Genealogy is like a jigsaw puzzle, but you don't have the box top, so you don't know what the picture is supposed to look like. As you start putting the puzzle together, you realize some pieces are missing, and eventually you figure out that some of the pieces you started with don't actually belong to this puzzle. I'll help you discover the right pieces for your puzzle and assemble them into a picture of your family.
Showing posts with label Wisconsin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wisconsin. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 7, 2021
Wednesday, August 28, 2019
Wednesday, March 21, 2018
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
Newspapers, Newspapers, Newspapers!
• Australia: Honi Soit, the student newspaper of the University of Sydney (New South Wales), has been digitized for 1929–1990.
• British Columbia, Canada: The Prince George Public Library has eight newspapers, including the student newspaper for the College of New Caledonia, on its site, ranging from 1909–1965.
• British Columbia, Canada: Simon Fraser University has a collection of digitized newspapers online, including the student newspaper The Peak and one group called simply "More Newspapers."
• British Columbia, Canada: The Thompson-Nicola Regional District library is digitizing newspapers from the Kamloops area and has a selection available covering 1882–2014.
• Cuba: Diario de la Marina is available through the University of Florida's newspaper collection. Years covered range between 1844 and 1961, but coverage is not continuous.
• England: The Church Times, an Anglican newspaper, has an online archive dating back to its first issue in 1863 and including more than 8,000 issues.
• France: Two collections of images from Excelsior, a weekly publication that published 20+ photographs in every issue during World War I, are available.
• Italy: Nine months of the 1885 issues of Il Secolo, published in Milan, are on the Florida State University digital archives site. The press release I read suggested that more issues will be coming at some point in the future.
• Lithuania: A new country! Someone has digitized the Vilna Provincial Gazette and posted it on the Internet Archive. The years covered are 1838–1917, with a few years missing. This was published while Lithuania was under the control of the Russian Empire.
• Mexico, Arizona, California, and Texas (under Worldwide category): The Historic Mexican & Mexican American Press collection includes newspapers from Tucson, Arizona; Los Angeles and San Francisco, California; El Paso, Texas; and Sonora, Mexico. The archive goes from the mid-1800's to the 1970's.
• New Zealand: The Southern Regional News Index covers the Dunedin and Otago area for 1851 to the present.
• United Kingdom: The Gazette has created an instructional video on how to search and use the online Gazette archives.
• California: The GLBT Historical Society of Northern California has an online searchable database of obituaries (not just an index) for the Bay Area Reporter, a weekly newspaper covering the GLBT community primarily in the San Francisco Bay area, for the years 1972 to the present. The Bay Area Reporter itself has an online archive that begins with 2005 and is working on digitizing its issues going back to 1971.
• California: The St. Helena Public Library has the St. Helena Star from 1874–2014 available for free.
• California: The now defunct San Fernando Valley Genealogical Society posted a collection of vital records abstracts on RootsWeb for Valley newspapers covering 1911–1945.
• Connecticut: The Shelton Library has two collections of newspaper clippings. The "Library Scrapbook" has clippings from multiple newspapers from 1923–1930 relating to the Plumb Memorial Library. The "Servicemen's Scrapbook of Shelton Men & Women Serving in World War" has clippings from the Evening Sentinel from 1943–1945, so apparently those servicemen were serving in World War II.
• District of Columbia: The Capital is online for 1871–1880 and is said to be a great source for research in the Reconstruction period.
• District of Columbia: Quicksilver Times (1973–1985) and Unicorn Times (1969–1972) are available from the Washington, DC Public Library.
• Georgia: The Macon Daily Telegraph for 1860–1865 is in the American Civil War Newspapers database at Virginia Tech.
• Illinois: The Lake Forester for 1899–1940 is on the Lake Forest Library site.
• Indiana: The AIM Media Indiana archive, which has eleven newspapers, is a pay site created via a Newspapers.com partnership.
• Iowa: Central College in Pella has ten collections of student newspapers and yearbooks covering 1876–2006, but there are some gaps in coverage.
• Iowa: West Branch newspapers the Local Record and Times, from 1866–1934, are on the West Branch Public Library.
• Kansas: A new state! There is an obituary index for Rush County at the Barnard Library site. It covers 1878–1951. Copies of the obituaries can be ordered from the library.
