Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: What Maps Have You Found Recently?

Today's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun from Randy Seaver will be extra fun, because the topic is one I love a lot!

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  Do you collect maps of the places that you have ancestors or family?  I do!  I love maps.  And have so many places!

2.  Tell us about a recent map find for your genealogy and family history (it could be any time) and where you found it.  Share the map and a comment on your own blog, or in a Facebook Status  post, and share a link on this post.

I collection maps and atlases in general, especially vintage ones that show earlier names of locations.  I love looking at and reading maps.  I guess I have to fudge a little bit for today's challenge, though.  I have found several maps recently that caught my attention, but I think only one of them has something to do with my own genealogy and family history.  But they're interesting!

360 Cornwall

This is a virtual map of Cornwall with more than 250 locations featured with aerial 360° views.  While it appears to be designed primarily as a way to attract tourist interest, the locations include heritage sites, and it looks cool.  And since my Dunstan family line, which so far I have only in Manchester, is supposed to have originated in Cornwall, that makes this related to my family history.  It's available online and as both Apple and Android apps.  (I chose the image of Penzance because I've actually been there.)

Aerial Montana

Another site with aerial photography is Aerial Montana, which features a map with indexed locations of photographs dating from the 1930's through the 1970's.  The photographs were taken by the U.S. Forest Service of land in the Forest Service Northern Region, primarily western Montana and northern Idaho.  While the photograph collection has tens of thousands of aerial images, the focus has been on digitizing those from the 1930's and making them available.  The map indicates latitude and longitude of about 31,000 images, of which 3,500 are currently online.  An article with background information about the collection can be found here.

Missoula, Montana, 1937

Civil Code in French-speaking Jurisdictions Worldwide

You might not expect to find a map in a Law Library of Congress blog post, but that's where this one came from.  There are apparently 29 jurisdictions in the world that include French as an official language.  The map shows which of those locations still use the French civil law system and how they apply it, whether by itself or in combination with another legal system.  Two countries, Mauretania and Niger, use French civil law and sharia law, which is an interesting combination.  I found this map fascinating because most of the places that are using the French civil law system are former colonies, so it shows history also.

Synchronized Napoleonic Map

I have read about people using Google Maps overlays with historic maps, including in family history.  This is the same idea, with the focus on a 1797 map about southern Germany produced during the Napoleonic wars.  The article to which I've linked, which was published on a Hungarian university site, states that "Hungary is a main provider in the publication of . . . georeferenced maps of the Napoleonic era."  I don't know if that's accurate or if they said it because they're promoting themselves.  I found the topic particularly interesting because I used to be an editor for a magazine about the Napoleonic wars.

Black and White and Read All Over . . . .

Several new links have been added to the Wikipedia online newspaper archives page, so I thought I should let everyone know about them.  All but two are free, which is always nice to hear.  Many more college student publications have appeared online; this seems to be an ongoing trend.  And there's one new country, Japan, which is one of the fee-based archives.

Australia:  The Ryerson Index contains publication information about more than 5 million death notices from 281 Australian newspapers, ranging from 1803 to the present.  The majority of the entries are from New South Wales, but other parts of the country do have coverage.

Brazil:  An older archive of Diario de Pernambuco, covering 1825–1924, is now available to go with the modern archive.  Maybe at some point the mid-20th century will be added?

Brazil:  The Diarios Oficiais ("Official Gazettes") of several cities and states are online.

British Columbia, Canada:  There are three new links for British Columbia, one index and two sets of transcriptions.  The index is for Victoria newspapers from 1858–1936 and includes BMD announcements, general news articles, and more.  The Qualicum Beach Family History Society has transcribed obituaries from many newspapers in the Parkville and Qualicum area from 1948–1994.  The second set of transcriptions is mostly BMD notices from British Columbia newspapers from 1861–1875.

Manitoba, Canada:  The Manitoban, the student publication for the University of Manitoba, is available for 1914–2012.  The Winnipeg Tribune archive currently covers 1890–1950, 1957–1960, and 1969, but there are plans to digitize and upload the missing years.

Québec, Canada:  McGill University student publications from 1875–2001 are on Internet Archive.  They include the McGill Gazette, McGill Fortnightly, McGill Outlook, Martlet, and McGill Daily.

Saskatchewan, Canada:  The Saskatchewan Obituaries Project is digitized scrapbooks of obituary clippings.

Canada (national):  The Drouin Institute has an online collection of transcribed obituaries from throughout Canada.  The site and the obituaries are all in French.

