Newspapers – Chronicling America



newspapers-2The U. S. Library of Congress online has a section titled ‘Chronicling America – Searching Newspaper Pages’. Any family history researcher is aware how invaluable hometown newspapers are when researching their ancestors. Details of events, trips, incidents, visitors, achievements, etc. which may have been long forgotten over the decades still can be found in the written material in newspapers.

The collection with the Chronicling America series is from the National Digital Newspaper Program. The online site allows the researcher to place key search words as well a specific newspapers or locations across the United States. The newspaper pages ranges between 1860 and 1922.

In the collections a few of the newspapers represented are The Akron Daily Democrat of Ohio;, The Bee of Washington, D. C.; The Bourbon News of Millersburg, KY; The Brownsville Daily Herald of Texas; The Chicago Eagle of Illinois; The Daily Capital Journal of Oregon; The Fort Pierce News of Florida; and the Kansas City Journal of Missouri.

In searching, once a newspaper of interest is located you click on the name. Up comes the page where the key words are then highlighted and the date and name of the paper are listed. You can zoom in and out to better read the actual article. A printed hard copy of the page can be made and it can be saved into PDF format.

The entire site is very easy to navigate. Even one’s own ancestors are not located in a newspaper article, just learning of life in their hometown is worth the experience.

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