, indexed by name, place, and just about any other keyword you could think to use in your ancestor search.
While old newspaper records have always been available, using them used to involve going to a local archives or library and looking through unindexed images in microfilm or microfiche or going to the offices of the newspaper itself and looking physically through old issues in their storage or research room. It is much easier to use these records today, which is excellent news for genealogists, as old newspaper records make such wonderful genealogical sources.
You can find the typical things you might expect in old newspapers, such as birth announcements, obituaries, and marriage announcements (even detailed descriptions of weddings). These things can include a wealth of genealogical information that you might not find anywhere else and should be used for this potential information alone. Yet, there can be so much more on your ancestors in these records.
If you have never seen a photograph of a particular ancestor before, there is always a chance that one may have been printed in an old newspaper, thus giving you a face to put to the name. Photos were published beginning in the mid-1800s, and accompanied everything from wedding announcements to obituaries, to military news to articles of local human interest. Even if you’ve seen a photo of a particular ancestor, finding a photo of them that you’ve never seen before in an old newspaper is always exciting and gives you another view of them as a person that is both metaphorical and physical.
You can also find all kinds of articles about local happenings that may mention your ancestors, giving you a look into their personal lives with details you would never otherwise know. Anything that happened locally was likely to be mentioned in an old newspaper. People visiting from out of town, or locals who were leaving town for a time, were often mentioned. So were detailed descriptions of children’s birthday parties, complete with guest lists. Descriptions of family reunions and who attended were sometimes included. Stories about local military men home on leave, or adventures they were having overseas, were often big local news. If your ancestor was involved in committing or thwarting a crime (or was the victim of one), there will almost certainly be a story about it. Announcements of job commendations, retirements, new hires, club memberships, club activities, church activities, and even local gossip involving the residents of the village, town, or city, were often written up in old newspapers. These were largely published in the age before TV, after all.
If you are looking for the story of who your ancestors really were as people, and also looking for additional genealogical details to add to your family tree, old newspaper records are the place to find it.