A Wealth of Information

The beginning of stories are almost everywhere. For the genealogist storyteller, old newspapers can be a neat source of more than information. They hint of stories that can tease my imagination.

I found my great-grandfather's name in shipping lists in newspapers from 1848 and 1850. I had no idea he had traveled by ship and that he had chosen a sailing vessel for one trip and a steamship for another.

It appeared he went to New Orleans each time, once from a port in New York City and once from Charleston, SC. He live in neighboring Georgia for about 25 years so using a SC port made sense to me. I have no idea why he traveled, but I could fantasize about what type of job he may have had.

Although there are free newspaper archives on the Internet, I used a paid service, www.genealogybank.com

For a list of both free and paid newspaper archives, check out
http://genealogy.about.com/od/newspapers/tp/newspapers_online.01.htm

Also check with local libraries to see if they subscribe to any online newspaper databases.