Don’t give up. When you’re faced with the tough task of tracing an elusive female back through history, it pays to be persistent. You’ll find plenty of rewards by tracing female family lines. Instead, tackle the challenge of following a female with the following tips – you may find that your great-great-grandmother’s maiden name and hiding place aren’t so far out of reach after all.

Tip 1: Ask around. Does anyone else in the family know the maiden name or recall other family names that could be associated with Great-Grandma?

Tip 2: Check online family trees. You may discover that someone else has already jotted down a maiden name for Great-Grandma (although you’ll want to reconstruct the research to be certain it’s the right maiden name and the right Great-Grandma).

Tip 3: Look at home. Is there a family member with an attic full of memorabilia? Something hidden in there, including wedding announcements, funeral cards, details on the backs of photos, notes on postcards and letters, or even a high school yearbook, could point you to Great-Grandma’s name. Also check related collections at Ancestry.com, including public member photos.

Tip 4: Check the church. While a marriage license should point you to Great-Grandma’s maiden name, you may not luck into finding one (prior to the 20th century, many states were hit and miss with civil registration of births, marriages and deaths). Church records and registers, however, may hold clues, including who married whom.

Tip 5: Look nearby. Property records, marriage records, naturalization records and more, whether in Great-Grandma’s name or her husbands’, may have included witnesses from her side of the family. Also consider that Great-Grandpa may have done business with Great-Grandma’s family.

Tip 6: Check the children. While state-held birth records may also be hard to come by prior to the 20th century, children are great keepers of clues. Middle names may have come from Great-Grandma’s side of the family – one of them may even be her maiden name. Baptism records could include the name of a sponsor or godparent who was related to Great-Grandma.

Tip 7: Revisit the neighborhood. It may seem cliché, but Great-Grandma could have married the boy next door. Follow her husband back through the census. Is there a female nearby whose name and other details (birthplace, birth year, parents’ birthplaces) mirror the facts you know about Great-Grandma? Follow her forward to see if she married Great-Grandpa.

Tip 8: Dig around the family plot. Families often remained together even after death. Cemetery records may mention Great-Grandma’s side of the family, and cemetery plots may be very close to Great-Grandma’s family.

Tip 9: Move forward. Clues from Great-Grandma’s married census records may point you to her past. If another adult is living with the family, it could be an elderly parent who moved in or Great-Grandma’s younger sibling, who’s helping with the kids. Follow that person back through census records to see if he or she might be the clue you need to locate Great-Grandma’s maiden name.

Tip 10: Read the newspaper. Obituaries can hold valuable details, including the names of Great-Grandma’s male siblings or cousins whose surnames mirror her maiden name. Also look for wedding and engagement announcements for Great-Grandpa. Do the same (plus birth announcements) for Great-Grandma’s children – if their grandparents are listed, you’ll find Great-Grandma’s parents.

For more tips on finding Great-Grandma, check out the latest 5-Minute Find video-Wife Hunting.

Don’t give up so easily. Turns out that story of true love could be hiding in a yearbook or a census record. Or it may be waiting in a document or photo that you’ve already found, viewed, and saved … just waiting for you to take a second look.

Here are some places where we found love stories, what we discovered, and which resources might unlock the tales of romance you’re looking for, too.
 
The Girl Next Door

Anne Mitchell, Sr. Product Manager, Library and Institutional Accounts

Tip: Explore the pages before and after your ancestor in the census to see if you find the prospective bride or groom living nearby.

Charlton Wallace married Martha Jane Cash in Rockbridge County, Virginia, in 1842. According to her death record, Martha was the daughter of Ready Cash and Mary Hartigan of Rockbridge County.  Unfortunately vital records weren’t kept at the time of Charlton’s birth or death, so I had to do a little digging to find his parents. I knew from his tombstone that Charlton was born in Rockbridge County in 1823 and died there in 1903, so Rockbridge County seemed a good place to start.

Identifying the family would be tricky since the 1840 census listed only heads of households by name, with children simply tallied by number and age range. Assuming Charlton was living with his parents in 1840—and that they lived in Rockbridge County, where he was born, married, and died—I narrowed the Wallace households that had a boy in the correct age range down to three.

