ROOTS & BRANCHES

It seems like I’ve written this column before.

And truth be known, in my more than a quarter century of writing “Roots & Branches,” I’ve returned to the topic of the value of historical newspapers several times.

I guess that happens when your “Roots & Branches” columnist is both: a) the author of the only full-length, commercially published book on this topic, The Family Tree Historical Newspapers Guide and b) a former newspaper copy editor.

But there’s nothing that brings out my evangelical zeal like trying to convert family historians to fully use newspapers.

Yep, I said it: “fully use” newspapers, not just reply “Oh, I’ve found my ancestor’s obituary” when they’re asked if they’re checked out newspapers.

That’s because an obituary might document the end of your ancestor’s life, but in many cases it only should be the beginning of your research in historical newspapers.

What brings this all back to my mind is the upcoming course I’m putting together for Family Tree University titled, “Heritage Headlines: Strategies for Tracing Your Roots in Newspapers.”

The course begins with a two-hour-plus webinar session on Aug. 11 starting at 6 p.m. EDT and then offers two weeks of discussion time with your “Roots & Branches” columnist.

Among the items to explore during the webinar are the major digitized newspaper websites, from free resources like Chronicling America and Old Fulton Post Cards to subscription services such as Newspapers.com, GenealogyBank.com, and NewspaperArchive.com.

An important facet of newspaper research that the course will cover is using the right resources to determine all the newspapers ever published in your area of interest (people often underestimate how many newspapers used to cover just one area!).

The course will also show the many times of information that used to be in newspapers, including “social” columns with information as granular as who was visiting who in a particular town. Newspapers truly were the social media of the 19^th century!

Something that people new to researching digitized old newspapers don’t always realize is how the searchability is created—and the pitfalls of that creation. When a newspaper is digitized, it is run through optical-character recognition (OCR for short) software and inevitably some characters are misread; the course will suggest a variety of workarounds for this.

Importantly, the webinar will show that biographies of ancestors can be built one short newspaper mention at a time.

The webinar also will cover more than just the websites with digital newspapers; also included will be websites of present-day newspapers and ways to aid your research with unpublished abstracts created by genealogical societies as well as issues on microfilm or bound books of the original paper-form issues.

 Registrants will also get access to a recording of the live webinar in case they aren’t available for the Aug. 11 live webinar.

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You can register for “Heritage Headlines” at the Family Tree University website’s URL, https://store.familytreemagazine.com/products/heritage-headlines-strategies-for-tracing-your-roots-in-newspaper-september-2025