Genealogy Research Stories: Newspapers Save the Day! Class Recap

Written by Regina Fitzpatrick
Published on October 26, 2021

Thank you all for attending Genealogy Research Stories: Newspapers Save the Day, and for helping us conclude the NJ State Library (NJSL) celebration of National Family History Month! I hope you enjoyed the two examples of how newspapers helped to get me around a few difficult brick walls.

How Newspapers can Help

Newspapers can offer clues to people’s whereabouts and community standing through news, social items, announcements, real estate transactions, and community events. I was able to find the records of Marion Chester and establish what happened to her after she moved to Princeton because of a newspaper article which announced she’d been elected as an officer in a social club.

In addition, newspapers can offer clues about local names and places. A newspaper article gave me a lead on the Stein Cemetery, adjacent to a duck farm. I was able to pass this along to the researcher who reached out the cemetery and confirmed that her relative was indeed buried there. This entire story is incredible, and I hope you check out the blog written about discovering Rose Isaacson’s grave.

Get those Records!

Remember, if you’re researching a person, you want to get records as much as possible. It’s likely that records (particularly birth, marriage, or death records) have authoritative biographical information which comes from the person themselves or someone close to them. I know this is frustrating for people researching in New Jersey, as many state level collections are not digitized or available on Ancestry. But the information you find in these records is often worth the money and wait.