GenealogyBank adds more newspapers – now over 4,000 titles

Posted on December 4, 2009 by Tom Kemp

GenealogyBank adds 25 more newspapers – now has over 4,000 newspapers from 1690 to Today.

GenealogyBank added 35 Million books, documents, genealogical records and articles this month.

Wow what a way to end the year.

Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman (Wasilla, AK). 10/06/2009 – Current

Arizona Range News, The (Wilcox, AZ). 10/02/2009 – Current
Eastern Arizona Courier (Safford, AZ). 10/05/2009 – Current
Green Valley News & Sun (Green Valley, AZ). 10/02/2009 – Current
Nogales International (Nogales, AZ). 10/02/2009 – Current
Sierra Vista Herald (Sierra Vista, AZ). 10/02/2009 – Current
Wickenburg Sun, The (Wickenburg, AZ). 10/05/2009 – Current

Half Moon Bay Review (Half Moon Bay, CA). 10/02/2009 – Current

Sioux City Journal (Sioux City, IA). 10/02/2009 – Current

Greensburg Daily News (Greensburg, IN). 10/02/2009 – Current

El Dorado Times, The (El Dorado, KS). 10/02/2009 – Current
Garden City Telegram, The (Garden City, KS). 10/02/2009 – Current
Leavenworth Times, The (Leavenworth, KS). 10/02/2009 – Current

Floyd County Times, The (Prestonsburg, KY). 10/02/2009 – Current
Sentinel Echo, The (London, KY). 10/02/2009 – Current

Daily Iberian, The (New Iberia, LA). 10/02/2009 – Current
L’Observateur (La Place, LA). 10/03/2009 – Current

Sun-Journal (Lewiston, ME). 10/02/2009 – Current

Free Press, The (Mankato, MN). 10/02/2009 – Current
Jordan Independent (Jordan, MN). 10/02/2009 – Current
Prior Lake American (Prior Lake, MN). 10/02/2009 – Current
Shakopee Valley News (Shakopee, MN). 10/02/2009 – Current

Emery County Progress (Castle Dale, UT). 10/02/2009 – Current
Sun Advocate (Price, UT). 10/02/2009 – Current
Vernal Express, The (Vernal, UT). 10/02/2009 – Current

Happy Birthday GenealogyBank!

Posted on October 16, 2009 by Tom Kemp

GenealogyBank is 3 years old today!
Wow – and has it grown. GenealogyBank has gone from 1,300 newspapers to over 3,800 newspapers – that’s the equivalent of going from 160 million articles to 346 million articles, documents and reports – GenealogyBank now has more than 130 million obituaries and death records. If you haven’t checked GenealogyBank in awhile – you should celebrate its birthday and try it today.

In October we added:
41 newspapers from 22 states
21 new titles
8,052 issues added from 1800-Today
Added nearly 14 million records, articles, documents

In the past 3 years GenealogyBank has ….
= More than doubled in size since it launched
= Added 186 million more articles, records and reports
= Jumped from 1,300 newspapers to over 3,800 newspapers
= Added 92,000 reports & books in just the past 12 months
= 130 million obituaries & death records
= Best source of old newspapers on the planet
= Largest collection of US newspapers published in German, French, & Spanish languages

It’s a great day for Genealogy!
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I can’t find my ancestor – what am I doing wrong?

Posted on August 31, 2009 by Tom Kemp

For most searches on GenealogyBank it is easy to find your ancestor. You type in their name and in an instant you spot them in the search results list.

So - what do you do when your ancestor’s name doesn’t come right up in the search hits?
Just like any other genealogical resource you need to step back and see what your options are and try various ways to search on the site.

Consider your search strategy.
1. Sometimes less is more.
Be careful how you type in your ancestor’s name.
His full name might have been: Willard Jacob Teskey …. but the newspaper article may have simply called him:
Willard Teskey
Willard J. Teskey
W.J. Teskey
Bill Teskey
or only: Teskey

Try typing in variations of the person’s name.
I have found that typing in only the surname can quickly get you the best results.

Tip: You almost never want to type in a person’s “middle” name. Newspapers rarely use a person’s full name.

Be Careful How You Limit Your Search
It is tempting to limit your search to only one state or even to one newspaper. That can often be the most appropriate search strategy. However, if your searches did not locate the obituary or article about your ancestor – try your search again and this time do not limit your search geographically.