Browsing the neighbors of one of the candidates gave me a very big clue as to the likely identity of Charlton’s probable parents, or at least the folks he was living with. As I paged back to the previous census page, living next door to William Wallace I found the household of Ready Cash. Since then I’ve found further evidence that makes it pretty clear that Charlton married the girl next door.

William Wallace household, 1840 U.S. Census, Rockbridge Co., Virginia

Ready Cash household, 1840 U.S. Census, Rockbridge Co., Virginia

Shipmates for Life?

Juliana Smith, Sr. Marketing and Communications Associate

Tip: Browse through the passenger lists of immigrant ancestors to see if a future couple was traveling together or met on board.

My great-great-grandmother Margaret Dooner was a first-generation American born in Brooklyn, New York, in January 1841. Her parents were Irish immigrants, and her baptism record from St. Paul’s Roman Catholic Church lists her parents as John Dooner and Eliza Moran. Since Dooner is a relatively unusual name by Irish standards, I thought I would try to locate John’s arrival in the U.S. in U.S. passenger lists. Using the 1841 birth date of the couple’s eldest child, Margaret, as a starting point, I limited my search to the years prior to that and found a John Dooner who is just about the right age coming to New York on July 10, 1839. I glanced at the others on the page and found a number of twenty-somethings, most of whom appear to be traveling without family, although there were a few young families sprinkled in.

Since the manifest was only two pages long, I scanned the other names on the list, and although there were no other Dooners, I ran across an Eliza Moran on the following page. Because Moran is a common surname, I will have to gather more evidence to prove this is John’s Eliza. It’s also possible that they were coming from the same area of Ireland and knew each other before immigrating. But in either case it’s a fun find and will be interesting to investigate just where love may have bloomed.

Ship “Ganges,” arriving at New York 10 July 1839, p. 1

Ship “Ganges,” arriving at New York 10 July 1839, p. 2

He Joined the What?

Loretto “Lou” Szucs, Vice President, Community Relations

Tip: If your ancestor served in the military, his pension file could include surprising personal details. Some military pension records and indexes can be found online at Ancestry.com and Fold3.com.

When my daughter and I uncovered my great-grandmother Jane Howley’s file for a Civil War pension based on her husband, Thomas’s, service in the Union Navy, we hit the jackpot. The file, found in the Navy Widows’ Certificates collection on Fold3.com, provided great genealogical details, as well as a number of depositions from family and friends.

A deposition by friend Margaret Freil, who knew Jane and Thomas before they were married, even revealed how they met:

I first became acquainted with Thomas Howley sometime about 1855 or 1856. He came to our house on Water St. near Fulton Ferry, Brooklyn, N.Y.  about that time and boarded with my parents. He was called a greenhorn then and I understand that he had just came here from England. My father introduced Thomas Howley to this claimant Jane Howley, whom I knew as long as I can remember.

I even learned a little bit about the early years of their marriage. There are 123 pages in the file, largely because Thomas enlisted using his mother’s maiden name of Moore, which left Jane with some explaining to do. She says,

 I objected to him going in the service because I was then with child and I did not think it was right for him to go. I did not know he had enlisted until after he went in the recovery ship and then I was told by Lou Barnett, who enlisted him, and brought his civilian clothes back to me. Yes sir, this man Barnett enlisted him, and I understand he got half of the bounty money.

Jane went to see Thomas a couple days later.

I asked him why he enlisted under the name of Moore and he said he did not want me to know it till he had enlisted and he then handed me $400 half of the bounty money he had received.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall for that meeting. Jane goes on in a later deposition to tell us that following his enlistment, “I felt very sore over it because I had one small child and was with child at the time.”

This is just a small sample of the details that we found in that file. The depositions are full of insights into the lives of all involved, and the clues we found will no doubt lead to more information.

Check for pension indexes and images of some files online at Ancestry.com and Fold3.com. If you find the record in an index, you can request the record from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

Other Resources

Newspapers. Check newspapers for engagement, marriage, and anniversary announcements that could include the story of how the happy couple met. Social pages may list the names of people at events and give you insights into their social circles.

