Practice the steps on how to locate a newspaper described in Chapter Eight of your textbook. What was the name of a newspaper you found?

Remember if the town you are interested in did not have a newspaper, be sure to include surrounding towns. If your ancestors were of foreign birth and still read in their native tongue, look for newspapers of that language. Although I could not read Finnish at the time, I located my great grandmother's obituary in a Finnish newspaper by searching for her name a few weeks previous and continuing until after her death. It gave me her home parish in Finland and enabled me to go back another generation. In addition, it provided me with much information surrounding her death.

Hurrah! You found just what you were looking for. Before you run out the door with your xerox copy, did you document the town and state of the newspaper, where it was published, and the date of the issue? You should also make a note of the repository.

Did you search a few previous issues as well as a few later issues after you found a death, for example? In the case of my Finnish grandmother, I found an article where she had been sick and was rushed to a hospital over 120 miles from her home. She had recovered from a successful appendicitis operation but died a week later of other complications. There followed articles of her death, then later of her burial, and finally of relatives who had come from out of town and were then returning to their various homes.

Did you watch for follow-up clues? For example, "Mrs. James Mason received word Thursday of the passing of her mother on Tuesday in New York Mills, Minnesota." Perhaps you are seeking Mrs. James Mason's maiden name. You could go to the date indicated by the clues in the paper and see which women died on Tuesday in New York Mills. Then you could follow up on their obituaries and see if any left a daughter, Mrs. James Mason.

Have you found an obituary or other article on an ancestor? Enter what the newspaper article stated and give as complete a citation as you are able to give. You may find that whoever gave you the article did not provide the title of the newspaper or the date.

Newspapers provide so many clues for the genealogist even if the information contained in them is often in error due to their secondary nature. Sometimes they even provide clues to a family’s migration patterns.