What is Google News Archive? |
| | In 2008 Google started offering scanned copies of selected newspapers from around the world. This project was halted in 2011 so no new content is being added but the work that was done up to that date is still available.
Google also offers a news search, but historical issues are barely indexed and appear to have been done so by machine and so are pretty unreliable. |
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What Newspapers are available in the Google News Archive? |
| | Google has scanned newspapers from across the country. The entire list can be found here: http://news.google.com/newspapers.
The issues that relate specifically to Maine are:
- Bangor Daily News (28 Nov 1908 - 31 Dec 2008)
- Biddeford Weekly Journal (24 Mar 1893 - 21 Nov 1930)
- Gray New Gloucester Independent (2 Dec 2006 - 2 Feb 2008)
- La Justice de Biddeford (8 Apr 1909 - 12 Jan 1950)
- Lewiston Daily Evening Journal (20 Apr 1861 - 21 Sep 1963)
- Lewiston Daily Sun (20 Feb 1890 - 31 May 1989)
- Lewiston Saturday Journal (4 May 1878 - 31 Mar 1921)
- Lewiston Evening Journal (20 Apr 1861 - 26 Jul 1980)
- The Lewiston Journal (1 Nov 1979 - 3 Jun 1989)
- Lewiston Wednesday Journal (23 Nov 1887 - 15 Mar 1890)
- Lewiston Sun Journal (1 Aug 2005 - 31 Jan 2006)
- The Monument (Gray) (2 Mar 2006 - 11 May 2006)
- The Lubec Light (18 Aug 2006 - 29 Nov 2007)
- New Gloucester Independent News (15 Apr 2006 - 29 Feb 2008)
- The Original Irregular (8 Mar 2006 - 15 Apr 2009)
- The Quoddy Tides (29 Nov 1968 - 16 Jan 2009)
- Six Towns Times (Portland) (3 Nov 1892 - 29 Sep 1916)
- Sun Journal (1 Jul 1989 - 30 Dec 2008)
- The Biddeford Union and Journal (12 Dec 1879 - 23 May 1884)
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Why did you do this? |
| | While doing research on a different project I was frustrated by the inability to search for names in much of the archive. Searching by date was difficult due to the fact that some newspapers are listed in the wrong order and under the wrong titles. In addition, events may take several days, months, or even years to appear in the paper.
Frustrated, I thought "Someone should go through and index all of this". So I started the project. Initially I wanted to index ALL of the names as they appeared in the papers, but I quickly realized that I had to limit my scope if I planned to get anything done (I may still return to filling in names from non-BMD articles at a later date).
Once I had the list I thought that it would be nice to make this available to a larger audience. Hence this site. I hope it is of use to you. |
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HOW did you do this? |
| | This list was compiled manually. That is, I opened up each paper, searched for the BMD sections and typed them into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. This allowed me to easier sort and later create the text for the web site. |
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Are you going to do other decades/years? |
| | Frankly, I don't know. I had originally planned to make the index go through the 1880s at least, but as I went along I found that this was more work than I had initially planned to spend on the project. Let's leave this in the "perhaps" file. |
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I know my ancestor was married/died in the 1860s but they don't appear here, why? |
| | There are several reasons an event might not appear in this list:
- The family did not report the event to the papers that I have indexed
- The name of the family was spelled by the paper differently than what you expect. Try variations
- I messed up. Try checking the originals and if you find an issue please report it to me.
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Some records are listed on multiple publication dates with different data. What should I gather from that? |
| | I have seen records listed twice and even three times with different data. In some cases these are corrections (or corrections to the corrections). |
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My ancestor's name was xxx, not yyy as you list it |
| | I tried to be as faithful (within reason) to what was printed in the paper. Unless it was an obvious misspelling (ie Jcak) I left the spelling as it appeared in the issue. Naturally, some foreign names (French, Irish, etc) were butchered by the paper.
I have also left some spellings such as Phebe as opposed to converting that to Phoebe, |
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Your list shows a paper published on xx/xx/xxxx but I can't find it in the Google News Archives |
| | While Google did a fairly decent job keeping the issues in order, they made some mistakes. Try searching the day before and the day after. Some dates appear under the incorrect date.
Many times you may also find the missing issue after another date. The January 3rd issue may appear under and after the January 2nd issue. In some cases dozens of issues are listed under a single date.
when all else fails try other years as not all issues are listed under the correct year. |
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I found an issue with a date/name/place/etc, will you fix it? |
| | If you find issues with any of the records I suggest you check the listing first. The actual date vs the published date may be different. I will try to note differences I am notified of. I will also make any corrections
reported by clicking HERE |
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Will you look up my ancestor for me? |
| | I cant guarantee anything, but feel free to ask. It all depends on time and how many requests I get. |
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Who are you? |
| | My name is Larry Roux. My "real" job is as a computer programmer at Syracuse University and I have been working on genealogy for about
20 years. The Roux family arrived in Maine from Quebec, Canada and I spent many summers visiting my grandparents in Limerick Maine. I am currently working on
a book containing letters written to Ada (Watson) Sawyer who also lived in Limerick, Maine. |
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I have a question/comment. How do I get ahold of you? |
| | Please email any comments or suggestions by clicking HERE |
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