Canadian Newspaper Archives

What Can You Learn From Canadian Newspaper Archives?

Delving into newspaper archives can turn up some very good information if you search in the right way. Just about every section has the potential to provide important details.

Wedding announcements can give you the date and place that a marriage took place, but they can also give you the spouse’s information as well as family names. Typically the bride’s and groom’s parents are named in the announcement. If you’re lucky, they may even name the grandparents.

Birth announcements can give you birthdays and parents’ names while death notices give you the date of death.

Of course, everyone knows that obituaries are great resources since they typically name most of the immediate family. But you can also pick up clues about organizations they belonged to if they served in the military, where they worked, and the names of friends and family.

There’s more though. Public notices, court cases, legal notices, and church announcements can also point you in the right direction to gather information on certain family members as well as extended family.

You can find out when your family immigrated to the US from Canada or immigrated to Canada by researching ship passengers lists. Military lists and military news can give you dates and places as well as some pretty cool stories.

Sometimes it’s just that one little obscure piece of information, a picture, a news story, a police blotter that reignites your research and fills in key pieces of vital information.

Perhaps you are looking for your great grandmother’s parents. You have searched everywhere and you are just hitting a wall. Then you search Canada newspapers and hit paydirt with a news story about a new business or a news story about a burglary where your relative was the victim. The information you can get from a seemingly innocuous source takes you down several different family tree branches where you discover more family than you knew you had.

Tips for Searching Canadian Newspapers Online

When you are searching Canadian newspaper archives online to discover your family history, keep these tips in mind.

• Don’t limit your search to only looking at papers in your relative’s hometown. Good news stories often get picked up by other newspapers in other areas, especially if the person once lived there or the story itself is worthy of national attention. You can also check in other cities where your relative lived or where their relatives lived.
• Don’t think linear in your search. Instead of only looking at your direct ancestors, expand your search by looking at their siblings and in-laws, aunts and uncles, cousins, and other family members.
• Don’t be afraid to narrow your search. If you are getting a flood of unrelated or irrelevant results, try bringing your search more into focus. Provide the name of the city or the middle or maiden name for more relevant results.
• Don’t be afraid to expand your search. If you aren’t getting as many results as you would like, expand your search. For instance, you can go from a city name to the county, or use just the first and last name and omit the middle name.
• Don’t forget to use different spellings of the last name. Sometimes a person’s name was written down wrong or recorded wrong and even if you are looking for Peters, it may be listed somewhere as Paters. Subtle changes can give you the results you want. Also, remember that many women use “Mrs. Husband Name” instead of their own. This was very prevalent in earlier times. For instance, Molly Brown might list herself as Mrs. Christopher Brown. Make sure you check all possible ways.
• Don’t limit your search to a specific date. Many times a small city newspaper won’t publish an announcement or story for several days or even weeks. Search several weeks after the event or incident and you might find what you need. Read more