The first newspaper in America was Publick Occurrences, printed in Boston, Massachusetts in 1690. Because it was started without the governor’s permission, it was soon shut down. The next newspaper printed in the colonies wasn’t until 1704. This time with the governor’s permission.[1]
Newspapers were eventually being printed all over the U.S.
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What can be found in newspapers?
Newspapers are the ancestors of social media. Ancestors read them to learn what was going on in the world and in their communities. In small towns, everything made the newspapers.
The most common use of newspapers in genealogy research is obituaries. Obituaries and funeral announcements name the deceased and give the date and place of death. They may also contain birth information, list relatives, and mention tidbits of the deceased’s life story.
Newspapers also publish birth and marriage announcements.
Aside from vital information, newspapers also contain advertisements, gossip columns, political news, and other items of interest to the community. Reading a newspaper printed in an ancestor’s town during his or her lifetime can indicate what life was like for that ancestor.
The gossip column sometimes contains genealogically valuable information, such as who was visiting from out of town and wedding anniversaries.
Ethnic newspapers
Ethnic newspapers were less preserved than English newspapers in America, so not all are extant. Sometimes, a few issues were lost or forgotten; in other cases, the entire run of a newspaper was lost.
The U.S. newspaper program has been working with the Library of Congress to preserve and digitize newspapers. Their efforts included identifying the newspapers from underrepresented voices.[2]
Discussed below are several ethnic newspapers in the U.S.
German American newspapers
German Americans were the first to publish their own newspapers in America and were the most prominent immigrant group to keep a non-English newspaper. German newspapers provided the German Americans with a way to preserve their language and culture in America. Some German newspapers in America are still in print today, and many can be found in the Library of Congress.[3]
German newspapers lost popularity with the onset of WWI. Anyone speaking German was looked at with suspicion, so German Americans stopped speaking German to show their loyalty to the U.S. Newsstands began boycotting German newspapers, and advertisers stopped advertising in German newspapers.[4]
African American newspapers
The first African American newspaper in the United States was a weekly abolitionist publication published in New York City in 1827. While several African American newspapers were published during the slavery era, post-Reconstruction saw a rise in such newspapers. These newspapers chronicle the social history of African Americans. Many can be found at the Library of Congress.[5]
Some newspaper databases will indicate that a newspaper is African American.
Jewish American newspapers
Many Jewish newspapers have been and still are being published in the United States. They have been published in English, Yiddish, and Hebrew.[6]
Native American newspapers
Native Americans published their own newspapers as early as 1828. Many of these newspapers are published in Cherokee and other Native American languages. [7]
Chronicling America includes several Native American newspapers in its collections.
Spanish American newspapers
Some U.S. newspapers are published in Spanish. This link contains lists of both current and defunct Spanish-language newspapers in the U.S.
Polish American newspapers
The Polish Genealogical Society of America, includes in its collections, the Dziennik Chicagoski newspaper.
Swedish American newspapers
The Minnesota Historical Society holds Swedish American newspapers from 1850.
Russian Newspapers
Russian speakers in the U.S. have published periodicals since 1868. Many of these are housed by the Library of Congress. With the rise of Russian immigration in the 1890s came a rise in Russian-American newspapers. Some of these newspapers were run by Jewish Russian-Americans.[8]
Asian American newspapers
The UC Berkeley Libraries house Asian-American newspapers, both historical and contemporary.
Italian American newspapers
Italian immigrants began coming to the U.S. in the late 19th century, establishing communities in the Northeast and Midwest, and in big cities such as New York, Boston, Chicago, and Detroit. These Italian American communities began publishing their own newspapers. They first published them in Italian, but eventually started printing them in English as well.[9]
Researching newspaper records in the United States
Some newspaper websites have search engines that enable the search for an ancestor’s name. However, some digitized newspapers have not been indexed, so they must be browsed.
To browse a newspaper, it is pertinent to know the date and place of the event in question.
Below is a list of websites to search newspapers on:
- Google Newspapers
- Library of Congress Chronicling America
- Online Historical Newspapers
- LDS Genealogy U.S. Newspapers and Obituaries Directory
- ABYZ News Links
FamilySearch has several newspaper databases, which can be found by searching for the place and ethnicity in the Card Catalog.
See also
Explore more about Newspaper records in the United States
- MyHeritage owns Old News, an online newspaper database, which can also be searched here: United States Newspapers from OldNews.com™
Other MyHeritage Newspaper collections are listed below:
References
- ↑ First Newspaper Published in the Colonies, MassMoments, viewed 10 June 2024, <https://www.massmoments.org/moment-details/first-newspaper-published-in-the-colonies.html>.
- ↑ Louisa Trott, Documenting Lost African-American Newspapers, National Endowment for the Humanities, 2022, viewed 10 June 2024, <https://www.neh.gov/blog/documenting-lost-african-american-newspapers>.
- ↑ German-American Newspapers, Library of Congress Research Guides, viewed 10 June 2024, <https://guides.loc.gov/germans-in-america/german-american-newspapers>.
- ↑ Leah Weinryb Grohsgal, Chronicling America’s Historic German Newspapers and the Growth of the American Ethnic Press, National Endowment for the Humanities, 2014, viewed 10 June 2024, <https://www.neh.gov/divisions/preservation/featured-project/chronicling-americas-historic-german-newspapers-and-the-grow>.
- ↑ African American Newspapers, Library of Congress Research Guides, viewed 10 June 2024, <https://guides.loc.gov/african-american-newspapers>.
- ↑ List of Jewish newspapers, Wikipedia, 2024, viewed 10 June 2024, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_newspapers>.
- ↑ Danna Bell, Native American Newspapers: Studying the History through the Eyes of the Community, Library of Congress Blogs, 2018, viewed 10 June 2024, <https://blogs.loc.gov/teachers/2018/11/native-american-newspapers-studying-the-history-through-the-eyes-of-the-community/>.
- ↑ Russian Newspapers Published in the United States, Library of Congress Research Guides, viewed 10 June 2024, <https://guides.loc.gov/russian-newspapers-united-states>.
- ↑ Italian American Periodicals at the Library of Congress, Library of Congress Research Guides, viewed 10 June 2024, <https://guides.loc.gov/italian-american-periodicals>.