• Kentucky: The Lawrence County Public Library has an online obituary index for the Big Sandy News that covers 1885 to the present.
• Louisiana: The New Orleans Christian Advocate, a Methodist newspaper, is only for 1850–1946.
• Louisiana: Scanned ads from former slaves looking for family members and friends lost during slavery which were published in the New Orleans Southwestern Christian Advocate (1879–1885) — which does not appear to be related to the previously mentioned paper — are available for free online.
• Maine: Digital Maine has the Old Orchard Mirror, a newspaper published only during the summer, for the years 1900, 1901, 1903, 1904, and 1914.
• Maryland: The Annapolis Capital has been digitized and placed online by NewspaperArchive.com on a pay site. The collection nominally goes from 1887–2016, but it goes straight from 1887 to 1918–1919 and then to 1929. It looked continuous from then on.
• Massachusetts: The Memorial Hall Library in Andover has three newspapers covering 1853–1925.
• Massachusetts: The Newburyport Public Library has ten digitized newspapers available for free on its site, courtesy of Advantage Preservation.
• Massachusetts: The Portuguese-American Digital Newspaper Collections, housed at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, includes Portuguese-language newspapers from California, Hawaii, and Massachusetts.
• Massachusetts: The (Mattapoisett) Wanderer, which also serves Marion and Rochester in southeastern Massachusetts, has an online archive for its entire publication history, 1992–2016, housed at the Internet Archive.
• Minnesota: Two union newspapers, the Minneapolis Labor Review (1907–current) and St. Paul Union Advocate (unsure of years covered), are now online.
• Missouri: The Houston Herald has been digitized and placed online courtesy of Newspapers.com for 1881–present and is a pay site.
• Missouri: There are online indices for death notices appearing in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and the Post-Dispatch, along with instructions on how to order copies.
• Montana: The Montana Newspapers project has some dupblication with the Montana Memory Project but includes many more newspapers. The years range from 1885 to 2015.
• New Jersey: The Belmar Historical Society has the Coast Echo and Coast Advertiser for 1881–1974 in PDF and searchable.
• New Jersey: The New Jersey Hills Media Group has partnered with Newspapers.com to present three newspapers on a pay site.
• New Jersey: The Woodbridge Public Library has digitized eleven local newspapers ranging from 1876–1970.
• New Mexico: The White Sands Missile Range published its own newspapers, which cover 1950–1990. There is a list of the issues that are missing, so if you have an old issue, maybe you can help!
• New York: A new collection of four Staten Island newspapers has been made available, with plans for more to come.
• North Carolina: The Nubian Message (1992–2005), the black student newspaper of North Carolina State University, has been digitized and placed online.
• Ohio: The Stark County District Library has digitized eight newspapers in partnership with Advantage Preservation.
• Ohio: The WestLife Observer (2013–2015) and the Westlake Bay Village Observer (2006–2015) are online at Westlake Library site.
• Oklahoma: The Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College student newspaper, The Norse Wind, is online for 1948–2007.
• Virginia: The Library of Virginia has the Charlottesville Daily Progress available for 1893–1964.
• Virginia: The Prince William County Library System has a local newspaper index for 1993–present for three newspapers that have no other index available.
• Virginia: The Pulaski County Library newspaper archive has five newspapers that range from 1893 to 2015.
• Virginia: The Handley Regional Library System has an obituary index for the Winchester Star for 1896–1914. This is a work in progress, and more information is being added to it.
• Wisconsin: The Lake Geneva Public Library has searchable indices for obituaries, birth announcements, and local people in the news. The site does not state which newspapers or years are covered, but an announcement from NEHGS said the obituaries were taken from the Lake Geneva Regional News and Lake Geneva Herald. The local people in the news database iincludes the code LGNT, which I believe stands for Lake Geneva News Tribune.
• Multistate: The Swedish American Newspapers collection, hosted at the Minnesota Historical Society, includes 28 newspapers from California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York, Oregon, Texas, and Washington. Total years covered in the database are 1859–2007.
Earlier this year, the National Endowment for the Humanities, one of the funders for the Chronicling America digitization project, announced that the years which can be funded are expanding from 1836–1922 to 1690–1963. This means that eventually we should see a much broader range of historical newspapers on the Chronicling America site. You can read the press release here.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Newspaper Links Recently Added to Wikipedia Page
• Québec: Translated obituaries from the Keneder Adler for 1908–1932
• Wales: The National Library of Wales has begun putting digitized newspapers and magazines online. So far issues cover 1844–1910, and they plan to add a lot more.