China:  Four more Shanghai papers published by the Jewish refugee community, three in German and one in English, have been added to Internet Archive.

Ireland:  PDF's of bound volumes of the Dublin Gazette from the 1750's to around 1800 can be downloaded from the Oireachtas Library Web site.  The Connolly Association has made available The Irish Democrat and its predecessor, Irish Freedom.

Japan:  The entire run (1897–2014) of the Japan Times, an English-language newspaper, has been digitzed and is available as a paid subscription through an outside agency.  This is probably designed as an institutional subscription only, but I can't find the site, only the marketing materials.

United Kingdom:  A generous person has created two Google Custom Searches:  one for all the national British newspapers, and a second that includes 384 local, city, and regional papers.

Arkansas:  The Ashley County Ledger has an obituary index and transcriptions for 1965 to the present.  The Pine Bluff/Jefferson County Library has an obituary index for local newspapers from the 1820's to the present.

Connecticut:  The Ferguson Library has provided an index to obituaries appearing in seven Stamford newspapers from 1830 to the present.

Georgia:  The Digital Library of Georgia has added two new collections:  Southern Voice, an LGBT publication, for 1988–1995; and six West Georgia historic newspapers covering 1843–1942.

Hawaii:  Two student publications from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa are now online:  Ka Leo o Hawaiʻi, a newspaper, for 1922–1949 and 2002–2010; and Ka Palapala, kind of a student annual, for the 1920's to the 1960's.

Idaho:  The Gooding County Historical Society has a page with downloadable Excel files with obituary indices for Gooding County from 1946–1947 and 1980–2011.

Illinois:  Illinois Wesleyan University has digitized student publications ranging from 1870 to the present.  The Illinois Digital Archives has added the Huntley Farmside for 1960–2000 and two collections relating to World War II:  The Herald (for Melrose Park and area) for 1941–1945, and clippings and index cards relating to servicemen from Park Ridge.

Indiana:  The Tell City–Perry County Public Library has an obituary index for 2010–2014.  The Torch, the Valparaiso University student newspaper, has been digitized for 1914–1992.

Iowa:  Granville and Newspaper Archive have worked together to place four Granville newspapers and a scrapbook collection online.

Louisiana:  Centenary College of Louisiana, in Shreveport, has four student publications online covering 1899 to the present, including one published in French.

Massachusetts:  If you had whalers in your family, you'll want to look at this.  The Whalemen's Shipping List and Merchants' Transcript for 1843–1914, published in New Bedford, is online courtesy of the National Maritime Digital Library.

Montana:  The Columbia Falls Columbian for 1891–1925 (I believe it is the complete run) has been digitized by Veridian.

New Jersey:  A scattering of issues of the Newark Sunday Call from 1871–1881 and 1881–1946 are available in two separate collections from Google News Archive.

Ohio:  The Cleveland Jewish News Digital Archive has added a few more historical Cleveland Jewish newspapers to its database.  The Cleveland Public Library has two indices on its site for several Cleveland newspapers, one for death notices and one for general news items.  Ohio Memory, the state digitization project, has added several newspapers to its collection.

Tennessee:  This one's a little different.  The Knox County Public Library has digitized and posted two years of the Knoxville News-Sentinel as a sample to motivate people to donate to a fundraiser to raise enough money for NewsBank to digitize the newspaper for the years 1922–1990.  The two years available are 1940 and 1982 (no idea how those years were chosen).  What I'm particularly curious about is whether the newspaper is planned to be available as a NewsBank subscription, since the library is raising the funds.

Texas:  Some death notices and news items were transcribed from two Arlington newspapers and put together as books, which have now been scanned and can be downloaded from the Arlington Public Library Web site.  The Dallas Voice, an LGBT newspaper, has been scanned for 1964 to the present and is available through the Portal to Texas History.  And Lamar University student publications from 1933 to the present have been digitized and are on the university library site.

United States (national):  Obituary Central is an index to obituaries from throughout the country.  Warning:  When you first go to the page you get an annoying pop-up ad.

It's interesting how digital partnerships work (or don't).  The Poughkeepsie Journal is online again, on its third host site.  I first found the historical Journal on Ancestry.com.  Then the license apparently expired, and it was not available for a couple of years.  Next it appeared on Footnote.com.  When Ancestry bought Footnote's parent company, it was unable to work out a license with ProQuest, which had created the digital archive of the newspaper.  The digital Journal has been offline for several years, collecting virtual dust on a virtual back shelf somewhere at ProQuest, and even the Journal didn't have access to it.  But now Ancestry.com and Gannett, the Journal's owner, have redigitized the newspaper, through to the present, and it's on Newspapers.com.  You can read a little more about the current situation at Dick Eastman's blog.