If that produces too many hits – then repeat your search and limit it by the likely starting and ending years when your ancestor. Be sure add a few years in both directions so you will bring up the most possible hits.

Tip: Newspapers often published brief biographies and articles years after a person died. So be careful how you limit your search or you might miss the articles you are looking for.

GenealogyBank brings together newspapers, books, reports and documents from over 300 years. During that time printers had access to varying qualities of newsprint; pieces of type and printing presses.

1. Newspapers have been printed on newsprint paper of varying quality. Some are smooth and some pages are rough.

2. Printers had only so many pieces of type and the newspaper had a deadline. It would be easy when they set the type for the day’s newspaper to swap in an “m” for a “w” or switch a “d” and a “p” or a “1″ and a “l”. The reader in 1843 would hardly notice the difference. But a modern computer might struggle to interpret each word if the piece of type was a different letter or had been damaged.

Let me give you a similar example that has circulated on the Internet for years:

Cna yuo raed tihs?
i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotui t a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

This is an extreme example that shows the problems that computers have reading the old newspapers and documents. Individuals reading an old newspaper quickly adjust to the look, feel of the newspaper and learn how to read it. GenealogyBank has been working on these issues for years and improved and enhanced our OCR capability.

GenealogyBank uses state of the art OCR software and we have teams of indexers that review and tag each item – focusing on names, obituaries, births, marriages and other data of high importance to genealogists.

3. Still can’t find your ancestor? Then, its time to dig in and search the target newspapers, page by page. GenealogyBank makes it easy to bookmark a specific newspaper, combination of newspapers or locations. You could then go through the newspapers – month by month – clicking from page to page to quicly see if your ancestors were mentioned.

Title Lists – Newspapers, Books & Documents on GenealogyBank

Posted on August 19, 2009 by Tom Kemp

You can quickly see what is included in GenealogyBank by looking at the title lists.

Click on the title list for each section to see what is included in GenealogyBank

Newspaper Title Lists

Historical Books Title List

Historical Documents Title List

For example – here is part of the title list for South Carolina newspapers in GenealogyBank.

Obituaries – From Annual Reports – Congress has chartered many national associations – among them the American Instructors of the Deaf.

Posted on August 19, 2009 by Tom Kemp

Congress has chartered many national associations – among them the American Instructors of the Deaf. Their annual reports routinely included details about the schools for the deaf and their faculty.

GenealogyBank has the back file of these reports.

Here are the obituaries that appeared in the 1908 report.

Deem, Charles S. (1861-1908). Jackson, Mississippi. p. 218

Israel, Ellen J. (1840-1908). Born – Morgan County, Ohio. Died – Brighton, Iowa. p. 218

Larson, Cora (Gunn). (1859-1905). Born – Buda, IL. p. 218-219

Mansur, Lida (O’Hara). (-1906). p. 219

Neal, J.C. (c. 1843- 1908). Died – Marion, NC. p. 219

Walker, Mary Ellen. (1852-1907). Born – Charlestown, MA. Died – Baton Rouge, LA p. 219

Yates, Frank B. (1863-1908). Born: Virginia. Died: Little Rock, AR. p. 219-220.

Tip: Associations routinely published detailed obituaries detailing the lives of their deceased members. GenealogyBank has information on more than 1 billion people – remember obituaries are not only in the newspapers. Be sure to search GenealogyBank’s historical books and documents.

Proceedings of the eighteenth meeting of the Convention of American Instructors of the Deaf, held at the Utah School for the Deaf and the Blind, Ogden, Utah, July 4-10, 1908. January 8, 1909. — Referred to the Committee on Education and Labor and ordered to be printed with illustrations. Date: 1909-01-08; Publication: Serial Set Vol. No. 5407, Session Vol. No.20; Report: S.Doc. 645

Julia Child (1912-2004)

Posted on August 14, 2009 by Tom Kemp

This week the nation is remembering Julia Child – how much she contributed to our lives and how much fun she was to be with – via her books, newspaper columns, TV Show – The French Chef and interviews.

Julia Child was born Julia Carolyn McWilliams – this week – August 15, 1912 in Pasadena, California and died this week – August 13, 2004 in Montecido, California. She married Paul Cushing Child over a long Labor Day weekend – 1 September 1946. She had met Paul Child while stationed in Sri Lanka with the OSS during World War II. The OSS is now known as the CIA. For her life’s work she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush in 2003. She was 92 years old.

