Newspapers - A Great Source for "4th of July" News

 Historic and Current Newspapers are a gold mine!  Think of key years and locations, and start searching.

Old Newspapers (such as 1820 and 1876)

(1) Using nyshistoricnewspapers.org as an example, I filtered on Otsego County and searched on "Revolutionary War Pension".  I filtered on the year 1820.

The result?  I found a front-page article in The Otsego Herald on 03 April 1820 about the House of Representatives discussing a military pension bill .  

Try it.  Then, adapt your search to your ancestors and locations, along with relevant newspapers.

(2) Again, using nyshistoricnewspapers.org as an example, I filtered on Ontario County and searched on "Centennial Sketches". I filtered on the year 1876.

The result?  I found The Geneva Daily Gazette from 21 April 1876 with one in a series of sketches from 1776 (Revolutionary War).  

Current Newpapers

For this example, I did a Google search using the name of a newspaper (Finger Lakes Times) and "Bicentennial 1976".

The result?  I found relevant articles dated both in 1976 and 2026 ("looking back").

Enjoy your searches!  Don't forget to keep track of your search terms, sources, and downloads.

Newspapers.com Announces New Clipper

 The clipping tool on Newspapers.com has been updated to allow the selection of multiple areas on a single page and save them as a single clip. This will be helpful when an article covers multiple columns.

Drag a box around the first part of the article, hit the blue + icon to add another block. You can add up to 5 separate blocks on the same page. 

 Here is a link to the blog article. 

Newspaper Research Overview & Newspaper Finder

Our last Roundtable discussion topic was Newspaper Research. Here is a recap of our discussion and a new site I just learned about. 

• Newspaper Finder is a Database for Digitized Newspapers https://newspaperfinder.com/
• Newspapers offer a window into the lives of our ancestors. Suggestions for things to look for in newspapers:
• Obituary
• Professional Notices and Advertisements for Ancestor's business
• Announcements for engagements, weddings, divorces, births
• Stories about parties like wedding showers, birthday parties
• Court Dockets
• Organization Meetings - 4H, card clubs, garden clubs, quilting group, women's organizations, Business Men's Association, fraternal organizations like Odd Fellows, Masons, Elks, etc. 
• School - grades, attendance awards, spelling bees, annual school picnic
• Politics - elections, conventions
• Land - real estate, homestead land advertisements, homestead awards, delinquent tax lists
• Shipping News - ships arriving and departing from port cities
• Cemeteries - burial notices, cemetery association meetings
• Religion - church services, tithing, and functions
• Digitized newspapers are searchable using technology like Optical Character Recognition and Artificial Intelligence. The accuracy of the search feature depends on:
• The quality of the newspaper image
• Newspapers made spelling mistakes, search using alternate spellings
• Words were split between lines due to space requirements, search using the first few characters of the word or name
• Titles were used - search on Mrs. John Smith or terms like Dr. or Doctor, Mayor, etc. 
• Search on addresses, occupations, business names, or cemetery names
• Keep a list of alternate spellings for Surnames and search on all of them.
• Use wildcards if they are available on the site. 
• Alternative Newspapers
• Look for newspapers printed in an immigrants mother tongue. 
• Other sources - religious newspapers, school newspapers, business newspapers, organization newspapers. 
• Finding Newspapers
• Don't forget not everything is digitized. Search the Library of Congress Directory of U.S. Newspapers in American Libraries https://www.loc.gov/collections/directory-of-us-newspapers-in-american-libraries/about-this-collection/ 
• Use Interlibrary Loan if the newspaper you need hasn't been digitized. 
• Google the name of the newspaper. 
• U.S. Newspaper Program - beginning in 1982 the National Endowment for the Humanities provided grants to preserve newspapers on microfilm. This website has a list of the institutions that participated from all 50 states. https://www.neh.gov/us-newspaper-program 
• National Digital Newspaper Program replaced the U.S. Newspaper Program and now focuses on digital preservation. https://www.loc.gov/ndnp/
• Check Universities, local libraries, local genealogical and historical societies to find newspapers, both online and offline. 
• Check the FamilySearch Research Wiki for the location. 
• Portal to Texas History https://texashistory.unt.edu/
• Digitized Collections:
• Library of Congress Chronicling America https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/about-this-collection/
• Ancestor Hunt https://theancestorhunt.com/
• Elephind https://www.elephind.com/
• Old Fulton History https://www.fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html 
• Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_online_newspaper_archives
• Google Newspaper Archive https://news.google.com/newspapers
• FamilySearch Newspaper Search https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/newspapers/
• Smalltown Papers Archive https://www.stparchive.com/landing.php?home=y
• Newspapers.com $ https://www.newspapers.com/
• GenealogyBank $ https://www.genealogybank.com/
• Old News $ https://www.oldnews.com/en
• Newspaper Archive $ (Free access Dallas Public Libraries or the National Genealogical Society Membership) https://newspaperarchive.com/ 

