New South Wales Newspapers

New South Wales

 * The Ryerson Index – Death notices and obituaries in Australian newspapers
 * The Sydney Dead Persons Society began indexing death notices in the Sydney newspapers. This project has grown into the Ryerson Index which now (July 2013) indexes death notices and obituaries in 222 newspapers and has over 4,000,000 entries.


 * 1776-1980 - Australia miscellaneous genealogical records : COLLECTION RECORD, 1776-1980 at FamilySearch, index. Browse images
 * 1841-1987 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index & images

Sydney Newspapers

 * 1803-1842 The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW : 1803 - 1842) at NLA Trove
 * 1831-1842 The Sydney Herald (NSW : 1831 - 1842) at NLA Trove
 * 1842-1954 The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954) at NLA Trove
 * 1955-1995 The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sun-Herald Archives, 1955-1995

Australia

 * 1800s-current: Australia, Newspapers.com Marriage Index, 1800s-current at Ancestry, index only ($)
 * 1831-2001: Australia Newspaper Vital Notices at Ancestry - index & images ($)
 * 1840-1845: Australian Periodical Publications at NLA.gov.au
 * Australian Newspapers at MyHeritage - index & images ($)
 * Australia Newspapers at Trove; images only ($)
 * Australian Lutheran at Findmypast; index & images ($)

TROVE
Trove is an Australian online library database service which includes full-text searching of digitized archived newspapers.
 * TROVE

State Library of Australia
The State Library of New South Wales has built an excellent collection of newspapers, both current and historical and their catalogue is a good place to start if you are looking for a newspaper circulating in your ancestor's town or district. As part of their preservation project, they have microfilmed much of their holdings.
 * State Library of New South Wales catalogue

Using the State Library microfilms, the National Library of Australia has a major digitisation project underway making the historical newspapers available online. If you are looking for a newspaper which circulated in the area where your ancestor had a connection, the place to start is the State Library of New South Wales catalogue. This will tell you:


 * Title including any other titles used during its publication life
 * Holdings
 * Publication place, publisher and dates including any suspension of publication or missing issues
 * Physical description
 * Reproduction (if any)
 * Subject
 * Previous or successor publications

The subject listing will be hyperlinked and enable you to find other publications circulating in the same area. The entry may also have a reference to "Ferguson":John Alexander Ferguson Bibliography of Australia (1941-1969).

Wikipedia
Wikipedia hosts two incomplete but substantial and growing lists of newspapers in New South Wales, one of English language titles and another of community language publications. The list of English language newspapers gives:
 * List of newspapers in New South Wales
 * List of non-English-language newspapers in New South Wales
 * Newspaper title
 * Place of publication ( Town or Sydney Suburb)
 * Whether the place of publication is in the Sydney region
 * Whether the title is current or defunct
 * Years of Publication

National Library of Australia
Sir John Alexander Ferguson (1881–1969) was a prolific collector of Australian books, periodicals and other Australiana. The National Library of Australia began acquiring his collection by gift and purchase. The Library began digitising early Australian newspapers in his collection and placing them online in the Australian Periodical Publications 1840 – 1845 project.

This project has now been outstripped by the on-going Newspaper Digitisation Program undertaken by the National Library of Australia in collaboration with the Australian State and Territory libraries. This includes titles from the first Australian newspaper in 1803 and, generally speaking, ends on 31 December 1954 which is the public domain cutoff date under Australian copyright law. However, the project has negotiated with certain copyright holders to include issues after that date.


 * Digitised newspaper and magazine titles from New South Wales

What information can be found in newspapers
Given the relative ease of finding the precise date of births, deaths and marriages, with the right newspaper, you have a good chance of finding:


 * birth notices - generally published within a couple of weeks of birth
 * marriage notices - generally published on the day or sometimes as a "pre-marriage" notice a week or so in advance
 * death notices - generally published within a week or so of death
 * funeral notices - generally published with a week or so of death

In smaller towns, social pages of the newspapers would often write up the details of a wedding. These may appear up to a month or so later; I think the newspapers "saved them up" for days when there was no other social news to report. They often give a quite detailed list of the bridesmaids and groomsmen (often family members) as well as relatives and friends who attended. The dresses of the bride, bridemaids and mothers of the bride and groom are often described in great detail. Others who contributed to the ceremony or reception (singers, musicians, cake icing, etc) are mentioned and again are often relatives.

Similarly, smaller towns often publish obituaries, again appearing some time in the next month or so (possibly waiting for a slow news day). These will often have the full life story and a lot of vital clues can be found within them. Some newspapers will give an account of the funeral, listing the pallbearers and those who sent wreaths etc or simply attended (many of whom will be relatives). Sometimes the funeral and the obituary appear as a combined article.

In larger cities, there is far less likelihood of finding obituaries or accounts of weddings and funerals, unless the person was very well-known.

Engagement notices were often published, but with virtually no other records to provide any clues as to the date of the engagement, finding them tends to be a matter of luck or great persistance (reading through many editions of the newspaper).

Accounts of other events in the lives of your family (sporting achievements, accidents, etc) are frequently reported in the newspapers, especially in smaller towns. However, unless you have some awareness of the event from other sources that provides you with an approximate date, you are unlikely to find them except by luck or persistance. While there is a wealth of information in newspapers, the lack of indexing is a significant barrier to unlocking these valuable resources.

FamilySearch Library
Additional sources are listed in the FamilySearch Catalog: