Newspapers are a valuable resource to genealogists and family historians. I definitely didn’t understand their benefit in my early research on my ancestors, and, even when I did, I didn’t mine them as effectively as I do now (and there is still room for improvement!). At first, I used newspapers primarily to find deaths, funerals, and obituaries. I didn’t know about or have access to archived newspaper copies that I could handle with my own hands; I did, however, use microfilm to search newspapers of interest. With the increased busy-ness of life and the popularity and availability of the digital versions of old newspapers, I have been able to maximize my use of newspapers as a research tool. Over the last five years, I have begun using them to understand the contexts in which my ancestors lived. It’s amazing how paying attention to such matters of interest to a local citizenry as tax records, police jury proceedings, church activities, and even weather trends has informed me about my people’s lived experiences and what issues may have concerned them. A few months ago, I picked up James M. Beidler’s The Family Tree Historical Newspapers Guide to round out my knowledge about the history and usefulness of newspapers. In this post, I’ll summarize what I’ve discovered in my newspaper research as well as my main takeaways from his book. Then, I’ll provide a brief introduction to a series of posts that reflect my application of newspaper research in answering a long-standing question I had about my maternal grandfather’s ancestors.
What is a newspaper? This may seem like a dumb question, but I think it’s important to start there. Beidler defines a newspaper as a “serial [and not just a single) publication designed to be a primary source of written information [in a particular format, e.g., four or more columns with a masthead], current events connected with public affairs, whether local, national, or international in scope.”1 Although news coverage is not limited to a particular topic or subject matter, the newspaper, itself, is directed toward the general public [rather than specific groups targeted by academic journals, for example] located in a certain geographic area or ethnic, cultural, racial, political, or national group.
In terms of the history of American newspapers, Beidler explains that weekly publications were being printed even in the early decades of the 18th century in the burgeoning colonies of the New World. However, from about 1850-1950, newspapers became the primary method by which Americans learned about their world, with those geared toward specific ethnic communities, like Cajuns and Creoles in south Louisiana, proliferating in the second half of the 1800’s. By the 1900’s, there were thousands of newspapers, with nearly every county seat in the eastern half of the country boasting its own publication. These newspapers featured, not only national and global news stories, but also advertisements, editorials and political opinion pieces, and legal notices. Many newspapers had correspondents in big and small towns who were able to to share their local news, thanks to telegraph wires and the efficiency of railroad travel. Items of more local interest included topics like visits from out-of-towners, church activities, weather woes, deaths, and crimes and punishment.
After overcoming disruptions caused by the Civil War, the print newspaper juggernaut had to contend with the advent of television after World War II. The newspaper readership was swayed by the convenience of tuning in to the nation’s newscasters. Increased expenses and loss of advertisement revenue forced newspapers to band together to save money, re-brand themselves as multi-city chains, or to merge completely. In order to compete with television’s domination of national and international news, they also began to narrow their focus to local issues and offer more in-depth articles . In spite of their struggles, newspapers, as a whole, continued to serve an important audience. When the nascent internet of the 1990’s exploded onto the scene in the 2000s, the passing knell of the traditional print newspaper tolled. At this time, newspapers strove to stay relevant by offering digital services and subscriptions to complement their now less frequently published print publications. It’s been that way ever since.
Meanwhile, historians and others began taking interest in preserving what was in danger of being lost to the wind. Eventually, as Beidler reports, “The US Newspaper Program, put into the place by the National Endowment for the Humanities with assistance from the Library of Congress in the early 1980’s, took on the goal ‘to locate, catalog, and preserve on microfilm’ the nation’s newspapers, especially those deemed ‘newspapers of record’ for their communities.”2 Other organizations and individuals joined this mission, and many have also focused on preserving newspapers digitally. These developments have been very beneficial to genealogists, and Beidler takes a deep dive into offering them resources about where to find newspapers online, how to use their search functions, and what to do with the information. Lists of newspapers in various geographic areas appear in directories like Wikipedia’s entry about online newspaper archives; the Center for Research Libraries; Chronicling America; and WorldCat (searches must be filtered for newspapers, by locality or keyword). There are also resources offered at the state-level or by historical societies. For example, in my newspaper research, Louisiana State University and the University of North Texas have been valuable tools.
To find newspaper images, the following resources will be helpful:
- sites with free access to actual newspaper images and search or browse functions: Elephind.com (searchable and browsable); SmallTownPapers (browsable, mostly from the last 40 years); chroniclingamericaloc.gov (searchable and browsable); Google News Archive (browsable, limited searchable);
- sites requiring paid memberships: Newspapers.com and genealogybank.com; and
- library-only subscription services like Proquest; Readex; Gale Historical Newspapers; Accessible Archives (recently acquired by Coherent Digital); and EBSCO.
To conduct searches, try:
- looking for patterns in terms of the newspaper’s placement of information may help you to find what you’re looking for. For example, I noticed that funeral announcements and obituaries seemed to be on page two and column four of a particular newspaper I regularly consulted;
- fact-checking what you find in newspapers with other records or information you’ve found. Printers often made mistakes, and sometimes journalists provided biased information;
- in addition to searching online, checking with family members who tend to save their newspaper clippings (like my grandmother who would clip the Opelousas Daily World; Obituaries) as well as historical/genealogical groups that might include newspaper information in their journals;
- considering all the variants of a person’s given or surname, and include some other identifying feature associated with the name like their ethnicity (e.g., colored or negro); you may even “try the names of other people who might have been in the same newspaper – such as relatives or even business partners.”3
I have a subscription to Newspapers.com, but I also have used other websites such as Chronicling America and the Portal to Texas History. When I search for my people or their FANs (i.e., Friends, Associates, Neighbors), I try to pay attention to: delinquent tax lists; property/sheriff sales; succession announcements; death and funeral Announcements (my Catholic relatives also published memorials on the anniversary of a death); criminal indictments; military draft announcements; marriage licenses, marriages, and divorces; significant birthdays; and sports accomplishments and awards. When searching, I begin broadly, using just a surname to see what I may find about the extended network of a particular family. If I am interested in particular individuals, events, or institutions (e.g., a school), I search the years and residences covering the life span of the subject in question. For example, if I know that my great-grandmother lived from 1910-1995 in Los Angeles and Chicago, I will search some form of her name across that range of years, in those places, or maybe even the places where her children migrated. However, I also make another consideration: I’ve discovered that sometimes newspapers re-print articles from past issues, particularly at a significant anniversary or when a current-day occurrence triggers the local, collective memory. This means that searching outside the range of the lifespan may also yield important information about a subject that you may have missed using your typical search criteria. Once I find references to the subject I’m researching, I use tidbits of information to fill in the gaps in my knowledge about the subject’s story.
In my latest project, The Chevis Boys and the Murder at Coulee Croche, I have used newspaper archives to drive my investigation of a family story passed on to me by my great-great aunt, Olivia Taylor Norman. The story involves a murder of a prominent citizen in St. Landry Parish and the calamitous chain of events that leads to a questionable outcome and an ignominious legacy. I’ll post Part One in a couple of days or so, but stay tuned each week to read the transformation of compiled newspaper information into an intriguing genealogical narrative.
The Genealogy Griot 
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