Maryland Newspapers

Time period, coverage &amp; content of Maryland newspapers
Newspaper publication in Maryland began in 1727 with the release of the Maryland Gazette in Annapolis. Newspapers may focus on the world or a tiny community, and may serve a general audience or a particular ethnic, religious, racial, or political group. Newspapers report family information within notices of births, marriages, and deaths (obituaries), and local news. They may include the following information:


 * Birth announcements may contain the infant's name, birth date, and parents' names, as well as the religion of the family.
 * Wedding announcements may contain the wedding date and place; the names of the bride, groom, bride's parents, and groom's parents; and the religion of the family.
 * Death notices and obituaries may contain the name and place of residence of close family and friends of the decedent, as well as the decedent's death date and place, birth date and place, and biographical information, such as occupation, military service, re ligion, schools attended, parents' names, places of residence over time, and place of origin.
 * News stories, legal notices and advertisements may contain nearly any information imaginable, including political or criminal activity, legal and domestic disputes, real estate transactions, business information, social contacts, military service, missing persons (including runaway slaves), or information about local disasters, epidemics, or other community milestones which affected the local population.

Why use newspapers?

 * Newspapers usually predate government birth, marriage, and death records.
 * Newspapers may serve as a substitute for civil records that were destroyed.
 * Unlike most government records, newspaper articles are not limited to a form. Thus, newspapers may contain details not found in more structured records.
 * Newspapers can report marriages, deaths or accomplishments of people who no longer live in the area but who still have friends or family there.
 * Newspapers may report events in the life of local inhabitants even when these events occurred elsewhere.

Before searching newspapers, know this

 * The name of the person you are looking for (including, if possible, maiden and married names of women).
 * The place and an approximate date of an event.

Your local library and interlibrary loan
Although your local library may not have a newspaper collection for the place where your ancestor lived, you may still access newspapers from distant libraries there. Many historical newspapers have been microfilmed. Local libraries often have a service called Interlibrary loan by which they can order microfilm copies of old newspapers from other libraries for a reasonable fee usually paid by the patron. Telephone your local librarian to learn which newspapers covered your ancestor's area and time period. Also ask which libraries in your area offer interlibrary loan services and what the fees are.

Web sites
Since digitizing and storing thousands of images of newspaper pages on the Web is expensive, free online collections of digitized historical newspapers are rare. However, modern day newspapers are increasingly found for free online.

Historical newspapers online

 * NewspaperArchive.com ($) has over 40 historical Maryland newspapers.
 * Ancestry.com ($) has over 20 historical Maryland newspapers.
 * University of Pennsylvania (free) has links to a handful of free historical Maryland newspapers online.

Current newspapers online

 * RootsWeb Obituary Daily Times (free) has a searchable database of over 14 million modern-day obituaries extracted by volunteers. Most are from 2000 or later, but some date back to the 1980s.
 * ABYZ Newslinks (free) has a directory of links to over 140 Maryland newspapers online organized by city.
 * OnlineNewspapers.com (free) links to over 110 Maryland newspapers online.
 * SHG Resources State Handbook &amp; Guide (free) links to over 30 current Maryland newspapers online.

Best on-site library collections
The following libraries have strong Maryland newspaper collections on site.


 * Enoch Pratt Free Library
 * Maryland Historical Society
 * Maryland State Archives

Guides finding Maryland newspapers
Hofstetter, Eleanore O. and Marcella S. Eustis. Newspapers in Maryland Libraries: A Union List. Baltimore, Maryland: Division of Library Development Services, Maryland State Department of Education, 1977. (Family History Library Book 975.2 B33h; fiche 6046965)

White, Les, et al. A Guide to the Microfilm Collection of Newspapers at the Maryland State Archives. Annapolis, Maryland: Maryland State Archives, 1990. (Family History Library book 975.2 B33s)

Indexes to marriage notices and obituaries in MD newspapers
Barnes, Robert W. Gleanings from Maryland Newspapers. Four Volumes. Lutherville, Maryland: Bettie Carothers, 1975-76. (Family History Library book 975.2 V2ba v. 2; film 928166 item 7) This work covers 1727 to 1795.

Barnes, Robert W. Marriages and Deaths from the Maryland Gazette, 1727-1839. Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1973. (Family History Library book 975.2 V2b)

Green, Karen Mauer. The Maryland Gazette, 1727- 1761: Genealogical and Historical Abstracts. Galveston, Texas: Frontier, 1989. (Family History Library book 975.2 D2g)

Maryland newspapers at the Family History Library
To locate newspapers in the Family History Library's collection which pertain to a large part of Maryland, click here. The Family History Library is not actively collecting newspapers of the United States.

How to search newspapers

 * Check newspapers from a week or two before or after a wedding, funeral, or wedding anniversary to find mention of out-of-town visitors and relatives.

Tips

 * You may find it helpful to place a notice in a local newspaper in order to contact others who may have information about your family.
 * Search all newspapers for your ancestor's area, particularly those focusing on your ancestor's ethnicity. Ethnic papers "care" about ancestors that mainstream papers ignore.
 * Don't ignore an ethnic newspaper that was published far from your ancestor, even hundreds of miles away. These papers often have a widely-circulated readership, so they tend to focus on a much wider area. For example, articles about ancestors from Illinois, Kansas, and Nebraska can be found in an ethnic newspaper published in Iowa.

Milestone in newspaper content: the mid-1800s
Early American newspapers were generally only a few pages and focused on international rather than local events. However, the combination of the telegraph, the railroad, the power printing press, and public hunger for news during the Civil War changed American newspapers permanently during the mid-1800s. They increased the news gathering, production, and distribution capacity of big-city papers such that these papers took over the reporting of international, national, and state news. This changed the focus of small-town papers to local events and ordinary people.