Family History Class Notes – Using Newspapers in Family History Research

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues and people are staying at home, many have found time to pursue their hobbies and there is a world -wide upsurge of interest in family history. Most are using online resources, including newspapers.

I believe that in the past, newspapers were the most under -utilized genealogical resource, but new technology is now changing that.

Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay, the early 19th Century British poet, historian and Whig politician once stated that ‘the only true history of a country is found in its newspapers’.

When you consider the first Australian newspaper began in Sydney just fifteen years after the arrival of the First Fleet, just imagine how much history of Australian families and their overseas connections must be buried in Australian newspapers.

We can read all the political, economic and social history books available for background context of our ancestors, but we can certainly better understand the lives of these ancestors when we find their stories, items and notices in old newspapers.

Types of Newspapers

• National
• Regional
• Local
• Ethnic and Foreign Language
• Religious
• Political
• Literary
• Military

Access to Australian Historical Newspapers

In Australia, the National and State Libraries have the responsibility of tracking down and collecting newspapers published, even today. They have many volumes of bound hardcopies of both Overseas and Australian newspapers. These can be located through their catalogues.

 

Regional and Community Libraries, historical societies and museums may also have original hard-copy or microfilm copies of newspapers, particularly those of the local area. You may have to travel to these local institutions to access these newspapers or you may be able to make arrangements for someone to view them on your behalf. There may be costs and fees associated with this service.

 

On-line Digital Access

In the past, it could be said that local and family historians did not use newspapers in their research because of poor accessibility, but this is no longer the case. Over the last few years, millions of pages of newspapers throughout the world have been scanned and digitized, and made available on-line to the public, through commercial ventures of subscription web sites, such as ancestry.com and findmypast.com, as well as historical document programs in National and State Archives and libraries.

Perhaps the most important source for Australian 19th Century and early 20th Century newspapers on-line are through the National Library of Australia, in their Historical Newspapers program, 1803-1954 at :-

http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper and the historical journals, and magazines program through the Australian Periodical Publications 1840-1845. This is part of the Australian Co-operative Digitization Project, which can be found at http://www.nla.gov.au/ferg/.

Between these two sites hundreds of titles are offered. These are in pdf format and can be searched by word or phrase, which makes them a very accessible resource. However one important warning- not all surviving issues of newspapers have been microfilmed, digitized and put on- line.

 

The first newspaper in New South Wales was the Sydney Gazette which first appeared on 5th March 1803 and was printed by George Howe, a convict. It was published for many years, ceasing in 1842.

As well as including functions many of us associate with a newspaper it also carried official governmental orders and proclamations, serving as the government gazette until 1832 when the New South Wales Government Gazette was inaugurated. Several other newspapers were published in Sydney over the years including:-

• The Australian-(1824-1848);
• Sydney Monitor (1828-1838);
• The Sydney Herald-(1831-1842) (later the Sydney Morning Herald);
• The Colonist-(1835-1840);
• Australian Chronicle-(1839-1843)
• Sydney Chronicle-(1846-1848).

I have had extensive experience of these Sydney newspapers and using them in local and family history, and have spent many hundreds of hours compiling selected indexes. Although all are now out of print they can be found in Libraries and Family History Societies.

 

These include

1. Index of Births, Deaths, and Marriages in Sydney Newspapers Vol 1 1830-1832

[Nola Mackey,1996,65pp, ISBN 1875840133,Out of Print]

2. Index of Births, Deaths, and Marriages in Sydney Newspapers Vol 2 1833-1835

[Nola Mackey,1996,107pp,ISBN 187584015X,Out of Print]

3. Index of Births, Deaths, and Marriages in Sydney Newspapers Vol 3 1836-1837

[Nola Mackey,1996,91pp,ISBN 1875840176, Out of Print]

4. Index of Births, Deaths, and Marriages in Sydney Newspapers Vol 4 1838

[Nola Mackey,1994,65pp,ISBN 18758409192,Out of Print]

5. Index of Births, Deaths, and Marriages in Sydney Newspapers Vol 5 1839

[Nola Mackey,1994,67pp,ISBN 1875840214,Out of Print]

6. Index of Births, Deaths, and Marriages in Sydney Newspapers Vol 6 1840

[Nola Mackey,1995, 64pp, ISBN 1875840230,Out of Print]

 

Here are some examples of Birth, Death and Marriage Notices and Reports in newspapers which allows you so see the range and type of information given.

 

 

 

As wonderful as it is having this electronic access to newspapers family historians need to remember. One document or newspaper item concerning an event is not proof.

