Historical Newspapers for Genealogy & Local History

Types of genealogical and local history information found in newspapers

Tips for Successful Historical Newspaper Research

• Check neighboring towns, especially county seat and regional port or market towns
• Read the whole paper as articles may be randomly placed to fill spots
• Look for women under husband’s name, i.e. Mrs. John Brown rather than Molly Brown
• Check papers around holidays for news of visiting family
• Check papers at the end of the year for necrology reports
• Remember misspellings, initials, abbreviations, middle names
• Remember weekly historical newspapers may not print a story for several weeks
• Remember editors may be biased and to not believe everything you read in the paper
• Compare stories from nearby papers for more complete details
• Check several days or weeks after a story appears for follow-up, corrections, more details
• When an ancestor disappears, broaden your search as he may have moved

Each historical newspaper database/portal offers different features.

Here are some powerful ways to think about expanding and enhancing your search.

Two Imperfect but Powerful Ways to Search

1. keyword searching – searches database content for any words you think will be relevant to your search. Sometimes this is the only choice you have – for example searching the Andover Townsman.

Tip: use quotation marks to keep phrasing together.  Example: “Memorial Hall Library”

2. index searching – databases sometimes have their own indexing terms tagged to articles or segments of content. Index searching is more specific than keyword searching. Author, dateline, date of publication, Obituaries, births, headline and byline are examples of newspaper database indexing terms.

Commonly Available Advanced Search Features

Not all databases support advanced searching, but developing an awareness of some search capabilities and available filters will help you find more and better results. Check the HELP or INFORMATION feature for each newspaper database to see what advanced search features are offered and learn to use them.

Stop Words – Frequently occurring words that a newspaper database might consider insignificant.  Removing stop words helps the database focus its search results and weed out irrelevant searches.   a, and, the, is, at

Stemming/Truncating — cutting off a word at its stem to broaden your search.  Example Terror*  will retrieve – terror, terrorist, terrorism.  One example of how this is useful for genealogical searching of surnames is not standardized. If you don’t know if an ancestor spelled their name Abbot or Abbott, you can simply search Abbot* Or, if you don’t know if an ancestor’s name was Rosenstein or Rosenburg, you could search Rosen*

Wildcards  — a universal character that can often be used in place of a letter if you aren’t sure how something will be spelled. Example Wom?n will retrieve the words women and woman

Proximity Operators – special search commands that can help researchers find words near to one another. Commonly available proximity search syntax looks like “Andover photo”~5 (results containing the words Andover within 5 words of the word photo) and Academy n/5 principal

There are hundreds of freely available digital newspaper collections

If you wonder if there is one…

1. Check WorldCat
2. Check local library catalogs and local library websites
3. Google it
4. Ask a Librarian! They love to help! 😊

Local Historical Newspapers Available from Memorial Hall Library

Andover Historical Newspaper Collection, free access to anyone, anywhere anytime.
https://mhl.org/historical-newspapers OR mhl.org/lna

Andover Advertiser 2/1853 – 2/1866

Andover Townsman 10/1887 – 12/2019

Lawrence American and Andover Advertiser 2/1866 – 12/1907

Newspapers.com (from Ancestry) remotely accessible with a MHL/Andover library card.
The licensed version of Newspapers.com that Memorial Hall Library has access to includes twenty-nine Massachusetts newspapers, nine New Hampshire newspapers, seventy eight Maine newspapers, five hundred nineteen Vermont newspapers, twenty nine Connecticut papers and fifteen Rhode Island papers. 

Lawrence Eagle Tribune on microfilm 1940-current.

Boston Metro News from Newsbank 
remotely accessible with a MHL/Andover library card
Includes searchable full-text (no image files)  access to The Eagle Tribune and The Andover Townsman from 2008- current.  Also includes 2008+ access to The North Andover Citizen, The Wilmington Advocate, The Reading Advocate and the The Danvers Herald as well as other North Shore and Merrimack Valley newspapers. Larger papers with extensive The Worcester Telegram (1989-current), The Quincy Patriot Ledger, The Lowell Sun and The Boston Herald. 

