Need some help with newspaper archive searching

[vampygirl13]

Hey there-

I'm hoping someone here can point me to a site or somewhere to help get my hands on this info.

My great-grandfather was killed in a robbery in 1924 and I've been searching all over the web to find an article or death notice for it to no avail.

Does anyone have any sites I can try?

Thanks for your help!

 

[Paisley]

Go to the web site of your library; they probably subscribe to sites you can access for free.

 

[TM]

Agreed - the library is the best place to start.

There is a service called Proquest which has been digitizing newspaper archives and making them searchable. Libraries often have subscriptions to this service, which is otherwise quite expensive. Probably only for large city newspapers, such as the Los Angeles Times, but you never know.

And if the event happened in a small town with a newspaper, the library may have microfilm of that paper. Generally these aren't indexed, so you'd have to scan through it yourself. That is time consuming.

You also might try http://www.ancestry.com/. They offer a free try-out period. That may yield some good information.

Tony

 

[LizzieMaine]

If you live near your state library, that might also be a good search point -- a lot of smaller libraries have purged their newspaper backfiles in recent years, but the state libraries generally haven't done this, and you might have better luck locating specific papers there.

One surprisingly good beginning search tool is Google News. They index the contents of Newspaper Archive.com, which powers the newspaper database for Ancestry, and even though you don't get full text results from a Google News search it will often help you narrow down your search to a specific date and paper.

 

[Carlisle Blues]

You also might try your local newspaper archives......sometimes that can be very effective with this type of search.

 

[AmateisGal]

I know that my state archives have all the state's newspapers at least on microfilm.

I fooled around a bit with the Google News feature, too, and they have a neat timeline feature.

 

[vampygirl13]

Thanks guys!

I'll start at my local library! I live near where said robbery took place.

 

[Lily Powers]

Libraries are a great resource. Keep this link for searching newspaper archives too: http://www.newspaperabstracts.com/

And this one is particularly fun for researching those relatives whose presence (or tales of past adventures) would make the family reunion just a bit more spicy: http://blacksheepancestors.com/