DIGITIZED NEWSPAPERS- HOW AND WHERE TO FIND OLD ARTICLES

Newspaper Finder is a new, free website that has major and minor newspapers that spans many different countries. Colette explains how to use this brand new genealogical tool, that may help to discover possible lost information about ancestors. Newspapers often contain details that can't be found anywhere else. Genealogists could be closer than ever to making that one breakthrough that opens up piles of data on long lost relatives.

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Newspaperfinder.com: https://newspaperfinder.com/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hello, welcome to the Gathering Academy. If you are listening on a podcast, I would love to have you join on YouTube just so you can see some of the things that we're talking about. If not, go ahead and continue listening. Um, I think you'll get some great tips just by just by listening to the audio. So we made it back from Sweden. Um, that was a hard thing to come back to. We had some adventures when we were pulling uh, I guess we were taking off from Copenhagen. We hit a flock of birds. We were both, we had both fallen asleep. And about halfway through the flight, we heard over the announcement that we were being diverted to Paris and um because the radar, the weather radar was broken, and we couldn't obviously go across the sea without that. So we landed in Paris. We got rerouted. So the nice thing was we got directly to Seattle instead of having to go through JFK. And then on that flight, there was an incident with an elderly man who was flying alone and from what we know must have had dementia, um, maybe having some sundowners, and he tried to open the door of the plane while we were en route. So that was really crazy. Um, so we almost had to do an emergency landing. They had to do some things to help sedate him, and we made it safely to Seattle, but it was it was quite an adventure. We've never had anything like that. Um, but it was it was a fabulous trip and um just got back into life and we had a daughter get married yesterday. So today's been just kind of a nice low-key day, the little nap. Um, but I am really excited to share with you a few tips um concerning newspapers. We've talked about some newspapers before, but I want to show you um some things that will really help you in your searching. So the first one I want to show you, um, it was just recently released. So I'm gonna share my screen. Share entire screen. All right, we're gonna open up another window, and I am going to do news calls newspaper finder. You see, because I've already been on it, it pops up. Newspaperfinder.com. This is fabulous because what it will do is it helps you to find newspapers that have been digitized and that are on the internet, and they are from some of the major newspaper um companies. Um, but some of them are from like uh newspaper archive, newspapers.com, old news from myheritage, but some of them are from state archives. Um, some of them are from Chronicling America. So I'm going to show you, show you this, and you may wonder, well, how how is this going to help me? So one of the great things is sometimes you don't know what time period a newspaper was published. Often you'd get a publisher that might publish for a couple of years, they close down, there might be a gap, and then somebody else starts up. So what we'll do is we're going to click here and we can, as it showed you, you can see right here, it's going to show us little pinpoints where newspapers were published. We can search by the location, filter by the date, and then we'll explore the results. And this is totally free. So you click search now, and it's not just the United States. So they have 32 newspaper databases, and their goal is to include every major and minor newspaper source on the internet. So it's brand new. They did a soft launch at Roots Tech and then they fully launched in April. So what's that? About six weeks ago. Um, so the countries that they have are Australia, Canada, France, Germany, United Kingdom, and the United States. And then they have some minor holdings in some of these other countries down below. Um, for those of you who are just listening on the podcast, we've got Colombia and the Cameroon, one from China, um, Hungary, Iceland, Kenya. I mean, it just goes on. So they've got a few things in those places, but we're gonna go for, I'm gonna show you for the United States first. So we're gonna go all the way to the top, and it's already checked. So then I'm going to do a start year and end year. So I'm gonna go for Nebraska because that's where my grandparents lived. I'm gonna start in 18. Um, let's see, my first relatives came in like the 1870s. So I'm gonna say 1872, let's say 19 uh. And I want all of the databases, and I'm going to choose the state. I'm gonna unselect the check-all, and I'll scroll down and just specifically do Nebraska, and then we'll say search. Look how many were in Nebraska during that time period. So I'm gonna scroll in and I'm looking for a little teeny town. There's North Platte. I did have family in that area. Um, Lexington, Overton, Beaver City. We're gonna go with the North Platte right now because their town was even a little smaller than that. So North Platte. And I can see I've this is a site I've never heard of. Advantage Archives. So North Platte, look at all these newspapers. We start, there's one in 1890 to 1890, and then that was the current. I guess it just had a short run. Um, I'm gonna narrow it down. Let me go. I'm just gonna do 18. So you can see you may need to do some experimenting. I'm gonna select the 1900. And it's helpful when you if you know, oh, there's Sydney. My family's near Sydney, somewhere near there, Scott's Bluff. So you can look and see. Well, we're just gonna choose one just for the sake of time. So let's just go to Sydney. So I can see here on