Mining the NewspaperARCHIVE Collection on MyHeritage Record Matches

I noted in Mining More Record Matches on MyHeritage on 27 March 2015 that I had many more Record Matches to review.  As most Genea-Musings readers know, a "Record Match" in MyHeritage is a record that MyHeritage thinks applies to a person in my MyHeritage family tree - the MyHeritage search system did this automagically while I slept, blogged or watched the baseball game.

Every once in awhile, I go in and "mine" one of these collections - in other words, search for information in records that I do not have for persons in my family tree database, and add content and a source citation to my database.

Today, I noticed that MyHeritage had 666 Record Matches for me from the NewspaperArchive collection on MyHeritage.  I don't have a subscription to NewspaperArchive, but MyHeritage provides images and OCR transcriptions to records in the collection.  The process for capturing information from this collection on MyHeritage is fairly straightforward:

1)  On the list of Record Matches from the NewspaperARCHIVE collection, I saw an item for the marriage of Helen Josephine Hosford and Cecil A. Munger in Belleville, Kansas:

I looked in my family tree database, and don't have a source citation for this marriage - this is an opportunity to add one to the database.

2)  I clicked on the link for the record, and saw information about the newspaper, the issue date, and an image of the newspaper page (two screens shown):

I could see that the wedding article was in two columns, I could zoom in one level but the article still wasn't easy to read.  I didn't see a way to download the page from the screen above.

3)  I clicked on the orange "Full screen" button and saw:

There is a Download icon (the down arrow icon in the black header next to the orange "Exit full screen" button).  I clicked that, and was able to save the page as a PDF file.

I opened the PDF file, and zoomed into the article and was able to read it easily:

From here, I used my Windows Snipping Tool to snip the two parts of the article and saved the snippets to my file for the Munger family.  Next, I transcribed the article into the marriage event Note in my family tree database, and crafted a source citation for the event.  Here is my source citation crafted using the "Newspapers, Online Images" source template in RootsMagic 7:

"Munger-Hosford," wedding announcement, The Belleville (Kansas) Telescope, 10 July 1930, page 5, column 4, marriage of Helen Josephine Hosford and Cecil A. Munger, 25 June 1930; digital images, MyHeritage.com (http://www.myheritage.com : accessed 12 May 2015), citing NewspaperARCHIVE (http://www.NewspaperARCHIVE.com) collection.

4)  Back on the MyHeritage Record Match screen for the item, I clicked on the "Confirm" button below the page image.  A popup box told me that the "Record Match Confirmed":

Then I could extract information into my MyHeritage family tree for this event (two screens below):

I clicked the right arrow to include the information and the source, and then clicked the light green "Save to tree" and the record was attached to the two person profiles in the marriage event.

5)  These Record Matches of NewspaperARCHIVE articles in the MyHeritage system are really useful to add detail and context to persons in my family tree.  When you find a newspaper, like the Belleville [Kansas] Telescope, you can really find some gems for your ancestral families and relatives.  

One caveat:  Because these matches are found based on OCR (Optical Character Recognition), the matches are not always correct.  I've found that the accuracy rate is about 50% for the NewspaperARCHIVE collection on MyHeritage.  However, it is still easier to use these Record Matches than to blindly search every digital newspaper archive website for nuggets. 

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2015/05/mining-newspaperarchive-collection-on.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.

Tuesday's Tip - A Digital Newspaper Archive Database - UPDATED

This week's Tuesday's Tip is:  Use a Digital Newspaper Archive Database in spreadsheet format to find digitized newspapers for your community of interest.

Genea-Musings reader Ronny emailed two weeks ago offering me a spreadsheet that he compiled from the holdings of several online digitized historical newspaper providers, such as Ancestry.com, GenealogyBank, Newspapers.com, NewspaperArchive, Elephind, Old Fulton Postcards, Google News Archive, and others.  If the newspaper is at a commercial site, you need a subscription or you could find a library that provides access to the site.

Ronny noted in his email:

"I got tired of hunting various sites to figure out if a town I was hunting had any newspaper archives available so I made a spreadsheet that now has over 13,000 collections, mainly from Genealogy Bank, Newspapers.com, Newspaperarchive.com, Ancestry.com, Old Fulton Post Cards, Google News Archives and Elephind. Though there are a few others included as well. I don't have a web site but would love to share the collection with others. I think if more people utilized newspaper archives, it would help break down some brick walls. "

He wanted me to somehow make it public and offer it to the genealogy world for him without charge to users.  I thought this was a great idea, and after a little thought, I uploaded it to a Google Drive file, and made it shareable.

 The updated link is:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1cdsFRokSx_RnpqUjQwanJvNlk/view?usp=sharing

When you open the link, only the first page of the spreadsheet shows up (I'm not an expert at Google Drive, apparently!).

There is a download icon at the top of the page (the down arrow icon) where the complete spreadsheet can be downloaded to your computer.  The file size is 1.430 megabytes.  It downloads as an .xlsx file, which most spreadsheet programs should be able to read.

When you open the file in your spreadsheet program (I use LibreOffice Calc), the top of the spreadsheet starts with Alabama newspapers in alphabetical city order:

Line 13,461 of the spreadsheet is for Wright, Wyoming:

The column headings are:

A:  State
B:  City
C.  County
D:  Title
E.  Date Range
F:  Earliest Date
G:  Latest Date:
H:  Site (with link to the website, not the specific newspaper)
I:  Pay Site or Free
J:  # of Issues
K:  Items

This is offered to Genea-Musings readers free of charge and as is.  It may or may not be updated in the future.

NOTE:  Some of the links in the "Site" are incorrect.  I will try to get Ronny to fix them.

