How to Find Old Newspaper Articles Online

A question was posed to me the other day. It was “How do I find an old death notice”. The answer depends on how close you are to the deceased or whether you know them or not. For a famous person like John Wayne, it is easy. There are people that still love and admire this movie star and can tell you his birthday or the day he died which was June, 11 1979.

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Elvis Presley newspaper headlines were many over the years of the famous actor, musician’s life and followed for many years after his death. Here on Old Newspaper Articles we show you how to locate articles such as from the Abilene Reporter News on March 1, 1960, it only involved good news. The headlines read “Due back next month, Returning Elvis Presley has serious acting goal”.  Sergeant Elvis Presley was described in the article as a thing as peculiar to the 20th century as the atomic bomb, Walter Reuther and frozen chicken legs. This was the point of Elvis’s return to civilian life and from a $25 a week truck driver to a $25,000 a week National Institution.

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To find old newspaper articles online is at times a struggle. The web is full of information and almost all current events are easy to find because they have been originally recorded on the web.  Almost every newspaper today has a web edition free of charge.  The current edition newspapers generally only have their issues up for a limited time.  But if you are looking into the past by more than a few years for old newspaper articles, you will need a subscription.

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From the history books to newspaper articles, World War 2 comes to life. But if a person in an American public school wants to know about WW2 or any other war they must read it on their own in old newspaper articles.  Every history teacher I had always skipped over the wars. They did cover a little on the first one, the revolution, but the same speech was heard year after year “there are more important events in history”.

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To search old news records is a chore by itself once you have the material.  Just a few years ago this meant going through stack after stack of either old newspapers or journals to find the necessary information. There are some that were luckier than others and had a librarian in the family like me.  My Great Aunt Ruth was the family librarian and she kept track of and documented all of the family records and deeds through out the years. Unfortunately she passed away a few years ago and no one has picked up the duties so the records are no longer up to date.

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December 8, 1980 is the date of the John Lennon assassination. Newspaper reports the tragedy the following day with headlines like “Suspect ‘stalked’ Lennon” From the Syracuse Herald-Journal and “EX-Beatle John Lennon Killed” from the Maryville Journal-Tribune.  No matter what the headline read, every newspaper article had the same information. That a 25 year old Hawaii man that had stalked John Lennon for three days and was being charged with the murder. The accused was Mark David Chapman.  Chapman even had a license for the gun he used in the murder and a bill of sale from Hawaii where the purchase was made, though of course the license was not legal in New York City..

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Famous Headlines become famous for many reasons. Some became famous because of the news they are reporting like the V E  edition. These were the two letters all of Europe had been waiting for since 1939. Victory in Europe was announced on May 8, 1945 or simply as many newspapers reported it as “V-E Day”.

When you search old newspapers you will discover other reasons that  headlines become famous, like the reporting of the outcome of the 1948 presidential election in America.  On November 2, 1948 the headlines read “Dewey Wins”. We now know this was wrong but it will forever be the most famous wrong headline ever.

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Old newspaper articles are a wealth if information for the world to use. There are literally over a billion articles now available on the internet. This vast knowledge is not only useful for historians and students but the common man as well. Every topic is available at the touch of a button.

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This weekend the Arizona Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Steelers face off for Superbowl XLIII, (Superbowl #43,) and everyone will be glued to their television sets to watch the event and the entertainment that goes with it.

Bruce Springsteen will be celebrating along with his old time E Street Band and it should be a great show.

Here at Old Newspaper Articles we normally think about using the Newspaper Archive database for reading about historical events and not for sports use, however I just did a quick search of the one word “superbowl” and there are over 15,000 occurrences of newspaper stories about Superbowls of the past.

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Our news in these times is filled with mention of immigrant problems that blend in with National Security problems. The story itself is nothing new and you might want find old immigration articles to compare with.

This country is a nation of immigrants, other than the Native Americans and DNA evidence now shows that they too were immigrants at one period or another in ancient history. Every generation has been faced with concerns over immigrant problems and there is no place better to see that than in the Newspaper Archive database of scanned newspaper images.

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Many of you are in a position where you need to Earn Money at Home. Here is a way to do it using old newspaper articles.

There are many local news agencies and TV and radio stations that have researchers on staff. These people are paid a salary and have a benefits package, take vacations or other time off and are a part of the company overhead and operating budget.

Most of those researchers are also staff writers that take the researched material and whip it into some form of story for their editor. You can take part of the responsibility of the research part of the project at a much lower cost that they can do it.

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Starting in 1861 with the taking of Fort Sumter by the south, there was a scramble on both sides to form armies. As the civil war evolved over the four year period it was concentrated in various sections of the country and to follow it properly you will need to become familiar with the names of the Civil War Battles.

The western part of the State of Virginia, that part which is now the State of West Virginia, saw some of the earliest action of the civil war battles when Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan who was in command of the troops in Ohio moved across the river and engaged the Confederate troops under Col. George A. Porterfield in what was called the Battle of Philippi and also called the Philippi Races.

