Newspapers are filled with profiles<\/a> and obituaries<\/a> that help us better understand the lives of our ancestors\u2014and the famous people who lived during their times. You can use historical newspapers to research their public careers and trace their family trees. Who knows? You just might discover that you are related to the celebrity of your interest. The following old newspaper articles about these three famous Americans are great examples of how newspapers can be used to investigate the lives of the famous\u2014as well as the not-so-famous\u2014people that make up our family trees.<\/p>\n Eleanor Roosevelt<\/strong> (1884-1962)<\/p>\n Eleanor Roosevelt achieved many firsts in her long, active lifetime. Her list of accomplishments is equally long. The wife of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, she is the longest-serving First Lady in American history (1933-1945), playing an active role throughout her husband\u2019s unprecedented 12-year, 4-term presidency\u2014a record that will never be broken now that U.S. presidents are constitutionally limited to 2 terms.<\/p>\n Eleanor Roosevelt was the first First Lady to hold press conferences. As a women\u2019s rights activist she was upset that most newspapers only had male reporters; she insisted that only women reporters could attend her press conferences\u2014forcing many newspapers to hire female reporters. She was the first First Lady to write a syndicated news column, which she wrote six days a week from 1936 until she died. She was also the first First Lady to speak at a national convention.<\/p>\n Her support for humanitarian causes she believed in (such as women\u2019s rights, civil rights, and child welfare) continued unabated after her husband\u2019s sudden death on 12 April 1945. She traveled constantly, meeting world leaders, and influencing opinions and policies. She avidly supported the United Nations, and was the first chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights.<\/p>\n Asked in her 75th<\/sup> year why she wouldn\u2019t slow down, Roosevelt replied: \u201cWhen you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die. Therefore, I think it a necessity to be doing something which you feel is helpful in order to grow old gracefully and contentedly.\u201d<\/p>\n This obituary for Eleanor Roosevelt was published in a Georgia newspaper on 8 November 1962.<\/p>\n Along with many photos showing her at various stages in her life, this obituary provided details of her illness and death, and contained tributes from influential leaders.<\/p>\n For example, President Kennedy called Mrs. Roosevelt: \u201cone of the great ladies in the history of this country.\u201d<\/p>\n United Nations Ambassador Adlai E. Stevenson said: \u201cI have lost an inspiration. She would rather light candles than curse the darkness, and her glow has warmed the world.\u201d<\/p>\n A tribute on the Marietta Journal\u2019s<\/em> editorial page offered this praise: \u201cHer greatness is embodied in a life of service to humanity. Her name will long remain an inspiration to those who recognize that there is no loftier aim than serving one\u2019s fellow man.\u201d<\/p>\n In October 1984 the nation celebrated the 100th<\/sup> anniversary of Eleanor Roosevelt\u2019s birth by restoring and dedicating her home as a National Historic Site. The U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp.<\/p>\n This 1984 article began:<\/p>\n \u201cShe had no gift for small talk and was painfully shy. Her plain looks dismayed her and fed her grim sense of inadequacy.<\/p>\n \u201cBut Eleanor Roosevelt blossomed into one of the most liberated women of the century, wielding an influence over American policy and thought that would make many presidents itch with envy.\u201d<\/p>\n The news article went on to say that during FDR\u2019s years as president, \u201cshe played a major role, serving as a conduit for the viewpoints of women, blacks, the young, and helpless.\u201d<\/p>\n And this: \u201cHer public activities continued long after FDR\u2019s death in 1945. President Truman appointed her to the U.S. delegation to the United Nations. In 1948, she pushed through the U.N. General Assembly, with Soviet approval, the Declaration of Human Rights.<\/p>\n \u201cShe continued work on her favorite causes\u2014child welfare, displaced persons, peace, minority and women\u2019s rights\u2014and continued globetrotting.<\/p>\n \u201cHer opinion was sought by world leaders, including Truman. Kennedy nominated her for the Nobel Peace Prize. Her last \u2018working\u2019 trip to Europe was in 1962, nine months before she died of a form of aplastic anemia.\u201d<\/p>\n Norman Rockwell<\/strong> (1894-1978)<\/p>\n Norman Rockwell was one of the most popular and beloved artists in American history. A painter and illustrator who focused on everyday scenes of American life, especially family and childhood, his work reached a wide audience by gracing the cover of The Saturday Evening Post<\/em> for more than four decades, as well as numerous other publications such as Popular Science<\/em> and the Boy Scouts\u2019 Boys\u2019 Life<\/em>. Rockwell also illustrated books and calendars.<\/p>\n His scenes often captured the innocence of childhood, such as this cover for The Saturday Evening Post<\/em>.