My thanks to Ronny for creating this spreadsheet - this was a labor of love, and is freely offered to Genea-Musings readers.

UPDATE 13 May 2015:  On 12 May 2015, Miriam J. Robbins, who has the Online Historical Newspapers website with similar content to Ronny's spreadsheet, was concerned that Ronny had copied some or all of her information to his spreadsheet.  When I was notified of this, I took this blog post down until the issue could be resolved.  Ronny informed me and Miriam that he had deleted Miriam's data from his spreadsheet before he sent it to me (and others), and that none of Ronny's information included Miriam's information.  Miriam double checked this, and found that this was the case.  So I am reinstating the blog post.

Ronny updated the spreadsheet after I noted that some of the links were erroneous, and the updated spreadsheet has been substituted for the first one in the link above.  The updated link is:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1cdsFRokSx_RnpqUjQwanJvNlk/view?usp=sharing

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2015/05/tuesdays-tip-digital-newspaper-archive.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.

Tuesday's Tip - California Digital Newspaper Collection

This week's Tuesday's Tip is:  For California historical newspapers, check out the California Digital Newspaper Collection (CDNC) at http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cdnc.

The home page provides information about the collection:

"This collection contains 59,822 issues comprising 534,354 pages and 6,224,759 articles.  The California Digital Newspaper Collection is a project of the Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research (CBSR) at the University of California, Riverside."

You can see the list of titles, and years available, here.

I entered "Joseph Whittle" (with quote marks for exact word order) in the screen above and clicked the Search button.  The results came in a list with the search terms highlighted:

I scrolled down a bit and clicked on one of the matches:

The linked article is highlighted, and the search terms are highlighted in yellow in the article.  I used the zoom icons (or the mouse wheel) to magnify the image.  I could move around the image using the left mouse button.  I could save the page by right-clicking on the page image and selecting "PDF of this page" and then saving it to my computer files.

This site is one of several that I use to find historical California newspaper images for my Seaver and Leland family history research.

The URL for this post is:

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

First Look at Newspapers.com Subscription Site

After receiving the press release for the Ancestry.com announcement of the www.Newspapers.com subscription website, I signed up for the 7-day free trial.

1)  Here is the home page:

There are links at the top of the page for Home, Search, Browse, Papers and Clippings.

2)  I wondered how many newspapers, and from which states, there were in the collection, so I clicked on the "Papers" link:

There are currently 819 newspapers in the collection.  The small map on the left of the screen above shows coverage, with bright red in Texas apparently the most.  I clicked on California on the map and saw:

The list of California newspapers is in three columns on the screen above.

3)  I clicked on New York state on the map, and on that page, I entered "seaver" in the search field at the top of the page.  I also clicked on the "Show advanced" button and added a date range to the "Year Range" search field (trying to avoid pitcher Tom Seaver!).  I could have added a specific location name in the "Place" field:

4)  I clicked on the first search result on the list - an article from the New York Times in 1997:

5)  The small "What are you looking for" popup window notes how many matches to the search terms are in this particular newspaper page.  There are seven, and I clicked through to number 3 of 7.

Up at the top of the page, the newspaper name, issue date and page number are listed, and there are links for Find, Clip, Print/Save and Share.  I can Print all or part of the page, or Save all or part of the page to a file on my computer.

6)  I clicked on the "Clip" link and was able to draw a rectangle around the particular clipping of interest.  The Clipping popup window lets me annotate this clipping.  When I click on the blue "Clip" button, the clipping is saved within my account.  I can see it by clicking on the blue "See the clipping" button::

The clipping was added to the "Clipped by" listing on the right column.  It appears that each clipping has its own URL - the URL for the one above is http://www.newspapers.com/clip/220/.

I can Share the clipping on Facebook, Tweet on Twitter, or Pin on Pinterest using the social media icons on the title line of the clipping.  I can right-click on the clipping and copy the clipping, or save the clipping to a file on my computer.

This looks like a pretty good excellent Search, Clip and Save process.

My concern is that the holdings in this site are very limited at present.  There are 819 newspapers, with over 25 million pages digitized in the collection.  In the grand scheme of things, this is a really small collection.  GenealogyBank advertises over 6,400 newspapers with over 1.3 billion records.  NewspaperARCHIVE (which Ancestry.com includes within their historical records collection) has over 5,000 newspaper titles and 120 million newspaper pages.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/11/first-look-at-newspapercom-subscription.html

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

GenealogyBank has a new face

One of my favorite genealogy subscription websites has a new "face" - they've changed how they look, and have made some changes with how it works.

Here is the home page for GenealogyBank (two screens):

The signed-in user can start a global search immediately by putting names into the last name and first name search fields.  Or the user can scroll down a bit and pick from a state (and then from a specific newspaper if desired) or a specific record set (Newspapers, 1690-present; Historical Documents (1789-1994); Historical Books (1801-1900); Social Security Death Index (1937-present) - free access!).

The list of newspapers available on GenealogyBank is at http://www.genealogybank.com/gbnk/newspapers/sourcelist/.

The "About Us" page for GenealogyBank says:

"GenealogyBank is a leading online genealogical resource from NewsBank, inc. Featuring a wealth of exclusive material-including modern obituaries and historical newspapers, books, pamphlets, military records, government documents and more - GenealogyBank helps you discover fascinating information about your family history.

"GenealogyBank's 6,100+ historical newspapers include letters, speeches, opinion pieces, advertisements, hometown news, photographs, illustrations and more. These unique primary documents go beyond names and dates, providing first-hand accounts that simply aren't available from census or vital records alone. With GenealogyBank, you'll get a glimpse into the triumphs, troubles and everyday experiences of your American ancestors.

