Free access to Newspapers.com database for five days

Ancestry is offering free access to its Newspapers.com database over the USA's President's Day weekend. It will run from today until 11:59pm Mountain Time on Monday 15 February and you can gain access by clicking/tapping the image below. You need to register.

If you don't already have a subscription to the site, it's worth setting aside some time to blitz the database over the next few days. It holds some 636 million+ pages of historical newspapers from more than 20,000 titles covering the United States and beyond.

You can search the full database by name, places, dates etc, or select searches focussed on either obituaries or marriages. If you have any 'lost' Irish ancestors who emigrated and settled in the US, this database is a great way to track them down. The only problem is the size of the database! Even with an unusual surname like Santry, a search returns 350 marriages, more than 1,000 obits and nearly 95,000 entries in the main database, a good number of them reporting breathless tales of dogged boxing fights involving one Eddie Santry, who won the world featherweight boxing title in 1899. Still, better too many than too few.

The database allows you to 'clip' pages, or parts of pages, but you can also Google screenshot.

Have fun!