Assessing Newspapers as a Family History Source

1. Do not automatically take the published word as gospel, and proof of what happened. Look at the evidence and how it was presented. Reports of Inquests and Court Proceeding are likely to be correct as the evidence is taken under oath, but an obituary or biography of a person’s life may contain untruths and exaggerations.
2. If there were more than one newspaper being published in the area in a time period look at them all. You will be surprised to learn they will not report the same event exactly the same. There may be more information in one than the other.
3. Not all newspapers are equal- and there is good reporting and bad reporting and much depends on the editor of the paper at the time.
4. Newspapers have always been in the business of selling news, but they have always come under the Crown laws concerning slander and misrepresentation of facts. Some owner/editors stretched these boundaries and have found themselves in Court. There have been several newspapers who were sent to the wall and insolvency through court cases concerning slandering opposition newspapers.

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Family and Local History Research Tool- Index of Births, Deaths and Marriage in Sydney Newspapers 1830-1840

Of the seventy odd publications I have written and self published, only four have had anything to do with our families. All the rest have been to assist the local community to tell their story or to assist other family historians access records to further their research. Many of the publications are available on my website ( http://www.heritagepath.com.au/ ).

However this will be changing over the next few months. I have decided to up date and rebuild my website over the coming months. A few publications will remain available and new ones will be added, but many will be removed and integrated into databases which at sometime in the future I hope to have available for researchers to access.

Some twenty years ago I spent many months extracting and indexing all the birth, death and marriage entries in some nine Sydney newspapers, copies of which have survived the ravages of time and have been microfilmed. I purchased copies of these microfilms from Pascoe and Company in Sydney.

The surviving issues of the following newspapers have been used in these indexes; Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser; The Sydney Herald; The Sydney Monitor; The Australian; The Colonist; The Sydney Times; The Australian Chronicle and The Sydney Standard and Colonial Advocate.

Not only the Birth, Death and Marriage notices but inquest reports, death reports, court reports, overseas items recorded in other countries. Many of these people are not recorded anywhere else.

This series called Index of Births, Deaths and Marriages in Sydney Newspapers covers the period 1830-1840. There are six volumes in all. Volume 1: 1830-1832;Volume 2: 1833-1835; Volume 3: 1836-1837;Volume 4: 1838;Volume 5: 1839 and Volume 6: 1840;

As you will note, the first two volumes cover three years of papers, the third volume two years, while the last three are yearly volumes. Each volume is in four sections. The first three cover the Birth, Death and Marriage Notices in each paper and the fourth section records deaths from the news columns and includes reports of death, inquests, funeral notices etc

I choose this time period because many historians were very frustrated that there were few records available for researching in this time frame, which was the last ten years of convicts and the first ten years of free immigrants into New South Wales.

Some interesting examples include:

Marriage: Volume 5 1839, p27

“ JOUBERT – BOUNEFEU, Married on 23 November 1839, at Kororarika at the Catholic Chapel, by Bishop Pompalier, D N Joubert, merchant of Sydney, to Louise Marie, eldest daughter of Piere Bounefeu.”

References- Australian, 24 December 1839; Sydney Gazette, 24 December 1839 and Sydney Monitor 25 December 1839.

Death; Volume 5 1839, p 54

“SKINNER Hughina, wife of Alexander Skinner, late Surgeon Superintendent of the government ship Lady McNaughton, and daughter of the late John Clarke, Sutherland, Scotland, died 7 April 1839, at Jerry’s Plains, Hunter River.”

Reference- Sydney Herald, 1 May 1839

Many of the libraries throughout the world, including Australia and New Zealand purchased copies of these indexes, as did many family history societies. I received hundreds of letters and emails from all over the world thanking me for compiling the indexes, as many people were able to find details of their ancestors, which they could follow up in other records if they have survived.

I published this series in book, microfiche and e-book format.

In the last few years the National Library of Australia has scanned these microfilms of each of these newspapers and digitally released them on their website under Trove, in their Historical Newspapers section. In theory this makes my indexes obsolete as the word search facilities of the National Library site makes all the records available at the press of a button.

However, as I have often stated, any family historian who relies on the computers facilities to find all their family history entries will often be very disappointed. Often many thousands of possible entries have to be sieved through to see if your family is indeed there. Also, the text recognition program used, although very helpful cannot hope to be 100% accurate. The printing of these early newspapers range from very dark and easy to read print to very faint and impossible to read. It needs the human eye to interpret those dark and smudged, as well as those faint broken text words. I have spent some forty years working with early 18^th and 19^th Century newspapers from all over the world, and have had much experience in working out those troublesome words.

I would use the National Library of Australia newspaper website everyday, but always consult my indexes if working in the 1830- 1840 time frame, as it saves me many hours of time. I immediately know if there is an entry, and in which newspaper I should be looking in.

Why not give these indexes a try, as you just never know, they just may solve your research problem.