"In addition to more than 300 years of extensive coverage, GenealogyBank features a streamlined interface and fast, accurate searching, allowing researchers of any level to easily track lost ancestors and uncover previously hard-to-find family history information."

I entered Devier Smith into the search fields on the screen above, and received several matches:

When I clicked on the one Newspaper match, I found a listing of the matches (up to 10 on a page) and a snippet view of the matches:

At the bottom of the results page above, I could edit my search with information about the last name, first name, include keywords, exclude keywords, date, and added since [date].

When I clicked on the one match on the screen above, the newspaper page appeared with the requested last name and first name highlighted:

The search is still a search for word combinations within two words of each other on the same page.  The "Search Tips" link describes it like this:

"Using both name search fields returns newspaper articles in which the surname is automatically "near2" the first name.

• This means the newspaper archive search engine automatically finds occurrences of the first and last names within two words of each other.
• This helps to find occurrences of middle names or initials in the newspaper articles, without having to enter or remember them.
• The "near2" search command is not order specific—meaning your newspaper search will retrieve the person's name no matter in what order it is mentioned: the first name then last name or the last name then first name.
• This search default is intended to bring you the most occurrences of the name you are searching for in the online newspaper archives."

For common names, the Search Tips recommend that the user enter information into the other fields.  for instance, when I search for the Seaver surname, I exclude the words "Tom" and "baseball" just to avoid results for Tom Seaver.

I like the new "look" and "feel" of the GenealogyBank site.  I especially like that up to 10 matches are displayed on the results page now - it used to be only 5.  Actually, I would prefer more - like 20 or 50!

Disclosure:  I know Tom Kemp personally, he is a distant Richmond cousin of mine.  I was given a free membership to the site several years ago and use it regularly.  This does not affect my use or review of the site.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/06/genealogybank-has-new-face.html

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

Small Town Papers now FREE to access

I received this in email from Paul Jeffko of Small Town Papers today:

"I wanted to let you know that we are making the SmallTownPapers Collection available free. Instead of a membership fee paywall, we are working with Google on a new monetization model they developed for publishers (like us) that have high-value premium content. Anyone can gain access to our content by answering a survey question.

"Google calls the system a "micro-survey". They have customers who pay them to conduct market research. We earn revenue from each user completed survey. Each "survey" is a single or sometimes a 2-part question. For each new page loaded, users will answer a survey question, which takes only a few seconds.

"To access the available free content, users visit www.smalltownpapers.com, select a title, then look for the link "Scanned Archives of ... <title> ". From there you can search or browse the available archives. There are about a half a million pages available now, and we are adding thousands of pages daily.

"All of the pages and corresponding OCR text are also indexed by Google, so users can do a Google Advanced Search along with "Newspaper Archive of <title>".

"Users are invited to contact us about specific titles found on the SmallTownPapers website that they would like to have more pages made available. For example, if a user wants more pages for the "Shelton-Mason County Journal" from say, 1965, they can let us know and we'll attempt to get those pages uploaded."

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/05/small-town-papers-now-free-to-access.html

More Goodies from the San Diego Newspapers on GenealogyBank

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After the tremendous find yesterday that many years of the San Diego Union and Evening Tribune historical newspapers were recently added to GenealogyBank (see Tuesday's Tip - San Diego Newspapers on GenealogyBank  and The Carringer Gardens in 1935), spent several hours last night capturing interesting tidbits of news about my three Carringer families in San Diego from about 1895 to 1943.  I was like a kid in a candy shop...it was truly a Forrest Gump genealogy moment for me as I found one helpful and interesting tidbit after another.  For the Carringer surname in just the San Diego Union newspaper, there were 183 matches alone!  I didn't capture all of them, and there were some that the image would not come up for me.

Two that I had not seen previously included:

1)  The wedding announcement of my grandparents, Lyle L. Carringer and Emily K. Auble (appeared on page 8 of the San Diego Union newspaper edition dated 21 June 1918):

2)  A list of marriage licenses from page 8 of the San Diego Union newspaper edition dated 21 June 1918)::

I did not have either one of these articles previously.  The wedding announcement article sheds more light on Lyle's Marine Corps service, the wedding service itself, and their first home (that was new for me!). 

Tonight, the quandary for me is:  should I work on my Family History Fair presentation handouts or go mining for more articles on my other families in the GenealogyBank treasure chest?  What do you think I'm going to do? 

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/01/more-goodies-from-san-diego-newspapers.html

Copyright (c) Randall J. Seaver, 2012.

The Carringer Gardens in 1935

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I posted Tuesday's Tip - San Diego Newspapers on GenealogyBank this morning, and wanted to go searching for more, but I had some non-blogging and non-research tasks to work on. 

After a torturous afternoon of updating and adding slides to my Genealogy Is Fun! Seriously! presentation, I decided to go searching for more interesting family history material this afternoon. 

Lookee here!  What a wonderful family history item!  From the San Diego Union, dated 24 March 1935, on page 18 (accessed on www.GenealogyBank.com):

And a more readable snippet:

A transcription:

Carringer Gardens, Model of Beauty, Have Also Wealth of Entertainment

By Ada Perry

Mr. and Mrs. Lyle L. Carringer, 2130 Fern st., are never bored with their garden.  They have four fish pools in it filled with finny pets that are always on the move.  Sometimes they move out on the grass but the Carringers chalk this up to playfulness and continue to enjoy the aquatic aspects of their home.

The Carringer place is distinctly in the livable small garden or outdoor living room class.  The pools are strategically located to invite folks outdoors for pleasure and relaxation.  One pool, the smallest, is placed near the rear door of the house as a starting point.  From there to a sunny larger pool planted to lilies and overhung with shrubs is a natural step.

