Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Found: 1906 Death of Charles Woodward in Topeka, Kansas

After my small success yesterday finding the death of Eugene Woodward (1883-1895) in the Belleville [Kansas] Freeman newspaper on MyHeritage yesterday (see Found Death Record of a Cousin on MyHeritage), I looked for more articles about Charles Woodward (his father), Ada Woodward (his sister) and Nellie Woodward (his sister) in the MyHeritage collection.

The first article I found was in the Belleville [Kansas] Daily Freeman newspaper dated 13 December 1905 (MyHeritage accesses NewspaperARCHIVE newspapers):



The short notice says:

"Mrs. Dave Williams and Miss Nellie Woodward went to Topeka Sunday night where their father is dangerously sick. He was able to recognize them when they got there but has been unconscious ever since."

This is an excellent article for me - I had identified David Williams as the husband of Ada Woodward from census records, but had no marriage record to verify that.  

So I looked again on MyHeritage for an article about the death of Charles Woodward after December 1905.  I found an article in the Belleville [Kansas] Telescope newspaper dated 5 January 1906:



The OCT snippet is tantalizing - "...State Journal chronicles the death of Charles F. Woodward of  Topeka, a former well known..."  

The image would not come up for me.  I clicked on the orange "Full screen" button and saw:



I have tried this about 20 times in the past two days.  It NEVER comes up for me.  Drat.  Is this a problem with MyHeritage and/or NewspaperARCHIVE?  I don't know.

I went to Ancestry.com, which also has newspapers from NewspaperARCHIVE, and searched for Charles Woodward and Topeka in 1906.  The search capability of newspapers on Ancestry seems to be very limited.  I could not limit the list of newspapers to just Kansas.  I found no such article as the one above.

I went to NewspaperARCHIVE and noticed that they had a 14-day free trial, so I signed up (I had to give them a credit card number which will expire soon).  

A search in NewspaperARCHIVE Was successful - here is the death notice in the Belleville [Kansas] Telescope newspaper dated 5 January 1906:



The article says:

"CHARLES F. WOODWARD DEAD

"Wednesday's State Journal chronicles the death of Charles F. Woodward of topeka, a former well known and highly respected citizen of Republic county.  Mr. Woodward was Clerk of the Court of this county in 1878, and was a step son-in-law of F.N. Munger.  The family has the sympathy of his many friends in this part of the state in their bereavement."

So I gained a middle initial for Charles Woodward, and narrowed the date of death to the Wednesday before 5 January 1906.  That was a Friday, so the State Journal newspaper published on Wednesday, 3 January 1906 refines the death date to "before 3 January 1906" for me.  

Now I wonder if the State Journal newspaper is available online, perhaps at Chronicling America or another website.  I'm working through this slowly but surely.

Note to self:  opt out of the NewspaperARCHIVE account before 14 October to avoid the credit card charge.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2015/09/found-1906-death-of-charles-woodward-in.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.

3 comments:

The Down East Genealogist said...

I'm interested to see that you actually have an image on the page you see when you click on "Review Match." I never see an image there for NewspaperArchive matches; if I go to Full Screen, it's blank like yours but without the "No Preview" label. It's pretty annoying because I have to download each page in order to see the actual image. The download button does at least work, however. Does the download not function when you get the "No Preview" message?

Geolover said...

Failure to find the newspaper items on Ancestry.com was not due to search-engine problems. Ancestry.com just does not have the pertinent newspapers.

Randy Seaver said...

Dear Down East Genealogist,

I didn't know that you could use the Download icon on MyHeritage and save the image for a page that shows as blank or "No Preview" from NewspaperARCHIVE. That worked for me with the "No Preview" notice also.

THANK YOU! I don't feel so bad now about canceling the NewspaperARCHIVE subsciption now. The MyHeritage search is so much better than the NewspaperARCHIVE search.