Learn How to Use the British Newspaper Archive for Family History Research

Click here to Listen at the Website

The recently launched British Newspapers Archive (BNA) database has over 200 UK newspapers, published from 1700-1950, and over 3 million pages – and is growing daily. It's a wonderful genealogy resource collection for anyone interested in their British family history.


Ed King has worked for the British Library since 1975. He is currently head of Newspaper Collections at the library. Since 2004, he has been involved with projects to digitise older newspapers in the library’s collections. He has been working with many colleagues to realise the British Newspaper Archive, launched late in 2011.


Click the link to listen to Mr. King discuss the value of newspapers, which are often the only place where information about local people and events are published. In this talk he gives practical examples from newspapers in the collection. Also covered briefly are some of the non-UK older digitized newspaper databases available.


Learn more about how to use newspapers for genealogy research from my new book How to Find Your Family History in Newspapers, available now at www.GenealogyGems.com. You'll get a proven research process and high tech tips for tracking down exactly the newspapers you are after.

Newspapers: Chronicling America Continues Growth!

The Library of Congress recently announced that "since October 2011, the National Digital Newspaper Program has expanded the Chronicling America site by more than 550,000 historic newspaper pages published in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Including titles like the Wenatchee Daily World (Wenatchee, WA), the Anti-Slavery Bugle (New-Lisbon, OH) and the Montana News (Lewiston, MT), these pages have been digitized from collections in Arizona, California, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington. More than 4.7 million pages are now available online, published between 1836 and 1922." Read more about it here.

Chronicling America is just one of many websites across the Internet offering free digitized newspapers.  However, the fragmented nature of online newspapers can make finding the one that holds your family history quite a challenge.  That's why I wrote Everything You Need to Know About How to Find Your Family History in Newspapers. 


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Pre-Order Now Available for Signed Copies of How to Find Your Family History in Newspapers

CLICK HERE to pre-order your signed copy of Everything You Need to Know About...How to Find Your Family History in Newspapers today.

As I was writing the final chapter of my brand new book Everything You Need to Know About...How to Find Your Family History in Newspapers, I knew I wanted to put the book to the test by showing a case study.  I had been pouring my passion for the topic of newspaper research into this new volume for months and had set aside my own genealogy research in the process. Chapter 11 offered an opportunity to pull an item off my own to do list and use it as the guinea pig for an example.

I really wanted to find a record of my Great Grandparents marriage in the newspapers. They were married just a year or two before the Great San Francisco Earthquake rocked the county courthouse.  The official record no longer exists.  Newspapers were my last hope.

As I put my proven process covered in the book through it's paces, I started to get a little nervous.  What if I didn't hit pay dirt?  I had used the steps and worksheets countless times before, but this was a challenging task, and I had a deadline.  All the worry was for nothing.  Not only did I find the small snippet in the classified announcing their application for a marriage license - I found dozens of articles new to me detailing my Great Grandfather's work with the I.O.O.F. to help those suffering after the earthquake, and his management of a recreational baseball team complete with his home address.  I fell in love with newspapers all over again!


With the final chapter written, and the book is in production, I now have the incredible pleasure of announcing that How to Find Your Family History in Newspapers is available for pre-order.  I can't wait for you to get this book in your hands and I'll be signing each and every pre-ordered copy personally.  The book will be officially announced at RootsTech and shipping will begin Feb. 6.  In the meantime, please check out this preview.  Be sure and click "Expand" to have it fill your screen, and turn your speakers on as you will hear an audio version of Chapter 1.  (Isn't technology fun!!)

 More by Lisa Cooke

CLICK HERE to pre-order your signed copy of Everything You Need to Know About...How to Find Your Family History in Newspapers today.

See you in the Funny Papers!

The Scoop on Family History Newspaper Research

What’s Black, and White and READ all over? Your Ancestors in old newspapers!

In fact, your ancestors could be anywhere! Most likely they were mentioned at some point in their own local paper, but they might also show up in a neighboring towns paper, or in a paper located thousands of miles away. 

There's nothing more exciting than finding information in an old newspaper that adds to your family history! But it's certainly not as easy as it sounds. That's why I’ve been working feverishly on a new book (that I can finally tell you about) that is going to give you the answers and resources you need to be successful finding your ancestors in the news. It’s called Everything You Need to Know About Finding Your Family History in Newspapers and that’s exactly what it is. It’s everything you need to know.

In this book I spell out a step-by-step newspaper research process and give you worksheets that you can copy and use again and again. There are tons of websites, search tips, and 3 very cool online tools that you probably aren’t using, but you should be!

Stay tuned because we’ll be doing an official launch very soon, and I’m going to have a very special opportunity for you to get a signed copy of the book first.  While you wait, get revved up for newspaper research by listening to my interview with Tom Kemp of GenealogyBank about what you can find in newspapers in Genealogy Gems Podcast Episode #124

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