The degree to which we are able to learn about the lives of our ancestors—beyond just names, dates and locations—depends on our meticulousness, the information available (either online or offline), and our skill set.
It also depends on whether we’ve taken advantage of all avenues available to us in our family history quest. Moving beyond the low-hanging fruit (e.g., a census, a death certificate, or a church record) may make the difference between a basic sketch of an ancestor or a lifelike portrayal of him.
That’s where historical newspapers come in. In my experience, newspapers make the seemingly impossible, possible.
That was certainly true in my years-long quest for answers about my great-grandfather, Hugo Wendt. Neither I nor my living family members knew much about him. But all that changed when many small-town historical newspapers from Nebraska came online for the first time.
After weeks of extensive digging, I largely reconstructed Hugo’s life. Through historical newspapers, many details of Hugo’s long-forgotten past came to
