Genealogy gems found in Newspapers

Newspapers can yield much more than birth and marriage announcements and obituaries. Not every newspaper prints the same columns in every issue or every year, but I have found ancestors listed in unexpected ways.

Sometimes you know of an event to do with your ancestor, but you don't know the date it occurred. 

I knew from censuses that one great-great-grandfather was a victualer, but since when? Then I found in the newspaper when he bought and sold his license under License Transfers in Liverpool.

I knew that another great-great-grandfather sold his farm and moved in to town, but I didn't know when. I found it under Property Transfers in the regional newspaper.

My great-great-grandmother traveled from Montreal to Bisbee, AZ when her daughter died and spent a night in a hotel in Tombstone. Look for Hotel Arrivals. 

Under Shipping News or equivalent the newspapers sometimes printed a passenger list...

My great-great-grandfather King's siblings immigrated to Australia. His sister's husband died in Melbourne in 1910 and this was in the newspaper a couple months later... 

Returns of banks in Aberdeen newspapers give ancestor name, address and occupation...

Below is a list of just some of the newspaper columns where you may discover your ancestors. How many can you find? 

Download the list and keep it handy when researching your relatives. 

Relevant Links

List of Common Newspaper Columns

Not all newspaper sites are equal

I have been scouring newspaper sites for many years, hoping to find word of my ancestors. To help you search and pick out words and names from the billions of pages the providers use an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) program to scan the pages looking for your keywords. The problem is not always which program they use, but the condition of the newspaper and the quality of the scan. 

I was frustrated recently looking for a 1990 death notice in the Times Colonist for Vancouver Island. The whole of the issue I needed, and a few others in the same month, were not scanned properly and the bottom third (including the index and the family notice sections) are so blurry they are unreadable. I told support of this, they acknowledged my concerns but I haven't heard anything else yet. I'm hoping it gets fixed before my subscription runs out.

And other times it just well may be the program. For my British ancestors I have used the newspaper section at Find My Past and Newspapers.com. Using filters (place, date, etc) help to narrow the search, but sometimes I still get no results. Then I try British Newspaper Archives, which is free to search. If I get what seems to be a good hit, I make note of the newspaper issue, date and page then browse to that issue and page in another site. 

Newspapers.com may have only one newspaper for Liverpool, as opposed to six at FMP and five at BNA, but after years of searching for an exact date or cause of death for my 2x great grandfather, that's where I found it. 

Remember too that other nearby city papers may print the same news.

You can read about the tragic death of George Singleton here. 

Bulletin des Recherches Historiques - Quebec Historical Society

For those researching Quebec Ancestors this publication may be helpful. It was put out by the Société des Etudes Historiques, (or Literary and Historical Society of Quebec), a bilingual society which was founded in 1824, and was the seed of Library and Archives Canada. 

Like the Scottish Antiquary I wrote about recently, the Bulletin contained many interesting historical facts, transcriptions of historic documents and registers, as well as questions from readers and replies.  

One example is this entry for George Harding of New Brunswick in 1797 selling a negro boy to his son John Harding...

Vol 2, No 3, pg 44

Another is the exact burial place of Jacques Nolin Fugere

Vol 4, No 4, pg 102

1659- 10 April: Jacques Nolin dit la Fougere was buried near his pew, on the right side, as walking into the church. His wife's name was Marie Gachet. It seems they had no descendants. 

Then there's the divorce of Sieur Michel Hotier in 1787...

Vol 26, No 8, pg 253

For browsing I like to use Internet Archives, but to see them in order and search within the whole series I try Canadiana online first. They can also be fund at BAnQ Numerique.

The Transactions of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec are mostly in English and contain names of members of the society

Following are links to some of the interesting entries I found.


Relevant links

Société des Etudes Historiques: Internet Archive

Société des Etudes Historiques: Canadiana

Montreal Coroners

Shérifs de Trois-Rivieres 1790-1882

Notre Dame de Quebec – Necrologie de la Crypte (see continuances)

Le Chant National des Acadiens

Transactions of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec