Monday, October 5, 2015

Found: 1919 Obituary of Celia (Vaux) Munger and 1929 Obituary of Francis N. Munger

After I wrote Found: 1906 Death of Charles Woodward in Topeka, Kansas last week, I decided to open a 14-day free subscription to NewspaperARCHIVE.com to see if I could find some of the newspaper articles for my relatives that I saw in the list of MyHeritage Record Matches (which access NewspaperARCHIVES, but don't always show the actual newspaper page for some reason).  

Today, I found obituaries for my second great-grandaunt Celia Ann (Vaux) Munger (1842-1919) and her husband, Francis N. Munger (1845-1929), both of Belleville, Kansas.  Celia Ann (Vaux) Munger was the sister of my second great-grandmother, Abigail A. (Vaux) Smith (1844-1931).  The children of Francis and Celia (Vaux) Munger are my first cousins, three times removed, and their grandchildren are my second cousins, twice removed.  If one of their descendants takes an autosomal DNA test, I should match them with a measurable amount of DNA.

On NewspaperARCHIVE, I found the obituary of Francis N. Munger;  here are the search terms I used (knowing that he died in 1929):

*  First name = francis
*  Last name = munger
*  Key word = belleville 
*  start year = 1929
*  End year = 1929

There were 7 search results:



And further down the page are two entries for the same date and newspaper:


One of the matches would not open for some reason, but the other one did.

I clicked on the title of the newspaper and saw:


The page told me that this was Page 1 of the Belleville [Kansas] Telescope newspaper, dated 13 June 1929.  I could go full screen, save the page, zoom in or out, go to the previous page, go to the next page, etc. using the toolbar with the red background.  The top of the page is shown in the window, with the keywords with a yellow overlay.

I zoomed in (using my mouse wheel), scrolled down a bit, and found the obituary for Francis N. Munger:


I transcribed the obituary as:

"F.N. MUNGER, PIONEER, DEAD

"Civil War Veteran, Pioneer and Former Mayor, He Played Part in Growth of Belleville

"Francis (Frank) N. Munger, Civil war veteran and pioneer of Republic county, died here Sunday, June 9, at the age of nearly 84 years.

"Coming to Republic county he located at the west edge of what is now Belleville and played an important part in the early life of Belleville and Republic county, serving as the third mayor of this city in 1882.  For some years he was jailor and later bailiff in the district court.  He was a past commander of the local post of the G.A.R.

"Francis N. Munger was born in Wisconsin, July 14, 1845, and died at the home of his son George, on his old home farm, near Belleville, Kansas on Sunday, June 9, 1929, after an illness of some months at the age of 83 years, 10 months and 15 days.

"He moved with his parents to Missouri when a child and later came to Kansas at an early day, locating on the farm where he died.  He was married to Celia Vaux Redfield, April 27, 1872, who precede him in death ten years ago.  To this union was born three children, George F. Munger, and Lou Munger Doctor, of Belleville, and Amy Munger Doctor, of Olathe, Kansas, who with 12 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren and one brother, Henry Munger, of Woodrow, Colo., are left to mourn his deqath.

"Mr. Munger came to Belleville in 1876, being among the early settlers, where he engaged in business and later moved on a farm near town.  He later lived for a number of years at Lansing, Kansas, and then for three years in Colorado.  He enlisted at Springfield, Mo., and served in the cavalry in the Civil war for three years.  For a number of years Mr. Munger served as commander of the Belleville G.A.R. post and attended every decoration and memorial day service except this year when failing health would not permit.

"He obeyed the Gospel when a young man and became a member of the Christian church of Belleville.  The funeral was conducted from his late home Monday afternoon by Rev. Robertson with burial beside his wife in the Belleville cemetery.


"Mr. Munger was always kind in ministering to the sick before the time of nurses and up to the time he was unable to do so because of failing health.  He will be greatly missed by many old time friends and acquaintances."