Sydney, there's that advantage archives, genealogy bank, newspaper.com, newspaper archive, old news. So old news is through my heritage. It is subscription, but you we can go to it and just see if there are any newspaper articles about our family. Then you can make the decision if you want to pay for a subscription for a month. Um, just remember, most of these you can get a shorter subscription. You don't have to do a year. Um, Advantage Archives. I've never done that. Let's try it out. This is 1892 to 1899. The People's Poinard. So this took us to the Sydney Um Public Library. It looks like this is the advantagepreservation.com. So it's the Friends of the Public Sydney Public Library. So they did the digitization. So let's just put a name of Lars and see if anybody with the name of Lars is in there. This is my first time doing this um advantage preservation through the Sydney Public Library, and we'll see if anything comes up. And it's taking a second to do that. So while while we wait on that, we're gonna come back here and let's go to um let's just try the Sydney Telegraph. That was only a year actually with Genealogy Bank. And we'll come in here and I'm gonna put a last name. I'm just gonna do Anderson because that was a common name in Nebraska because I had a lot of Swedes that went there. And this one wants me to create my free account. So we'll create my free account. And okay. Created a free account. This is a new thing. Um, I did not know that um Genealogy Bank actually had a free account. So this is, I guess I'm teaching you something here. Um it says you can have a free A account, but then it says come in here and do an annual or a monthly membership after a free trial. I don't think I want to do that. So I'm just going to close out of that. So, how do you get around that? Um, Genealogy Bank, I can make note of this and then I can go to my local family history center and they have Genealogy Bank there for free. They have um newspaper archive for free. They have um, let's see, and newspapers.com for free. Let me close that little thing out there. So, same with old news. I could do the same thing there. Um, let me take you to the United States uh to the United Kingdom. So I'm gonna get rid of this United Kingdom and let's do a search. Oh, we need to choose an area in the United Kingdom. So let's to let me do whales and look at all the newspapers that are available in well. So one of the advantages of this is that you have the ability to see where there's areas where there may not have been a newspaper. Let's say your family lived here in this area in the Tregaron area. Likely the Lampeter newspaper would have information, maybe Adverstworth. So let's click on Lampeter. And we can see Lampeter Wales during this time period had a newspaper from 1892 to 1910. This is based on what they currently have in their holdings that have been digitized. That doesn't mean there aren't more newspapers, but it gives you an idea of something that you could select, and that's through Welsh newspapers. That's another one. I have never heard of Welsh newspapers. Let's just click on this and see if it's free or if um you have to pay. So it looks like it's through the newspapers.library. So this is actually through the National Library of Wales, and I have been there before. Um, they actually have um where I you're able to see digitize records from like probates, um, court documents. So let's test it out. So let's just click on um one of these um highlighted dates. So January 1st was it looks like their first issue. And if we click on it, it should be free. And it is free. And so this is their little clipping of that newspaper. It's you can see it's the top little corner. And so, oh, there we go. We've got the entire thing. And if you notice this, this one's all in Welsh. So let's test it out with let's go back. Oh, here's the Sydney, uh, the here's this finally came back. This is the Sydney Public Library, and here's an obituary for a Lars. Let's just click on this. This is in 2006, since I didn't specify uh narrow it down to a specific time period. But you can see here through the Sydney Advantagepreservation.com, we actually have a free newspaper. So there's a lot of free newspaper sites, and the library archives is going to be your gateway to that. Let's test out. So that's the Welsh newspaper. A little tricky to read that, but you could use your AI with your phone, take a picture, and have it translated. Um, so I'm gonna go out of Sydney. Let's come back here instead of Wales, let's choose Scotland. And we'll search for that same time period and look at all those newspapers. So let's say I had family up here in the north in Nairn, and you can see that there is through British Newspaper Archive, that is a paid site. Um, you can see here the Nairnshire Telegraph. Let's click on that, and most of the time they do this verification. So it takes me here and into on this day, tells me a little bit about it, gives me the information about the newspaper and all the available years. So I can see 1853 to 69, it's available. Then there's a gap, 1873 to 18, 1939. So my recommendation is to come in here. Let me see if I can find it. Oh, look, there's thinning of the veil. Um, is to come in here to newspaperfinder.com and play around with it. Um, you'll be able to find some. Um, you can narrow that down the dates. I'll show you one more that actually is really fun. So 1750s in light of the fact it's 250th um anniversary of the United States. If we go to 1750 to 1786, let me say I forgot the seven. And we're gonna change it to United States, and I'm just going to do check all. Let's see how many newspapers in that time period. Look how many there were during that time period. So let's go to Philadelphia, and we can see here, let me drag it down. So you can see Chronicling America has the Dunlap's Pennsylvania packet. This is from 1773 to 1777. Chronicling