Extra! Extra: Paid resources I use

Have you ever seen newspapers used in chickens nesting boxes? Flat newspapers are sticky for chickens feet but shredded newspapers are great and mix with the other bed materials. They are softer, provide comfort and place to keep warm.

So “shred” some newspapers like a snowboarder shreds some powder. Be anxious or excited to jump into your ancestors’ world. What to you is history was their current day, whether it was a tragedy throughout the world or only within their family.

Newspapers can give a rare view of the dash marks in a person’s life. I subscribe to a couple different newspaper archive services for both the Unites States and British collections. It may seem like a weird choice, when there is never a shortage of records or websites I could pay to access*. But with the Family History Centers closed due to COVID 19 for most of 2020 and having less online newspapers available there anyway, I purchased the full collections to use anywhere for both British Newspaper Archive and Newspapers.com

The first British family line that I looked up after subscribing got me thinking about the family in that area, and when I went back to look at the tree, places, locations started to connect. But first I marked a hint wrong, (Yes still making mistakes!) I thought, nope this hint is for too far away, it can’t be this family! But more records proved the 300 mile move north was correct, the whole family up and moved when a daughter married up there and I was able to add 30 new family ancestors from that one family that moved and generations stayed in that area till years later when some immigrated to the United States.

A few days later, I looked at a brick wall family line: The Sayse or Sayce family. I tried searching last names spelled that way but nope, no hits or search results in the newspapers in the time frame I was looking in. There were lots of Sayes, spelled slightly different, listed over and over as innkeepers or farmers. So I jumped on to Ancestry, changed the last name slightly, added her estimated birth date and area…and only one record pops up! A christening record that lists her parents!? I was shocked, that can’t be right…after all these years, why didn’t someone before me find that? More research shows the church name as the same town name. Monkton is St. Nicholas priory which is one and the same! Verifying her location, her christening date and for the first time listing her parents. So I searched for a possible marriage between a William and Margaret…one result again, same parish and a few years before my ancestors’ birth.

It never ceases to amaze me how miraculous it is. And how humbling it is to help even a little bit. And yes, I still hesitate to believe it even when everything lines up. It’s the chicken in me…

While I haven’t found additional siblings for the Sayse family, this family continues to build now that the birth place is verified. So while the newspapers haven’t initially given births, marriages and deaths that I can immediately put into my tree and know are family, it has already provided meaningful discoveries so I can add more family and given me a better understanding of the area.

Both times using newspapers has provided information that I wouldn’t have otherwise.

My main concern when I first paid for the newspapers use is that I will get distracted reading non-ancestor stories, thinking they would make incredible movies (They would, too!) and not focusing on my family tree. And yes, that still happens occasionally. Because everyone has a story both proven in records and living in life that can be recreated based on the best information we have even when if we don’t know it is our ancestor for sure.

While I don’t know that my ancestor is the “pie guy” from St Helens, who stabbed his dinner pie with a knife and fended off other customers from taking his meal after a long day in the mines, it was a colorful story of coal mining family rascals that lived a tough life and worked hard in very dangerous conditions for everything they had and shed new light on their way of life and the community they grew up in.

*As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I am able to connect my FamilySearch account to Ancestry, FindmyPast, Geneanet, Myheritage, etc to use at home without paying as well. Learn more about how to do that here. Choose from the availabe websites to connect your member connected Familysearch account.