Other parts of the garden planted in flowers, cacti and succulents and several fruit trees are easily accessible from the second pool and then the Carringers and their friends naturally gravitate to a lath house furnished with chairs and tables.

There are sources of amusement in the lath house.  The remaining pools are located there.  One is a rill in the heart of a pretty rockery and the other a shadowy oval presided over by a rice plant with curving stalks topped with leaves like giant hands.  Directly above the pool a tree rests apparently on the water.  The invisible stand which holds it up represents some clever household ingenuity.  It was formerly a piano stool.

A grill is built at the end of the lath house on a rock structure.  The grill space can be filled with a decorative potted plant when not in use although the Carringers have found it a consistent entertainer.

Next the grill in a glass house annex is a surprise feature.  On shelves are aquariums filled with tropical fish, paradise, moons, guppies and other fancy swimmers weaving about in grassy water jungles; blinking, gobbling and raising families in the most distracting style.  The glass house is heated for them and each aquarium has individual radiators and thermometers for perfect comfort.

Tropical aquariums are often kept indoors but the Carringers have theirs handy to the pools where fish life from goldfish to guppies can be observed.  Certain of the tropicals are moved to the goldfish pools at favorable times for variety.

This is the best description of my grandparents gardens, fish pools and lath house that I've seen.  I played in this garden as a child, but I don't recall all of these details.  When I was 9 years old, they sold this house and the gardens to Mr. Phillips, and he put a wall around it and we never ventured into it again.  I would love to go back and see if the pools and lath house are still there.

My grandfather was a very talented man, and my grandmother was a world class flower arranger.  I'm not surprised that they did this in their backyard.  After all, what was there to do for entertainment without television during the Great Depression?  They enjoyed their backyard, read books, discussed issues, listened to the radio, and worked on their collections. 

I wonder what else I can find?  Indexed newspapers are a Godsend for genealogists - thank you, GenealogyBank?

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/01/carringer-gardens-in-1935.html

Copyright (c) Randall J. Seaver, 2012

Tuesday's Tip - San Diego Newspapers on GenealogyBank

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This week's Tuesday's Tip will be exciting for all San Diego area researchers - GenealogyBank has some early 20th century San Diego newspapers online!

The commercial genealogy historical newspaper website (it has more than newspapers too!), GenealogyBank, has added three San Diego area newspapers to their large collection of historical newspapers:

*  San Diego Union - 1 July 1898 to 31 October 1934

*  San Diego Evening Tribune - 4 December 1895 to 30 September 1936

*  San diego Union-Tribune -- 7 December 1983 to present

These are, I think, the first large San Diego area newspapers added to a large historical newspaper collection.  Heretofore, researchers had to go to the San Diego Public Library to read the newspapers on microfilm.  There is a limited index available on microfiche at the San Diego Public Library (and other San Diego area libraries) for the San Diego Union newspaper for the years 1868 to 1915, and 1930 to 1985. 

I entered the Last Name = "carringer" and the Keyword = "diego" into the GenealogyBank search field and found, as match #29 out of 218, an article in the 8 June 1897 San Diego Evening Tribune on page 1:

The short part of the article in the "Local notes" section is:

Now I know when my great-grandparents started building the house that I grew up in. 

There are many more articles available about my Carringer, Auble and Smith ancestors in San Diego.  Perhaps they will shed some light and provide new information about their lives.  I'm going to have a lot of fun going through this collection today!

Thank you, GenealogyBank!

Disclosure:  I received, and continue to enjoy, a free subscription to GenealogyBank in recent years.  Genealogist Tom Kemp is the Director of Genealogy Products at GenealogyBank, which is part of the NewsBank organization.  I love the site and had hoped that San Diego area newspapers would be added!

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/01/tuesdays-tip-san-diego-newspapers-on.html

Copyright (c) Randall J. Seaver, 2012.

Visiting the Beaver Dam (Wisconsin) Community Library

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I described my research activities in the Beaver Dam (Wisconsin) Community Library in Day 10 of the Seaver Family History Mystery Tour.

I took some pictures of some of the records that I searched there:

1)  Here is the entrance to the Beaver Dam Community Library at 311 North Spring Street in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin:

2)  As soon as we entered, I asked Anita, a library employee, where the genealogy and local history section was located.  She guided me to the area which has two desks in front of some general genealogy books, and several bookcases with local history material.  There were also two microfilm reader and printer units in the area, and a cabinet full of Dodge County newspaper microfilms. 

Here is a picture of the desk area with the notebook for the indexed Dodge County Citizen newspaper index for 1856 to 1914:

3)  A look in the Dodge County Citizen newspaper index for pages with "Smith" is below:

The index has listings for births, marriages, deaths, anniversaries and probates, but not for general newspaper articles.  Unfortunately, my Devier, Mary and Ranslow Smith were not included.   Needless to say, this is a tremendous resource for Dodge County newspapers! 

4)  The bookcases opposite the desks have more local history records.  The photo below is of the bookcase with the Dodge County newspaper indexes, cemetery indexes, plat maps (1859 to the present), and telephone books:

The library has published a guide to the Beaver Dam Community Library Genealogy and Local History Collection.  The online version is at http://www.cityofbeaverdam.com/department/division.asp?fDD=16-149.

The guide provides listings of other local genealogy and local history resources, including research libraries, vital records, and local history.  Anita suggested that I should visit the Dodge County Historical Society in Beaver Dam, and I'm glad I did because that's where I obtained the photo of Ranslow Smith's Four-Mile Inn taken in 1930.

