Richard J Heaton's Page

While on holiday in Yorkshire last week I stopped off at Harrogate and was reminded how valuable local knowledge of local newspaper collections can be.



For several years I've been trying to track down copies of the very rare Burniston's Northern Luminary, printed at Knaresborough. Its not particularly old, but the one copy I have seen is extremely well written and lists a number of marriages of the local registry office - which might indicate non-conformity - but with only one copy… Continue

Broadly I find two catagories of marriage entries in newspapers -

The normal Mr.X son of Y married Miss Z daughter of .... at .... on so and so date.



And then we have the more uplifting one's. For example this came from one of my recent transcriptions of the Salisbury and Winchester Journal, 1786.



"A few days since was married at Compton, near Shaftesbury, John Jeanes, aged 83, to Elizabeth Fisher, alias Rideout, alias Thrifty, a brisk young widow of 25. They were… Continue

Dick Eastman (who's blog I try to read every day) has highlighted an interesting article by Gena Philibert Ortega on the subject of tracing female ancestors - the content is US based newspapers and I thought it worth contrasting this with earlier newspapers.



Newspapers are a brilliant resource for family and local historians - but you do need to mindful that early newspapers had a number of objectives, they were commercial enterprises, which in practical terms means they needed to… Continue