Newspapers, Newspapers, Newspapers . . . .

It's time for another round-up of the latest additions to the Wikipedia online newspaper archive page!  Advantage Preservation has been on a binge of digitization lately, so more newspapers seem to be coming online every day, which is great for us researchers.  And almost all the new links are free, which is even better.

Belgium:  The Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique (Royal Library of Belgium) has uploaded free digital images of newspapers dating from 1831–1918.  The site is in French, Dutch, and English, and some of the newspapers are in German.  Newspapers from 1919–1950 are indexed and appear in search results, but due to copyright issues, those images are not free.

Canada:  I found a trove of Mennonite links.  There are links to indices for death notices and obituaries in five Mennonite newspapers, and an author/subject index for one of the newspapers (which was published in in the United States for a time and so also shows up in the Multistate list).

China:  The Shanghai Echo, a periodical for Jewish refugees who had fled Europe, is online for 1946 to 1948.

England:  The Foxearth and District Local History Society has posted transcribed selections from newspapers in the East Anglia area.

England:  Spare Rib, a feminist publication, has been digitized and uploaded in its entirety.

England:  A book was published with a detailed index of The (London) Times of 1863, and that book is available online as a downloadable PDF.

Ireland:  Ancestry.com has created a new newspaper site, IrishNewspapers.com.  I wonder if this means it's trying to go back to the pricing model it used to have, where you could pay for different databases separately.

Poland:  There is an index to death notices published in Nasz Przegląd ("Our Review"), a Polish-language Zionist newspaper that was published daily in Warszawa from March 1923 until August 1939.

Russia:  This is another Mennonite resource.  Someone created an index of Mennonite-relevant stories in the German-language Odessaer Zeitung ("Odessa Newspaper").

California:  The Genealogical Society of Santa Cruz County has an index to early local newspapers, available as PDF files.  I don't see that the index tells you which paper an entry is from, but maybe I'm just overlooking it.

Georgia:  The Uncle Remus Regional Library System, which covers six counties (but not the ones I'm researching, of course), has several newspapers available online, courtesy of Advantage Preservation.

Indiana:  The New Albany–Floyd County Public Library has an index to local newspapers for 1847 to the present.

Indiana:  The obituary index for the Plymouth Pilot Daily is downloadable as several PDF files.

Iowa:  Ten newspapers from Dickinson County have been digitized by Advantage Preservation.

Massachusetts:  The first 30 years of the Boston Jewish Times are available courtesy of the American Jewish Historical Society.

Michigan:  More than one million subject index cards from the Detroit News are available on the Seeking Michigan site.

Michigan:  The Milford Public Library not only hosts an obituary index for the Milford Times for 1929–1949, but they will provide you a free copy of the obituary when you find one you want.

Michigan:  This one's a little unusual.  A cemetery has the local newspaper, the Petoskey News Review for 1874–2001, on its site.

Montana:  The student newspaper for Bozeman High School for 1939–2015 is available online, courtesy of Advantage Preservation.

Montana:  Montana State University is in the process of placing digital copies of its student newspaper, the Exponent, online.  Not everything is there yet.

Nebraska:  Advantage Preservation worked with the North Bend Public Library to digitize three local newspapers there.

New Jersey:  Ten early Plainfield newspapers running from 1837–1918 are on the Plainfield Library's Web site.

New Jersey:  The Rockaway Township Free Public Library has the Iron Era and Rockaway Record available online.

New York:  Allegany Public Library and Advantage Preservation teamed up to put four Allegany newspapers online.

New York:  The Troy Irish Genealogy Society has added a marriage notices index to complement its Lansingburgh newspapers death notices index.

North Carolina:  The Duke Chronicle, the student newspaper for Duke University, is online but only for the 1960's and 1980's.

Ohio:  A collection of newspapers printed by the Wright Brothers has been digitized and is available on two sites, Dayton Metro Library and Wright State University.

Tennessee:  An obituary index for the Nashville Tennessean for 1964 to the present is on the Nashville Public Library's site.

Multistate:  The American Historical Society of Germans from Russia hosts an index for about 200,000 obituaries.  There is no indication on the site what years this covers.

