How Can You Fill Gaps in Your Family’s History?

 

A family tree includes major life events such as birth, marriage, divorce and death, with records, certificates and other evidence to verify the dates.  Evidence helps you to separate multiple individuals, who may have the same names and be born around the same time, sometimes even in the same place! While official point in time events and their records are important, they do not tell you much about a person or the life they led.

Where can you find the details that fill in the gaps?  Who were they?  Where did they live? How did they live and what sort of life did they live? What did they look like?

One potential source is historic newspapers. 

Do you have a family member who is a collector or interested in genealogy?  If so, you’ve likely seen a closely cropped obituary, marriage announcement or other life event the clipper wished to keep. 

These newspaper clippings are valuable. Why? Newspaper clippings can help fill in the gaps between point in time data. They add context and texture to people’s lives. These articles may include pictures or details about weddings, graduations and other special events. You may learn where an ancestor went to school, who their friends were, and people and places they may have visited.

Articles in newspapers can break down brick walls by identifying unknown people and/or places. Obituaries, for example, often include where a person was born and when and where they died.  They often list the name of relatives as well. This can be especially helpful for female relatives, as their married name and possibly their spouses name may be included.

Newspaper clippings may also help you sort out your ancestor from someone else with the same name.

However, the utility of newspaper clippings is a bit limited if the person clipping the article did not keep or include the publication information. 

Source Information Matters

Why? Not every source will provide the same information.   News publications often have different audiences. News reporting may be biased. Language or cultural barriers exist.  Newspapers can make accidental errors, or may have been given incorrect or incomplete information. As a result, different publications may not report the event from the same perspective or have the same level of information.

Knowing when and where a newspaper article was published can also help you sort out errors if their information is correct and other evidence you have is incorrect.  For example, if you find an obituary in a paper dated 1905, and other evidence says the person died in 1908, you need to investigate. Are you looking at two separate people with the same name? Or is the evidence for the later death date incorrect?

When information in the article doesn’t match other information you have, knowing the source is helpful.  Did the article come from a local, regional or national paper?  Or did it come from a special focus publication?  Who was the intended audience?  Can you find another article about the same event in a different publication?

In short, when you clip, include the publication information.  In particular, attach the name of the newspaper, the date the article was published, and the volume, section and the page number where the article is located to the article itself. 

Do you have a newspaper clipping without the source information?

If you have a clipping without source information, look for the article’s source. Start with the likely place where the article might have been published.  Review the newspapers published from that location.  See if you can match the article exactly.

If you cannot, look for other newspapers that may have published information about your ancestor and family.  Look for papers published in a nearby town, a town where your ancestor used to live, a regional newspaper, foreign language newspaper or other special interest publications. 

Libraries are a good source of historical newspapers. Their collection may be in print, on microfilm or digitized. They often have database subscriptions which contain digitized newspapers from a variety of places.

Many historical papers have been digitized. These can be accessed from a variety of internet resources. Some require a fee. Others, such as the Chronicling America website are free to users.

Enjoy your search!

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Originally published 2020/03/24 at 2:12 pm. Revised and updated on September 27, 2022.