Anita sent me links via email to:

*  History of Dodge County, Wisconsin (1880) http://www.archive.org/details/historyofdodgeco00chic

*  Dodge County, Wisconsin: Past and Present (1913) http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/wch&CISOPTR=24777&CISOSHOW=23777

*  The Dodge County Citizen Index, is online at  http://www.cityofbeaverdam.com/egov/docs/1314044996720.htm

Genealogy research would be a whole lot easier in every county if volunteers and library staff had done as much work as the Beaver Dam and Dodge County local historians.  This is a gold mine for Dodge County, Wisconsin researchers.

My thanks to Anita for her help in my searches, and for having a great library to visit. 

I'm almost ready now to go research!

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In How do I catch up to 13 years of genealogy sloth? I lamented that I had fallen behind in keeping track of the genealogy and family history resources that I have in my possession, and knowing what resources were available to seek out for my ancestral families.

Please understand that much of my "research" is really finding what has already been published, hopefully by competent researchers.  My "real research" uses that information as a starting point, and tries to find original source records to verify the information, and to find new information (especially probate, land, tax, and other records not available in online databases).  I tend to rely on "authoritative" and "reliable" sources for ancestral families (e.g., The Great Migration Begins, Mayflower Families), especially those in the early colonial time period and before.  There are not enough years to check all of the records available in New England and England personally! 

Two weeks ago, I set a goal to get my "Source Reference Lists" in order, and to update my "Books and Journals to Review List."  I finished those today.  I took these steps:

1)  Went through my piles of "to-be-filed" papers and entered the source on my Source Reference Lists. 

2)  Used Martin Hollick's book, New Englanders in the 1600s, to add content for my colonial New England families and most of my colonial New Jersey families.  Martin's book indexes published genealogical research from 1980 to 2005 for New England families, and is invaluable!  I added items to my "Books to Review: list, noting author, title, and volume/page numbers.  I did the same thing for periodicals, separating them into three categories - the New England Historic Genealogical Register, The American Genealogist, and all other periodicals. 

3)  Edited and printed the lists, and put them in my master research notebook.  They are also in a file on my flash drive and my laptop, which is going to the Midwest with me.

What I don't have is a complete listing of resources by family before 1980 or since 2005.  Oh well, I only had two weeks! 

I don't have listings of resources for non-New England locations for my surnames either, but nearly all of my ancestral families, and brick walls, are in New England, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. 

I am going to check PERSI (the Periodical Source Index) for my brick wall surnames (well, not Smith...) and for many of my localities outside of New England and see what is available.

The primary research repository on this trip is the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where I plan to be on Monday, 12 September.  I only planned for one day, so I'm going to go for the "low hanging fruit" of the periodicals that I cannot easily access here in San Diego, and the recently published books that I find to be authoritative and well-sourced.

At the Watertown, Wisconsin Library and the Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, Community Library, I'm going to search for local newspapers in the 1840 to 1870 time period that might have information about my Devier J. Lanphear Smith and the Samuel Vaux family.  I'm particularly interested in Devier's marriage in 1861 and his name official change in 1866.  Perhaps there will be leads there about his birth parents.  Or not.

At the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison, I will ask about the court records for Devier's name change in 1866, look for "vertical files" for my Smith, Vaux and Seaver families, and search local newspapers for information about my wife's Norwegian families, plus cemetery transcriptions and information about the towns they settled in (Cottage Grove and Deerfield.  I only have one day here, so I will do a survey first and then search the most promising leads.

Then we will visit the towns where the Leland/Natvig homesteads were located, and visit the churches and cemeteries that they worshipped in and are buried in.  I need to look for local historical societies also, if they exist.

Finally, we'll visit Old World Wisconsin in Eagle, Wisconsin where the Ranslow Smith Four-Mile Inn has been relocated and refurbished in their living history collection.  Ranslow Smith was the adoptive father of Devier J. Smith.  Devier grew up in this Inn, and ran the livery stable when he was a young man.  I hope that they have the stable at OWW! 

I'm almost ready to go!  Blogging may be light...

Content from SmallTownPapers and Gannett Leaving Fold3

I received this news from Fold3 via email:

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Content from SmallTownPapers and Gannett Leaving Fold3

On September 15^th we will be removing from Fold3 some of the newspapers that came from two of our partners, SmallTownPapers^® and Gannett.  This is due to contractual issues and we have no plans to remove any other content from the site.

Here are a few questions that you may have about this change:

Which titles will be removed and which will still be available on Fold3?

All titles from SmallTownPapers and Gannett will be removed.  Nearly all of these titles are from our newspaper collection.  To help you see which titles will be affected, we've collected those that will be removed into a category called "SmallTownPapers and Gannett" in the "Other Records" category of the browse on the site until they are removed on the 15^th.

Only titles from SmallTownPapers and Gannett will be removed and we will still have great historical newspapers on the site including The Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, The Atlanta Constitution and The London Times.

What about images from these titles that I have added to my Gallery or downloaded?

All Gannett images will be removed from the site and will no longer be accessible on Fold3. From the SmallTownPapers collection, we have negotiated ongoing rights to images to which users have contributed (for example, bookmarked, commented on, annotated, spotlighted or added to their Gallery or to a memorial page). All other SmallTownPapers images will be removed from the site. Of course this will not affect any copies of images you have downloaded to your hard drive.

How does this affect other titles on Fold3?

This only affects titles from SmallTownPapers and Gannett. We have ongoing rights to all the other titles on the site and have no plans to remove any other content.

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I appreciate Fold3.com providing this information, and I'm glad that the five newspapers mentioned are still included in the Fold3 historical collections.

The Small Town Papers site is free to access (www.smalltownnewspapers.com).

disclosure:  I have a fully paid subscription to Fold3.com (formerly Footnote.com) and have received no benefits from them for writing this post.

