Do you wonder how to find newspaper articles for your ancestors? There are a few online sources, but what if the newspapers of interest are not online? What do you do?

Say your ancestor lived in Kansas. What newspapers were published in Kansas? And where might you find them if they are not online?

Never fear - there is a way to find out where newspapers are held, either in archives, libraries or historical societies.

Check out this one minute video to find out how - yes one minute! You have a minute to spare don't you?

Good luck and happy hunting!

Recently I have taken a step back from my family history research and have begun to analyze where I got the impetus for discovering new branches of my family tree, as well as the key "finds" that have triggered a flurry of new research activity. Also, for the stories that give a new dimension to an ancestor - where did they come from?

And you know what I found?

Just some of what I will call these "trigger moments" had anything to do with a document or formal "ancestral record." In other words, they may have been written down in a formal document, but it was not the discovery of the document that was the trigger. Now certainly discovery of a pertinent document can trigger significant amounts of research - no doubt. But the real "biggies" for me were many times triggered by something else. 

They were a direct result of reaching out to a living human being. Or from a newspaper. Now you could criticize my logic here and say that a newspaper clipping is a "document" but I would disagree. So stay with me here.

Let's examine five simple ways to find stuff out about your ancestors without searching for formal documents and records.

1. The most obvious non-record based technique is to Talk to your older living relatives. I have 3 of them - my Dad's brother, and two of his cousins. The youngest is 79, the oldest 91. It is from the youngest of these that I was informed of the maiden name of my great great grandmother. Her maiden name was Braunhart - a name I had never heard before - and he informed me that she was the brother of a California State Senator in the 1800's. That phone call later spurred my creation of a new website dedicated to the Braunhart family. Not to mention later connections with dear "cousins" in New York City and Berlin, Germany - as well as the discovery of over 50 German language 100 year old letters between members of the Braunhart family. What a find - all because of a phone call. 
2. You may have heard of "Cluster Genealogy" and "Friends and Neighbors" research. These typically deal with searching for siblings and friends and neighbors of your target research person or family in documents, many times census records. Well - that's great, but.... Talk to the living friends and neighbors of your parents or grandparents. I did that - and found out all kinds of interesting information about my Dad's service in World War II that he didn't want to talk about. And how my Mom and Dad met. And the identification of some actual relatives in photos that a neighbor knew but that my uncle didn't! And much more.
3. Find "cousins" - everyone talks about "cousin bait." Don't just put stuff on your website and wait for "cousins." Seek them out. Get on Facebook. Look at the names of target "cousins' friend lists to find their relatives and women's maiden names. I have found many new "cousins" on Facebook. Do exhaustive Google searches. Be relentless. Go after them. They won't necessarily find you via your website or online family tree sites. And then talk to them and collaborate. Riches are awaiting you.
4. OK - newspapers.  As a self-diagnosed newspaper addict - the stories that one can obtain, as well as the information about siblings, children, aunts and uncles in an obituary? Can't be beat for the richness of information in newspapers. I have written tons about these fine pieces of paper in Newspapers! You can piece together a family from newspaper clippings - not always easily but it can be done. And the stories? Indeed.
5. Go to a library in the town of your ancestor - I have found some really interesting stuff in hand written notes of lodge meetings and other local church related minutes. I even found out about the death of an ancestor in the 1800's in handwritten notes of these meetings. No death certificate - even no newspaper clipping, but because of a fire his father got a loan from the lodge to rebuild his business and pay for his son's burial expenses. No formal document was available. Spend some time in those small local libraries.

So get out more - talk to your relatives and ancestor friends and neighbors. Seek out new "cousins." Look in old newspapers and get to a library. 

I am sure that there are many other "non-formal document" based research methods. Please share examples in the comments.

Everybody likes to bash the Government (or even if they don't like to - they do it anyway). Regardless of your political persuasion - it is something that every American has done during their lifetime and for a variety of reasons. And I suspect it is true in every other country on earth as well.

So let's leave politics aside and at least be thankful for the following link: Family History and Genealogy, provided by USA.gov.

It presents a number of links to find additional information, databases, etc.

Here is just a sampling of some of the information therein - which provides links to a massive amount of other sources. So for family history and genealogy research, it is a great place to start to find stuff.

• Archives and Historical Societies by State 
  
• Census Finder including UK and Canada
  
• Federal Inmates Releases Information
  
• Genealogy Resources by State 
  
• Historical Records - National Archives 
• Immigration and Naturalization Records
  
• Land Records 
  
• Military Service Records
• Nationwide Gravesite Locator
• Tracing American Indian Ancestry

It is a good jumping off point for finding where a huge number of genealogical resources can be found. 

No - you won't find your great grandma's birth date on the page - but you might just be led to a place where it can be found!

Check it out!

Chronicling America is the definitive place to locate newspaper collections in America. There also is an excellent capability available to search over 6 million digitized newspaper pages from over 35 states. 

There are additional resources that one should know about.





