One of the oldest surviving papers in the United States, the Philadelphia Inquirer was founded as the Pennsylvania Inquirer in 1829 (Philadelphia would replace Pennsylvania in the title in 1859). It was originally a Democratic paper that supported President Jackson, but in its later history the paper would eventually lean Republican, then independent. As Philadelphia already had quite a few well-established papers when the Inquirer began publishing, the paper struggled at first, it but eventually found its footing and became a major paper in the city.

However, the paper really gained its reputation during the Civil War, when it became one of the best-regarded papers for accurate war news. Though the paper supported the Union, it was considered a more-or-less objective source, to the extent that even some Confederate generals, including Robert E. Lee, read the paper. The high quality of the Inquirer’s war news was the work of the paper’s nationally renowned war correspondents, including Uriah Hunt Painter and Edward Crapsey.

After the war, in what would become a cycle of declines and successes, the Inquirer hit a slump and its circulation dropped dramatically. The paper was revamped in 1889, including the introduction of a Sunday edition and an emphasis on classifieds, and the Inquirer once again became successful. However, under poor management, the paper hit another slump, particularly during the Great Depression.
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In the mid-1930s, the Inquirer turned around once again. By 1947, the Inquirer was the only major morning paper in Philadelphia (though there was still a major evening paper in competition) and was turning a respectable profit. Yet another downturn followed, but beginning in the mid-1970s, the Inquirer began winning numerous journalism awards, including 20 Pulitzer Prizes to date, and regained its place as one of the nation’s most prominent papers.

Since the Philadelphia Inquirer focused on comprehensive news coverage for much of its history, the paper can be a particularly valuable source for learning about the events and issues prevalent in the city, state, and nation during your ancestors’ day. If you’re looking for specific mentions of an ancestor, you might find them in lists of death notices and marriage licenses, local social news, or even the day’s fire record or building permits issued, among many others.

With a Newspapers.com Basic subscription, you can see issues from 1860 through 1922; or, with a Publisher Extra subscription, access those early years and additional issues from 1922 to August 2016. Get started searching or browsing the Philadelphia Inquirer on Newspapers.com!

Do you have relatives or ancestors from Iowa? Come explore the Des Moines Register on Newspapers.com! With a Newspapers.com Basic subscription, you can see issues from 1871 through 1922; or, with a Publisher Extra subscription, access those early years and additional issues from 1922 to July 2016.

Like many other papers, the Des Moines Register went through multiple changes in name and ownership over the years, and it was finally given its current name in 1915. A daily morning paper for much of its history, the Des Moines Register grew to become the most influential newspaper in Iowa and an important regional paper, reaching peak circulation in the 1960s. With reporters located throughout the state and (beginning in 1933) a news bureau in Washington DC, the Des Moines Register was able to cover local, state, national, and international news and even provided syndicated material to other papers through the Register and Tribune Syndicate.

For more than 100 years, from about 1899 to 2008, the Des Moines Register ran editorial cartoons on its front page. One of the cartoonists was the widely syndicated Jay Norwood “Ding” Darling, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning twice for the Des Moines Register—in 1924 and 1943. The paper has won 16 Pulitzer Prizes in total, the first being Darling’s 1924 award and the most recent having been won in 2010.

If you have ancestors from Iowa, the Des Moines Register is a great place to look for them, as the paper had strong local and statewide coverage throughout its history. You might find that one of your ancestors wrote a letter to the editor, or that another showed up in a local news item, such as this piece from 1944 about a storeowner sleeping through a robbery after his wife took their watchdog home because the dog had “begged” to go.

The Des Moines Register also ran plenty of photographs of locals—from North High School’s graduates of 1905, to Iowa’s “healthiest looking twins” in 1921, to 43 Iowan GIs stationed in Australia in 1944—so you may even find a photo of a family member. And, of course, the paper carried the typical birth, marriage, divorce, and death notices and ran columns on social news and local gossip.

Get started searching or browsing the Des Moines Register on Newspapers.com!

Do you have ancestors or relatives from Southern California? Come check out the recently added Los Angeles Times on Newspapers.com. Newspapers.com has issues of the Los Angeles Times ranging from 1881 to 2016—135 years of Southern California history! With a Newspapers.com Basic subscription, you can see issues from 1881 through 1922; or, with a Publisher Extra subscription, access the years previously listed and additional issues from 1922 to March 2016.

The Los Angeles Times began publication on December 4, 1881, under the name the Los Angeles Daily Times. However, since it originally wasn’t published on Mondays, it wouldn’t become a true daily until February 1887, when it began putting out a Monday issue. It was renamed the Los Angeles Times in the masthead in 1886.

