Newspaper Archives - GenealogyBank

Genealogy Records Found in Newspapers
How to Search Newspapers

Birth Announcements
Engagements, Marriage, Anniversary & Divorce Records
Obituaries
Legal Notices
Advertisements
Family Reunions

Military Records
Passenger Lists
Photographs & Images
Shipping & Shipping Records
Community News Articles
And much more!

This newspaper archive was built through OCR technology. There are a few important points to remember:

Newspapers don't always include full first names. Your ancestor could be listed under an initial or salutation. Also try last name variations.
Don't limit your search to just one newspaper. Newspapers often picked up stories and obituaries in former hometowns and in places where other family members lived.
If your family lived in a small town, look for a larger nearby city newspaper which might have included local news.
Don't limit your search to your direct ancestors. Search for the names of cousins, siblings, in-laws, and other family members who lived in the same area.

Essential for exploring your family history.

Newspaper Titles

Discover more than names and dates. Get to know your ancestors' stories—the lives they lived, their hardships and triumphs. Family trees are just not complete without the details available in newspapers.

GenealogyBank's Newspaper Archives Document Every Day of Your Ancestors' Lives

Newspapers are likely the only surviving documentation of the daily lives of your ancestors. Daily newspapers covered the news, reported on events, and recorded the births, marriages and deaths of the people in their community and beyond. Rich or poor, each of us makes it into the newspaper at least once—but the papers themselves record the daily pace of life unfolding around us.

GenealogyBank is the largest and fastest growing newspaper archive for family history research.

Featuring over 7,000 newspapers and a powerful search engine, no other online resource provides as much family history information. Search GenealogyBank now and begin discovering the many genealogical treasures provided by newspapers.

GenealogyBank currently has 228 million newspaper obituaries and death records covering over 320 years from over 7,000 newspapers. New obituary records are added daily.

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Historical Newspaper Archives Search Tips

Newspaper Archives Last & First Name Search

Using both name search fields returns newspaper articles in which the surname is automatically "near2" the first name.

This means the newspaper archive search engine automatically finds occurrences of the first and last names within two words of each other.
This helps to find occurrences of middle names or initials in the newspaper articles, without having to enter or remember them.

The "near2" search command is not order specific—meaning your newspaper search will retrieve the person's name no matter in what order it is mentioned: the first name then last name or the last name then first name.

This search default is intended to bring you the most occurrences of the name you are searching for in the online newspaper archives.

However, if the person's name is popular, like Smith, try using some of the available search options such as location, date range, and keyword, in order to narrow your search to the specific Smith you are looking for (see below).

Using Advanced Search in the Newspaper Archive Database

There are two keyword search boxes to narrow your search for newspaper articles: "Include keywords" box and "Exclude keywords" box (see below).
Use the Date search box to enter a specific date or date range of the newspaper content you want to search online.

Using Keywords & Quotation Marks to Search Newspapers

All the searches for historical newspaper articles are full-text keyword searches against OCR-generated ASCII text.
By using the "Include keywords" box and/or "Exclude keywords" box, you can narrow or expand your online newspaper article search.
Put phrases in quotes like "John Adams" in the "Include" keyword box to limit the newspaper article search to that exact name—versus using the last/first name search that brings back results matching John near2 Adams.
If you find too many names in the newspaper archive search results, narrow your search even more by typing names or places you do NOT want in your search in the "Exclude" box.

Using Boolean Operators to Search Newspaper Archives

Use AND, OR, ADJx (order specific), NEARx (order non-specific) and Wildcards, such as "?" and "*")

Broaden or narrow newspaper search queries

By emptying filled-in fields to broaden your search, or filling in empty fields to narrow your search.

Display newspaper search results in different ways, such as:

Best matches (this is the newspaper search default)
Oldest items (based on newspaper publication dates)
Newest items (based on newspaper publication dates)
Once changed, the selection will remain the default until you change it again.

Search Newspapers by Date Range

If you know the date of the newspaper content you are seeking, then use the "Date" search box.

Enter a specific date or a date range—a variety of date formats are accepted.
Examples: June 2, 1804, or 1804 - 1849, or June 1804 - August 1949.

Using Colonial English Variant Spellings to Search Old Newspapers

Many of the newspapers in the historical newspaper archives are very old, and the searches must deal with Colonial English.
The long "s" character was almost identical to the "f" in many texts.

When searching old newspaper articles on words containing the letter "s," use the "?" wildcard in place of the "s."
Note: this can occur whether it is the first letter, a letter within a word, or at the end of a word.
The double "s" is in words like Massachusetts needs to be replaced with two wildcards in historical newspaper searches.

Examples of Searching for Old Newspaper Articles with Colonial English

Modern Spelling	Colonial Spellings	Suggested Search
Spanish	Spanifh	Spani?h, ?pani?h
Boston	Bofton	Bo?ton
Massachusetts	Maffachufetts	Ma??achu?ett?

In addition, type was set by hand for early American newspapers and printers did not always have enough pieces of type to include all of the letters in a word. This resulted in letters being omitted, or sometimes letters that looked similar were used as substitutions.
Much of this historic newspaper material did not use standard spellings.
Examples of some conventions that were common in old newspapers:

Use of name variants - Smith or Smythe
Use of "e" in word endings - Chesapeake or Chesapeak
Dropping the letter "h" - Philadelphia or Philadelpia

Examples of irregular vowel usage:

clerk - cleark
color - colour
Delaware - Deleware
Elijah - Elifha
Israel - Ifreal - Ifral
Jehovah - Javovah

Examples of letter e to word endings

Brown - Browne
Chesapeake - Chefopeak or Chefopeake
Clark - Clarke
highways - highwayes

Examples of interchanging use of the letters "i" and "y"

adjoining - adjoyning
Pennsylvania - Pensilvania or Penfilvania
rails - rayls

Colonial Newspaper Search Notes

If in doubt, use wildcards such as the question mark "?" or the asterisk "*" in your colonial newspaper search.
A question mark is a single-character wildcard and an asterisk multi-character (allows for up to 5 characters) wildcard.