<\/p>\n A fine tribute to Rockwell is provided by the opening paragraph of this 1978 newspaper advertisement run by the Norman Rockwell Museum, offering the official commemorative plate entitled \u201cNorman Rockwell Remembered\u201d:<\/p>\n \u201cIn more than 2,000 artworks, Norman Rockwell honored America, creating a pictorial history of our times…illuminating our lives with gifted warmth and insight.\u201d<\/p>\n This obituary for Norman Rockwell was published in a North Carolina newspaper on 9 November 1978.<\/p>\n Although Rockwell did paint some works about serious social issues in America such as racism (for example, his The Problem We All Live With<\/em> was about integrating schools), he was best known for his sentimental views of American family life. This obituary contained this quote from Rockwell:<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe as I grew up and found the world wasn\u2019t the perfectly pleasant place I had thought it to be, I unconsciously decided that if it wasn\u2019t an ideal world, it should be, and so painted only the ideal aspects of it\u2014pictures in which there were no slatterns or self-centered mothers, in which, on the contrary, there were only Foxy Grandpas who played baseball with the kids and boys fished from logs and got up circuses in the backyard.\u201d<\/p>\n Steve McQueen<\/strong> (1930-1980)<\/p>\n Steve McQueen was an enormously popular American actor during the 1960s and 1970s, often playing tough characters that were cool and defied authority. That defiance extended to movie directors\u2014he was notoriously difficult to work with\u2014yet his popularity with the ticket-buying public kept him constantly in demand. In fact, in 1974 McQueen was the highest-paid actor in the world.<\/p>\n McQueen starred in such films as Bullitt<\/em>, Papillon<\/em>, The Magnificent Seven<\/em> and The Towering Inferno<\/em>. He loved speed, and was an accomplished motorcycle and racecar competitor. He often performed his own stunts, including the amazing motorcycle riding in The Great Escape<\/em>\u2014thanks to careful editing, in one scene McQueen is performing his own character\u2019s riding as well as the German chasing him on another motorcycle!<\/p>\n Steve McQueen died at the age of 50 due to cancer and related complications. This obituary was published in a Massachusetts newspaper on 8 November 1980.<\/p>\n This obituary related how McQueen\u2019s acting was shaped by his own rebellious youth:<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough he was often described as a rebel and nonconformist, his screen image was an updating of a Hollywood leading man tradition going back through Gary Cooper to silent film heroes\u2014friendly Americans, smiling loners who become skillfully violent when pushed too far.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was founded in part on his own experiences, particularly his knockabout youth.<\/p>\n \u201cBorn Terrence Steven McQueen, he was placed in a Chino, Calif., boys home as a juvenile delinquent at 14. At 15 he ran away to sea.<\/p>\n \u201cAs he told it, before he was 24 he had been in and out of jails for fighting and theft, served a month on a Southern chain gang and was jailed briefly in Cuba.\u201d<\/p>\n The obituary reported how McQueen himself connected his acting with his rough background, especially when discussing the character Josh Randall from the television Western Wanted: Dead or Alive<\/em> (1958-1961), the role that made him a Hollywood star:<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the strengths of Wanted<\/em> was Randall\u2019s unromantically practical attitude toward heroics. McQueen, who often spoke in the argot of the 50s village hipster he once was, referred to Randall as \u2018an uncomplicated cat.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cWhen the villain had him cornered and outnumbered, McQueen\u2019s Randall would smile disarmingly and back off, figuring he\u2019d live to get his man some other day, an outlook McQueen credited to his own hard-earned survival skills.<\/p>\n \u201cHe even rewrote his dialogue to make Randall fit his own experience of men who live close to danger.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018I couldn\u2019t play some happy-jack who shoots it out with four men without batting an eyelash. I\u2019ve been whipped, man, and in real life I tell guys who outnumber me: You\u2019re right, you\u2019re right.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Although he gained fame and fortune playing tough guys, McQueen didn\u2019t want to be confined to those roles, as reported in this 1980 newspaper article.<\/p>\n![\"Mrs.](\"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/marietta-journal-newspaper-1108-1962-eleanor-roosevelt-obituary.png\" "\\"marietta-journal-newspaper-1108-1962-eleanor-roosevelt-obituary\\"")
<\/a>![\"Eleanor](\"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/dallas-morning-news-newspaper-1008-1984-eleanor-roosevelt.png\" "\\"dallas-morning-news-newspaper-1008-1984-eleanor-roosevelt\\"")
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<\/a>![\"Heart](\"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/boston-herald-newspaper-1108-1980-steve-mcqueen-obituary.png\" "\\"boston-herald-newspaper-1108-1980-steve-mcqueen-obituary\\"")
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![\"[Steve]](\"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/dallas-morning-news-newspaper-1108-1980-steve-mcqueen.png\" "\\"dallas-morning-news-newspaper-1108-1980-steve-mcqueen\\"")
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