You may even find articles with incredible details about an ancestor’s love story. The following article appeared in the New Castle News (New Castle, Pennsylvania) of 9 December 1910.

“New Castle News” (New Castle, Pennsylvania) of 9 December 1910

Maps. Find your ancestors street addresses in city directories, censuses beginning in 1880, and other records and plot locations on a map. Contemporary maps can give you a general sense of a location, although bear in mind that streets may have been renamed or renumbered. Historical maps, like those found in the following collections, can be even more useful:

• U.S., Indexed County Land Ownership Maps, 1860–1918
• Historic Land Ownership and Reference Atlases, 1507–2000

From U.S., Indexed County Land Ownership Maps, 1860–1918, Carbon County, Pennsylvania, 1875

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Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.

Who will you find today? Here are some notable names that we found in the newly added states.

Liberace
Wladziu Valentino Liberace is still using his first name in the 1940 census, though he’s Anglicized it to Walter. Later that year, he’ll head off to New York, but in April he was still living at home in Milwaukee with his family—including his mother, Francis. He made $300 the year before working as a musician. Bet that total has a few more digits on the 1950 census.  

William Sylvester Harley  and Arthur Davidson
It’s hog heaven for G.I.s when famed motorcycle company Harley-Davidson produces more than 60,000 motorcycles for the troops during WWII. (A third of those went to Russian soldiers—after they joined our side.)

Orville Redenbacher
According to the census, Orville Redenbacher and his wife, Corinne, have moved from Terra Haute, where they were living in 1935, to Patoka, Indiana. Orville developed his first hybrid popcorn strains in 4H, but it will be another 25 years before he and business partner Charles Bowman perfect the hybrid popcorn that will make him famous.

Hank Williams
Country music legend Hank (Hiram) Williams was living with his mother, sister, and two lodgers in Montgomery, Alabama, in April 1940. Lillian, Hank’s mother, ran a boarding house to help support the family while Hank’s father was hospitalized for years in Louisiana.

Martin Luther King Jr.
In 1940, Martin Luther King Jr. is sharing the house with a brother, a sister, a grandmother, an aunt, and a lodger. He hasn’t started skipping grades yet in school, but he has already changed his name from Michael to Martin. His father, a pastor, made $2,500 the previous year.

Clark Gable and Carole Lombard
“Ma” and “Pa” (as they called each other) Gable settled down on their ranch in Encino, California, after their 1939 wedding.

Dorothy Marie Hofert (David Letterman’s mom)
Dorothy is two years away from marrying Harry Joseph Letterman, seven from becoming mother to her famous son, David, and fifty-four from her first gig as correspondent at the 1994 Winter Olympics

Nelle Harper Lee
Did you ever wonder where Nelle Harper Lee got her ideas for To Kill a Mockingbird? The 1940 census lists her as the daughter of Francis [Finch] and Amasa Lee, who in 1940 was working as a lawyer in private practice. At 13, a precocious Nelle is already in high school.

Henry Louis “Hank” Aaron
Hammerin’ Hank is six years old in the 1940 census, and his little brother Tommie is seven months. Tommie and Hank share the record for most home runs by a pair of siblings in the Majors—though they didn’t exactly share and share alike: Hank had 755, Tommie 13.

Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell Marsh
Margaret Mitchell Marsh lists her occupation as a writer doing “private work,” though she claims no salary or wages for the previous year. On her way to selling two million copies of Gone with the Wind, after the movie came out in 1939, she and husband John R. Marsh probably got on just fine on the $5,000+ wages he reported from his work as advertising manager for a power company.

Henry Ford and John DeLorean
Back to the future. In 1940, Michigan was home to both auto industry founding father Henry Ford and futuristic innovator John DeLorean in 1940. 

Dorothy Lamour
Dorothy Lamour was lighting up screens with the recent release of The Road to Singapore with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. On the home front, she apparently had moved in with her mother and stepfather after her 1939 divorce. (Five lines down on the census page you’ll find her neighbor Boris Karloff.)

Bob Hope
Was Bob trying to go incognito by using his real given name Leslie (misspelled as Lesley) Hope on the 1940 census?

