Finding Female Ancestors in 18th and 19th Century British and Irish Newpapers

Dick Eastman (who's blog I try to read every day) has highlighted an interesting article by Gena Philibert Ortega on the subject of tracing female ancestors - the content is US based newspapers and I thought it worth contrasting this with earlier newspapers.

Newspapers are a brilliant resource for family and local historians - but you do need to mindful that early newspapers had a number of objectives, they were commercial enterprises, which in practical terms means they needed to make a profit by selling advertising space and providing International / National / as well as local news. All this is in a relatively small space (many newspapers were simply one sheet of paper printed on both sides and folded in half).

This means the space available for wedding notices and obituaries was in practice quite limited. And you do need to check as many "local" regional newspapers as possible. Its also worth remembering that the marriage or death might appear two or three weeks after the event (longer if it had taken place overseas such as India) so its always worth checking a little further on.

And - not all that is printed in newspapers is factually correct - so if you are lucky enough to "your ancestors " marriage or obit do check the following weeks edition e.g. Salisbury Journal 1769 "The paragraph on the death of the Rev.Mr. Colston, of Coker, Somerset, in our Journal of the 27th ult was without foundation, that Gentleman being alive and in good health."

A link to Dick Eastman's Blog can be found below- http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2009/07/finding-your-female-ancestor-in-the-newspaper.html