After some rocky first years, the Los Angeles Times became successful, though due to competition with other area papers, it wouldn’t become the leading paper of Los Angeles until the 1940s. To date, the Los Angeles Times has won 42 Pulitzer Prizes, winning the first in 1942 (for a freedom of the press campaign) and most recently in 2016 (for coverage of the San Bernardino mass shooting). It also won Pulitzer Prizes for coverage of the Watts Riots (1965) and the 1992 Los Angeles Riots.

The Los Angeles Times was originally a Republican paper, though its political leanings would shift over the years. One long running feature of the paper was the so-called Midwinter Number, published on New Year’s Day between 1885 and 1954, to promote Southern California. For a few years, 1891 to 1895, it also had a similarly themed Midsummer Number. Since 1968, the Los Angeles Times has run a daily first-page feature known as “Column One,” which highlights interesting and thought-provoking topics.

One memorable event in Los Angeles Times history was on October 1, 1910, when a union radical bombed the Los Angeles Times’ building in retaliation for the paper’s fight against unions. The bombing killed 21 employees and decimated the building. The current Los Angeles Times building was completed in 1935.

If you have Los Angeles area ancestors, you might find them mentioned in a variety of places within the Los Angeles Times, including in lists of weddings, marriages, births, divorces, deaths, or war missing or killed. They might also appear in news about Los Angeles area locals or society news, among many other columns.

Start searching or browsing the Los Angeles Times on Newspapers.com!

Come explore the Poughkeepsie Journal on Newspapers.com! The Poughkeepsie Journal is the oldest paper in New York State and one of the oldest in the country. With a Newspapers.com Basic subscription, you can see issues from 1785 through 1922; or, with a Publisher Extra subscription, access the years previously listed and additional issues from 1922 to May 2016.

You may notice on the browse menu for the Poughkeepsie Journal that it seems like Newspapers.com is missing years between 1860 and 1941; however, these issues of the Poughkeepsie Journal can actually be found under the title the Poughkeepsie Eagle-News (which is also on Newspapers.com), as the paper was going by variations of that title during those years.

The Poughkeepsie Journal was founded in 1785 was a weekly paper until 1860. It would undergo many name changes over the years, including the Country Journal, the Poughkeepsie Journal & Eagle, the Poughkeepsie Eagle, the Poughkeepsie Eagle-News, and Poughkeepsie New Yorker. The name was changed to the Poughkeepsie Journal in 1960, a return to the name it had held for a few decades in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

From its inception, the Poughkeepsie Journal coved state, national, and international news, and since its issues go back 230 years, that’s a lot of history you can explore! The paper also covered news specific to Dutchess County and the Mid-Hudson River Valley. So if you have ancestors from this area, the Poughkeepsie Journal is a particularly valuable resource.

You never know what you might find in the Poughkeepsie Journal. It might be a marriage or death notice for an ancestor you’ve been looking for, or photographs you’ve never seen of family members. You might even find anecdotes about your ancestors, such as this piece from 1785 about a woman who died at age 108 and maintained her good health until the end, knitting, mending clothes, and walking the 2 miles to her daughter’s house right up until her death.

Get started searching or browsing the Poughkeepsie Journal here.

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Do you have ancestors from out west? Look for them in the Arizona Republic on Newspapers.com ! With a Newspapers.com Basic subscription, you can see issues from 1890 through 1922; or, with a Publisher Extra subscription, access the years previously listed and additional issues from 1923 to April 2016.

The Arizona Republic began publishing in Phoenix on May 19, 1890, under the name the Arizona Republican, a title it maintained until 1930. When the paper began publishing, Arizona was not yet a state, and though Phoenix had recently become the territorial capital, it had a population of only about 3,100, with another 3,400 in surrounding areas. The young city was still relatively undeveloped, and at the time, the economy of the Phoenix depended on the Five C’s: cotton, citrus, cattle, climate, and copper.

The Republic was initially created as a partisan paper to support the administration of the unpopular Republican territorial governor, Lewis Wolfley, though he resigned from his position not long after the paper began publication. There were already two papers in Phoenix in 1890, and the Republic struggled financially at first, but by 1915 it had become the largest paper in the state. The Republic boasted full coverage of the Associated Press wires, as well as coverage of news from the rest of Arizona and the city itself.