She is celebrated in Meryl Streep’s new movie – Julie & Julia

and she is in GenealogyBank too – from her numerous recipes; articles about her books & TV series; numerous obituries published in newspapers across the country and her death record in the SSDI.

Cook like Julia Child

Napoleon’s Legendary Chicken
Dallas Morning News – 13 Oct 1977

Hard Boiled Eggs
Dallas Morning News – 15 Dec 1977

Spaghetti Marco Polo
Dallas Morning News – 29 Dec 1977

And be sure to read her interview with Carol Sewall, Food Editor of the Dallas Morning News – 21 Oct 1976.

I am looking for my family tree. Can you tell me how to find it in GenealogyBank?

Posted on August 6, 2009 by Tom Kemp

GenealogyBank – is an online library of resources – millions of them. Like a library it has an index – in our case an index on every word making it easy to find references in each of the issues of the newspapers, books etc. It has over 1 billion names.

(Illustration: Wikipedia Commons)
Documenting your family tree is a lot like putting up the family Christmas tree. You have the bare tree and now you need to look in the boxes of Christmas decorations and put up each one.

It takes time to pick out and put the items in just the right place on the tree – but when you’re done – wow – it always looks great.

So – let’s get started on putting together your “family tree”.

What do you know about the family?

Who are you looking for?

For example – what are your grandparents or great-grandparent’s names?

When and where were the born?
When, where were they married?

So – you’ll see who you are looking for and with the when/where of their birth, marriage and death – you can decide where in GenealogyBank will I be likely to find that information.

If they died in say, 1982 – then look in the Social Security Death Index and in the America’s Obituaries section.

If they served in the Revolutionary War – then we’ll look in the early newspapers for articles and in the Revolutionary War Grave Index in the “Historical Documents” section.

Tell me more about your family and we’ll start researching in GenealogyBank to discover the original sources that document their lives.

Taking the time to gather together the facts to document your family tree is worth it – just like it is to take the time to put together the family Christmas tree each year.

We can do this.
Tell me more about your family.

Tom

Funerals

Posted on July 13, 2009 by Tom Kemp

I attended a funeral today for an old family friend that we have known for over 44 years, Axel Ohrn. Seeing people I have not seen in decades Axel’s funeral was a reunion as family and friends gathered from around the state of Connecticut to remember and honor him. He was 98 years old.

Newspapers over the past three centuries routinely carry obituaries and death notices that alert us that a person has died. They also routinely carry news accounts of the funerals themselves. GenealogyBank has more than 130 million obituaries, death notices, published funeral news accounts and sermons.

Here are some examples from the 29 May 1905 Montgomery (AL) Advertiser.

Prentis C. Randolph

Mary E. Finch

John Hunter Cobbs

In the 1700s and 1800s it was common for families to print a copy of the funeral sermon as a keepsake and remembrance of the deceased.

GenealogyBank has many funeral sermons online like this one printed in 1804 on the death of Jonathan Homer, Jr. (1783-1804).
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GenealogyBank adds more newspapers – 51 titles – 16 States

Posted on July 2, 2009 by Tom Kemp

GenealogyBank announces that it has added newspaper backfiles for 51 newspapers from 16 States.

This major upgrade brings GenealogyBank to nearly 300 million articles, books and records from over 3,800 newspapers; 260,000 books/documents and other resources. An esitmated One Billion Names.

Click on the following links and start searching!

California
Colton. Chicano. 1 Issue. 5/10/1973
Los Angeles. Dos Republicas. 1 Issue. 1892-06-07
Los Angeles. Heraldo de Mexico. 27 Issues. 8/8/1918 to 11/1/1928
Oakland. Mundo. 36 Issues. 8/2/1973 to 4/2/1975

Colorado
Trinidad. Anunciador. 1 Issue. 9/9/1922

DC
Washington, DC. Daily National Intelligencer. 1,624 Issues. 1822-01-01 to 1884-12-31

Florida
Ybor City. Diario de Tampa. 6 Issues. 1/6/1909 to 1/30/1909

Georgia
Sparta. Farmer’s Gazette*. 51 Issues. 1803-06-17 to 1807-08-08

Indiana
Indiana Harbour. Amigo del Hogar. 2 Issues. 5/29/1927 to 5/27/1928

Louisiana
Donaldsville. Donaldsonville Chief . 6/11/2008 to Today
New Orleans. Times Picayune. 528 Issues. 1861-05-01 to 1897-04-10

