How to Locate Birth Announcements

You may wish to locate a recent birth announcement as a celebratory record of your child's birth, or find an older announcement while tracing your family history. While newspapers commonly published birth announcements in the past, the "Iowa City Press-Citizen" warns that today's newspapers rarely publish them except on request. However, you may still be able to find birth announcements. For a recent birth, online newspapers and databases may place the announcement on the Internet. For a search further back in time, you may need to use print resources or archived primary documents through a library or genealogy service.

• 1

  Identify the local newspapers published in the town or city where the birth occurred, if you know the child's birthplace. Use the local newspaper's online search function, if available, to locate the birth announcement---for example, the "Hartford Courant" maintains an online service allowing individuals to input keywords such as the parents' names, child's name and family hometown. Contact the local newspaper for assistance with older articles, as the publication may keep print archives off the Internet.

• 2

  Consider an online genealogy search database if you do not have success with the local newspapers. Confirm that the database includes publications covering the geographic area around the child's birth location. Search with keywords, including the child's full name, location and birth year, whenever known, on a genealogy website such as Ancestry.com, which includes archived announcements from a number of nationally-known publications.

• 3

  Visit a public library serving the geographic area where you believe the birth occurred---this suggestion may be most helpful for older records and family history searches. Seek out archived newspapers covering the relevant time period and learn how each newspaper indexes information about names, places and events. Search for the parents' names, as many older birth announcements did not include the baby's name, according to the Salt Lake City Public Library. Ask for assistance with the library's microfilm machines, which allow you to scan archived newspaper articles stored on microfilm rolls.