Google News Archive Search

I have used Google News for some time, but only recently discovered Google News Archive Search – available at http://news.google.com.au/archivesearch/

An Advanced Archive Search allows you to select a particular date range. You can choose a particular publication (or even just enter the word ‘Sydney’, to check publications with that word in the title). Once you have the search results, a timeline lets you focus on the particular decade of interest.

I searched for “hay simpson” – an ancestor who played Ned Kelly (in the 1934 film When the Kellys Rode) and then was lost at sea when he tried to sail from Lord Howe Island to Sydney. Most of the results found were from The Sydney Morning Herald in the 1930s, reviews of performances and then the search for the missing yacht. However one article was from 2003, when Simpson’s niece found a suitcase of film photographs during a renovation.

Another useful search was  for all of the words scriven and cooperstown. My husband descends from the SCRIVEN family, and one of that family (Elizabeth SCRIVEN) married Alfred Corning CLARK of Cooperstown (son of the founder of the Singer Foundation) and I thought that family were likely to be well-reported in the press.

You don’t need celebrity ancestors to find them mentioned in newspapers, and Google’s News Archive Search is another way to find interesting background stories about family members.