In our past newsletters we have discussed the analogy of gardening and genealogy. This has included preparation, careful examination, recognition, and sharing the bounties with others. We are often asked, "How can I find vital record information about my ancestor when the courthouse burned and all the records along with it?" This is not as hard a task as it may seem. The answer is old local newspapers.

Before the advent of emails, personal Web pages, and the telephone, our ancestors used newspapers as a way to keep informed about local gossip and community events. A treasure trove of genealogical information can be found in time-period newspapers on subjects as minor as "who was visiting the neighbor" to major events such as murders and natural disasters. These include births, marriages, deaths, migrations, names and locations of relatives. Such information is found in the following obituary:

The Ouachita Telegraph Saturday, February 16, 1889 Page 2, Column 1 Mrs. M.J. McGuire, of Ruston, mother of Maj. Thomas McGuire of this parish, died at that place on last Tuesday, aged 71 years. Mrs. McGuire was a native of Alabama, removing to Louisiana in 1851, and was for a long time a resident of this parish.

This information can be particularly useful to a family historian when the locality where your ancestor was born has lost records because of fire or other disasters. The above obituary includes Mrs. McGuire's death date, age, one son's name and the fact that she had arrived in Louisiana in 1851 from Alabama.

Newspapers usually are not destroyed when a courthouse burns, and can be a much-needed resource of genealogical information. The good news today is that these old newspaper resources are becoming more and more available through the Internet.

The first step is to find out if an early newspaper exists. Many good Internet sites for finding the old local newspapers available online are listed in this newsletter. The one we have selected for our demonstration can be found at:
Newspapers.
Once this web page has been accessed, click the state of interest. We selected California as our state of interest. This gave us a list of California newspapers and what areas they covered, plus a link to the newspaper's web site. The "Fresno Bee" was selected and then the Archive folder. Although old articles are not available online at this site, the website gave information on a service they call "BeeSearch" with the corresponding rates. "BeeSearch" can search for old articles that were published in the "Fresno Bee", and these search requests can be ordered through email. All this can be done without ever leaving your computer!

If the particular newspaper you want didn't appear at the previous site we mentioned, you could try using Newspaper Links Online. This site has an extensive list of links to local newspapers for most states as well as links for Canadian and International newspapers.

This site maintained by the Library of Congress LOC Newspapers has a large index of available newspapers including dates of availability. While this doesn't include every old American newspaper, it is still a good place to search.

Some of the newspapers do not provide research services for early newspaper items. Once you know the name of the paper, though, you can often access the library or historical society web site of the county in which the paper was published to see if they have the newspaper of interest on microfilm. Sometimes the repository will offer research services for archived newspapers. If the repository doesn't have a site, you may have to use the good, old fashioned telephone to call for information on interlibrary loans or research options. Usually the library located in the same county where the newspaper was published will have old newspapers on microfilm and can provide someone locally who will search these records for you for a small fee.

In the near future, online abstracts of old newspapers will continue to increase in availability. In a news release of 28 February 2001, the New York Post announced that it would digitize and make the microfilm of it's 200-year-old archives available on the Web. There is no word yet on when that project will be completed.

In any case, old newspapers are a source of genealogical information that should not be overlooked. This is especially so, now that this resource is becoming more available through the Internet.

There are also many sites that have abstracted obituaries from newspapers and have placed them online. This can be another source of valuable family history data. We are interested in hearing how your newspaper research turns out and if you found some particularly interesting sites. Please write us at newsletter@mytrees.com about your research experiences, and we will consider them for publication in the "Your Stories" section of this newsletter. If you know of some good links to obituary sites and would like to share them with us, we will publish them on the MyTrees.com site along with the links we have found.

Article written by Karen Clifford from Genealogy Research Associates and Tauna Hinckley. Sponsored by MyTrees.com.
Links provided by Cindy Carman.