Searching old local newspapers free: Chronicling America and how to beat bad OCR

The source Chronicling America is the Library of Congress's free newspaper database, built through the National Digital Newspaper Program with the National Endowment for the Humanities: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov. It covers papers up to 1963, from every state that has taken part, with full page images and searchable text. Why searches fail The text was produced by OCR from microfilm. Faded type, folded pages and nineteenth-century typefaces produce misreadings, so a name you know is there may not come up. How to search well - Search the surname alone, limited to one state and a range of years, before adding first names. - Try likely OCR errors: "rn" read as "m", "li" read as "h", the long s read as "f" in older papers. - Search a nearby distinctive word instead of the name: a street, a church, a business. - Browse by date. If you know the date of a death, open the local paper for the following week and read the pages. That finds what search misses. - Check the US Newspaper Directory on the same site to learn which papers existed in your town, then ask the state library whether it holds titles that are not online. What you find Obituaries, legal notices (probate, sheriff's sales, land), society columns, court news and advertisements. Legal notices are underused and often name heirs. Citing it Newspaper title, city, date, page, column, and the Chronicling America URL with the date you accessed it.