Harry Lillis “Bing” Crosby
And apparently “Bing” was good enough for the rest of the world, but nor for Uncle Sam, who recorded Harry L. Crosby and family at 10500 Camarillo Street.

Warren Buffet
Apparently the apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree. Nine-year-old Warren Buffet’s father lists his occupation as the proprietor of a bond investment business on the 1940 census.

Bob Gibson
Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Gibson, the last of seven children, is living with his mother and brothers and sisters in Omaha. Gibson would give up his spot with the legendary Harlem Globetrotters to play even more legendary baseball with the St. Louis Cardinals.

Johnny Carson
The Carsons moved from Iowa to Nebraska when Johnny was eight. About the time the census was taken, Johnny started working as an amateur magician—the Great Carsoni—but he records no income for 1939.

Dorothy Gale
She’s a little too young, and not an orphan, but the 1940 census for Kansas does include a Dorothy Gale.

Salvatore “Sonny” Bono
Before his family made the move to sunny California, Salvatore “Sonny” Bono lived in Detroit, where his father working on the assembly line in an auto plant and his mother owned a beauty parlor.

Francis Ford Coppola
Census as prophet? Francis Ford Coppola’s biography says he was born in Detroit—which is where he is living in 1940. But the census says the one-year-old was born in New York—which is where he would grow up.

Hunter S. Thompson
Godfather of Gonzo journalism Hunter S. Thompson was living in Kentucky with his father, a veteran of the World War according to the supplemental details provided at the bottom of the page. There was no “1” at the end of World War yet. Too bad some things change.

Dennis Lee Hopper
Easy riding Dennis Hopper is living with his parents in the home of his maternal grandparents, William L. and Nellie Davis, where they were apparently living in 1935 as well. Grandpa is a farmer, while Dennis’s father manages a grocery store.

Carl Hilding “Doc” Serverinsen
Doc got the nickname “Little Doc” after his father, who was a dentist in private practice in Oregon according to the 1940 census.

Alan B. Shepard
The 1940 census didn’t report on sports or hobbies, so there is no indication of whether the moon’s most famous golfer had started working on his swing yet.

William West Anderson
Apparently tired of Gotham, Batman was hanging out in Walla Walla during the 1940 census. Or at least that’s where you’ll find his alter ego Adam West (living incognito as 11-year-old Billy West Anderson).

Marty Robbins
Martin David Robinson hasn’t shortened his name to Marty Robbins and started singing gunfighter ballads quite yet. In a couple of years, he’ll join the Navy; in 1953, he’ll join the Grand Ole Opry.

Barry Goldwater
Before Barry M. Goldwater became a senator and then a presidential candidate, he was president and manager of the family’s retail department store. The business is apparently doing well enough to allow for three live-in servants: a cook, a house man, and a nurse.

Florence Henderson
Judging from Florence Henderson’s 1940 census record, the role of Carol Brady wasn’t much of a stretch. She’s the youngest of nine children still living at home.

James Earl “Jimmy” Carter
Brother William (Billy) is only three. Father is a farmer—possibly also a manager. H-2 for Jimmy’s highest grade at the time.

Rosalynn Smith [Carter]
And here’s his future wife, Rosalynn Smith. Her father, a mechanic at an auto garage, died later that year.

Jimmy Hoffa
We found Jimmy Hoffa—in 1940. He’s at home in Detroit with wife, Josephine, and daughter, Barbara.

The Andy Griffith Show had a kind of timeless humor. For a brief time we are transported to that little town in North Carolina, where the characters welcome us to a simpler time. We can be guaranteed a few laughs and the world rights itself in a half hour. Is it any wonder we’re still drawn to it?

The series incorporated many of Andy Griffith’s memories of his home town of Mount Airy, North Carolina. That’s where we find Andy living with his parents, Carl and Geneva Griffith in the 1930  and 1940  U.S. federal censuses.

Like his character, he came from humble roots. His father worked in a furniture factory, as a laborer in 1930 and band saw operator in 1940. His salary of $850 per year was enough that the family owned their home at 197 Haymore Street in Mount Airy.

By 1940, Andy’s six years in school had already eclipsed the education levels of both of his parents, and he would go on to finish high school in Mount Airy. Five days before his eighteenth birthday, on 2 June 1944, he registered for the World War II draft.

