Newspapers for Genealogy

Presentation for the

Irondequoit Public Library

September 2013

I had to put this in….

A truth --->

• Newspapers can be extremely valuable in finding information about your family over a period of time and in a specific location. And they may well show movements, married names, and much other information.

• There are many newspaper that exist which have not been digitized and put online yet.

• The Central Library in Rochester has large cabinets of the city newspapers on microfilm, 5500 reels of them, but they are online only in bits and pieces. Try such sources such as www.fultonhistory.com. That web site has many Democrat and Chronicles, and a few Union and Advertisers. It also has a downloadable Excel spreadsheet of all the papers on that site.

• How many pages are there?

A couple, you could say…

Why use newspapers for genealogy research?

Lots of reasons - you can find useful information in obituaries such as where folks lived, who survived them, streets where they lived, where they worked, where they are buried, what the relations are, or what the daughters’ married names are.

Wills might also have some of the same information, but that means that the person would have had to have had a will, and there may be be fees to access it. (Monroe County = 90 dollars!)

Newspapers also have birth information, marriage notices, anniversaries, and social columns that may have family news.

As Honest Abe said…

Caveat…Taken directly from the D and C of 17 March 2012:

“Our current business model — based primarily on print distribution — is essentially the same as it was in 1833…That does not make sense and it is not sustainable. Non-subscribers will have access to a limited number of free articles before they are required to subscribe.”

As of May 3rd 2012, that is the case. And the online search capability seems to have diminished with less years available.

Locally it’s bit of a mess…only 5 years and hard to get to.

• There are many more which are not yet in the Fulton web site. The D and C and the TU papers from Rochester are included in a massive newspaper clipping file at the Central Library. That file has 7500 subjects and 500,000 clips in it, covering ca 1936 to the present. There is a hard copy guide to the subjects, but that is not online. Nor is that guide an index. As of 2013 they no longer clip and file.

• They have all the town papers, but do not clip them. Most are on microfilm.

There is this info:• Rochester newspapers published in the 1800’s

• Rochester Telegraph 1818 – 1828

• The Album November 1825 – 1828

• Rochester Observer February 1827 – 1833

– Name changes• Rochester Daily Advertiser April 1827 - 1996• Rochester Daily Union • Rochester Daily Union & Advertiser• Times Union

• Rochester Republican December 1829 – December 1849

• Anti Masonic Enquirer September – December 1833

Which continues– Name changes

• Rochester Daily Democrat February 1834 - current• Rochester Daily Chronicle• Democrat & Chronicle

• Daily Sun June 1839 – December 1839

• Rochester Daily American 1844 - 1929

• North Star December 1847 - April 1851

• Frederick Douglass June 1851 – December 1853

• Douglass Monthly January 1859 – August 1863

– Name changes• Rochester Evening Express January 1859 - 1936• Rochester Evening & Post Express

• Rochester Herald August 1879 – 1926

• Daily Evening Times November 1888 - 1889

The Central Library (Rundel) is a Familysearch affiliate; and there are online ways to search local newspapers such as: http://userdb.rootsweb.ancestry.com/news/

At this time, there are no papers from Monroe County in the database, but there are a LOT from the rest of NY state.

What papers were published where and when?

• French’s Gazetteer of NY (1860) has a great series of footnotes that go in to detail about the papers and their publishers.

• See: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nymonroe/french.htm

Sample from French’s:

• Where can you find them?

• You can start by looking here, although it was unfunded by NY state in 2007, and papers have been moved from the locations listed in this web page:

• http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/nysnp/

Use them with an open eye and mind…where is the Brighton Pittsford Post?

Fortunately….

Our neighbors:• The Buffalo NY public library downtown

does have a large 300,000 item card file, but that is not yet online, although there are papers from Buffalo in Fultonhistory. There is also a large number of 3 x 5 cards of a newspaper index at the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society in Delaware Park in North Buffalo. Nope, not online.

• The Onondaga County library (Syracuse) also has a great genealogy collection, but their web site does not show directories or newspaper indexes. There are links to various commercial newspaper databases.

“Hidden collections”

• A few years ago, the LeRoy historian retired. In his attic he had a large number of clips on various families going back 100 years or more. He gave me many copies on the families that I was researching on that area.

• Which goes to show that any individual office may have a great collection, but it must be used in person. And you are dependent on it not getting tossed out!