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The upcoming Inauguration of President Barack Obama is a landmark event of great importance in the history of this country. I just looked at some modern news about the preparations for this event and the security plan that is in place is no doubt the greatest ever.

The current President Bush has already proclaimed that date of January 20th to be a State of Emergency in Washington, DC, which then qualifies the city’s costs to be covered by the Federal government, and the whole security program is directed by the Secret Service.

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Many of you come here because you searched for Death Notices Archives and we want to help you discover that these death announcements or obits are right at your finger tips.

If you are looking for recent death notices, then we would recommend going to the city or area that the death occurred in and do an online search for an existing local newspaper in your community of interest. Then all you have to do is go to that newspaper website, which you should easily find with your search engine of choice, and see if they have current issues of their publications online.

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Your Family History is unique and is going to be one of the most interesting research projects you have ever worked on it. Trust me, I know. I have been doing serious genealogical research for about 40 years and there is nothing more exciting than learning how to trace family history.

Genealogy and Family History:
The two terms genealogy, and family history, generally mean the same thing to most people but technically they refer to two different parts of the research. Genealogy is accepted to mean your genetic line of ancestors. A chart that starts with your self and moves back in time through each generational set of parents is called a pedigree chart.

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We know that as an Internet user you get bombarded with buy this, buy that deals constantly. Just in case you have been hesitating on clicking through to the members area let me walk you through the procedure to become a member and do your first newspaper article search.

First step after you have clicked on the link to go to the members area, (you can do this at any time and you can always back out of the member area if you decide that you want to think it over first.) There is no hard sell here. You will see a list of some of the many features that are available to members.

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Those of you that are old enough remember exactly where you were and what you were doing when you heard the news of the John F. Kennedy Assassination. I know that I was working in a small television repair shop at the time and someone came in from the diner next door and said they just heard that the president had been shot.

I immediately turned on a local radio station that was playing some music, pushed the “record” button on a little tape recorder, just at the time that the local radio station broke in with a news alert that President Kennedy had been shot. I think the nation went silent. I know that people around me just kept shaking their heads in disbelief.

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Those of you that were around on July 21st, 1969 will always remember where you were and what you were doing when those last few minutes of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing were occurring.

I remember vividly that I sat perched on the edge of my living room chair watching three television sets that I had moved in to be able to watch all three of the big network channels that were available where we lived.

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One of the most famous of all of the Women of the Civil War was Dr. Mary Walker of Oswego, New York. She worked as the first woman surgeon on the battlefields during the war and was later renowned as being ‘manish’ as she wore mens clothing the rest of her life.

Dr. Walker was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor (CMOH) for her bravery under fire, only to have it rescinded later by Congress. Being the mighty little scrapper that she was, she refused to return the medal, and in retrospect it would be considered rightly so, as her medal was eventually returned to her posthumously.

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If you had an ancestor that served in the military in 1898 in the U.S there is a good chance that he was involved in some way in the Spanish-American War. Old newspaper articles are your best place to start your historical research on this subject.

The Spanish-American War was short lived, occurring between April and August of 1898. The conflict was generally considered to be over the liberation of Cuba and the United States got involved after the resolution of Cuba to be independent was rejected by Spain. The Monroe Doctrine played a major part in the decision to go to war to protect countries in this hemisphere.

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Early Methodist History in America:
I was contacted recently by a genealogist who was interested in some ancestors that were in the northern part of New York State in the 1780’s-1790’s. Her request brought to mid some historical research I did on the earliest start of the Methodist Religion in America.

John Wesley

John Wesley:
When you think of early Methodist history the name of John Wesley of England comes to mind and it was curious to me as to how it could be that the Methodist religion was brought to America by a German speaking man that came from County Limerick in Ireland and lived first in New York City before settling in the Northern part of New York Province in what is now Washington County, NY.

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This writer does a lot of historical research. That is obviously why I have such a passion for these old papers and why I like to share how valuable I think they are to your research projects. Recently I wanted to find out some information about a single battle action that occurred near the end of World War 2.

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When you are working on a history project or your genealogy you will want to search obituaries or death notices in old newspaper articles. This little snippet of an announcement that was written usually by the funeral director from information collected from a living family member are very useful for clues on where to look next.

Secondary Evidence:
There is no doubt that this secondary evidence is often wrought with errors, misspelling, incorrect dates and even in wrong names of the parties, still they are little news items that should not be overlooked for their value in other areas.

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Millions of people are involved in the search for their ancestors Family History Genealogy. The way this search process evolves over time is fairly standard for everyone no matter what part of this country you are searching in.

Start With Yourself:
You have to start with yourself and work backwards through successive generations. First you should record everything about yourself on a sheet of paper or a genealogy family group sheet. This will be where you record your date and place of birth, your parents’ names with mother’s maiden name, and your marriage date and place, spouse’s name and vital stats also, then the names and dates and places of birth of your children.

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