Having just graduated from high school at the time of the draft, he doesn’t have a job at the time, but soon he was off to college where he was active in music and drama. His yearbook shows he was president of the Men’s Glee Club in 1947 at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

He was also a member of the musical fraternity, Phi Mu Alpha at UNC.

His education and talent in music, comedy and drama paid dividends that will benefit generations to come. Andy Griffith made us feel like he was our next door neighbor and we could sit down with him and forget about the troubles in the world.  His legacy is the smile that comes to our lips we recall a more innocent time – a time when humor was less about shock value and more about uplifting our spirits.

Tina Turner
While the unincorporated town of Nutbush doesn’t really have “city limits” as the name of the famous Tina Turner song might imply, it’s nonetheless where we find her in 1940 listed as Anna Bullocks, age 5/12.  (You can find Nutbush in Civil District 11 on this enumeration map.)

Jack Nicklaus
Only three months old in April of 1940, the “Golden Bear” was more likely to have been playing with Teddy bears than golf clubs, but we found the future golf pro, Jack Nicklaus living with his parents, Louis “Charlie” Nicklaus and Helen, in Columbus, Ohio.

Arnold Palmer
Jack Nicklaus’ rival, Arnold Palmer, was probably already getting golf tips from his dad, Milfred “Deacon” Palmer, whose occupation is listed in 1940 as “pro green[s] keeper” in a country club.

Shirley MacLaine and Warren Beatty
The only roles  brother and sister Shirley [MacLaine] and [Henry] Warren Beaty were prepping for in 1940 were those of kindergartner and preschooler. They probably got a lot of help from dad, whose occupation was that of “principal-teacher” in a public school.

Bill Cosby
In 1940, Bill Cosby is living with his parents and younger brother, James, and lodgers Ernest and Bertha Fletcher. Ernest is probably his uncle, Ernie Fletcher, who he refers to in his book I Am what I Ate– and I’m Frightened!!! And Other Digressions from the Doctor of Comedy. The North Philadelphia neighborhood where he’s living would in later years become the backdrop for the stories that were featured on his hit series Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids.

Grace Kelly
In 1940, years before becoming an award-winning actress and Princess of Monaco, ten-year old Grace Kelly was living in Philadelphia with her father, John “Jack” Kelly, owner of a construction business, mother Margaret, two sisters and a brother. Florence Merkel, personal secretary, is living in the household as well. Princess Grace returned to Philadelphia in 1966 to attend Florence’s funeral. (Want to learn more about the Kelly’s? Grace’s dad was chosen to answer the supplemental questions at the bottom of the schedule.)

Doris Day
Although only sixteen at the time of the 1940 census, Doris Kappelhoff’s mother gave her age in the census as eighteen. By this time Doris had begun singing professionally on the radio and in local bands, although her occupation in the census is listed simply as “new worker.” She’s living in Cincinnati, Ohio with her mother, Alma and brother, Paul.

Phil Donahue
The future talk show host and media mogul’s 1940 census record shows the five-year-old Phil Donahue living with his parents in Cleveland, Ohio, where his father, Phillip, is working as a furniture salesman, earning $2,200 per year.

Paul Newman
We found Paul L. Newman living with his brother and parents, Arthur and Theresa in Shaker Heights, Ohio (a suburb of Cleveland), where he was attending Shaker Heights High School at the time. A few years later he was serving in the Pacific theater of World War II and in 1945 was serving as an Aviation Radioman, Third Class aboard the USS Hollandia about 500 miles from Japan when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

Tim Conway
An avid horseracing fan, comedian Thomas [Tim] Conway may have come about his love of horses at an early age. In the 1940 census, his father’s occupation is listed as “horseman, country estate.”

See what you can find in the 1940 census.

Ancestry.com Searches: A Behind the Scenes Look, presented by John Bacus
Wednesday, 23 May 2012, 8 PM ET

Learn how search at Ancestry.com works AND get an inside view of tricks you’ll need to take full advantage of its power. John Bacus, Ancestry.com Search Product Manager, walks you through the tech side and presents you with plenty of tips, advice and even a few workarounds—all of which will help you make your next search at Ancestry.com more effective, productive, and better than ever.

