Ancestry, an online family history platform, have announced that more than twelve million historic UK newspaper pages, from over 200 UK newspaper publications, have been made available on their Newspapers.com website.
The pages provide details on historical events, individuals and other fascinating insights into the news and culture of the time and could help people discover more about their family history.
Owned by Ancestry, Newspapers.com is the largest online newspaper archive and consists of 736 million+ pages of historical newspapers from 23,100+ newspapers from around the world. The UK newspaper titles include The Daily Mirror and a vast array of regional publications from across the UK such as Manchester Evening News, Birmingham Mail, Kent & Sussex Courier and many more.
Pages dedicated to births, marriages and obituaries will be launched in the near-future providing users with easy access to incredible details about their ancestors, as well as the lives of people at the time, on a national and local level. Meanwhile, people looking to explore specifics around their family history, or delve into events that took place in areas where their ancestors lived will also be available to view.
To illustrate some of the stories availalable, Ancestry has suggested some links focussed on stories for Women’s History Month. These include:
- The introduction of women’s suffrage in the Derby Daily Telegraph
- The first woman to sit as a judge on the High Court in The Birmingham Post
- Nancy Astor (see image), the first female MP in the Hull Daily Mail
- The launch of the first women’s football team in The Pall Mall Gazette
- Helen Sharman, the first British female astronaut in the Evening Standard
- The first female actors in the Derby Daily Telegraph
“Newspaper articles are an invaluable source for not only discovering more about historic events throughout time, but also about our ancestors and how they once lived. This is why we are launching over 12 million archived newspaper pages from a variety of publishers in the UK. Newspapers.com has been a huge success in the US and we are now pleased to offer people in the UK the opportunity to further their family history research and discover all kinds of interesting stories and anecdotes within these pages.”
Simon Pearce, Family History expert at Ancestry
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