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Subject: [NC-Newspaper] Research in Newspapers
Date: 3 Oct 2001 12:33:44 -0600

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"RESEARCH IN NEWSPAPERS," by James L. Hansen
(Excerpt from "The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy," edited
by Loretto D. Szucs and Sandra H. Luebking, Chapter 12)
===================================================================
"The Wall Street Journal" once advertised itself as the "daily diary
of the American dream." That statement, like much advertising copy,
may have been somewhat overblown, but it does encapsulate much of the
importance of newspapers to the genealogical researcher. Newspapers
are, for those who become proficient in their use, the day-to-day (or
week-to-week) diaries of local community events. They are thus
excellent sources for family history, giving accounts of events from
a contemporary point of view and often including details recorded
nowhere else. The genealogist who overlooks newspapers misses a great
mass of potentially valuable material.

Newspapers are intended for general readers, usually serve a
geographic region, and may also be oriented toward a particular
ethnic, cultural, social, or political group. Because newspapers
preserve the collected thoughts of many minds, they reflect moral,
cultural, educational, and political development more broadly than do
the isolated thoughts of an individual's correspondence or diary.
Nowhere can a clearer idea be gained of public sentiment than in the
American newspaper.

While records of birth, marriage, and death are the most commonly
sought and the most consistently helpful, only the genealogist's
imagination and resourcefulness limit the newspaper's usefulness in
supplying clues about historical events, local news items, probate
court and legal notices, real estate transactions, political
biographies, announcements, notices of new and terminated
partnerships, business advertisements, and notices for settling
debts.

Newspapers can provide at least a partial substitute for nonexistent
civil records. For example, an obituary may have appeared in a
newspaper even when civil death records did not exist. And newspapers
are an important source of marriage records, particularly in those
states, such as Pennsylvania and South Carolina, where the civil
recording of marriages was essentially nonexistent until the
twentieth century.

Newspapers take on added importance where official public records
have been destroyed. All Cook County, Illinois, official records, for
example, were destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Newspapers
consequently become even more critical in reconstructing the history
of the city and tracing the roots of its settlers.

Because newspapers are unofficial sources, even when they merely
supplement the public records, they can provide much incidental
information that is simply not recorded anywhere else. Also, because
of their unofficial nature, they are not bound by the regulations and
forms used by more "official" sources. A newspaper account of a
marriage might, for example, indicate that it took place at the home
of the bride's parents, perhaps even naming them; it might list the
occupation of the groom, or indicate that the ceremony was part of a
double wedding in which the bride's sister was also being married.
None of these details is likely to appear in the marriage record at
the courthouse.

Unlike official records, newspapers are not limited to a particular
geographical area. They can include reports of the weddings of local
citizens, even when they occurred in a neighboring county or another
state. They can report visits of geographically distant relatives or
the return visits of local residents to them. They can publish death
notices of individuals who had left the area long before but who
still had local family or friends. In each case the newspaper account
can identify the date and place of an event, thus opening the
possibility of turning up additional documentation in other sources.

EDITOR'S NOTE: To locate newspapers available by state, visit the
U.S. Newspaper Program at:
http://www.neh.gov/projects/usnp.html

This program is a cooperative effort by states and federal
government, with funding from the National Endowment for the
Humanities and technical assistance from the Library of Congress.
It's goal is to catalog and preserve newspapers from across the
country. Links to individual state projects are available at the link
above, where more information on availability of newspapers is
typically included.
____________________________________________________________________

The above piece is an excerpt from "The Source: A Guidebook of
American Genealogy," edited by Loretto D. Szucs and Sandra H.
Luebking, Chapter 12, 'Research in Newspapers," by James L. Hansen)

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