Researching Laurel County Historic Newspapers on FamilySearch
By Mark A. Watkins
The free genealogy site, FamilySearch.org now has the historic London newspapers available on their website for browsing. Prior to the pandemic, these digital images were only available at their Family History Libraries or affiliate libraries. This made researching impractical because of the amount of time spent browsing. These images are not indexed, so there is no way to search on a name. Research is conducted only by browsing the papers. It appears that the papers were first microfilmed in 1956 by the University of Kentucky. At some point later, these films were digitized.
The Newspapers Available are:
The London Sentinel from June 13, 1907 (Vol 1, Issue 1) to January 31, 1919
The Sentinel-Echo from February 6, 1919 (name change) to December 31, 1953
The Mountain Echo (incomplete) Oct. 3, 1873 (Vol 1 Issue 4) to Jun. 10, 1887
The Mountain Echo January 27, 1888 to April 25, 1916
To Access these papers from your home internet, go to www.familysearch.org
You may create an account and sign in, but you do not have to. On the top left of their home page, click on [search]. On the drop-down menu click on [catalog]. From here have choices. In the "place" type in [London, Laurel, Kentucky] and it will autofill [United States, Kentucky, Laurel, London]. Click on [search]. On the search results page, click on the newspaper line, then select your paper. On the next screen is a series of films. Click on the [camera Icon] on the right-hand side to select your paper. Many times, this camera may have a [key Icon] on top which means that the film is locked and can only be viewed at a FHS library. Regardless of the key icon, these films are presently unlocked.
There is a shortcut for the above step. After you clicked [search] and [catalog], instead of entering the "place", click on the hyperlink [Film/Fiche Number] and enter: [009050506] This takes you directly to the London papers (but not the Barbourville papers)
If you select [The London Sentinel], then click the [camera icon] for the date range you want, next to pop up are the actual images of the paper in chronological order. You may browse starting at image #1. Again, these images are not indexed and there are no finding aids. You simply have to browse. There is an image counter above the images. You can advance to the image with the arrow or by typing a number in the counter and pressing enter.
A good use of these images is to find obituaries. So, find the correct film that encompasses your date of death and use a series of high and low numbers in the image counters to zero in the issue after the date of death of your ancestor. I have found for the first time many obituaries in my family that was eloquently written and provided keen insight into their personalities.
Once a newspaper article of interest is found, you can download the whole page to your computer by clicking on the download button. Once I open the image on my computer, my photo software will allow me to crop the image to the article I am interested in. I normally save using the name of the paper, date published, and article subject matter in my file name. I organize these into folders for family lines, people, etc.
I am not aware of any other place where the London papers are digitized (Ancestry, Newspaper.com, NewspaperARCHIVE, Library of Congress) - and if there is a service, it is not free. I have been doing my family history research for 25 years and this is a sudden increase in easily accessible family history and I am finding a significant amount of history for the first time that my cousins are appreciating greatly. In addition, seeing history unfold as told in a weekly small-town newspaper is very interesting. Depending on the editor at the time, there may be more or less national news. Starting in 1917, the weekly national news cycle was momentous and browsing these newspapers for a history buff a must.
