Teach Genealogy: Gentleman's Magazine

24 June 2008

Gentleman's Magazine

DearREADERS,
Imagine my surprise during last week's UK-Ireland genealogy voice chat in Second Life, when one of the participants (who lives outside London) remarked that in addition to looking for birth or wedding announcements, one might look in Gentleman's Magazine.

The only gentleman's magazines I'd ever heard of were the type that would make Ol' Myrt blush.

But according to that more experienced family history researcher, Gentleman's Magazine was a legitimate publication where notices were published.

During the voice chat, I multi-tasked and found an entry in WikiPedia for Gentleman's Magazine which reads in part "The Gentleman's Magazine was founded in London by Edward Cave in January, 1731. The original complete title was The Gentleman's Magazine: or, Trader's monthly intelligencer. Cave's innovation was to create a monthly digest of news and commentary on any topic the educated public might be interested in, from commodity prices to Latin poetry. It carried original content from a stable of regular contributors, as well as extensive quotes and extracts from other periodicals and books. [...] Cave, a skilled businessman, developed an extensive distribution system for The Gentleman's Magazine. It was read throughout the English-speaking world. It finally ceased publication in September, 1907." For more info see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gentleman's_Magazine .

Since that Second Life genealogy voice chat, I've been doing a little more research, and discovered it is possible to search issues of the magazine in question by going to the Internet Library of Early Journals. The project which was completed in 1999 includes the following:

18th- century journals