America is free. Internet Archive is free. These other ones are paid. Although I'm going to show you a new trick if you're a member of the church with newspaper archive in just a second. So all of these are ones that you can check and narrow down. What's really fun is this is a little homework assignment for you, is to go into um 1700 to 1750 and see what's available in the United States in that early time period. Um, it's quite cool. So, newspaper finder. Um, before we go um to my newspaper archive tip, I'm going to show you another website that a friend of mine does. It's called ldsgenalogy.com. And this is a great collection. Um, and it can also help you to find newspapers. There's a lot of good um tips over here on the right hand side. If we go up here to um, this is my friend Jenny Ann. So if you need any assistance, she is also a professional genealogist. Um, if you want to go to learning genealogy, she will have some things about locating records, some brick wall help. There's a little video here to show you how to use the site. Um, and then we will go here to the records directory and you can browse by state. So let's go back to our Nebraska. Um, so let's say I used the newspaper finder. I could figure out, okay, this is where, these are some newspapers I want to look at. You can also use this. So my family was in Hamilton County. So let's find Hamilton. There's Hamilton. I can click on Hamilton, and now she even has links for birth records, cemetery records, census, church. Look at all of this. Um, and then I could go to newspapers. So here she's got some newspapers. So Hordville is where my grandpa lived. So I can click on Hordville, and now it narrows it down. So I've got newspapers.com has 1910 for two different years. So they likely, this is where I could go back to the map because I'm very visual. I could go back to the map now that I know Hamilton is the county. I can filter into that, and then I can see what other towns are nearby that maybe my grandpa might be mentioned in that newspaper. So this is another little tip that's really fun. All right. And then the last thing I wanted to show you today is on Family Search. So this was this was um available, and then they had to pull it because um they had to make some adjustments. And that reminds me, we were gonna talk about storied. So um we'll put that down as a future um little podcast to talk about. So if we want to access newspapers through Family Search, we can click on search. And I don't know if you've noticed this down at the bottom, but there's newspapers. So for about a month it was um not functioning, but it is now. So newspapers is in connection with newspaper archive, which is owned by storied. Um, every member of the church can have a free storied account. And if you're wondering what storied is, we'll talk about that um sometime over the summer. Um, so what you can do is when you're in here, and it says every member can have a free account. So when I start to type the information in, so I'm gonna do Lynn Anderson and I'm going to say search all I'm going to do, Nebraska, and I'm going to say search. And then it says newspaper archive will open in a new tab. So if I don't want to stay in it, I close it and it'll take me back here to Family Search. So I'm going to say continue. Um, it says as a church member, you can access the record details and image if available for free. Other site features may have an additional cost, which is okay. I'm so grateful that we have this. So when I come in here, it says to access these articles right here, I need to start my free membership. So I'll click here, start free membership. And this one truly is free. The other one that was really interesting with Genealogy Bank. And then put the email in and a password. Wow, that was crazy. All right, we'll see if that works. So now I have a free newspaperarchive.com account. So it says my membership is active and now I can continue my research. So um, let's see. So we've got some Lynn's. Let's edit our search because I didn't put the name. So we have Lynn, it didn't pull up the Anderson. And let me put in Marquette. Actually, we let's even narrow it down by it didn't, for some reason, it didn't pull up. Where's United States? There's United States at the top. And state, we're gonna go down to Nebraska and City. He lived in Marquette. Let's see if there's one for Marquette. Doesn't have Marquette. It was a teeny town, so I'm just gonna say update results, and we'll see how many come up. We'll see if he if he pops up. Um, this one came up that's not mine. This is Osceola Lincoln, Stromsburg. So none of these are actually mine. It would take me a little bit of searching to find him. So, but let's just try one out. So here's the Osceola record in 1963. And maybe I didn't put the date, so that's probably part of the reason I didn't do it. So we can narrow it down. So here we go. We've got the newspaper, we've got the ability to download the image. So we can clip it. Just remember, because this is a paid site, clip it for your own personal use, but don't upload it to Family Search because that would be breaking the copyright. Um, but you can take this information and you can use AI to make a um a summary of it, and then you can put it into your Family Search account. So let me go see, I'll show you how that's done. Um, let me go to edit my search and let me narrow my date between this year. So I'm gonna do the year of he probably would have been mentioned when he was in high school, maybe in 1934. To let's go to um 1945. Update results. I could also try his dad. His dad's more likely to be in there. I'm gonna edit my search. I'm gonna put Henry. And just remember, when you have a really common name, you're gonna get a lot of other people. But here we've got a Henry R. Anderson, that's not mine. Um, Stromsburg, Lincoln. It may not have his smaller, smaller air, the smaller