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When researching your family’s history, one of the best resources at your fingertips are old newspapers. There are paid sites such as genealogy bank and newspapers.com. However, one of my favorite resources happens to also be FREE and very helpful for anyone with ancestors from New York.
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NYS Historic Newspapers
The NYS Historic Newspapers project provides FREE online access to a wide range of newspapers chosen to reflect New York’s unique history.
Researching NYS Historic Newspapers
Tip #1. Try Variations of your Ancestors’ Name
When researching my family’s surname of PREFUME I found that often that search keyword would bring up ‘perfume’ so I tried researching “Perfume” with a secondary search term such as a first name or specifying a specific city.
Similarly, I recommend variations of the first name too. For example, if you’re searching “John” how about also trying “Jno.” or “Jon”?
Also, remember that often in the older newspapers you’re interested in — grandma might be listed as Mrs. GRANDPA’s NAME.
Another way of accounting for variations in spelling is to use “?” instead of the letter in your search field.
Tip #2. Piece Together Your Ancestors’ Movements
In historic newspapers, many of the local “social news” tidbits are similar to what you’d currently find on Facebook. For instance, in the newspapers I found articles putting together my mom’s whereabouts from Easter celebrations to birthday parties to Sunday dinners.
Tip #3. Other Ways to Find Your Ancestors
In the past, I have been surprised that a search for an ancestor’s name will not come up but if I look up an event or use someone else’s name, I will find the article mentioning my ancestor.
Lesson: Researching historical newspapers is like rummaging through a clearance sale at TJMaxx. It requires the 3 T’s:
TIME
TACT
TENACITY
If you have the time – you would likely not be wasting your time searching the headlines manually of a local newspaper that is known to have articles about your ancestors. For instance, I tend to focus my research primarily on the Ogdensburg Advance and The Cobleskill Index. This is especially useful if your ancestors are from a smaller village or town versus the bigger cities like New York and Brooklyn.
Other ways to research your ancestors is to look for them through their connection to:
- friends
- place of worship
- place of employment
- place of education
Sharing is Caring
I hope this has been the slightest bit helpful as you embark on your research! Good luck and please let me know if you have any other questions I can help you with!
I have never tried anything like this before. I will definitely try it and hope I will have lots of fun doing it.
Ahhh interesting article, an ideal time with the lockdown to do some research to track the ancestry.
Wo, Such an interesting post and I would really want to track down my ancestors
I always wanted to track down ancestors. This is really helpful for researching ancestors. I learnt some new things about research as well.
More great tips. I can see where you would need to have the three Ts in doing this type of research especially tenacity! Weekends In Maine
I have a lot of friends and family who live in NYC and would love this article! Especially since we are in quarantine, all of us have time to do this type of research and learn more about our family.
This post remind me the detective movies or thriller movies.
My husband’s nephew really wants to dig deep into his ancestry. I will share this information with him. I hope I hear something exciting from him soon.
You always leave us with the goal of doing research. I always learn new things from your blog. Great job on your A-Z challenge. 🙂
Now is a great time to work on ancestry stuff! I will have to check out these resources.
What a wonderful resource! I can’t wait to dig in to old newspapers. I recently canceled my Wall Street Journal subscription because it’s just too expensive. I really appreciate newspapers, especially old ones. It helps to keep us grounded.
I love this! It’s like playing detective!
What a great, free resource for researching your ancestors. I haven’t had too much luck with some of the genealogy sites for my family’s history but I need to check if my state even has a resource like this.
thanks Valerie. i hope you are able to find a similar resource. so wonderful having it online versus having to go to libraries.