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Introduction to the Michigan Newspaper Family Histories

About the families

The publishing history of a newspaper can be complicated. Title changes, mergers and absorptions are very common in newspaper publishing. Many newspapers also were published in a variety of editions: daily, weekly, tri-weekly, city and country editions are just a few of the possibilities. Since knowing the exact title and dates of a newspaper can be of great help in historical research, our newspaper 'families', similar to family trees, have been created to help librarians, researchers, genealogists and others track the titles, publishing dates and history of Michigan's newspapers.

The families are arranged alphabetically by city and then by name of the newspaper family within that city. Click on the name of a family and you will be taken to the family tree. On the tree, each separate newspaper title appears within a box. The dates that follow each title are the dates of publication. When beginning or ending dates are inconclusive a 'u' for unknown may appear in place of a digit. For example: '18uu-19uu' indicates that a title began sometime in the 1800s and ended sometime in the 1900s. '1874-187u' indicates that a title began in 1874 and ended sometime in the same decade. If a newspaper is currently being published, '9999' appears in place of an ending date.

The letter in the bar on the left side of a title box represents a newspaper's frequency of publication. Below is a key to the letters in the title boxes:

d = daily
w = weekly
m = monthly
bw = biweekly (every other week)
bm = bimonthly (every other month)
sw = semiweekly (2 times a week)
sm = semimonthly (2 times a month)
tr = triweekly (3 times a week)
i = irregular
u = unknown

Mergers, absorptions, and relationships are noted in the families by solid arrows; other editions of the title by broken arrows. Some families may contain only one or two titles. Some families are quite lengthy and are related to other newspaper families; when this happens an arrow appears next to the title box with the name of the related family.

The family histories do not indicate Library of Michigan holdings. The Library of Michigan's newspaper holdings are available through an online list and other libraries' holdings are available through Chronicling America.

Accessibility

These pages are not fully accessible using screen reader software. Print copies are available at the Library of Michigan reference desk and in the Braille and Talking Book Library.

Updated 08/15/2011