Newspapers

When researching you can also check newspaper archives online. There are many things that could be printed about your relatives in a local newspaper.

 Death Notices- Not only do these give information on when the person died but also how old they were at the time of their death, where they died, how, where they came from, family and relatives who are still alive or deceased themselves and where the service was held and burial information.

Engagement and Wedding Announcements- These usually have information on the bride and groom and their families, friends, dates, where the happy couple was from. Where they will be going for their honeymoon, or where they will live. Where they got married, how they met. Some even give details on the wedding ceremony and reception afterwards.

Traveling- Many local hometown papers being small and needing news to print would announce if the local people were going out of town to visit relatives or coming back from being out of town. Moving, death in the family, or traveling for business or pleasure can be some of the other information these articles will list.

Advertisements- If your relative owned a company or was part of a company you can find advertisement about their company. This will give you more information on what the company services were and maybe what your relative did in and for the company.

Here is a list of free newspapers archives online I found:

Historic American Newspapers  
These go by states and there are a few states not listed but hopefully in the future they will be added. They only have papers from 1836-1922. If you are going to search a person's name put the whole name in quotations so you wont be getting every paper that lists just "John" or "Smith".

California Digital Newspapers
These list a few counties of California and are from 1846 to present but they are still adding to this site. Use the same formula above when searching names.

Wyoming Newspapers
From years 1849 through 1922.

Walla Wallop Historic WWII Airport Newspaper
As a tribute to the men and women who trained and served in the Walla Walla Army Airbase during WWII, the port of Walla Wall has launched this website containing the former airbase newspapers. It was called Walla Wallop and was published once a week from May 19, 1944 to June 21, 1946.

Washington State Newspapers
Searchable database

Northern New York Historical Newspapers
Searchable database for the following counties: Oswego, Jefferson, Lewis, St. Lawrence, Franklin, Clinton and Essex.

Suffolk County New York Historic Newspapers
Just click on any of the names of the newspapers you see on the page and it will bring you to the search page. You will be able to search separate papers in the advanced search and all of Suffolk county papers with a regular search. These are just the clippings of the original articles not the whole paper.

The New York Times Archive
I included this paper because some of the articles you don't need a subscription for. If you are lucky and have one you will be able to have no problem in reading the articles. Even the ones you have to pay for at least gives you a snippet of the article which might have some information you can use.