July Genealogy News

 2025 National Archives Genealogy Series

Recordings are available https://www.archives.gov/calendar/genealogy-series/2025 for the presentations:

• Revealing Ties to Espionage in the Office of Strategic Services Records
• From the Territory of Montana to the Republic of Vietnam: Researching Native American Veterans in the National Archives, 1881-1966
• Washington DC, Law and Order: Cops and Robbers, 1861-1991
• Disaster Preparedness and Response for Family Collections
• Research Immigrant Ancestors: Alien Registration (AR-2) Forms

Past Event recordings are also available https://www.archives.gov/calendar/genealogy-series

Thomas MacEntee Amazon Prime Day Special - Free E Books

25 books written by Thomas MacEntee are free to download during Amazon Prime Days July 7 -July 11, 2025.  Link to article https://genealogybargains.com/amazon-prime-day-free-genealogy-ebooks/.

175,000 New Historical Records Released by Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland

The Virtual Treasury of Ireland was launched in 2022 and is working to reconstruct the records lost in the fire in 1922 at the Public Record Office of Ireland. Here is a link to a post on Dick Eastman's blog about the new records and the website https://wwweogncom.wildapricot.org/page-18080/13516932.

Black Pearls of Genealogy

This is a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving, restoring, and honoring Black family histories. 

https://thebpog.org/home-two/

Newspapers.com Added Page Category Options

Page Categories like politics, disaster, sport, etc. help you find what you're looking for faster. When you apply a Page Category filter to your search you will see results where your search term appears on pages related to the category.  Here is a link to their blog post about this feature https://blog.newspapers.com/explore-our-new-page-categories-options/?xid=8822&utm_source=Internal&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Find_July-2025

June Genealogy News

Chronicling America

 The Library of Congress is upgrading its search engine and interface for Chronicling America. The official change is scheduled for August 4, 2025.

Old Maps of Ireland

The first detailed land survey on a national scale was in Ireland in the mid-17th Century. Here is a link to a blog article from IrelandXO about maps. 

Reddit

Reddit is a kind of message board. Messages are posted in interest-based forums called subreddits. The genealogy subreddits are:

r/Genealogy

r/AncestryDNA

r/AskHistorians

r/Translator

Here is a link to an article about using Reddit. 

New York Genealogical and Biographical Society - Report on Tracing Immigrants to New York City

NYG&B has published a report of sources available to research immigrants to New York City held in their collection and at the New York Public Library. We might not be able to visit to take advantage of these items but could possibly find them in a library nearby. Here is a link to the report. 

Genealogy News

♦  Now through March 24th, Ancestry is offering 6 month memberships for 1/2 off! Take advantage of their Spring Sale here.

♦  Irish roots? MyHeritage is offering free access to their Irish record collection through March 18th. Details at the MyHeritage blog.

♦  St Patrick's sale on Irish books at Genalogical.com. Save 20% now through March 20th. Details here.

♦  Free webinar - Germany's Shifting Map: What It Means For Your Research - presented by Katherine Schober of Germanology Unlocked. Three dates to choose from: March 18th, 19th, or 20th. Register for free now.

♦  Check out Fishwrap, the official blog of Newpapers.com, for information about the 2.5 million pages of Irish newspapers recently added to their archive. 

♦  A new genealogical resource book titled San Agustín de Laredo Baptisms, 1823-1845, Laredo, Texas is now available on Amazon. It picks up where Gloria Villa Cadena & Angel Sepulveda Brown’s book, Annotated Baptisms 1789 to 1823 of San Agustin de Laredo (present day Laredo, Texas), published in 2008 by Los Bexareños Genealogical Society, left off. The baptisms, translated from Spanish to English, are the focus; however, Grace Scruggs Rolph also shares her mother’s family story, reveals answers to long buried secrets, and why it is so important to use traditional research methods in conjunction with DNA analysis.

♦  MyHeritage has released their new DNA ethnicity model: Ethnicity Estimate v2.5. This MyHeritage Blog article provides much information about this exciting new ethnicity model including these highlights: 

• Identifies 24 percentage-based European ethnicities.

• Quite a few of the new percentage-based ethnicities, such as Armenian, are unique to MyHeritage and not identified by other tests.

• Distinguishes between 15 different Jewish ethnicities, more than most other DNA tests on the market.

♦  American Ancestors will host an online seminar April 2-30, Revolutionary War Research: Tracing Patriot and Loyalist Ancestors. This five week course will delve into the many primary and published records that can help document your Patriot or Loyalist ancestors. Learn more.