Researching newspapers is an extremely useful resource. They enable context to be added to an ancestor’s story. Besides looking for an article, look at the advertisements of the day. These can provide additional detail relating to food, clothing and household items along with the costs.
Language.
Things to take into account regarding the content within an article is the language used. Some may find the language used to be a little concerning. My take on this is to expect the unexpected. Some articles do provide a lot of detail relating to an event. I came across an article relating to the golden wedding anniversary of my great-great-grandparents. Details of the cake and the guests who attended as well as where the event took place were in the article. A Golden find!!
Websites.
I have two favourites that I use constantly. I am biased towards the Australian site, TROVE which is free to use. I have had a very high success rate when I have conducted searches on this site. More on the use of TROVE later.
I have also used the British Newspaper Archive with a direct paid subscription. I am aware that the British Newspaper Archive newspapers are also available via Find My Past.
I have currently not used Find My Past to search for any newspaper articles. I do have a Find My Past paid subscription.
As of January 2024, I had not used Newspapers.com. My understanding is this site refers mostly to US newspapers. However, when I did some investigating, I noted the following listings:
approximately 10 million for Australia, about 4.2 million for England, 2.6 million for Wales and 2.2 million Scottish records whilst New Zealand around 1.7 million. (Updated mid-March 2024, checks show a dramatic increase in the English record set to over 41 million and an additional 5.5 million records covering Australia.)
Note: This is a subscription site which is payable in US dollars. I understand you can access the site via an Ancestry subscription. This has not been verified. I shall discuss a little more about Newspapers.com shortly.
Website addresses are: https://trove.nla.gov.au/ ; https://www.newspapers.com/ ; https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/ ; and https://www.myheritage.com/
Corrections.
I have been able to make corrections to the OCR used in TROVE and the British Newspaper Archive. I have found that the correction process appears to be easier in Trove. As previously mentioned, I have not used Newspapers.com so have no knowledge of what can and cannot be done.
TROVE.
Having used TROVE the most, I have found it quite easy to use. During my time using this site, there have been changes. I have found these changes to be for the better. TROVE is funded by the Australian government i.e. the Australian taxpayer.
Update.
As I was preparing to update this writing in mid-February 2024, I got a notification of free access to Newspapers.com. It appears the Australian newspapers only cover New South Wales and Victoria. I’m more interested in Queensland and sadly there are no newspapers on the site. (Further updates mid-March 2024, there are now South Australian and Queensland newspapers available.)
In my own research I have been aware that a relative from Shropshire, England ventured to Ohio in the US. I used the surname as an example. I ended up down a huge rabbit hole mainly due to too much information being found in Ohio newspapers! Since I have not researched the extended family lines it did make it extremely difficult to know what I would be looking for – other than the surname. Just in one county, there are over 20,000 instances.
I need a good starting point but from what I see from the newspaper reports it is much like both TROVE and the British Newspaper Archive.
Always remember, that all sites continue to add records on a regular basis. You would have seen my notes showing the updates from Jan to mid-Mar 2024.
Additional note: My Heritage, now has newspaper articles appearing. I have not investigated this fully. I became aware of them when I was doing research towards the end of April 2024.
Closing.
In closing, newspapers have given me context to my ancestors. I have found many articles where there has been a mention, of farming accidents, drownings, car accidents, births, engagements, marriages and deaths. I even located details about shipping information about the ships my ancestors travelled on to get to Queensland. All of this information brings my ancestors alive and it’s like I am looking through a window into their world but back in time.
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Explore & Discover.
Acknowledgements: The top pic is from Pexel. All others are screenshots from TROVE, British Newspaper Archive, Newspapers.com & My Heritage.
Ancestor Family 