Planning for my visit to Dodge County, Wisconsin

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On our Midwest vacation in September, I plan to visit Dodge County, Wisconsin to search for records pertaining to two of my ancestral families - the Devier J. Lanphear Smith family, the Samuel Vaux family, and any Lanphear families.  They both owned land in Burnett township in Dodge County, according to the 1860 plat map I have of Burnett and Oak Grove townships. 

My goals in Dodge County are:

1)  Visit the Ranslow Smith home location:

As I noted in The Four-Mile House of Ranslow Smith in January 2008, and in Santa comes early - what a gift! in December 2007, Ranslow Smith (1805-1875) built the Four-Mile House in Rolling Prairie (a village in southern Burnett township), and this is where his adopted son grew up.  The restored Four-Mile House is now located at Old World Wisconsin, near Eagle, and I plan to visit there also on this trip.  I described the 40-page portion of a larger typescript, commissioned by Old World Wisconsin, in the earlier post.  This typescript has maps of Burnett township showing the location of three Smith homes, including Ranslow Smith's, plus a small plat map of Rolling Prairie showing the exact location of the Four-Mile House in 1860.  This small plat map shows the Hotel at the southwest corner of Beaver Dam Road and Smith Street (the street running north-south named Watertown Road in the 1873 plat map).  I don't have digital images of these maps for my use, so I will scan them on Sunday at Scanfest.

The image below is from Google Maps satellite view of the area:

From my evaluation, I think that the typescript indicates that the Four-Mile House was located on the southwest corner at the intersection of County Road 1 (running vertically on the map above, on the left of the image) and Prospect Road (the horizontal road about 35% of the way up the image, just above the railroad that runs nearly horizontally at the bottom of the picture).  I think those roads used to be Beaver Dam Road and Smith Street on the 1860 plat map.

Obviously, the Four-Mile House is not there any longer, but I still want to visit the site as best I can.

2)  Cemetery Visits

I went looking in Find-a-Grave for Smith and Vaux persons buried in cemeteries near Burnett.  I found Ranslow's wife Mary Smith, Devier's adoptive mother, and Walter T. Vaux, a nephew of Samuel Vaux, buried in Burnett Corners Cemetery several miles north of their homesteads.  I printed out the pages for the cemetery, which has a map and directions to the cemetery.  I also captured images of the gravestones and entered the source into my RootsMagic database.

3)  Local Newspapers

What newspapers were published in Dodge county, Wisconsin in the 1840 to 1870 time period?  I went to the Library of Congress Chronicling America website and clicked on their link for "Search U.S. NewspaperDirectory, 1690 to Present" and found 29 newspapers that published in that time frame.  Here's a screen capture of the first 20:

From this, I can determine which newspapers were published for specific dates in specific places.  Unfortunately, the Chronicling America site does not have any newspapers digitized in Wisconsin yet.

How do I find if these newspapers are available in a library or archive, and where are they located?

I went to the Dodge County, Wisconsin USGenWeb site (http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~widodge/) and they had a link for "Dodge County Newspapers."  What a wonderful resource!  This lists the newspapers published in the county history, the issues available, and the location of print or microfilm pages, and if indexes are available.

Likely candidates include:

*  Beaver Dam Argus - English language paper: 7 Dec 1860 - 12 Jul 1956.
Microfilm available from the Beaver Dam Community Library, 311 N. Spring St., 920-887-4631. This paper is indexed, though the index is not on microfilm, but in book form at the library.

*  Dodge County Citizen - English language paper: 10 Apr 1856 - 16 Apr 1924.
Microfilm available from the Beaver Dam Community Library, 311 N. Spring St., 920-887-4631. This paper is partially indexed.

*  Republican & Sentinel - (English language?) paper: 10 Feb 1853 - 5 Mar 1857.
Microfilm available from the Beaver Dam Community Library, 311 N. Spring St., 920-887-4631. This paper is indexed.

*  Dodge County Gazette - English language paper for Dodge Center: May to June 9, 1852.
Microfilm available from the Wisconsin State Historical Society through interlibrary loan.

*  Horicon Argus - English language paper for Horicon: 7 September 1854 - 30 November 1860.
Microfilm available from the Wisconsin State Historical Society through interlibrary loan.

*  Horicon Gazette - English language paper for Horicon: 9 January 1861 - 1 January 1862.
Microfilm available from the Wisconsin State Historical Society through interlibrary loan.

*  The Watertown Library has copies of The Democrat, The Republican and The Watertown Daily Times dating back to the 1850's. They are all indexed. They are not specific to Dodge Co. but do have whatever Dodge Co. residents live in and near Watertown.

Uh oh, that gives me weeks of work to do, I fear!  Or I could hire a researcher there.  Fortunately, the Four-Mile House typescript lists many articles from these newspapers that refer to Ranslow Smith, but I'm really interested in the Devier J. Lanphier Smith and Abigail Vaux family (my second great-grandparents), who married there and had their first three children thereDevier's age, and perhaps his birth parents and potential siblings.  News of the Samuel Vaux family will be sought also. 

It looks like a visit to the Beaver Dam Community Library is mandatory, and then there's the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison and the Watertown Library.  I probably need more than two days to do this, so I'll need to prioritize places and details.  And make a later visit if I run out of time.

4)  Review Family History books, Local History books, Maps, cemetery transcriptions/indexes, and vertical files at the Beaver Dam library for Smith, Vaux and Lanphear persons. 

5)  What else should I do in Dodge County?  I welcome your ideas! 

My next step is to review the local libraries for open hours, location, and access restrictions (do they permit digital cameras, notebooks, laptops, flash drives, etc.).  Then I'll look at the Madison, Deerfield, and Eagle, Wisconsin areas to prepare for the trip.