John is a Principal Product Manager at Ancestry.com, where he is responsible for the core search features of the site, such as search forms and search results. Prior to his time at Ancestry.com, he held search-related product management roles at AltaVista and eBay. John’s interest in genealogy was first piqued with the family history his grandparents put together when he was a child, and has enjoyed validating and building upon the research they did with two curious minds, some spare time, and a motor home.
Click here to register. 

Common Surnames: Finding Your Smith, presented by Juliana Smith
Thursday, 24 May 2012, 3 PM ET
Despite his common moniker, your ancestor was unique. Get the tools and tips you need to find your ancestors with common surnames in this free one-hour class with Juliana Smith. In this class you’ll learn how to craft the best search on Ancestry.com, and how to save your findings in a way that makes it easy to pick your family out of the crowd.

Juliana has been working for Ancestry.com for just shy of 14 years and began her family history journey trolling through microfilms at the tender age of 11 with her mother. She is a certificate holder in the Boston University Genealogical Research program, and wrote the “Computers and Technology” chapter of The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy. Her favorite part of family history is discovering the stories in the records of her ancestors.
Click here to register.

Forward thinking: Tracing the children of your ancestors. And their children… presented by Crista Cowan
Friday, 25 May 2012, 1 PM ET
Are you stuck in your march back through time identifying ancestors? Turn around. Revitalize your research. Rekindle your desire to continue with some success. Descendancy research utilizes much of the same methodology as ancestral research but can lead to a whole new way of looking at your genealogy. Often it can lead to discovery of cousins who have missing pieces of the puzzle needed to complete your picture of common ancestors.

Crista Cowan has been doing genealogy since she was a child and has been an Ancestry.com employee since 2004. Known as the Barefoot Genealogist, Crista brings her passion for family history into her presentations and provides common sense solutions for the challenges we face in the search for our ancestors.
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All events will be archived, and if you register, you’ll get an email from us alerting you when the archived version becomes available to view at your convenience.

It’s easy to make a quick assumption if you’re just looking at one record. However, when you seek out details from a variety of sources, you can gain a better understanding of your ancestors’ circumstances.

In my own research, my great-aunt introduced me to my 3rd-great-grandfather Thomas Tobin via a letter that mentioned his violent death during the Civil War. A Civil War hero in our family? Not quite. A newspaper article about Thomas’s death indicated that “in a state of intoxication, [Thomas] fell down on a brick pile … and received a concussion on his head that resulted in his death.”

So don’t stop at one record—always look for more. It may turn out that the story you initially uncover happened exactly as told. But sometimes, when you dig a little deeper, you’ll get an even better picture of what really happened. And why your own ancestor did what he did.

Family history is like that. There are often multiple ways to find an answer or uncover a story. When you run into the void caused by the loss of the 1890 U.S. Census, you can sidestep to other records. (Click here to read about some resources to help bridge the 1890 gap.)

Sometimes the obstacle is the lack of (or inability to find) a record for a direct ancestor. In those situations, you can sidestep to another family member whose record may include the information you’re looking for. Or take advantage of advancements in technology with new DNA testing to help fill the gap. An AncestryDNA™ test could connect you with a distant cousin that has just the treasure you’re looking for.

In other cases, the key to understanding the records and stories you uncover lies in historical context. Historical newspapers, local histories, and geographical tools can put your discoveries into perspective and give you a more accurate view of the times—and of your ancestors’ lives.

Researchers today are fortunate to have so many tools available and easy access to a wide variety of records. Everyone runs into challenges when researching family history, but if you take a cue from this episode and use all the tools at hand, you can overcome some pretty big obstacles. And when you put all your resources together and use them creatively, you also get a well-rounded view of family history that goes beyond names and dates to create a more complete and vibrant story.

P.S. Want a few more ideas? Join experts from Ancestry.com and ProGenealogists for a live Q&A on Tuesday, February 28 at 2 p.m. Eastern, when they’ll answer questions and share some of their favorite research tips. Learn more here.