• California: The Free Speech Movement is a selection of scanned newspaper issues, mostly from the Berkeley Daily Gazette and the San Francisco Chronicle, relating to the movement.
• California: San Leandro Public Library index to two local newspapers
• California: University of Southern California "Trojan Family Archive", which includes the Daily Trojan (the student newspaper) from 1912–present (I used to work at the DT doing hard-copy paste-up and some editing!)
• Illinois: Chicago Foreign Language Press Survey translations from 22 different languages of foreign-language newspaper articles from 1855–1938
• Louisiana: New Orleans Bee posted as images only (no search) for 1827–1923
• Minnesota: Chaska Valley Herald for 1862–1887
• New York: Like jazz? Issues 1–58 of the Buffalo Jazz Report are free online.
• Ohio: The American Israelite (Cincinnati) is available for 1854–2000 as a pay service from ProQuest.
• Texas: The J. C. Penney company used to publish an in-house newsletter called the Dynamo from 1917–1932. A sampling of 31 issues is online.
• Wisconsin: Eleven newspapers from the Door County library, ranging from 1873–1925
I posted recently about having added a link to the Newspaper Abstracts site. I found about 20 articles there that had been transcribed from the Winters (California) Advocate of the 1870's and 1880's. What a great find!
Saturday, April 14, 2012
"Who Do You Think You Are?" - Edie Falco
That said, the introduction talked about Falco's career in television, film, and stage and that she was the first woman to win Emmys for outstanding actress in both comedy and drama. She was born in Brooklyn, grew up on Long Island (let's not forget that Brooklyn is actually on Long Island, so she wasn't going very far), and now lives in Manhattan. She talked about how her parents "split" (I don't know if that means divorced or separated) but family is very important to her. She has adopted two children of her own and wasn't sure what to tell them about the family research she was going to be involved in. Is family merely bloodlines, or something more than that? She found a definition of family that said it was a group of people living together with someone as the head of the household, and that fits her life.
Falco's father is Italian, and she knows his side of the extended family fairly well due to visits and get-togethers. Her mother's parents had died long ago and there was "less cohesion", so she wanted to know more about that side. To get more information, she went to visit her mother, Judy Anderson, on Long Island.
Anderson had a copy of a family tree that "cousin Linda" had made. It had a lot of details written on it, and I wish we had had the chance to see more of it (and it isn't one of the documents available on the Web site). The tree showed Judy's mother as Ruth Megrath and her father as George Megrath from Wales. Anderson also had a photo of her grandfather sitting outdoors in a chair. The story was that Megrath was his mother's maiden name, his father's last name was Brown, and his mother had left his father in Wales and brought him to the United States. This, of course, begged the question of why? Falco had never heard of Wales in connection with her family but assumed he had to have been born there because of the story. Without knowing more about Wales, however, she decided to start her research in New York, because she knew he had been there.
Falco immediately contradicted this last statement as she was heading to the New York Public Library by saying, "Mom thinks George was living in New York." (Thinks, knows, same thing, right?) With that amount of reliability, it's a good thing she wasn't going far out of her way. At the library she met Maira Liriano, who works in the library's Milstein Division. (I recognized her as having been one of the researchers on the Gwyneth Paltrow episode.) They found George Megrath in the 1920 census in New York City, but the census said that he was born in Wisconsin, his mother was born in New York, and his father was born in England. It seemed to be the right person, however, because the rest of the family matched exactly. Falco asked Liriano for confirmation that England was a separate country from Wales (duh!) and commented that her mother's family tree was wrong. She then said, "Let's see what else I can find on Ancestry.com." Heaven forfend any other site could be used!
Falco found someone's personal family tree on Ancestry that said Megrath had died in 1947 in Massachusetts at the age of 70. The tree had a link to a scan of an obituary that said he was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. From that Falco concluded that Megrath had not been born in Wales after all but in Wisconsin. So first she took the word of her cousin that Megrath was born in Wales, and then because an obituary said he was born in Wisconsin she decided her cousin was wrong and information from the second person, whom she didn't know from Adam, must be right. This is a way to show analysis of information? What happens if a third person says he was born somewhere else? But take his word she did, and off she went to Wisconsin with the comment, "I hope Milwaukee will give me more clues."