One thing I need to firm up is possible hotels in Dodge County for at least a one night stay.  We have the AAA book.  If you have any ideas, please let me know!  I figure Watertown or Beaver Dam are the closest to Burnett.

As you can see, I have used online resources extensively this morning (yes, all this morning in about two hours) to find the material above.  I find that by writing it on my blog, in an organized way, and saving images and web pages to my computer (and to my laptop), I can organize my plans quickly, and can ask my readers to contribute information and resources that I've overlooked or not thought about.

Tuesday's Tip - Use the Google News Archive Search

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This week's Tuesday's Tip is:  Use the Google News Archive Search (http://news.google.com/archivesearch/)  feature to find newspaper articles to enhance your family history research. 

The Google News Archive searches some (but not all!) historical and current newspapers for your search query terms.  There are several types of content:

*   Content that is accessible to all users (such as BBC News, Time Magazine and Guardian)
*  Content that requires a fee (such as Washington Post Archives, Newspaper Archive, and New York Times Archives).
*  Content from newspapers in the Google  News Archive Partner Program.

See the Google News Archive Help page at http://news.google.com/archivesearch/help.html for more information.

One of the key features is the "Timeline" that appears at the top of the search results:

The user can see the time periods for search results of the search query terms.  The user can click on a decade in the timeline to narrow the search to that time period. 

There is an Advanced Search query form that permits narrowing the search to specific words and phrases, a date range, a language, a specific source, etc. 

The biggest benefit to my research has been finding free newspaper content in recently published newspapers and in historical newspapers (e.g., the New York Times before 1923). 

Many of the websites that require payment offer a snippet of information from the article.  Those articles are helpful - they tell me that there is an article of interest, and that I can obtain it by paying for it online or by visiting a repository that holds the newspaper/magazine in question (for instance, my local library has the New York Times on microfilm). 

The Google News Archive is just one of many newspaper resources available to the family history researcher.  Some are freely available, and some require a subscription to access the articles.  Some subscription sites are available at a local library (some are online with a library card).

The URL for this post is http://www.geneamusings.com/2011/06/tuesdays-tip-use-google-news-archive.html

(c) 2011. Randall J. Seaver. All Rights Reserved. If you wish to re-publish my content, please contact me for permission, which I will usually grant. If you are reading this on any other genealogy website, then they have stolen my work.

Where is the Old Fulton NY History Site?

I was putting my presentation together for my CVGS Research Group meeting on Newspapers tomorrow, and when I clicked on my Bookmark for the Old Fulton County NY History site with old postcards and newspapers (http://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html) I got:

Ruh-roh...what happened?  Did it move?  If so, where?  Did they not pay their provider?  Did someone swallow it up behind a firewall?  Does anyone know?  Is there someone to contact? 

A Google search revealed no announcement or comment about the site.  It would be a shame to lose this site.

UPDATE:  The commenters Roger and Norman and Karen Leverich (in a Facebook comment) cleared this yup - the link is now http://www.fultonhistory.com/fulton.html .  And Charley G clarified it is not Fulton County but the town of Fulton in Oswego County... Thank you all!

William Seaver's Murder in 1821 - the 1866 Confession: Part 2

On 15 March, I posted "A Horrid Murder" in Alexandria.  The newspaper article about his murder on 6 July 1821 was lurid, but what happened after that?  On 17 March, I wrote William Seaver's Murder in 1821 - a Reward Offered - by the President of the United States, and three mayors.  The William Seaver's Murder in 1821 - A Jailhouse Confession post on 18 March seemed to solve the case.  William Seaver's Murder in 1821 - Was it Ever Solved? posted on 21 March was an article from 1874 claiming that the murder was a "cold case," but mentioned a confession to a murder printed in the Alexandria Gazette newspaper in 1866. 

William Seaver's Murder in 1821 - the 1866 Confession, posted on 30 March, provided the first part of the 1866 Confession of John Trust from the Alexandria Gazette newspaper.  We got up to the point where John Trust confessed to the murder and was describing his seeming escape to a friend's home about 20 miles away, seeing the news that the murdered man was named "Seaver" and not "Wroe," and ending with a call to go to Alexandria for bad news.  What was the bad news?  John thought the authorities wanted him for the murder.  Did they? 

We finish the story about the murder with these excerpts from Chapter 10, the last chapter, of "A Wonderful Narrative of Old Alexandria, or the Confession of John Trust," published on 2 August 1866 in the Alexandria Gazette newspaper (found online on GenealogyBank - http://www.genealogybank.com/).

"I soon learned that my sister had died a short time after I left her, and that the letter, and exclamation of Mrs. H., had referred to the news of her death, and not to my guilt.

"But my great stay was Lorentz [apparently a family servant].  Never once did I miss him from the side of my couch when I needed his services, and under his untiring care I rapidly improved.  I regained my health so far as to resume my apparel.  The first time I dressed I remembered the locket..."

"My knees trembled, and without waiting to finish my toilette, I searched my pockets.  It was gone!  While I was searching, Lorentz came to assist me.  At a glance he knew I missed something.

"'Oh,' said he, 'the locket fell from your clothes as we were disrobing you, and I put it in your dressing case' and then, continuing, for I was too embarrassed to answer, 'I did not know you had that locket; it is an old acquaintance of mine, I assure you.'

"'My poor brother painted it as a birthday present for your father.  They were the only miniatures he ever made, and he painted them especially to suit this old locket, that one of the schoolboys found and gave to your father.'