Maine
Eastport. Eastport Sentinel*. 555 Issues. 1818-08-31 to 1832-08-15

Maryland
Baltimore. Federal Gazette. 1,989 Issues. 1796-02-05 to 1823-11-08 Uniontown. Engine of Liberty & Uniontown Advertiser*. 73 Issues. 1813-10-21 to 1815-04-27

Massachusetts
Gloucester. Gloucester Telegraph. 1,597 Issues. 1827-01-01 to 1851-12-31
Springfield. Federal Spy*. 170 Issues. 1794-05-13 to 1804-05-29

Nebraska
Nebraska City. Nebraska City News-Press. 4/6/2009 to Today

New Mexico
Albuquerque. Opinion Publica. 1 Issue. 1893-01-21
Las Cruces. Eco del Valle. 5 Issues. 1/6/1906 to 2/13/1912
Las Cruces. Estrella. 12 Issues. 6/19/1915 to 2/21/1925
Las Cruces. Labrador. 12 Issues. 1897-11-21 to 9/1/1911
Las Cruces. Las Cruces Democrat. 1 Issue. 1892-03-09
Las Cruces. Mesilla Valley Bulletin. 1 Issue. 4/30/1937
Mountainair. Independent. 2 Issues. 4/20/1918 to 12/7/1918
Santa Fe. Daily New Mexican. 30 Issues. 1871-06-21 to 1875-01-30
Santa Fe. Santa Fe Weekly New Mexican and Livestock Journal. 1 Issue. 1895-12-26
Socorro. Defensor del Pueblo. 16 Issues. 1925-0-16 to 9/24/1937
Springer. Colfax County Stockman. 1 Issue. 12/10/1910
Springer. Estandarte de Springer. 124 Issues. 1890-07-03 to 1893-05-25

New York
Albany. Albany Evening Journal. 69 Issues. 1854-04-22 to 1874-06-30
Brooklyn. Espana Libre. 2 Issues. 2/7/1941 to 5/9/1941
New York. Doctrina de Marti. 30 Issues. 1896-07-25 to 1898-02-15
New York. Eco de Cuba. 3 Issues. 1855-06-22 to 1855-07-20
New York. Prensa. 1832 Issues. 7/19/1919 to 12/30/1929
Poughkeepsie. Dutchess Observer*. 60 Issues. 1816-07-24 to 1821-12-26
Sag Harbor. Frothingham’s Long Island Herald*. 8 Issues. 1791-07-26 to 1798-03-12

Ohio
Chilliocothe. Fredonian*. 27 Issues. 1807-02-19 to 1819-06-10

Tennessee
Athens. Daily Post-Athenian. 3/28/2009 to Today
Newport. Newport Plain Talk. 7/1/1998 to Today

Texas
Brownsville. Cronista del Valle. 13 Issues. 2/21/1925 to 8/9/1927
Brownsville. Heraldo de Brownsville. 18 Issues. 7/21/1937 to 2/20/1940
Brownsville. Progreso. 1 Issue. 1876-05-07
Brownsville. Puerto. 1 Issue. 9/27/1958
Corpus Christi. Nueces County News. 1 Issue. 11/17/1938
El Paso. Atalaya Bautista: Semanario Evangelico Bautista. 8 Issues. 11/3/1910 to 1/21/1929
El Paso. Continental. 3 Issues. 10/17/1937 to 8/19/1938
El Paso. Monitor. 1 Issue. 1897-07-03
Kingsville. Notas de Kingsville. 2 Issues. 8/2/1951 to 11/11/1954
Laredo. Correo de Laredo. 2 Issues. 1892-02-11 to 1892-05-26
San Antonio. Bejareno. 2 Issues. 1855-08-18 to 1856-04-19
San Antonio. Prensa. 662 Issues. 2/13/1913 to 9/15/1916

* New titles are marked with the *

Find and document your ancestors in GenealogyBank - the best source for old newspapers on the planet.

Period!

William Montgomery Clemens (1860-1931)

Posted on June 20, 2009 by Tom Kemp

Genealogists who made a difference

William Montgomery Clemens (1860-1931)

was a prolific genealogist and writer. Nephew to the more famous Samuel Clemens (1835-1910) – he was also a newspaper man and author. William M. Clemens started writing for the Pittsburgh Leader in 1879 and continued his research & writing for more than five decades.

(Illus. Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain – 2nd from right).