Independent guidance for genealogy research

Why we built AncestorAdvisor

AncestorAdvisor publishes guides to researching family history in historical newspapers. Most examples focus on US newspapers, with selected British and Irish sources where relevant. We help readers identify likely titles, check available issues and compare free, library and paid access.

How we work

What we do not claim

• We do not claim every service has been personally tested unless a page states the exact test and evidence.
• We do not publish fake customer testimonials or popularity figures.
• We do not call one archive “best” without defining the research situation.
• We do not guarantee that a named record exists or that an archive search will succeed.

Publisher and audience

AncestorAdvisor is published from the United Kingdom for English-speaking family-history researchers. Its current coverage focuses mainly on US historical newspapers.

Editorial bylines

Writer names shown on articles are fictional editorial personas used to organise AncestorAdvisor's content. They do not identify real contributors, hold real-world credentials or imply personal archive testing. The small portraits are illustrative artwork, not photographs of real staff. Editorial claims remain the publisher's responsibility and are supported by the evidence cited on each page.

• Sarah Levy
• Daniel Brooks
• Maya Patel
• Helen Carter
• Thomas Reed

Editorial image credits

Our guides use public-domain archive and newspaper photographs hosted locally for performance, alongside original SVG research diagrams and contemporary illustrative scenes. Public-domain source records are provided by Wikimedia Commons. Image descriptions and credits distinguish illustrative scenes from historical photographs; diagrams explain research methods rather than serve as historical evidence. Articles are published by AncestorAdvisor, and credits identify the publisher and source of editorial artwork.

• Boston Public Library newspaper reading room
• Library of Congress Newspapers and Current Periodicals Reading Room
• Historic newspaper printing press room
• Library staff operating a microfilm reader
• Woman reading a newspaper, circa 1930–1940
• Illustrated historical newspaper obituary
• 1890 map of Liverpool
• Contemporary illustrative research scenes created by AncestorAdvisor for the school-newspaper, newspaper-photograph, historic Black-newspaper, disaster-report, immigrant-language newspaper, religious-newspaper, labor-newspaper, adult amateur-sports and county-fair guides. They are not historical photographs or documentary evidence.
• The common-name newspaper guide uses a contemporary illustrative scene of a researcher comparing separate pages, not an archival photograph or documentary evidence.
• The ancestor-address guide uses a contemporary person-free research-desk illustration with separate printouts and a map, not an archival photograph or evidence of a real address.
• The undated-newspaper-clipping guide uses a contemporary illustrative desk scene, not an archival photograph or evidence of a real clipping.
• Fifty-eight original SVG research diagrams created for AncestorAdvisor, September and October 2026