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Look in historical newspapers
If an ancestor has vanished, old newspapers are usually the quickest way to establish that someone was sent to prison, or emigrated overseas. There are millions of articles and family notices from regional titles back to the 18th century at britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk, which can also be searched on findmypast.co.uk if you have a ‘Pro’ subscription. These originate from the British Library, where you can browse thousands more undigitised papers and journals. We discovered from the York Herald that Twiggy’s great great grandmother Grace Meadows and her 14-year-old daughter Lucy were charged with stealing (right), and in an obscure trade journal we found actor Charles Dance’s father advertising for work as an electrical engineer in South Africa. Hence, it’s always worth checking overseas newspaper databases too, just in case. Search Australian papers for free at trove.nla.gov. au, while there are back issues from around the globe at news.google.com/newspapers. A mammoth archive from North, South and Central America and Canada is online at newspapers.com, and irishnewsarchive.com was useful when we researched actor Julie Walters’ tree.