One memorable moment from the Republic’s early years was an attempt on the editor’s life in the paper’s office by some disgruntled citizens in 1892, an incident which not only sparked articles in the paper, but also a short poem. Also memorable was the paper’s trend-setting decision in 1913 to purge from its pages all ads for patent medicines, which it considered “offensive to all decent readers.”

The Republic was there for all of Phoenix’s big moments, such as the Salt River Valley flood of 1891, the range war between the Tewksbury and Graham families (which finally ended in 1892), Arizona’s admission as the 48th state in 1912, the 1917 Bisbee Deportation (which resulted in the illegal deportation from the state of more than a thousand striking miners), the dedication of the Hoover Dam in 1935, the escape of two dozen German POWS from a Phoenix-area camp in 1944, and the first college football Fiesta Bowl in 1971.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Arizona Republic, check out its 100-page 1990 centennial issue, which covers a wide range of topics related to the paper’s history. Otherwise, get searching or browsing the paper here.

If you have ancestors from Indiana or the surrounding region, come check out the Indianapolis Star on Newspapers.com. Issues from 1903 to 1922 are available with a Newspapers.com Basic subscription—or,with a Publisher Extra subscription, access the years previously listed and additional issues from 1923 to March 2016.

The Indianapolis Star began publication in June 1903, when Indianapolis was already a bustling city. It is a daily morning paper that originally launched with 10-page issues, except for Sunday issues, which were longer.

Indianapolis had been founded on the banks of the White River in hopes that the waterway would serve as a major artery for trade, but the river turned out to be too sandy and shallow. Nevertheless, the city became a major transportation hub for the region because of the railroads and roads that passed through it. In fact, just a few months after the Indianapolis Star began publishing, it reported on a train wreck that occurred in Indianapolis in which 14 players on the Purdue University football team were killed.

With the development of automobiles around the turn of the 20th century, Indianapolis became a major auto manufacturer. Reflecting the importance of automobiles to the city, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was built in 1909, and the Indianapolis Star reported on the first Indianapolis 500 race in 1911.

In 1913, the city’s position on the White River proved a detriment when heavy rains caused massive flooding. The Indianapolis Star covered this and other natural disasters that struck the city over the years, including the outbreak of tornadoes in 2002.

Of course, the Indianapolis Star also covered politics, and a major story in the late 1960s and early 1970s was the controversial formation of Unigov—the consolidation of Indianapolis’s city and county governments.

If you have Indiana ancestors, the Indianapolis Star is a great place to look for them, as it includes plenty of columns and articles about the city’s—and region’s—inhabitants. You can find announcements of births, marriages, and deaths in addition to social and personal news. And you can learn about who held parties and meetings, as well as who played on the winning basketball team, got into a car accident, and more.

The paper is also great for discovering the context of your ancestors’ lives. For instance, from the ads, you can find out how much your family members might have paid for a TV or house during a certain era, as well as what clothing was in style at the time.

Get started searching or browsing the Indianapolis Star here—you never know who you might find!

Posted in Content Update

Do you have ancestors from Detroit or surrounding areas of Michigan? Check out the Detroit Free Press on Newspapers.com. Issues from 1837 through 1922 are available with a Newspapers.com Basic subscription—or, with a Publisher Extra subscription, access the years previously listed and additional issues from 1923 to February 2016.

The paper began publication in 1831 as the weekly Democratic Free Press but became the Detroit Free Press in 1837 when it transitioned to a daily paper, one of the first dailies in the state. Then, in 1853, it launched a regular Sunday edition. For the first 40 years or so, the paper was four pages, but it began expanding in 1878. During the Civil War, the paper was known for its war reporting and sent correspondents into the field to cover battles. The Detroit Free Press would later go on to win multiple Pulitzer Prizes, earning the first in 1932.

As a paper of a major Michigan city, the Detroit Free Press covered local, state, national, and eventually world news. It documented the city’s triumphs—like the Detroit Tigers’ first World Series win in 1935—as well as its struggles (such as the race riots of 1943 and 1967) and controversies (such as the Milliken v. Bradley Supreme Court decision in 1974).

Detroit’s economy revolved around the auto industry throughout the 20th century, almost from the moment Henry Ford founded his Ford Motor Company in 1903 and then built the Highland Park Ford Plant in Detroit. Other automakers followed Ford, and the industry boomed in Detroit in the first half of the century. During World War II, the government used the area’s automobile factories for war materiel production, and the Detroit Free Press ran stories about Ford’s factory and others being used to build B-24 bombers, jeeps, and tanks.