A comment on the local RRLC newspaper project

and some other sources - • For the rrlcnewspapers.org project, they have been using

the New York State Newspaper Survey (http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/nysnp/) to identify pre-1923 microfilm holdings in our service area.

• RPL and some of its associated branches do have quite a bit of microfilm listed on the survey that they are interested in digitizing. The plan currently is to wait for funds and to do it in a big batch if possible. The work is hired out to local contractors.

• RPL’s Digitizing Dept. did scan digital versions of late-issues of the Gates Chili News. They are discussing how to make these available.

Suggestions for finding your ancestors in old newspapers

1) Select a place and time of interest for one or more ancestors

2) Determine what newspapers were published when and where

3) Identify which ones, if any, are searchable online or locally

4) Search for your ancestor’s information…

a. via free/low-cost on-line or local sources

b. with free/low-cost help from others

c. via more expensive high-probable-yield sources

5) Visit remote newspaper archive, if necessary

6) Call, write, or submit a query via their ask-a-librarian services.

MEDIA

METHODS on-line telephone microfilm paper

1) News search engines x

2) Request library help x x

3) Browse newspapers x x x

Also, many times papers are loanable from a particular library or the state library for a modest fee, and you can look in them yourselves.

Finding old newspapers - more sources

Library of Congress Newspapers

Chronicling America: Newspaper Directory DIRECTORY

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers FULL TEXT

NewsBank Obituaries $ FULL TEXT

NewsLibrary Newspapers (1977-2001) $ FULL TEXT

GenealogyBank Historical Newspapers (1690-2007) $ FULL TEXT

Chronicling America

Some other sources

Google News Archives (1758-current) FULL TEXT Footnote's (now Fold 3) Historic Newspaper Archives

(1785-current) $ FULL TEXT

And the NY Times:

A private person has done this:from www.fultonhistory.com

Google, of course.

And more -

Selected Newspaper Archives:AJC Historic Archives (1868-1945) FULL TEXT

(AJC is the Atlanta Journal Constitution.)

NY Times Archives (1851-2011) FULL TEXT

Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1841-1902) * FULL TEXT

Fitchburg (MA) Sentinel & Enterprise (1998-2011)FULL TEXT

Irish Newspaper Archive (1763-2011) FULL TEXT

*Fultonhistory.com has many more years in that database.

Still other sources

Ancestry.com Newspapers $ FULL TEXT

Family History Center Catalog free - CATALOG

FreeNewspaperArchives www.FreeNewspaperArchives.us

Highbeam $ www.highbeam.com

Lexis-Nexis $ www.lexisnexis.com

WorldVitalRecords $ www.WorldVitalRecords.com

A possibly useful link -

• http://www.libraryweb.org/~digitized/

Which continues

FreeNewspaperArchives.us

Sample from the Rochester library’s website -

http://www.genealogybank.com/gbnk/newspapers/sourcelist/full/#New%20York

Help! Where can I find other papers?

The United States Newspaper Program

www.neh.gov/projects/usnp.html

A cooperative national effort among the states and the federal

government to locate, catalog, and preserve on microfilm

newspapers published in the United States from the

eighteenth century to the present.

Don’t forget

Here’s a great example of what you could find.

And here are some passenger lists -

References:

www.byub.org/ancestors/records/newspapers/intro.html

How to Find Your Ancestor in an Old Newspaper

Brigham Young University Broadcasting

 

http://genealogy.about.com/cs/newspapers/a/news_research.htm

Family History in the News

How to Find & Use Newspapers for Genealogical Research

Kimberly Powell, About.com Guide

A free source

A pay source

Their Rochester newspapers

There are always new things being released - in 2013 there is this:

St. John Fisher College’s Lavery Library Completes Frederick Douglass Collection Digitization Project

See the bibliography for more sources!

• When you think about how we did genealogy 30-plus years ago, you can't imagine that many newspapers were used regularly. We didn't use them not because they lacked importance but because we would have had limited access to them in the pre-Internet years.

To restate:

• Be systematic & plan your search step-by-step

• Search free and low-cost datasets first

• Search online, call, or visit distant local & specialty libraries

• Explore online lists & discussion groups for newspaper sources and help

• Incorporate quotes, stories, poems, lyrics, pictures in your histories

• Cite relevant sources in your work

• Enjoy the hunt!!! You’re going to find something very interesting