Family Tree Magazine is offering a free eBook on How to Search Obituaries to Find Ancestors and Trace Your Family Tree by Thomas Jay Kemp, which will show you secrets to mining GenealogyBank.com for obituaries of your relatives and ancestors. The Free eBook can be obtained at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/genealogybank-offer. You have to enter your name, email address and state in order to receive the link to download the free eBook. As a result of your entry, you will start receiving emails from Family Tree Magazine about their offers (which you can unsubscribe from if you wish). The free eBook is 16 pages with examples of obituaries that you might find on GenealogyBank: One of the examples in this book is for an obituary for a person in my database, Sarah (Pray) Wade (1795-1822). It was from the Providence [R.I.] Patriot newspaper. I didn't know, or recall, that GenealogyBank had that newspaper in the early 19th century. Cool! Who else died in that area in the early 19th century? The first person I thought of was Humphrey White (1758-1814) of Glocester, Providence County, Rhode Island. Is there an article in the Providence newspaper for him? There was! It's only an Administrators Notice, but if I did not have a probate record for him (I do), this would lead me to look in Glocester R.I. town and probate records. The notice above was in Volume 12, Issue 33, Page 4, in the issue dated 27 August 1814. I plugged in several more Rhode Island names, and then tried some southern Massachusetts names. In a search for Alpheus Smith (1802-1840) of Medfield, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, I found two articles in the Norfolk [Dedham, Mass.] Democrat newspaper: The one above is another Administrator's notice (Volume II, Issue 4, page 2, issue dated 29 February 1840). The one below is a Commissioner's Notice that persons have been appointed to receive and examine the claims of the creditors to the estate (Volume III, Issue 19, page 4, issue dated 11 June 1841): Again, both of these notices would be leads for a researcher that there is probably a probate record for Alpheus B. Smith in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, probate records (I already have the probate records). I have many more ancestral persons to try in these two newspapers! I look forward to some genealogy fun in the next few days. Tom Kemp's eBook provides excellent examples of what can be found in newspaper obituaries - names of relatives, mentions of birthplaces, immigration dates, interment locations, social activities, offices held, employment or business information, and much more. All of those items found in an obituary may lead a researcher to several other records, including vital records, cemetery, military, immigration, citizenship, to name a few. To be sure, not all newspapers are available in digital format on websites like GenealogyBank, NewspaperARCHIVE, Newspapers.com, Chronicling America, Old Fulton Postcards, California digital Newspaper Collection, and more. Some of them are commercial sites, and some are free sites. But many historical newspapers are available in paper, microfilm or digital format - you just have to find them in a library, historical society or a website. A researcher needs to include newspaper searches in a reasonably exhaustive search to find information about their ancestors. The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/11/free-genealogybank-ebook-on-how-to.html Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver Disclosure: I have a complimentary annual subscription to GenealogyBank, which I appreciate very much, but does not affect my opinion about the website. I have not been remunerated in any way for this blog post.