Note: This article originally appeared in the March 2006 issue of Indiana Genealogist and is reprinted here with the author's permission.
“The newspaper is a Bible…,” Henry David Thoreau wrote in an 1854 essay (The Columbia World of Quotations. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). He was referring to how much influence a newspaper has on the public, but for genealogists, the same sentiment applies: searching in newspapers should be a cornerstone of your research strategy.
The date that vital events (birth, marriage, death) began to be registered by the government varies. Indiana, for example, did not uniformly record births and deaths until 1882, and county officials did not begin sending copies of their records to the state until the turn of the century. That is one reason why finding an obituary can be a genealogist's mother lode, with the person's date and place of birth and date and place of death among the possible nuggets.
But even if your ancestor didn't have the money or the social standing to merit an obituary, the newspaper is still a great source for their death. Several years ago, I was stymied trying to find out what had happened to my great-great-great-grandfather—he disappeared after the 1870 census, and his wife was listed as a widow on the 1880 census, but I never found his tombstone in the area cemeteries. The mystery was solved when I searched the county newspapers and found a February 1875 resolution from a fraternal order he belonged to.
Marriages were recorded by the county clerk, but if those records happen to be lost/destroyed, newspapers can be a substitute—they may have published a list of who had applied for marriage licenses and include separate items about some of the weddings. In some cases, the lack of a wedding was considered noteworthy. Even if your ancestors' wedding did not appear in the newspaper, you can glean information from anniversaries—look 20, 25 or 50 years after the marriage date to see if they had a celebration or reminisced about the day.
Newspapers are wonderful sources for the “legal stuff”—official information that the local court or government agency was required to publish, such as lists of those delinquent in paying their taxes (which often included the location of their property), or a notice of an administrator being appointed for an estate. It's easy to overlook these notices, but they can contain important pieces to the puzzle—for example, the fact that one of the heirs was not living in Indiana. Newspapers also provide information on topics that may never have been openly discussed in the family, such as adoptions, divorces and criminal cases (which appear in indexes to court records under “S”, as in State of Indiana vs. ____).
Many researchers already know how to find information on their ancestor's military service, obtaining copies of their service records and applications for pensions. But the newspaper should also be consulted for the period when they were in service, to see if they had any details of “local boys” in the conflict, or published any of the ancestor's letters home. Even after they have returned home, events like reunions of their regiment (especially at 10, 20, or 25 year intervals after the end of the conflict) can provide valuable information.
Newspapers can also provide clues of where to look for an ancestor, in unlikely ways:
Whatever type of information you are searching for, you may be missing out if you restrict your search to the newspapers in the county where your ancestor lived. Newspapers served a larger audience, thanks to mail delivery and the telegraph, and metropolitan-area newspapers often had columns for various counties. Even neighboring states should be checked. The Volume 16, Number 3 [September 2005] issue of the Indiana Genealogist showed that in 1882, there were several Indiana items featured in The Hicksville News, even though Hicksville was a town in northwestern Ohio. And a Fort Wayne newspaper from 1881 contained items from both Ohio and Illinois.
One thing I often hear from out-of-state members is how they wish they could be in Indiana, to be able to search the records. Thankfully, newspapers are becoming more accessible to all. The Indiana State Library (140 N. Senate Ave., Indianapolis IN 46204; 317-232-3675; http://www.in.gov/library) has an extensive collection of newspapers from around Indiana, many of which are available on microfilm (see http://www.statelib.lib.in.us/www/isl/indiana/newspaper/hold.html for a listing of what they have for each county). The microfilm can be obtained by your local library through inter-library loan—you only have to pay a small fee, and the loan period is usually 3-4 weeks. The ISL also has searchable indexes of some of the larger newspapers, including Indianapolis and New Albany (see http://www.in.gov/library/www/isl/whatwehave/npindex.html). And if you are planning a visit to the Allen County Public Library, you'll find that in addition to their Fort Wayne holdings, they also have newspapers from other parts of the state, including the Indianapolis News 1869-1932 and the Indianapolis Star 1903-present.
Newspapers are also becoming more readily available on the Internet, thanks to digitization. Newsbank has an Early American Newspaper collection, which goes up to 1876. It's only available to libraries, so check to see if your library has a subscription to it. Individuals can get a subscription to Newspaper Archive (http://www.newspaperarchive.com), which includes issues from Fort Wayne, Kokomo and Indianapolis newspapers. And Ancestry.com sells subscriptions for its Historical Newspaper collection, which currently includes newspapers from Fort Wayne, Hammond and Indianapolis.
Note: the Indiana Historical Society compiled a list of all Indiana newspapers published before 1980 and where the copies are kept. See Indiana Newspaper Bibliography: Historical Accounts of All Indiana Newspapers Published From 1804 to 1980 and Locational Information For All Available Copies, Both Original and Microfilm by John W. Miller (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1982). The Hoosier State Press Association also maintains a listing of currently published newspapers—see Indiana Newspaper Directory (Indianapolis, Hoosier State Press Association, 2003).