Multistate:  MennObits has transcribed obituaries from Mennonite newspapers from 1864 to the present.

I hope you find some great information in at least one of these newspapers!

Where in the United States Is Dave?

David Brainin
(taken in Butte, Montana)

I believe in "whole family research."  This means that I research not only my ancestors but also their siblings, spouses, and sometimes further out.  I do this because you don't always find the answers to questions such as parents' names in your ancestors' records, and also because you get a fuller, richer picture of what your family was doing and how people interacted when you look at everyone in the family.

When I started working on my Brainin line, I ran into a lot of problems.  First, as is common in general, the name was spelled all kinds of different ways.  It particularly showed up a lot as "Brennan" and similar spellings, which caused all kinds of confusion, becuase most of those were Irish or English, whereas my family were Jews from Russia.  But over time, as I worked through multiple censuses and as more finding aids (such as online databases) became available, I found all of my family members in almost all the censuses after they arrived in the United States.

Except Dave in 1910.

I had found Dave (Dovid) arriving at Ellis Island with his sister (my great-grandmother) Sarah and their older sister Lena on the Caronia on August 2, 1905, so I knew he was here before 1910.  (I even found the three of them on a Special Inquiry page, listed as likely public charges, because they were two young unmarried women and a teenage male with no skilled trade.)  I had found all the other family members in 1910.  They were all living together at 236 East 103rd Street in Manhattan — my great-great-grandparents Max (Mendel Hirsch) and Rose (Ruchel) Brainin with their children Lena, Sarah, William, Bessie, and Benjamin — except for the oldest son, Max, who was already married.  He was living at 101 Columbus Avenue in Manhattan with his wife, Nellie, and their son, Sidney.

I found Dave in 1920, still living with his parents.  This time they were at 1575 Madison Avenue in Manhattan, the address my grandmother remembered for her grandparents (and where she was born).  I have a copy of his 1927 marriage license, again in Manhattan.  His children were born in Manhattan in 1929 and 1931.  By 1940 the family had moved to Cumberland County, New Jersey.

But where was he in 1910?

Everything I knew about the family in general, and about Dave in particular, was associated with New York and New Jersey. I turned the search pages on Ancestry.com upside-down and sideways trying to find Dave in one of those states.  I tried variations of first and last name, first name only, last name only.  I tried birthplace and age with no name.  I bought a copy of the New York City 1910 index that was available on a CD and checked it.  I went crazy going in circles.  But still no Dave.

At this point I thought about just giving up.  After all, I had several records attesting to Dave's life in this country.  I knew when he arrived, where and when he was married, where his children were born, where he died and was buried, even when he adopted his nephew.  I didn't really need to find him in 1910.  I knew he had to have been here then.  I was pretty darned sure he hadn't traveled back to Russia to visit, since the whole family had come here.

But I'm stubborn.  I wanted to find him.  I wanted to know why he was hiding from me, laughing at me.

So one day, after having unsuccessfully tried some new permutations of the search, I thought, "Well, why don't I just look around the whole country?  It couldn't hurt."

And instead of restricting the search to only New York or New Jersey, I looked through the whole U.S.  And what did I see?

Hey, who's that in . . . San Francisco?!  That couldn't be Dave, could it?

I looked at the census page itself.  The address was 1018 Webster Street (which no longer seems to exist, but the San Francisco African American Chamber of Commerce is at 1006 Webster).  It sure looked like Dave — age, birthplace, arrival in U.S., occupation, all jived with the information I knew.  But what was he doing in California?

I still wasn't sure it was Dave, but keeping in mind the possibility that it could be, I looked for other possible records for him out west.

I found his World War I draft registration — in Butte, Montana.

I found an index entry for a naturalization — in Washington State.

After obtaining the naturalization (a fast-tracked U.S. Army one at Camp Lewis that didn't have much information in it) and piecing everything together, I was very sure it was my David Brainin.  There were no conflicts in information.  Apparently, he was the only member of the family who heard the call of "Go west, young man" and left the East Coast to see more of this new country to which he had immigrated.  He was out west at least between 1910 and 1918.  And by 1920 he was back in New York with the rest of the family.

Considering all the stories about the family I heard while I was growing up, I was surprised that I never heard about Dave's adventures out west.  No one ever mentioned it.  And at this point I suspect that no one still alive would really know why he did it.