In Milwaukee she went to All Saints Episcopal Cathedral, and said she was doing so because it holds a lot of historic baptismal records. Normally a church will only hold baptismal records for its own denomination, so we had to assume that Megrath must have been baptised as an Episcopalian, but the way it was phrased seemed to imply that All Saints held baptismal records for the city. Very misleading scripting here. She met with Christie Manussier, the office manager for the cathedral, and told her she was looking for baptismal information for her grandfather. Manussier brought out books for a range of years and said that the church had been pretty diligent about including most information about babies. Unsurprisingly, Falco found George MeGrath Brown, born March 21, 1876 in Milwaukee, whose parents were Charles Childs Brown and Mary MeGrath Brown. Charles Brown was present for the baptism, as he was listed as a sponsor. So Megrath's father was part of his life after all, at least at the beginning, which differed from the family story Falco had been told.
To find more information about Charles Childs Brown, Falco next visited the Milwaukee County Historical Society (not Center, as was listed on screen) and spoke with archivist Amanda Koehler (more accurately the Assistant Curator of Research Collections). She told Koehler an incredibly vague story of what she was trying to find: My ancestor was here in 1876 to attend the baptism of his son and I'm trying to find more information about him. Magically, of course, information was there to be found. Koehler told Falco to look in city directories to see if he was listed, and she (Koehler) would look in censuses. Falco found a Charles C. Brown in the 1870 directory who was an apprentice with the Milwaukee News, but she conceded it could be a common name. Koehler found no Charles Browns in Wisconsin after 1870 (What about before 1870? We didn't even know how old he was or when he and Mary MeGrath were married.) but did find a 32-year-old C. C. Brown in the 1885 Minnesota state census in the town of Little Falls. Now, Little Falls is more than 400 miles from Milwaukee, so there was no reason to assume it was the same person, especially only with initials, but he was born in England, which matched the information from the 1920 census. At least for this there was not an automatic leap; Falco said it was compelling (maybe for varying definitions of the word compelling) but that they didn't know for sure if it was him. Then Koehler produced a book she called Historical Sketches of Royalton, Minnesota (actually Historical Sketches of Royalton and Vicinity), which had an entry for Charles C. Brown. It said he had been a printer and writer and started Royalton's first newspaper in 1885. He then moved to Duluth, where he was the night editor, and died there. There was no reference to any family. Royalton is only about 10 miles from Little Falls, so it was not unreasonable to think this was the same man from the 1885 census. The fact that he worked for newspapers made a connection to the Charles C. Brown in the 1870 Milwaukee directory, but it was still not a strong case. That's what we were going with, however. As the program cut to commercials the teaser for the next segment showed a newspaper article with the title, "What Happened -- A Sad Accident."
 |
| Legal notice for estate of Sister Kathryn Brown, Albany Evening Journal, November 16, 1903; George MeGrath Brown and Walter Bacon Brown (probably George's half-brother) are mentioned by name |
Falco decided to look for Sister Katherine Brown in the 1900 census, which actually was a logical thing to do if she wanted to find more information about the family. She somehow found her (with a name that common, heaven knows how she picked her out, though); the census said she was born at sea and that her mother was born in England. (What about her father? And one of the many interesting things not addressed in the episode, why was she Sister Katherine? Was she in a religious order?) So Falco said, "I think I have to go to England to find out more." Yeah, right! How about more research to figure out where in England you should be looking? But that would be too logical, so off she went. We next saw her in London, where she said she needed to find a family historian. All she had to go on was a birthplace at sea. Somehow she connected with Jo Foster, credited as a family history researcher, at Fulham Town Hall. Do you feel there's a magic wand being waved over all of this? Where's the fairy godmother? Is this a Disney movie?
