Newspapers have been around for hundreds of years and with the internet, computers have made accessing articles from newspapers easier.
The information provided in newspapers is practically endless. Public records available in newspapers are:
Vital Records-Births, deaths, and marriages are a matter of public record. The newspaper usually had an announcement of some kind of the important events. During the last century, not all births were in the newspapers because of the number of home births, but most deaths and marriages were written up.
Criminal Records- Many times when a crime is committed, the newspapers cover it on the front page. In addition, larger newspapers usually will have a crime section that lists the crime, persons name and sometimes where the person lives. It is a tool for tracking an ongoing criminal trial or crime spree or even finding a missing person.
Photographs-Newspaper articles include photographs for a variety of events, anything from store openings to funerals. In addition, there are times when a newspaper will run an article about the history of a community this article might have old photographs of people from the town. This might be the only place to find a picture of a long dead relative.
Business Information-Sometimes a new business comes to town or an old business leaves town and the newspaper will do an article. This is a great place to find information on the owner and at times employees of the business.
Finding newspapers online can be a hit and miss. Sometimes newspapers just aren't on the internet. A good place to start searching is with the person's hometown newspaper. Many larger newspapers online have some searchable archive databases, which will have all the newspapers available for viewing. Many searches are free but viewing the material costs a small fee.
Small town newspapers usually do not have the cash for this kind of archive project. In this case, it is best to check with the local library, either they will have a hard copy of the newspapers or it is going to be on microfilm. A person can go to the newspaper office and view the old papers in hardcopy or some papers have microfilm.
Some towns have becoming ghost towns, to find information on residents of these places takes some work. The first thing to do would be check with neighboring communities libraries for newspapers, family history books, and any other information. Also, check the newspapers in the neighboring communities. Local historical societies sometimes have access or know where to find copies of the ghost towns newspapers.
Online there are tons of sources for newspapers. For a monthly subscription, Ancestry.com has an archive of millions of large newspapers from across the United States. They are searchable using anything from name, place, state or date. Also, the pages are printable and can be saved to a hard drive for further reading.
Another site NewsArchives.com charges a small fee to use but is a wealth of information. This site also has millions of newspapers which are searchable by subject, state, city, and year. The material can be viewed in a small brief; to read the full article you must have a subscription.
Xooxleanswers.com is another site, which for a subscription fee will allow users to search for keywords. This site also has a link to Google News. Google News provides access free to recent newspaper articles across the world. In addition, to the recent news articles, Google will search through the web and retrieve newspaper articles from a wide variety of online resources. A Google search for the name and place of the person might be the most direct and fastest way to find information.
In addition, GenealogyBank.com, a fee-based site has not only newspapers but also books, historical documents, and newspaper obituaries. The online database allows for searches by first, last or middle name, key word, place and date.
WorldVitalRecords.com is another fee-based genealogy site with a huge selection of newspapers. Searches can be done by name, location, key word, and year. Results come back with excerpt of the newspaper article along with a small thumbnail of the newspaper including page, newspaper name and date of publication in the search results. This helps narrow down the search to the correct area and time period you are searching.
The Obituary Daily Times is an online database with daily postings of obituaries from around the world. The information is all from volunteers, mainly geared towards family researchers and historians but it is a good place to start searching for a deceased loved one.
Newspapers provide a history of the towns, and people throughout history. It is an unfortunate trend but the younger generation is not reading newspapers like those that did before. Small towns and big towns have lost century old newspapers, because of a variety of reasons, mainly the easy and instant access made available by the internet. The news will not go away completely but will most likely change into a different type of information experience. Many newspapers will limit runs on hardcopy and steer more towards online subscribers. In time many if not all newspaper archives might even go online, making accessing information on people from the past, easier and cheaper.
GenealogyBank.com The largest online newspaper archive for family history research with over 1.5 billion names from 1600's to present day. Search free.
