{"id":7207,"date":"2014-05-22T15:21:17","date_gmt":"2014-05-22T15:21:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=7207"},"modified":"2021-04-21T11:11:36","modified_gmt":"2021-04-21T15:11:36","slug":"how-to-research-your-genealogy-with-google-newspapers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/how-to-research-your-genealogy-with-google-newspapers.html","title":{"rendered":"How to Research Your Genealogy with Google & Newspapers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/em><\/strong>: Gena Philibert-Ortega is a genealogist and author of the book \u201cFrom the Family Kitchen.<\/span>\u201d In this guest blog post, Gena shows how to use the information you find in old newspapers to conduct Google searches that help your genealogy research.<\/em><\/p>\n

So you just found \u201cthe\u201d newspaper article about your ancestor that you were hoping to find. You\u2019re excited and can\u2019t believe what you just learned. That\u2019s great! Congratulations! But don\u2019t stop there. What\u2019s next?<\/p>\n

The next step is to find out more about the information in that newspaper article. Take that article and enhance what you just learned by searching Google.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Photo: magnifying glass. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you\u2019re not familiar with all that Google offers, know that it\u2019s much more than just a search engine. In some cases it also includes content that Google has digitized and made available, such as in the case of Google Books\u2014a must for genealogy researchers. In other aspects it is a specialized search engine that is meant to search for specific content like images or videos. Adding Google searches to your genealogy research routine will help you uncover more facts about your ancestor\u2019s life, complementing the information you learn from old newspapers.<\/p>\n

Googling Historical Events <\/strong><\/p>\n

In some cases finding the perfect newspaper article might mean finding one that doesn\u2019t even mention your ancestor by name. Instead, perhaps the news article provides confirmation about an event your ancestor experienced.<\/p>\n

One story I\u2019ve heard repeatedly in my family involved one of my paternal great-grandmothers. The story involves the 1933 Long Beach (California) earthquake and how angry my great-grandmother was because all of her china, stored in a china hutch, was destroyed by that quake. While I knew there was a 1933 earthquake, I wanted to learn more about how it would have affected my family. Now unfortunately, my great-grandmother isn\u2019t here to ask about that story\u2014but I did get a sense of the magnitude of that earthquake and the resulting damage by reading about it in newspapers. In turn, this historical news information helped me better understand what my great-grandmother experienced.<\/p>\n

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This Long Beach earthquake occurred on 10 March 1933 and registered 6.4 on the Richter scale. At least 120 people lost their lives in the earthquake, and there was millions of dollars in property damage. In retrospect, my great grandmother was probably very lucky that her china was the only casualty.<\/p>\n

\"front-page<\/a>
Evening Tribune (San Diego, California), 11 March 1933, page 1<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Once I found some newspaper articles that detailed the quake aftermath, I turned to Google and searched on the keywords \u201c1933 Long Beach Earthquake.\u201d Of course I found articles and books that tell me more about this earthquake, but what I was most excited about was the video footage I found<\/a> via a Google search, on the free website Internet Archive<\/a>. Internet Archive is a wonderful source for digitized books as well as microfilm, audio, and video files.<\/p>\n

The video footage showed me what Long Beach looked like just after the earthquake and allowed me a glimpse of my great-grandmother\u2019s world as a 29-year-old wife and mother. One aspect that really hit home was that my grandfather was a 7-year-old schoolboy at this time, and many of the local schools suffered significant destruction. Luckily the earthquake happened at 5:55 p.m. on a Friday so kids were most likely at home when the quake struck.<\/p>\n

Finding Images with Google<\/strong><\/p>\n

A continued search on Google Images (available by clicking on Images at the top of your Google Search results page, or by going to the website Google Images<\/a> and entering your search keywords) provided me with images of the damage caused by the earthquake. I could then click on one of those images and go to the corresponding website. One of the benefits of Google is searching by words or images.<\/p>\n

Search Tip:<\/em><\/strong> When searching on Google, don\u2019t just stop with the Web results. At the top left of your results page, click on Images<\/strong> to see images that match your search terms, or click on Videos<\/strong> or Books<\/strong> to see what videos or books have applicable information for you as well.<\/p>\n

My next steps in telling the story of my great-grandparents is writing up a narrative about this earthquake they experienced, adding my dad\u2019s memories of his grandmother, and including newspaper accounts, images, and links to the relevant videos, so that my children\u2014and eventually my grandchildren\u2014can better understand this event my family lived through.<\/p>\n

Researching with Google Books<\/strong><\/p>\n

Remember those missing husbands? <\/strong>If you read one of my previous Blog articles, Missing Men: Lost Husband Ads in Newspapers for Genealogy<\/a>, you may have noticed that in order for me to learn more about the stories of the missing men, I also searched Google Books<\/a>. For those who are unfamiliar with Google Books, it is a Google search engine that includes digitized books as well as a \u201ccard catalog\u201d of books. Because Google partners with libraries, you can find everything from family histories, city directories, local histories, DAR publications, and occupational and union journals. Google Books is a great complement to your newspaper research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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In that Blog article, I showed a newspaper ad that I found about one of the men I highlighted in the article, Henry Hooyer (a.k.a. H. L. Hooyer):<\/p>\n

\"missing<\/a>
Dallas Morning News (Dallas, Texas), 12 September 1907, page 8<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After finding this \u201cmissing husband ad,\u201d I wanted to know more about Hooyer and his disappearance. I knew later newspaper articles might exist, but I also wanted to see if Google Books might provide me with some information. A missing husband could be \u201cmissing\u201d for a number of reasons\u2014including disappearing as a cheap alternative to divorce, or perhaps some tragedy had befallen him.<\/p>\n

My search on Google Books paid off. I was able to find out more about his disappearance through digitized copies of the Leather Worker\u2019s Journal<\/em>, the journal of the International United Brotherhood of Leather Workers on Horse Goods, available on Google Books. Notices in his union journal included more information about the disappearance, his physical stats, and that his occupation was harness cutter at Schoelkopf\u2019s when he disappeared on August 19th.<\/p>\n

\"article<\/a>
The Leather Workers\u2019 Journal, October 1907. Credit: Google Books.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What Will You Google?<\/strong><\/p>\n

So how do I use Google after I find a newspaper article? I use the newspaper article as my foundation and then take clues from it to try to find other information in digitized books, images, videos and websites. For me, what I find in a newspaper leads me to more questions which I resolve by searching for additional newspaper articles in GenealogyBank and a search in Google.<\/p>\n

Search Tip:<\/em><\/strong> Just like with any search engine, remember when searching for an ancestor to try different versions of their name including initials. A Google Advanced Search, available from the drop-down menu on the gear icon at the top right of your Google search results page, will allow you to narrow your search.<\/p>\n

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Introduction: Gena Philibert-Ortega is a genealogist and author of the book \u201cFrom the Family Kitchen.\u201d In this guest blog post, Gena shows how to use the information you find in old newspapers to conduct Google searches that help your genealogy research. So you just found \u201cthe\u201d newspaper article about your ancestor that you were hoping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12713],"tags":[2340,544,1110,2339,1658,2233,12,2061,542,3936,5242,465,5243,7028,1198,2020,27,4818],"class_list":["post-7207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genealogy-research-tips","tag-1933-long-beach-earthquake","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-earthquakes","tag-family-history-2","tag-family-research","tag-genealogy","tag-google","tag-google-books","tag-google-images","tag-henry-hooyer","tag-historical-newspapers","tag-hooyer","tag-leather-workers-journal","tag-long-beach","tag-newspaper-archives","tag-newspapers","tag-newspapers-for-genealogy"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70499,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7207\/revisions\/70499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}