RESEARCH Newspapers

Newspapers (and Transcriptions)

There are a number of newspapers that cover Cumbria. They often contain details of births, marriages and deaths and other articles of interest to the genealogist. In the 19th Century though, most local newspapers were not as we know them today and although they carried local news they also carried national and international news, it is probably only in the second half of the 19th century that the National Newspapers started to be available once they could be distributed by rail. Higher society events would have course be published in newspapers like the Times as well as in local editions. A list of newspapers for the county together with the years of publication and the location of the archive is given below.

Carlisle Archive Centre has the below newspapers on 35mm microfilm available in the search room.

• Carlisle Journal 1802-1805; 1810-1811; 1818-1820; 1822-1824

• Carlisle Patriot 1815 - 1910

• Northern Counties Gazette 2 December 1876 - 4 September 1886

• Penrith Observer January 1861 - December 1906

• Whitehaven Guardian 4 February 1875 - 28 March

Some of the newspapers are now available in the British Newspaper Archive. This archive is free to look at the index, but payment is required to actually read the pages, this access is often included in site such as Ancestry or Find My Past as well as being available in your local library.

Transcriptions

In addition excellent work is being done by our member Petra Mitchinson in transcribing BMD's from the  Carlisle Journal, and Carlisle Patriot. Plus Barb Baker has done some transcripts from the Penrith Herald. 

These transcriptions have been posted on list-cumbria, a mail list server maintained by Cumbria FHS. The List Archive can be browsed. There are well over 4000 postings including births, marriages and deaths; court cases and general news items. There are tens of thousands of BMDs, and over time these will be added to the people search on this site.

Meanwhile, there is another implementation of these transcriptions at the Genealogy-Cumberland Google Group