The source citation for this obituary is:

"F.N. Munger, Pioneer, Dead," obituary, The Belleville (Kansas) Telescope, 13 June 1929, Page 1, column 3, Francis N. Munger obituary; digital image, NewspaperARCHIVE (http://www.NewspaperARCHIVE.com : accessed 5 October 2015).

I also found and transcribed the obituary for Celia Ann (Vaux) Munger:

"MRS. FRANK N. MUNGER

"Celia Anne Vaux was born at Buffalo, N.Y. May 23, 1844, and died at Belleville, Kansas, November 4, 1919, at the age of 75 years, 5 months and 10 days.

"She moved with her parents to the state of Wisconsin when about 12 years of age, where at Burnet, on January 1, 1861, she was married to Miles Redfield, and to this union two children were born, Nellie B. and Ada A., both have, with their father, preceded her in death.  Mr. Redfield dieing in 1867.  Then she moved to Empire Prairie, Mo., at which place she was united in marriage to Frank N. Munger on April 27, 1872, and to this union were born Geo. F., Amy M., and Lou M., who with their father and fourteen grandchildren, are left to mourn her death.  Mr. and Mrs. Munger came to Kansas in 1873, locating in Belleville and being among the early settlers, where he engaged in business and later moved to a farm near town.  They lived a number of years at Lansing, Kansas, an d then for three years in Colorado, returning to Belleville about three years ago.

"She gave herself to God when but a child and served him through the many years of her life.

"Funeral services at the Christian church Wednesday afternoon at 2:00 o'clock, burial in the Belleville cemetery."

These obituaries are fairly consistent as far as names, dates, and places.  I had most of the information in them previously, but added the two marriage dates provided.  There are some errors - "Miles"Redfield should be "Milo" Redfield, and Celia was born in 1842 and not in 1844.

Frank Munger was one of the early residents and the third Mayor of Belleville, and a Civil War veteran.  I wish he was my ancestor because he probably had a Civil War pension file.

One of the issues with the 14-day free trial of NewspaperARCHIVE is that you are allowed only 25 views of the actual newspaper pages.  I don't know if the number of views is limited if you have a paid subscription or not.

MyHeritage has a much better search of the NewspaperARCHIVE collection, but the OCR is usually badly mangled and you're lucky if the name is OCRed correctly.  Some of the newspaper page images on MyHeritage don't load in the image window.

Ancestry.com has some, but not all, of the newspapers in the NewspaperARCHIVE collection - they don't have the Belleville, Kansas papers, for instance.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2015/10/found-1919-obituary-of-celia-vaux.html

Copyright (c) 2015, Randall J. Seaver


Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post.  Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.


4 comments:

merleengholdston said...

Newspaper Archive is also available at Family History Centers in LDS churches, and the OCR search results shown are almost unintelligible. Is there a different search for subscribers?

Michelle Ganus Taggart said...

What a great find ! I am going to check them out.

Michelle Ganus Taggart said...

What a great find ! I am going to check them out.

kdduncan said...

Before you get involved with NewsaperArchive.com, do your homework. Check all the complaints against them and read all the fine print in their contract agreement. There are even complaints against them on their Facebook page that they never respond to. During the time that I was trapped in a subscription with them, there was no customer service. There was a phone number that no one ever answered. There was an answering machine connected with the number, but no phone calls were ever returned. All issues with their service had to be communicated by email. If you do subscribe or go for their free trial service, follow their instructions for unsubscribing to the letter. At that time, they required termination of a subscription to be communicated to them by email only, at least 72 hours prior to the subscription renewing, which is automatic. They do not send a reminder that your subscription is about to renew. You can contact them after it renews, and they will cancel it, but you won't get a refund. For most of the time that I had my subscription, their images were difficult to read, and their system was very clunky. At the time I left them, their subscription had become prohibitively high - $200/year, but their images had improved. If money is no object, then go for it - they do have a lot of newspapers that are not in any other databases. I keep hoping that someone else will take them over. They have a reasonably good product, so it is baffling that they treat their customers so poorly. All I can say is buyer beware.