The Museum's Newspaper Archives

Old newspaper articles often give us insight into the thinking of the times. Today we have many ways to learn about what's going on in the world and many ways to learn the opinion of others, but in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the choices were limited. Today we can be informed not only through the newspaper, but also by television, radio and the Internet, for example. One hundred or more years ago, the average person mostly read newspapers to get their news. Thus, newspapers often had a great influence on the sentiment of its readers.

Within the many exhibitions of the Museum of Family History you will currently find sixty-five articles that have been extracted from a number of mostly defunct newspapers, e.g. the New-York Daily Tribune. These articles cover a range of topics, whether it be about the concern over excessive immigration, the lives of Jewish farmers, life on the Lower East Side of New York, Ellis Island and Castle Garden, and even New York's Yiddish Theatre. Those of you who are subscribed to this blog, or who visit it frequently on their own, know that many announcements have been made as to new articles that have been readied for your perusal.

You can now pick and choose any of the aforementioned articles and more on the Museum's new Newspaper Archives page. Each article is listed according to the Museum exhibition it is associated with. It is also listed by its title, by the newspaper it appeared in, and the year the article was published. Most of the articles currently available at the Museum were first published between the early 1880s and 1910, important years for both European and American Jewry. Additionally, each article is linked to the webpage on which it appears. So you easily peruse this list and simply click on the link of the article you wish to read. The list will be added to each time a new article is placed online by the Museum.

You can find the Newspaper Archives page at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/archive-newspaper.htm. The only links on the Museum website to the Newspaper Archives page can be found in the right-hand column on the Museum's front page and on the Site Map page.

Three Useful Newspaper Online Search Engines

Many of us already know of ProQuest, an online resource that offers many old editions of newspapers, especially the New York Times. Some public libraries make the ProQuest searchable database available on site, and this of course, is a free service. You may even be able to subscribe to the service for home use. You can learn more by visiting the ProQuest website at http://www.proquest.com/en-US/.

Over the last number of months, for those interested in old New York (City and upstate) newspapers, there's the Fulton History site (found at www.fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html)where you can "search over 10,258,000 old New York State historical newspaper pages."

I have recently discovered too that the Library of Congress has a searchable database, including old newspapers from twelve of these United States. The search engine can be found at http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/search/pages/.

All these searchable databases can be very useful for genealogical researchers, especially in conducting research of historical events, not only in the United States, but throughout the world.