Newspapers dot Com Update – July 2026

Newspapers.Com is one of the larger subscription newspaper sites. At the date of this publication, they claim over 1.24 billion digitized pages from over 31,000 titles. Here is a list of the new titles from the past month. United States California Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maryland Minnesota Missouri New Mexico New York North […]

FamilySearch New and Updated Collections – July 1-31, 2026

FamilySearch continues to add or update its record collections at a fast pace for us to search. ​​For the period of July 1-31, 2026, the added/updated collections are: For a complete list of all added/updated collections, go to https://familysearch.org/search/collection/list​ I hope that some of these are what you have been waiting for! Good Luck and […]

Newspaper Distortions – The Spacing Mirage

Not every newspaper distortion involves misspelled names or poor OCR. Sometimes the problem is simply spacing. In the era of hand-set type, compositors frequently adjusted the spacing between letters and words to make columns align neatly. Names containing prefixes, apostrophes, or multiple words were especially vulnerable. What appeared perfectly readable in print can become fragmented […]

Research Mistakes – Looking Only at the Person You Are Researching

Sometimes the fastest way to find your ancestor is to stop looking at your ancestor. When researchers hit a brick wall, the natural reaction is to search harder for the same person. Unfortunately, that approach often overlooks the people who shared your ancestor’s life. Ancestors lived as part of families, neighborhoods, churches, workplaces, and communities. […]

Elephind Collection Just Hit 47 Million Pages

From Elephind: Elephind currently searches 47,119,848 pages from the 4,444 newspaper titles listed below. We still have over 150 million pages and thousands of titles to add — and this number continues to grow. Here is a list of all the titles for searching at Elephind: Start exploring at Elephind.com

Newspaper Distortions – The Typist’s Trap

As newspapers moved from paper archives to digital databases, many collections relied on human operators to manually rekey articles, indexes, and metadata. While this process made newspapers searchable, it also introduced a new layer of errors. Characters that looked similar on a screen or in a faded original document were often entered incorrectly, creating mistakes […]

Research Mistakes – Stopping After the First Record You Find

The first record you find is often the beginning of the story—not the end of it. Finding an important record is exciting. A census, birth record, marriage license, or obituary can feel like the answer you’ve been searching for. But one record rarely tells the entire story. Every record was created for a specific purpose, […]

Research Mistakes – Failing to Record What You Already Searched

When you do not record where you searched, yesterday’s dead end can become tomorrow’s wasted hour. Genealogy research often involves searching many websites, databases, repositories, record collections, name spellings, locations, and date ranges. Without a record of those searches, it becomes surprisingly easy to repeat the same work. A search that produced no useful result […]

Newspaper Distortions – The Shadow Double

One of the most frustrating challenges in newspaper research occurs when multiple people in the same community share the same name. In large cities and small towns alike, common names such as John Brown, Mary Smith, or William Johnson often belonged to several unrelated individuals living at the same time. Newspapers rarely provided enough detail […]

Research Mistakes – Believing Missing Records Mean Missing Ancestors

A missing record does not mean a missing ancestor—it usually means you haven’t found the right place to look yet. One of the quickest ways to stall a genealogy project is to assume that if a record cannot be found, it never existed. Historical records disappear for many reasons. Courthouses burned. Counties changed. Records were […]