"The time occupied in this statement gave me a chance to collect my thoughts.  I intended to allow his mistake to pass by, and change the subject, but he was too full of it, and continued to talk, until I told him he was mistaken. 'Oh no,' he answered, taking up the locket, 'Look here;' he pressed it as though trying to touch a hidden spring -- 'It must have rusted, but it is here,' continued he, as I took up the ornament which he laid upon the table, in order to open his pocket knife.  'What is there,' said I, doubly interested.  'Your dear mother's miniature too: the thing has two faces, one of which opens by a spring that has been clogged up.  It is strange you did not know it.' 

"'No one ever told me before,' said I, most truly.  The knife did the work in the twinkling of an eye, and another lid sprung open.  I looked with eager interest, and saw, if ever portrait was true, Blanche Fordenhame [his sister].  The other picture, too, seemed to me more like Wroe than ever.  I was disappointed.  Lorentz must have been mistaken.  This was certainly Wroe and his wife; the similarity of the case had doubtless led the old man into the belief that the faces were identical.  These conclusions made themselves mentally whilst I gazed at the picture.  I thought it prudent, however, to dissemble my knowledge, and let the intelligence just given explain my emotion, which I was sensible the old man plainly perceived.  So I pressed my lips to the locket and returned it to the case.

"But a new surprise awaited me.  A few messages had been left for me during my illness, mostly notes of courtesy or business; when I entered my cabinet, they were for the first time put in my hands.  One of them at once riveted my attention; the handwriting was as familiar as my own - it was Wroe's:  I eagerly broke the seal.  It was dated the day after the murder, and read thus:

"THE LETTER

"'This note will be the punishment of your crime, for it will tell you that you have lost the chance of winning, with your brother, the proudest triumphs man has ever achieved.  When I toss away crowns as baubles, you may sorrow to feel that in despairing of a success you did not earn, you sought to steal from me, by murder, a glorious future; which I valued most, because I could share it with you.  In my despairing travels, after my wife's death, I met, in England, people, and learned circumstances, which showed that you were my long lost brother.But for my unstrung nerves and wandering faculties, at our first meeting, beside the grave, I would have made myself known.  Deterred, then till a calmer time, I thought that I would postpone the revelation until, our art perfected, we should achieve our triumph, and then clasp you to my heart as my brother.  You know, with what unwearied zeal, I sought to guard you from everything which might interfere with our high pursuit.  You were unworthy, you were morose, suspicious: at last, jealous of my success, you laid in ambush to murder me.  My father watched over me, and his image, by dropping from my breast, and causing me to go back in a fruitless search, saved one son from becoming the assassin of another.

"'I saw the pedlar fall, and watched you hide your dreadful burden, but wretch as you are, I cannot consign to the gallows, my brother.

"'Go! ingrate wretch! Cain! The world is wide enough for us both, but remember when triumphs cluster around me that they would have been won for you -- MURDERER.'"

"Used as I had grown to startling and unlooked for events, the recitals of the page before me, were strange beyond all the marvels I had seen worked in my apprenticeship to that fatal art.  As I recalled under the impetus of the strange intelligence, all Wroe had told me of his early life, it seemed strange that a suspicion of the truth had not crossed my mind.  That the kind seaman and his wife, of whom he had spoken to me so often, were the same persons to whom my poor mother had intrusted her two eldest children on my father's death, was now beyond doubt.

"I could well understand, too, that he had dropped the locket on the road, that 'Seaver' coming along behind, had picked it up, and passing Wrote, as the latter turned back, held the locket in his hand when he was shot.  My first impulse was to seek my new found brother, confess my guilt, implore his pardon, and begin again at his side the pursuit which had proved my undoing.  But stronger than the fear of his hatred, which I even now I believe I could have overcome, my promise to my dead sister interposed, and I dashed the thought aside as a temptation from the evil one, and then my thoughts turned again upon the locket.  I opened it once more.

"Lorentz was then right -- that was my father, and I bedewed his picture with reverential tears; and this - my poor mother; again the striking resemblance to Blanche pressed itself upon me with a deadening conviction that no one but my mother's daughter could be so like her, and that she too was my sister."

It continues from there - John Trust goes to Baltimore with his servant, Lorentz, and the embark for the West Indies, then to Mexico where he found religion, wrote the letter and sent it via a Spanish envoy to Washington, and perhaps lived out his life as a hermit near Alexandria and dying in 1857.  Was John Trust his real name?  Was Wroe the real name of his intended victim? There is no telling.

There is so much detail in his description of the murder and his actions following, and the explanation of how he came to obtain the locket seems to hang together.  As mentioned before, the murder happened in 1821 and it is not known when the manuscript was written by John Trust, and it was published 45 years later. 

These historical newspaper article archives are wonderful, aren't they?  GenealogyBank has done an excellent job of continually imaging and digitizing over 5,000 titles; however, not every title has the full run of the specific newspaper.  The indexing done by optical character recognition seems better on GenealogyBank than most other commercial historical newspaper providers.  The indexes permit genealogists and historians to uncover articles like these that may shed significant light on the lives of our ancestors.  We could not do this work well without the images and indexes!  We all need to remember that not every historical newspaper ever published has not been imaged yet - far from it!

If you had been a reader in 1866 of the Alexandria Gazette newspaper, would this set of ten chapters have intrigued you?  Whoever wrote it was a gifted writer of the times.  Reading it aloud really helps a person understand the vocabulary and speech traits of the time, doesn't it?  I was mesmerized by the whole ten chapters.  I can see news-hungry readers in 1866 waiting impatiently for the next installment of the saga.  It is a story about more than the murder of William Seaver, although I've tried to focus on that in my excerpts from the lengthy chapters. 

What of poor William Seaver, perhaps mistakenly murdered by John Trust?  Where did he come from?  Who were his family? What happened to them?  Are there any descendants? 

Or were the last three posts in this series just an April Fool's Day prank on my part?  Did anyone really go to GenealogyBank and check out these articles?