Massachusetts historical newspaper databases from Boston Public Library 

Research resouces available with a Boston Public Library E-Card

Seventeenth & Eighteenth Century Burney Collection from the British Library
Newspapers, pamphlets, and broadsides gathered by the Reverend Charles Burney (1757-1817) representing the largest and most comprehensive collection of early English news media, containing approximately 1,270 titles from London, the British Isles, and the colonies. Local Coverage: Boston Gazette (1721-1722); New England Courant (1721-1723).

Nineteenth Century US Newspapers
Massachusetts Coverage: Boston: Atlas, Congregationalist, Courier, Daily Advertiser, Emancipator & Republican, Investigator, Liberator; Lowell: Lowell Daily Citizen.

Boston Globe 1872 -1990 indexed facsimile edition
Searchable full-page and article reproductions back to the first issue on March 4, 1872. Coverage:  Morning Edition only

British Library Newspapers
National and regional newspapers specially selected to best represent nineteenth century Britain, including newspapers that helped lead political or social movements and penny papers aimed at the working and clerical classes.

MyHeritage
One of the largest, most internationally diverse genealogy databases of its kind. Provides access to billions of historical documents, millions of historical photos, historical newspapers, and other resources in thousands of databases. Contains 239 Massachusetts newspapers including the Lawrence Sun American from 1917 – 1922

New York Times 1851-2021 indexed, facsimile edition
Searchable full-page and article reproductions back to the first issue on Sept 18, 1851.

Newspaper Archive
Searchable full-page reproductions of historical newspapers Boston coverage includes: Boston Globe (morning and evening editions), 1872-1922; Boston Post, 1831-1922. Also includes historical newspapers published in these states: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, D.C., New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Boston Public Library Local Newspaper Research Guide
Full of links to digitized newspapers throughout the Commonwealth.

Boston Public Library Newspaper Collection
The Boston Public Library holds one of the major newspaper collections in the country. The Library provides very limited access to original newspaper files which are mainly stored offsite in our Archival Center. You may request scan of items that are too fragile to handle.

Boston Public Library Newspapers on Microfilm Collection

Newspapers available through the Digital Commonwealth

Massachusetts Historical Newspapers from the Boston Public Library on Digital Commonwealth
Searchable, digital access to over 100 Massachusetts historical newspapers spanning from 1770-1978. 

Papers from the Lawrence Public Library on the Digital Commonwealth
Searchable, digital access to The (Lawrence) Evening Tribune from 1890 – 1930

Other Historical Newspaper Resources

Library of Congress Chronicling American Newspaper Collection
Thousands of American newspapers through 1960s. Good quality images, searching can be slow and sometimes difficult.  Massachusetts newspapers on Chronicling America. 

Google News Archive
This platform is extensive, however it is not being enhanced or expanded. Keyword searching is not fully functional.  Local papers of note: Nashua Telegraph, Providence Rhode Island Evening Tribune, Providence News Turners Falls, MA.  

Internet Archive
The Internet Archive’s historical newspaper collections are rich and continuously evolving.  Thousands of newspapers and magazines from around the world are included in this free-to-use massive archive. Because of the enormity of the Internet Archive and the nature of varied, user-submitted metadata, searching for specific items can be difficult.   Massachusetts newspaper titles on the Internet Archive that have a specific collection link, are included here.  If you want to search a title that is listed here, but there is no link, navigate to archive.org   and search the title of the paper you are looking for in the SEARCH METADATA field.  Use quotation marks to ensure the search is looking for the precise phrase you want.  For example type “Advent Herald”  in the SEARCH METADATA field.  Note: The Internet Archive is a highly valuable archiving service for libraries, archives, museums and other cultural institutions to store and provide access to unique content, but the search interface on archive.org will not match the user experience from a commercial database like Newspapers.com, for example. 

Advantage Archives
Advantage Archives is a digitization company that works with libraries, archives and museums to scan and host digital newspaper and archival book content.  This link to their nationwide directory is a nice resource for looking for Massachusetts historical newspaper collections. About 30 Massachusetts towns have newspapers on this platform including Amesbury, Brookline, Middleton, Hingham and Wellesley
https://communityhistoryarchives.com/