areas. So what I will show you, let's pretend this is my guy. So I come in here and let's say I would like um this article that talks about Henry Anderson. So I'm going to bring it in. Sorry, it's being a little weird. We're gonna X out on that. Let's see if we can bring this into clip. We're gonna clip and I'm gonna clip this area. It's being a little tricky here. Edit shape. There we go. Edit shape. Now I can do it. So I'm gonna drag it in to here. This is the article about Henry, and I'm gonna say clip. And I'm gonna say it's other. And it's being really finicky. Hopefully, you don't have this problem here. I think I'm gonna have to refresh the page. Here, let's let's um I'm gonna start a new search if that's okay. Let's do um Carol Bagley. That's a little bit um easier. We're gonna just do the state of Washington. He might have been mentioned there, and we'll just search. I'm not even gonna do a date. We'll see if we can get it to be a little bit easier to use. Here we go. So this was about at my grandpa. He lived in Sunnyside, Washington. Oh, here's the morning milk thing. I've never seen this before. So I'm gonna go with the morning milk. This was in 1942. This is about the time my grandpa ended up going to um Washington. So you can see this new morning milk condenser is soon to begin operation in Sunnyside. This is really cool. And so it looks like the article is right here and probably just goes down to this area. So I'm gonna see. This will be a little trickier to actually to snip. But what I can do is I can just say download and I can save it as a PDF file, and then I can edit it. So or a JPEG. So let me do it as a JPEG. Here's the entire page. I can say save, uh, save it, and it it will go should go down to my downloads. Let's see if it did it. And allow, you want to allow, and so now it's down on my downloads. So now I have a copy of this, and I can come in here. I'm gonna make it bigger, and I can come in and snip this little portion of the thing. So I can do command shift four if I've got a Mac. I'm just gonna come in and I'm gonna snip this little thing. I can send this to my relatives so that they can see it. I've snipped that little part right there, and now I'm gonna demonstrate what I would do to translate it. So I come in here, I go, I'm gonna open up Gemini, and you can do Claude. Oops, the wrong one. This happens sometimes. I just want GeminiNode.com and I'm gonna come here to Google Gemini. And then I'm just going to say please. It's always nice to be kind to the please summarize this newspaper article. And I want to say um highlighting, highlighting Carol Bagley, because I want to make sure it includes that information. And I'm I could do it in flash or I can do it in thinking mode. Um, if I've got the paid version, I'm going to upload the file and it's my recent screenshot right there. Usually it's in order. You may have to change it. Um and then I'm going to use the thinking mode, which they've just changed it. There's thinking level. Um, we'll just use it on standard, I guess. And then we'll say submit. So you can play around with the different ways. They're constantly updating AI. Um, generally, thinking mode is for more complex problems. So here it gave me the summary. So I can take this, I can click on this little copy response, and I can come back to my family search. So let's go back to family search, and I can go to family tree and find. And I'm going to put his name in there, James Carol Bagley. And I don't think there's any other ones. He was born in 1910, and we'll say search. And there he is. So I bring him up, and then I can come into his memories. He's got 134, so some a lot of people have been adding some things, and I could click add memories. And if you remember, if you saw one of our previous ones where we demonstrated how AI can transcribe these, I added his journal entries in here and I made them private and put them in a group so I could share them with my family because there's mention of living people in there. So you want to make sure it's private, um, put it in a family group, and then you can share. Um, and then I'm going to say upload. Actually, I'm going to do right because we're not uploading the image. And then I can just do paste. And I then what I'm going to do is I'm going to go back to storied. And I'm just going to call or to the newspaper archive. I'm going to copy the link. Sometimes links can break, but for the sake of um ease right now, I'm going to just put um at the end of the story, I'm going to in parentheses put source, and then oops, with a comma. And I'm going to paste it here, and I'm going to put the title is article from uh what newspaper was that? So that was from, let's see, at the top of the page. Let's see if we can go back here. The Kennewick Courier. So we'll go back here. Article from the Kennewick Courier. And we should have a date for that. So let's go back to that. And it said this was 1st of January 1942. So I'm going to say the date, 1st of January 1942. And then the place would be Kennewick, Washington, even though he lived in Sunnyside. And so I've got that in there, and I will, they've got the link so somebody else could go and see that. And I can say next. And I can say make public and it's public. All right. So my suggestion for you for homework for this week is to get on to try the library or the newspaper finder, try family search, uh, check out the newspapers and see if you can find have a breakthrough on an article about a family member. I've never seen this newspaper article about my grandpa, so I'm excited to read through some of these articles and learn a little bit more about his life that he may not have recorded. And then also remember that you can use LDS Genealogy to help you as well to find other records. So it's a good companion for the Family Search Wiki in doing your research. So have a great week and we'll see you next time.