California Newspaper Archives

Tips for Searching California Newspapers Online

It isn’t hard to search California newspapers – or any newspaper archives – but there are a few things you can do to make your search more productive. Follow these tips to make better use of the newspaper archives and increase your chances of getting the results you want.

• Search surrounding towns. Many people make the mistake of limiting their search to only papers that are in their relative’s hometown or the town where they worked or other known locations. This is a good start, but it shouldn’t end there. Interesting news stories are often picked up by neighboring papers, including larger papers. This is especially true if the person lived there or had family there. Or the story could just be so good it is worthy of national attention. Always check cities where your relative lived, where their families lived, and the cities near there.
• Don’t limit your search to just your direct ancestors. Sometimes you can hit pay dirt by doing a sort of reverse search by looking up in-laws, siblings, and extended family like cousins, aunts, and uncles.
• It isn’t unusual to get an overwhelming flood of information that is usually irrelevant or unrelated to your search. You can remedy this by narrowing your search and pulling it more into focus to get more relevant results. If you have a maiden name or middle name or even the name of the city where they were born or lived you can really pull down the results to those that are more likely to be what you are looking for.
• If you aren’t getting the results you hoped for, don’t be afraid to expand your search. This means cutting back on the information that you give the search engine so that it has wider parameters. For instance, instead of providing a specific city, use the county instead. You can also leave off the middle name and just use first and last or even first initial and last name.
• Spelling is another area where people often get caught up. Use different spellings, especially of the last name. If you’ve looked at old census reports, you may have noticed that they are usually written by hand. This leaves lots of room for misspellings or illegible names. A person’s name can be recorded wrong or written down wrong so Peters could be Paters or Smith could be Smote, Smite, or Smath. By making little changes to the name, you could uncover more information.
• Don’t forget the “Mrs. name” trend. Many married women used their husbands’ names. It was a common practice up through the 1950s and 1960s and some even later. You don’t see it often now, but it used to be very common. For instance, Sally Smith Brown is married to Joshua Brown so she would list her name as “Mrs. Joshua Brown.” Make sure you check all the possible variations.
• Dates can be tricky too. While you should search specific dates, don’t limit your search to just those dates. Often small newspapers won’t publish a story or announcement for days or even weeks after the event. That is true today and it is definitely true in earlier historical newspapers. So, when you are searching, expand your search to encompass several weeks after the event as well as the actual date of the event.