Foster had a book with birth registrations and said, "See if you can find your" great-great-grandfather. Falco found Charles' birth record for August 16, 1853. His mother was listed as Catherine Brown formerly Kindley, and next they looked for more information about her. (Why not look for information about the father? This was the second time he had been bypassed. Obviously, the show's researchers must not have found anything about him, or else he was boring. Therefore he shouldn't be mentioned.) Foster had Falco look for Catherine Kindley in the 1841 English census (on Ancestry, of course), but she didn't find her. Foster disingenuously suggested looking under the name Kate (they're getting less and less subtle about the way they lead the celebrities), and amazingly enough Kate Kindley, age 10, born in Cornwall, was found in Penzance. She was living with 69-year-old Jane Childs, possibly her grandmother?, and 28-year-old Elizabeth Childs, but no other Kindleys. To find more about Kate, she went to Penzance. Before we saw Penzance, there was an introspective segment where Falco talked about how these people actually existed and that it was unnerving to find records of family members. (I guess she's never considered what kind of paper trail she has created during her own lifetime.) She wondered why Kate wasn't with her parents and if she really had been born at sea.
In Penzance archivist Chloe Phillips of the Morrab Library was on hand. Falco told her she was trying to track down information on Kate Kindley, who was 10 years old in 1841. (See how far you get with a request like that at a library.) Phillips brought out a book cushion and conservator's gloves for Falco to wear, then set out a book and said to look for Catherine in the book. If you're going to go to the trouble of using conservator's gloves (which, as I've commented before, are now considered by many to be a deprecated practice for handling paper, because you lose your tactile sensation and can damage the paper more than with your finger oils), why have someone page through a book instead of just going directly to the relevant page? But Falco eventually found Catherine, who was baptized in October 1831, the daughter of Ralph and Dorothy Kindley. Ralph was a master mariner from Penzance. We then had a short narrative on British maritiime history and how a mariner would have spent most of his life at sea. That could explain why Kate's father was not enumerated in the census, but not her mother, so Falco wanted to find more information about the parents and why Kate was with her grandmother in 1841 (assuming that was her grandmother, of course; we had seen no research to confirm that). Phillips suggested she look in the newspaper, and the West Briton and Cornwall Advertiser of March 8, 1833 had a note that Dorothy, the daughter of Childs and wife of Captain Kindley, had died at age 28. Now we knew why Dorothy wasn't in the 1841 census, and this did seem to indicate Jane Childs was likely Kate's grandmother, but what happened to Captain Kindley?
The final segment took Falco to Charlestown, Cornwall to meet Dr. Sam Willis, a maritime historian and author. This location was purely window dressing, as none of the research revealed had anything to do with Charlestown. Willis took Falco out to the Earl of Pembroke, which he said was similar to the types of ships her fourth great-grandfather Ralph Kindley would have sailed. Falco asked if it were possible that Catherine was born at sea, and Willis said Dorothy easily could have been used to being on a ship. He had found that in 1831 Kindley was the captain of the Lord Cochrane, which had put into New Orleans. While there wasn't direct documentation of Catherine's birth, the pieces did fit. (In the middle of this we suddenly got a beautiful piece of unexpected eye candy in the form of a shot with a rainbow in the background.) Falco wondered where Kindley had been during the 1841 census. Willis had also found New York Public Administrator papers from October 1840 regarding the estate of Ralph S. Kindley, mariner, who had died about July 20. He had been on a voyage from Africa to New York on the schooner Africanes. He died of fever and was buried at sea.
Falco said how very disheartening it was that "little Kate" had lost both of her parents before she was 10. So much of family is about nurturing, but George's mother had divorced and Kate had been left without parents. She talked about the "emotional clouds you were surrounded in as you grew up" and how it was really about the people who loved and cared for you. It struck me as a little overdramatic; why focus only on the negative? What about the other generations that did not have such events? So even though from a research perspective this episode had a lot of flaws, what Falco had learned did appear to have resonated with her. Again we did not see a reprise with the family member we had started with. Maybe Falco's mother was unsettled with the information that had been found.
I squeaked through with my prediction on this one. Most of the research focused on general background in the U.S., not any major historical events. They did go to England and Cornwall, so we had an ancestral country, but it wasn't Italy or Sweden, which is what I had been anticipating. And I was right with Rita Wilson, so I'm still batting a thousand, but barely. Not only that, but WDYTYA has reruns for this week and next, so I'm actually caught up!
I watched through the credits at the end of this episode and learned that Apple is officially listed under "Promotional Consideration" (otherwise known as product placement). I have noticed the ubiquitous Macs before but had not actually noted the credit. I find this amusing because Ancestry "optimizes" its site to work on PC's using Internet Explorer. Mac browsers simply cannot get all the functionality Ancestry offers. They get even less functionality than using a PC with Firefox. (Maybe they're running Windows on the Macs.)
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