Saturday, May 31, 2014

Great Web Tools for Searching Historic Newspapers

From the FamilySearch blog By
Newspapers--shutterstock_31584622Countless millions of historic newspapers all over the world are now revealing their secrets as they are being digitally published online. And that means they are much more accessible to family historians—if they know where and how to find them. That was the essence of Lisa Louise Cooke’s message in her presentation “Tech Tools that Catapult the Newspaper Research Process” given at The National Genealogy Society 2014 Family History Conference in Richmond, Virginia, on May 8th. Cooke is the host of The Genealogy Gems Podcast.
Cooke explained that historical newspapers are rich possible resources for family history information. In their forgotten pages, a determined sleuth can turn up birth, marriage, death records, maiden names, names of ancestors’ friends and relatives, insight into their long forgotten community.
And even photographs—which can also be insightful portals to the cultural or sociological content of an ancestor’s era. Cooke showed an old newspaper photo she discovered online of her mother as a young girl with two friends. Upon closer review, she realized they were dressed up mimicking famous personalities from the popular show Laugh-in from her mother’s generation.
“To find the right newspaper for your research,” noted Cooke, “look for papers in the geographic community where your ancestors were known to live.” And to search those published during the timeframe they lived there.
Cooke demonstrated 6 helpful online tools for finding and searching historic newspapers online.
Click here for the rest of the article and the list of several great newspapaer websites

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