The second phase of Ancestry's Belfast Newsletter World Archive Project (WAP) has just got underway and will see the WAP team transcribe birth, death and marriage announcements from editions of the newspaper published from 1738.
As with all WAP projects, the records will then be indexed and made available free of charge in Ancestry's database.
Importantly for genealogists, the paper's news, adverts and bmd announcements were not limited to the Belfast area; the Newsletter was distributed island-wide prior to Partition, and covered national and international news. It claims to be the oldest English language daily title, and was originally produced twice a week before switching to daily publication in 1855. This volunteer project will ultimately see all editions up to 1925 indexed and searchable by name.
The first phase of the project launched in June 2014. Birth, death and marriage notices dating from 1828 to 1858, as well as engagements, obituaries and memoriams were transcribed, indexed and loaded to Ancestry's collection in October last year. You can search it here.
If you fancy helping to speed the transcribing project along, see details of the WAP project here.
The Belfast Newsletter is already available on Ancestry in browseable format.