Official records give you dates and places. Newspapers give you the stories: celebrations, achievements, accidents, court cases and community life. A single article can transform an ancestor from a name into a person.
What you might find
- Birth, engagement and marriage announcements
- Obituaries and death notices, often listing surviving relatives
- Local news stories, such as awards, accidents or community events
- Court and police reports
- Shipping news and travel notices
- Business advertisements placed by ancestors who ran shops or trades
- Lists of exam results, prize winners or club members
Where to search
Many national and regional libraries have digitised historic newspapers, and some offer free online access. Local libraries and archives often keep original copies or microfilm of town newspapers that have not been digitised. Ask librarians which local titles covered the area and period you need.
Search tips
- Digitised newspapers are searched using automated text recognition, which makes mistakes. Try spelling variations and partial names.
- Search for a distinctive address, business name or place rather than a common surname.
- Remember that women were often referred to by their husband's name, such as "Mrs J. Sharma".
- Narrow your search by date and location to cut through irrelevant results.
Tip: If you know a date of death, look at newspapers from the following one or two weeks. Notices and obituaries were often published several days later.
Reading with care
Newspapers were written quickly and sometimes got details wrong. Treat reported ages, spellings and relationships as clues to confirm with other records, as explained in our guide to judging sources.
Save what you find
Save a copy of each article with the newspaper's title, date and page number, so you can cite it and find it again later.