Search 250 years of history in seconds
Image © The British Library Board. All rights reserved
Today we are happy to announce the launch of our collection of British newspapers on findmypast.com! The British newspapers include local and regional titles from England, Scotland and Wales from 1700 to 1950, and encompass nearly 200 titles. With this new addition, findmypast.com World Subscribers will have access to all of the records and articles they need to research their family tree in one website. Throughout the next 10 years, approximately 8,000 new pages will be digitized every day and every new addition will be included in existing subscriptions.
Photo © Chris Close
The British have always had a particularly voracious appetite for newspapers, especially during the 19th century when nearly every town in the country had its own newspaper. From the man who decided to walk around the world in an iron mask to the coronation of Queen Victoria, British newspapers have captured every aspect of people’s lives.
The British newspapers are part of an exclusive partnership with the British Library to digitize 50 million pages over the next 10 years.
Until now, if you wanted to use these newspapers you’d have to travel to Colindale in the UK and call up the bound volumes or microfilm reels and trawl through them page by page – now you can search millions of pages and articles from your own home in seconds. The British newspapers even cover almost every major event in the US.
Photograph © Chris Close
The stories featured in this collection are infinite. You can see great events reported as they appeared to people at the time, from the Crimean War to the Boston Molasses Disaster. These newspapers also give you the minute detail of how people lived and died; how they put food on the table and how they went up and down in the world; what they wore and how they entertained themselves
Whether or not you are doing family history research, resurrecting major world events and uncovering small town secrets in this collection is fascinating.
Learn more about the collection at
http://www.findmypast.com/articles/world-records/newspaper-archives/british-newspapers
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Official press release: British Newspapers Release findmypast US PDF
My family on my Mother’s side are from England & Germany and have been traced back to the 1400′s in England. Wonder what went on before that?
You have done your research! Keep looking back to findmypast.com because we are always adding new records to dig deeper.
Started playing with these yesterday and had a couple of finds already.
Thanks.
Love hearing success stories. These newspapers make it so easy!
With regard to cootncrires my experience is totally different from two recent commentators, and similar to Peggy’s experience. When I send cootncrires to Find My Past, I get a prompt e-mail saying they are looking into it within 28 days. Often within in 2 days or sometimes on the same day I have received confirmation that the correction has been accepted. They actually do acknowledge and correct the transcription errors, and a real person has clearly actually looked into it.By contrast Ancestry merely add a note and perpetuate their own transcription errors, some of which are extremely bizarre. They also seem to only provide a very limited facility for actually making cootncrires and comments, and the whole process is so automated that it feels as though no actual person has looked at the matter, which may well be the case. I do have subscriptions to both because they provide different information, which I want. Ancestry does provide access to the transcribed BMD info and recent London Parish records info. Find My past has a good search facility and fuller transcriptions, and of course the 1911 Census. It does cost money, but family history research is currently a major hobby for me and my husband. In the future, I might drop back to Pay as You View on one of them.The various companies clearly are in competition to get information that no one else has on their site. There are other sites I access occasionally for Irish and non-conformist records, which also are subscription or Pay As You Go, but I find them less easy to search and access. The Free BMD and county BMDs are increasingly useful but by no means complete. The IGI is free and can be useful but is labourious to search, and has to be treated with extreme caution as to accuracy. In Lancashire, the On-line Parish Clerk is good too, but only as good as the particular records which volunteers have transcribed. I wish I could offer to be a volunteer, but just can’t at the moment.Like Peggy, there is no way I could accomplish the research I have done, and enjoy doing without these various facilities.
my paternal grandad was from Yorkshire, sure hope this helps find records/info as I live in Texas and don’t see a trip “over” anytime soon
Sounds like a this collection could be a great resource for you, Patricia, without having to go anywhere. You can search for newspapers in or around Yorkshire or search for your grandad specifically. Best of luck on your search!
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