In addition to the bigger stories, the Detroit Free Press also covered the milestones and other, more minor happenings in the lives of its residents, letting its readers know who died, applied for a marriage license, had an anniversary, stayed in a hotel, paid the liquor tax, was admitted to high school, needed to pick up their mail at the post office, and more.

There are countless stories of interest about the citizens of Detroit as well, including one about a woman who gave birth to her third set of twins in 1962 and one about two “plucky” Detroit women who stopped a pickpocket in 1911.

Get started searching or browsing the Detroit Free Press here. You just might find your ancestors!

Do you have ancestors or other family from Ohio or northern Kentucky? Come check out the Cincinnati Enquirer, one of the new papers on Newspapers.com. Explore issues of the paper dating back to 1841, when it began publication, up through 1922—or, with a Publisher Extra subscription, access additional issues from 1923 through 2015.

Cincinnati was founded in 1788 and by 1819 had been incorporated as a city. Throughout much of the 19th century, Cincinnati was one of the biggest cities in the nation and the biggest city in the west. Due to its location on the Ohio River, it functioned as a hub for trade and shipping; it also had a huge pork industry and was sometimes referred to as “Porkopolis.”

The Cincinnati Enquirer published its first issue on April 10, 1841, and in 1848 became one of the first papers in the nation to put out a Sunday edition. Starting out at just four pages an issue, the paper steadily grew in length over the decades.

The Cincinnati Enquirer reported on noteworthy local events and issues of the time, covering 175 years of Ohio Valley history, in addition to national and world news. In 1884, it covered the destructive Courthouse Riots, a violent response to a manslaughter conviction that left more than 50 people dead and destroyed the Cincinnati courthouse. In 1914, the paper reported on the death of Martha, the last known passenger pigeon, at the Cincinnati Zoo. The Cincinnati Enquirer also provided in-depth coverage of the Air Canada Flight 797 accident in 1983, when a plane made an emergency landing at the Cincinnati airport and burst into flames, killing 23 passengers. Natural disasters in the area were also documented in the paper, such as the flood of 1937 and the blizzard of 1978.

If sports interest you, the Cincinnati Enquirer has countless articles about the Reds and the Bengals from over the years, including coverage of the famous “Big Red Machine” team of 1970–76, as well as articles from baseball’s early days, when Cincinnati boasted the first all-professional team in 1869.
And, of course, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported on the doings of the area’s residents, from marriages, to deaths, to crimes, and beyond.

Get started searching or browsing the Cincinnati Enquirer here. Or find other Ohio papers on Newspapers.com here.

November is Native American Heritage Month. Come explore the newspapers written by or for Native Americans on Newspapers.com. Though some of these papers may have just a few issues available, they all provide a wealth of insight into Native American life at the turn of the 19th century and beyond.

Let’s take a look a few of these papers:

• The Progress (White Earth, MN; 1886–89). This paper was published by members of the White Earth Reservation. It was devoted to reservation and area news and advocated for the interests of the tribe.
• The Tomahawk (White Earth, MN; 1904–1921). The Tomahawk was created by the same people who ran the Progress after that paper’s demise in 1889. Between the two papers, there is 20 years’ worth of Minnesota Ojibwe history.
• Indian Chieftain (Vinita, OK; 1882–1902). The Indian Chieftain was an influential paper in the Cherokee nation. It was “devoted to the interests of the Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles, Creeks, and other Indians of the Indian Territory.” The paper also covered national and international news, in addition to tribal affairs.
• The Indian Journal (Eufaula, OK; 1890–1977). This paper, still in publication, is the oldest continuously published weekly paper in Oklahoma.
• The Indian Advocate (Sacred Heart, OK; 1893–1910). The Indian Advocate was published at the Sacred Heart Abby by a Benedictine order. It was intended by its Catholic publishers to help “civilize” the tribes in Oklahoma Territory.
• Cherokee Advocate (Tahlequah, OK; 1880–99). This paper contains some articles and sections that use the Cherokee syllabary.

Other Native American Papers on Newspapers.com include (but are not necessarily limited to):

• Red Lake News (Red Lake, MN; 1915–20)
• The Branding Iron (Atoka, OK; 1884)
• Cheyenne Transporter (Darlington, OK; 1880–86)
• Our Brother in Red (Muskogee, OK; 1882–98)
• Daily Brother in Red (Muskogee, OK; 1890)
• Indian Methodist (Muskogee, OK; 1893)
• Indian Journal (Muskogee, OK; 1880–92)
• Indian Sentinel (Tahlequah, OK; 1891–1899)

Explore these papers and more on Newspapers.com!