The Family Tree Historical Newspapers Guide by James M. Beidler

The Family Tree Historical Newspapers Guide by James M. Beidler ISBN-13: 9781440350627 Paperback: 240 pages Publisher: F+W Media Released: March 20, 2018

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from Back Cover:
There are more historical newspaper resources than you think--and they're easier to access than you know. When researched properly, no other type of record can beat historical newspapers in "taking the pulse" of their times and places, recording not just the names, but also information important to the community. This comprehensive how-to guide will show you how to harvest the "social media" of centuries past to learn about your ancestors and the times and places they lived in. With step-by-step examples, case studies, templates, worksheets, and screenshots, this book shows you what you can find in online (and offline) historical newspapers, from city dailies to weekly community papers to foreign-language gazetteers.

The Family Tree Historical Newspapers Guide features:
Tips and techniques for finding crucial genealogy records in newspapers, such as birth announcements, obituaries, and even news reports

Step-by-step guides for using popular online newspaper databases such as GenealogyBank and Newspapers.com

Case studies that will put information found in newspapers to use


My Review:
The Family Tree Historical Newspapers Guide helps you to optimize your use of historical newspapers to discover information about your ancestors or a time period. The author focused mainly on American newspapers. He started by providing a brief history of newspapers, especially how they handled death notices and such. He used many examples of how someone's research turned up interesting information, often in unexpected spots. He talked about the types of things to look for in the newspapers, like birth notices, marriage announcements, death notices, divorces, and community articles.

He covered free-to-use and pay-to-use historical newspaper archive sites and how to use their different features. He also covered ethnic and international newspapers. He explained things like how to search for names that may have a variety of spellings or a name which also belongs to a famous person (but not the person you're interested in). Overall, I found this to be an informative and useful book of tips on this topic.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.