Geo. P. Rowell & Co’s American Newspaper Directory, New York, 1898.
“Don’t just look stuff up. Learn about newspapers,” said the late Mel Wolfgang, one of my favourite genealogists and lecturers.
I met Mel, an author, peace corps volunteer, teacher, and archivist from New York, at the Ontario Genealogical Society’s 2012 conference in Kingston. Within minutes of meeting him, he became my new best friend, perhaps because he was sort of Canadian, having attended McGill University in Montreal, but most likely because he was a genuinely nice person.
During each of his presentations at the conference, Mel made sure the content included a lot of Canadian content. He knew his audience.
Yesterday, I started looking at the notes I took during Mel’s presentation, Exploring Some New and Less Familiar Pathways in Newspaper Research. He had shared some of the resources available for locating newspapers in original paper format, on microform, and digitized online, but the part that stood out was about how to learn about newspapers and, in particular, how to use newspaper directories.
Newspaper directories
Newspaper directories were sold to advertisers who were looking for places to promote their goods and services. They provided brief descriptions of the newspapers and the towns where they were published.
Kingston, Ontario, Geo. P. Rowell & Co’s American Newspaper Directory, New York, 1884, page 528.
There were two major newspaper directories during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Rowell’s American Newspaper Directory and N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory.
What genealogists can learn
Here’s what advertisers learned back in the day from a newspaper directory — and what genealogists can learn today.
- Names of newspapers published in a city or town
- Frequency of a newspaper
- Circulation stats
- Number of pages
- Population of the town
- Major industry or business
- Name of railroad or river that ran through the town.
According to Mel, a newspaper with a small circulation that was published more than 100 years ago is probably hard to find today.
Marblehead, Massachusetts, Geo. P. Rowell & Co’s American Newspaper Directory, New York, 1884, page 200.
American and Canadian newspapers
The Library of Congress has compiled 34 digitized Rowell’s and Ayer’s American Newspaper Directories, from 1875 to 1920, and here’s the good news for genealogists north of the US border. These American directories include Canadian newspapers published at the time.
In the case of the 1884 directory, 48 states, eight provinces and the Northwest Territories can be found in the Index in the first pages. Then, you can take a look at their ad.
The circulation numbers are indicated in the newspaper description by a letter of the alphabet, such as B or J. To understand what these represent, look at the Key to Circulation Rankings after the title page of the directory. For example, B means the circulation did not exceed 50,000 and J means the circulation did not exceed 1,000.
Advertisers
If your ancestors owned a business, look at the Index of Advertisers. You may find their name among the hundreds who advertised each year.
Next steps
Once you identify which newspapers were available in a particular town, you can Google the newspaper name to find out if it has been digitized, visit your local library for microfilm copies, look at Library and Archives Canada’s website website to find out if they have microfilm copies, and/or visit the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America for digitized US newspapers.
Heads up about the Library and Archives Canada website this weekend. If you have difficulty accessing parts of the site, it may because of a temporary interruption of LAC’s “computing services.”
Thanks for the tip, Mel. I’m glad I kept my notes and your syllabus material.