That’s the wonderful part about going beyond a name on a family tree—digging into the story brings people to life. And adding off-the-beaten-path resources like newspapers, which helped Tomei get the real story of her great-grandfather’s murder and its aftermath, makes the truth that much more vivid.

My first research experience with newspapers was also one of the first real research trips I took with my mother. We went to the Chicago Public Library, where we spent hours scrolling through microfilms of old newspapers, looking for mentions of her client’s ancestors. Although I was supposed to be searching for an obituary, I kept calling my mother over to see my exciting discoveries. Unfortunately they were not about her client; they were just interesting articles from the era we were researching.

I’ve never lost that fascination with old newspapers and still enjoy trolling through the pages of dailies and weeklies from places where my ancestors lived—and pretty much anywhere else.

Historical newspapers offer a firsthand look into the times and places our ancestors inhabited. And that glimpse into bygone eras often provides insights that can’t be found elsewhere. You’ll find the Ancestry.com newspapers collection through the Search tab. Click on it and look for Stories & Publications on the right side. Then use these search tips to find your family in the news.

• Specify “Exact.” Restricting your search to “exact” can help narrow the results. For names, click the Use Default Settings links below the name fields and select the appropriate restrictions. For keywords, click the Exact box following the keyword field.
• To narrow your search to a particular time frame, enter a date in the year field under Publication Info. You can click the Exact Only box, but also allow a little wiggle room by entering +/- 1, 2, 5 or 10 years (e.g., a search for a publication date of 1850 with +/- 10 years will search newspapers for 1840–1860).
• If you want to search for a phrase, put it in quotes. This tells Ancestry.com to look for that exact phrase—for example,  “California emigration”—rather than pages that mention California in one article and emigration from Sweden in another.
• Search beyond your ancestor’s stomping grounds. Like they do today, newspapers often picked up stories from places across the country. Try searching the entire collection for a place name (town or county) instead of a person.

Make some time to search or browse newspapers from the era of your ancestors. Bookmark your “favorites,” and when you find a few spare minutes, curl up with the laptop and take a quick trip through the past with some real pages of history. And be sure to add them to your family tree, in case you ever have the needs to unravel a family mystery, too. You’ll find information about doing just that at www.ancestry.com/wdytya. Ancestry.com is a sponsor of Who Do You Think You Are?.

As interesting as it was, if you think about it, it’s shouldn’t be too surprising that branches of your family tree occasionally cross before they connect. In my own files, I have a newspaper clipping about the wedding of a Brooklyn, New York, politician’s daughter. The clipping not only describes the wedding in great detail but also lists all of the guests—and this was no small affair. The guest list was rife with politicians, including ex-president Grover Cleveland and his wife, the governor, a senator, and several congressmen. The father of the bride was no slouch either; he was well-known in political circles as the “Boss” of Brooklyn.

Two of my relatives were also there, and some thirty years later, their grandchildren would marry. While it’s no bombshell like the one dropped on Martin Sheen, it’s a good reminder that your ancestors were part of a community in which their lives intertwined. My two relatives at that wedding were both on the police force, one the ex-commissioner, and the other a patrolman who had worked his way up to become a captain. So they may easily have known each other through their work and shared some mutual friends.

Learning about the people your ancestor interacted with can really bring your family history to life.
Start a list of your ancestor’s associates—people whose names appear as sponsors, in-laws, witnesses, business partners, members of a religious community, or even just neighbors. Then hop on Ancestry.com and see what you can turn up on them. Check census records, directories, and historical newspapers for mentions.

As you learn more about them, you’ll get to know your ancestor’s community. If that’s not enough inspiration, keep in mind that immigrants and families often traveled and settled with people they knew. Tracing the origins of your ancestor’s friends and neighbors may lead you to your own ancestor’s roots.

And of course, don’t overlook a direct ancestor’s siblings. Martin Sheen uncovered two compelling stories about two different uncles who shared some of the same political passion. You never know what stories are waiting just off your direct line.

So, now you’ve heard my story. What’s yours? Have you found a connection in your family tree that had you raising an eyebrow or shouting for someone to come take a look at this? Or maybe an inspiring story about your ancestor’s sibling? Please share it in the comments, or email it to me at stories@ancestry.com.