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Free Newspaper Collections

January 24, 2025

Genealogists love old newspapers for good reason. Birth and marriage announcements can provide the framework of an ancestor’s life. Often, the only biographical information written about someone’s life appears in his obit. Other newspaper articles add context to local and national events that may have impacted someone’s life.

 

Newspapers were published in all parts of the United States. Some existed well before the American Revolution. Most, however, are from the mid-1800s and forward.

 

Millions of pages of newspapers have been digitized over the last few decades. This has made newspapers one of the easiest genealogical resources to access. Both free and paid websites offer newspapers from all over the world.

 

Chronicling America (https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/ ) is a free newspaper site that contains digitized newspapers from all over the U.S. It contains newspapers from 1746 through 1963. Due to copyright issues, most of the titles covered were published before 1929.

 

The site also features a directory called “U.S. Newspaper Directory, 1690 to Present.” This helps identify all the newspapers published for a specific place and time and indicates how to access them.

 

Chronicling America is usually a good place to begin newspaper research. Once you have checked what papers are available on its website, it is time to search for additional newspapers from various states. Most states have historical newspaper projects which have digitized newspapers for that state. The easiest way to locate a state’s historic newspaper project is to google the name of the state plus “historic newspaper project.”

 

Since the state newspaper projects are free, it’s worth checking them even if the titles they cover overlap with those from Chronicling America. Not all issues of a particular title may have been digitized at both sites. I have used the historic newspaper projects of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming extensively and have found articles on them that were not available on Chronicling America.

 

Once you have exhausted the free sites, it’s worth checking out paid sites such as Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/ ) and Genealogy Bank (https://www.genealogybank.com/ ). Although they are paid sites, they offer free trial memberships for a limited period. Use the free trial to check that the sites contain newspapers and issues that will be of value to you.

 

A few years ago, newspaper research was tedious and time-consuming. Unless you had a date, it required endless scrolling through microfilm or paper copies. It often meant lengthy visits to far away libraries that held a specific newspaper or long waiting times for interlibrary loans of microfilm rolls that covered only a few days of a newspaper. That is no longer the case.

 

Digitized newspapers are expanding their titles and coverage at a rapid pace. If you don’t find the newspaper that you need on a website, check back in a few months. The site may have added just what you need.

 

Carol Stetser

Researcher

Larimer County Genealogical Society

 

 

 

Substitutes for Passenger Lists

January 17, 2025

Passenger lists are a great genealogical resource. They don’t exist for every immigrant, however. There are few ships’ lists for people who arrived during the colonial period. Even after the Revolution, few records are available for immigrants before the mid-19th century.

 

During the era of massive immigration from Europe from just after the Civil War until World War I, passenger lists usually exist. There are exceptions, however. For example, San Francisco was one of the major ports for those entering the United States via the Pacific. Passenger lists were kept from 1820, but a fire in 1940 destroyed all the lists before 1893.

 

James and Fannie Burnett, my second great grandparents and their children came from New Zealand in 1877. Their port of entry was San Francisco. When I learned that there were no passenger lists extant for that period, I was disappointed.

 

However, with some research, I was able to follow my family’s voyage from Lyttelton, New Zealand all the way to Ogden, Utah. Using journals and newspapers, I filled in the blanks that a lack of passenger lists had created.

 

Journals and life stories are surprisingly common among those who immigrated. Leaving his/her home to travel to America was a major event in an ancestor’s life. Many of them wrote diaries or journals to commemorate their journey. In the case of my Burnett ancestors, they were travelling to Utah to join the Latter-Day Saints who were already settled there. A Mormon missionary who had been in New Zealand was returning home to Utah. He wrote extensively about the trip and even mentioned various members of my Burnett Family. Many LDS missionary journals are available through the Family Search system.

 

In addition, my second great grandfather’s older son, John Thomas, accompanied his father and stepmother to Utah. At a later period in his life, John wrote a life history. He was eighteen when he travelled across the Pacific, and his viewpoint of the trip adds to the missionary journal.

 

To augment the journals, I used newspapers in New Zealand and San Francisco. New Zealand has an excellent historical newspaper archive called Papers Past. It is free and easily searchable. I found an article which listed the passengers aboard The City of Sydney. Among them was the Burnett Family. I also found an arrival article in a San Francisco newspaper. It did not list all the passengers, but it did give more details about the voyage.

 

Between the journals and the newspaper articles, I learned the date the ship sailed and which ports it visited on its journey across the Pacific. I also learned the exact date of arrival in San Francisco. The journals further supplied details of the Burnetts’ trip from California, describing a trip up the Sacramento River to Sacramento and the final leg of the trip via railroad.

 

Passenger lists are worth seeking, but other sources can help flesh out an ancestor’s immigration voyage. Don’t give up if you can’t find a passenger list. Be sure to check for journals and diaries. Even if your ancestor didn’t write one, someone else he/she travelled with may have. Finally, don’t overlook newspapers. Most of the ports your ancestor travelled from or to were larger cities with daily newspapers. The papers usually published articles about departures and arrivals.

 

Carol Stetser

Researcher

Larimer County Genealogical Society

 

 

 

Revisiting Online Family Trees

January 10, 2025

I’ve written about online family trees in the past, but I think they’re worth revisiting. In fact, that’s exactly what I do when I pursue my own research. Periodically, I search various online family trees for my ancestors.

 

There are family trees on lots of websites including My Heritage, Find My Fast, American Ancestors and lots more. My favorites are the Family Search group-researched Family Tree and Ancestry’s Public Member Trees. I’ve used these databases for decades, and I’m familiar with how they work. In addition, both contain huge numbers of names. This means that you are likely to find at least a few trees for almost anyone you are looking for.

 

Although some people deride them for their errors, online trees are a good way to begin a research project. If you find a tree for someone, it can jumpstart your research. You may find birth and death dates that you hadn’t known. Even better, many family trees, especially the Family Search one, contain copies of original sources.

 

Even when I’m not actively researching a specific line or person, I occasionally check family trees. You never know when new information or even new trees will have been posted. I’ve found dates and names and places on trees that helped me break down long standing brick walls.

 

Family trees do come with a drawback. Trees can be filled with misinformation. Once incorrect data is posted online, it takes on a life of its own. Some researchers copy trees without checking their validity. Twenty years ago, no one knew the parents of my third great grandmother Elizabeth May Terry. She was one of those ancestors who apparently beamed down to earth from outer space. Back then, someone on one of the message boards suggested that William and Ellen May from County Carlow, Ireland were her family since they had a daughter named Elizabeth. That suggestion has since spread throughout the internet, and hundreds of trees now show it as a fact.

 

Since then, several researchers have proven through church records, a family record book, and records from Canada that Peter and Sarah May from Portadown, Northern Ireland were Elizabeth’s parents. A few trees show Elizabeth’s real parents, but more still show her parents as William and Ellen, people who had no relation to her.

 

Information on the internet never goes away, no matter how often it is debunked. Before you add any information from an online family tree to your own tree, remember that. Online trees are great sources of clues. I refer to them often. Just be sure to verify everything you find.

Carol Stetser

Researcher

Larimer County Genealogical Society