I did learn a valuable lesson in searching for Dave in 1910 — people aren't always where you expect them to be.  And as usual, I want to find more.  For example, since I live near San Francisco, it would be cool if I could find a photo of the building Dave used to live in, and maybe other records from when he was here.  But I'm happy I finally found him in 1910 and learned a little about his travels out west.  And I don't think he's laughing at me anymore.

After I had found these records, I came into possession of several photographs that belonged to my grandmother.  Amazingly enough, one of the photos was of Dave, taken in Butte, Montana.

More Newspaper Archive Links? Of Course!

I have added several more links to the Wikipedia online newspaper archives page.  Most of them are free.  I hope some of these prove helpful in your research!

• Alberta, Canada:  Our Future, Our Past:  The Alberta Heritage Digitization Project, intends eventually to collect all Alberta newspapers.  Currently the years range from 1885 to 2001.  You can browse by year or location, but no search function is available.
• China (new country!):  ProQuest has made three partial years of the North China Daily News available through the Center for Research Libraries system.  As with all ProQuest databases, this is a paid site.  (The really big news with this newspaper is that the Shanghai Library has digitized more than 100 years [1850–1951], but so far the database is strictly in house.)
• England:  Lloyd's List, from the venerable Lloyd's of London, has an online archive going back 24 years.  This is also a paid archive.
• California:  A large collection of 19th- and 20th-century transcribed newspaper articles about the former town of Alvarado, now split between several cities in Alameda County.
• California:  The Grass Valley Daily Union from 1865–1884 (except for 1878) can be browsed online thanks to the Nevada County Library.
• California:  Neighborhood Newspapers of San Francisco is an effort to make several local newspapers more widely available through digitization.  Currently the focus is on issues covering the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, but the plan is to add historical runs for Grapevine, New Bernal Journal, Noe Valley Voice, North Mission News, Potrero News, Richmond ReView, El Tecolote, and Tenderloin Times.  More information about the project is available on the FoundSF Web site.
• Missouri:  The Scenic Regional Library has digitized and posted fourteen newspapers from Franklin, Gasconnade, and Warren counties, published between the 1870's and 1920's.
• Montana:  The Gallatin County Genealogical Society has posted an index of obituaries in local papers and Web sites from 1980–2013.
• New York:  Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's student paper, The Polytechnic, is available online for 1869 and 1885–2001.
• New York:  The Troy Irish Genealogy Society has posted marriage and death indices from Troy newspapers from 1882–1885, and transcribed marriage and death notices and miscellaneous news items from the West Troy Advocate from 1837–1865.

How have newspapers helped you solve some of your genealogy research questions?

More Newspapers Listed on the Wikipedia Newspaper Archives Page

Maybe because of the holiday season, I didn't find many new links for newspaper databases over the past couple of months.  On the other hand, all of the new additions are free!  You can find all of these links added to the Wikipedia newspaper archives page.

• British Columbia:  The Herald (under various names over time) for 1900–2013 has been made available through the Terrace Public Library.
• Philippines:  The Manila Standard from 1984–2003 is online.
• Scotland:  The South Ayrshire Libraries now have an online index of births, marriages, and deaths that appeared in the Ayr Advertiser from 1801–1835.
• Connecticut:  The Wilton Public Library has searchable indices for obituaries (1937–2005) and articles (1997–2005) published in the Wilton Bulletin.
• Montana:  The Big Timber Pioneer (1893–1949) and Saco Independent (1912–1922) have been added to the Montana Memory Project.
• Ohio:  The Warren County Genealogical Society has lists of names of obituaries published in county newspapers, covering 1810–2010.  New names are added regularly.
• Ohio:  The Williams County Public Library has a searchable obituary index that covers 1862–2013, with gaps in coverage for years and newspapers.  The library will also send copies of the obituaries.
• Washington:  The Ellensburg Daily Record from 1885–2005 is online.
• Washington:  The North Olympic Library System has an obituary index that covers 1916–present.  It isn't clear from the site whether the obituaries are only for Port Angeles.
• Multistate:  The Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University has a map plotting the growth of newspapers across the U.S., created using data from the Library of Congress Chronicling America database.  The map also works as an alternative way to search for newspapers from the Chronicling America collection.
• Multistate:  The Library of Congress has a page with links to directories from 1869–1920 listing American newspapers that were being published.
• Worldwide:  The Handwritten Newspapers Project is really interesting.  It lists items from around the world, with dates ranging from 59 B.C. to A.D. 2011.  One handwritten Indian newspaper has been published in Urdu since 1927.

Have you found anything interesting in a historical newspaper recently?