The first resource to be aware of is the U.S. Newspaper Directory, which provides detailed information for over 130,000 newspaper publications and what libraries and archives hold them. Since only a small percentage of newspapers are in digital form, this is excellent information for the serious researcher. Below is a video that shows you how to find these offline collections and where to find the microfilms for those collections:

For the second resource, the video below shows you exactly how to find what collections are available for you to search online in the site, including collections by state, by ethnicity, and by language:

And yes, there are over 6 million pages that can be searched online. Below is a comprehensive video tutorial that shows you all the features and options that you need to know about in order to more easily and successfully navigate the site and search for articles about your ancestors:

There are newspapers from over 35 states and the collection is always growing. Some of the states that are represented have additional state and/or county-based collections not affiliated with the Chronicling America site, thus providing even more digitized newspapers to search. And there are also state and county-based digital collections for the states that are not represented in the national Chronicling America collection.

Please take a look at the Newspapers! page in this, The Ancestor Hunt site for the aforementioned additional state resources as well as some special collections, such as Farming and African-American newspapers.

In our last episode, we discussed The 6 Best Ways to Not Find Your Ancestors and that was fun. So I thought I would change things up a bit and share a true story.

Charlie was an aging man who had lost his wife many years ago and who owned a small piece of land near the woods. It was about 5 acres, and he had chickens, a goat and a few horses.

As Charlie was getting on in years, he often got bored,  was way past the age of having a job and was retired. Like many older retired folks, he began to think of his legacy and how he fit into the world. He had run successful businesses, was financially independent, and had 4 children who had spread out across the country. Only his daughter Amelia was fairly close.

Amelia was a computer whiz and taught Charlie how to use the Internet, which helped Charlie keep in touch with the world. Since Charlie had some hearing problems, she convinced him that using email would be a good way to keep in touch with his children and grandchildren, rather than trying to hear them on the telephone. She also convinced him that since he had come from a very interesting family with a storied past, that maybe he should take up genealogy as a hobby.

That kind of intrigued Charlie, since he had always wondered about his grandparents and older ancestors - where they came from and whether all the stories were true that he had been told when he was a kid. So he did. He started searching online, but was soon confused as to what to do with the information and what to do next.

Charlie went into town once a week to shop for groceries and run other errands. He often stopped at the library to check out books since he liked to read. In his most recent trip to the library, he saw a flyer on the bulletin board about a class in Beginning Genealogy that the retired school principal and Charlies' old friend Samuel was teaching. Since the class was on Tuesday afternoons - and Tuesday was Charlie's trip to town day, he enrolled in the class.

He really liked the classes - he learned about pedigree charts and family group sheets and all the other basic stuff about writing down one's family history. He was really getting into it - in fact it became an obsession with him in just a couple of weeks. He was searching online 10 to 12 hours a day, looking through databases and searching old newspapers.

Then one day, in the fourth or fifth class, Samuel said something that totally caught Charlie off guard. Samuel started talking about source citations and how important it was to write down where you had found stuff. He was telling the students to "cite your sources" and how absolutely critical that was to recording one's genealogy. When Charlie heard that he went off the deep end. He stood up in the class and screamed at Samuel, "I am not gonna do that." He was shaking, he was so upset.

Fortunately the class time was over and Charlie bolted from the class, got in his old beat up pickup truck and drove home. Samuel was very upset at the behavior of his old friend. He thought long and hard about what to do - he knew that this genealogy thing had given Charlie a new lease on life and he had become enthusiastic about life once again - for the first time since his wife had died 6 years prior.

Surprisingly, on Friday of that same week, Samuel received an email from Charlie. Paraphrasing - Charlie told Samuel that he was sorry about his outburst in class, but that he was startled with what Samuel had told the class to do, and he would do it if Samuel helped him. Samuel emailed him back and wrote "Sure I will help you. When do you want to do it?" Charlie wrote back and said "How about Saturday? And remember to bring your gun." Samuel thought it strange about the gun comment, but since he and Charlie used to go shooting when they were younger, he guessed that after they finished the genealogy stuff that they would go target shooting.

Samuel arrived on Saturday. Charlie invited him in and again apologized for his outburst and told Samuel how important that doing genealogy had become to him, that it had given him a new purpose in life and that he would do what Samuel had told him to do.

As they sat there, Charlie let out a huge sigh and asked Samuel - "Are you ready?" Samuel said - "Sure" as he reached for his briefcase. Charlie asked him - "What are you doing? Let's go outside", as he reached for his rifle. 

Samuel, with a puzzled look on his face said ,"Oh are we going to go shooting first?" 

And Charlie responded, "We have to go outside; that's where the horses are." Samuel, even more puzzled, asked "What do the horses have to do with it?'

And Charlie responded - "Well dammit Samuel - you said I had to shoot my horses as part of this genealogy stuff."

And Samuel started laughing like crazy. So much so that Charlie started getting mad. "What the hell are you laughing at? I gotta kill my darn horses and that ain't funny."

At which Samuel spat back - "I said "cite your sources" not "shoot your horses" you darn fool."


The moral of the story is to cite your sources so you don't have to shoot your horses. By the way, I lied - this isn't a true story.


For excellent information regarding citing sources, try Elizabeth Shown Mills' Evidence Explained.