How do I find an obituary in Newsday?

How do I find an obituary published in Newsday?
Simple: just click here to go to the obituary backfile at GenealogyBank and follow these steps:

Let’s say you are looking for the obituary of Elayne Singer who died in 2004.

1. Go to the obituary backfile at GenealogyBank.com
2. In the search box – type her name: Elayne Singer
3. Look just below the “Begin Search” button and click on Advanced Search
4. Under “Include Key Words” – type: Newsday
5. Click search.

Instantly your search brings up her obituary notice.

TIP: Use this same technique to narrow your search to any one of the 3,500+ newspapers in GenealogyBank – simply type the name of the newspaper in the “Include Key Words” box.

You may also limit your search by date, place of publication etc.

Elayne Singer sounds like a special woman – her grandson, Scott Resnik said of her: “She was the family matriarch and my best friend.”

It’s good that we have such easy access to the obituaries in Newsday and over 3,500 newspapers to remember what has been written about our ancestors. Click here to see a list of the more than 3,500 newspapers – that you can search.

Newsday (Melville, NY) – August 4, 2004
Elayne Singer, 80, bookkeeper, family matriarch
Agonizing that her older sister, Marion, had a matter of hours to live, Elayne Singer told her grandson, Scott Resnik, in a telephone conversation Saturday morning that she hoped her own death would be quick and painless.


Less than two hours after that telephone conversation, Singer, a liver transplant survivor, died at Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow from injuries sustained in an accident on Sunrise Highway. Singer, 80, and her husband, Irving, were on their way from the couple’s Uniondale senior complex to the Merrick Long Island Rail Road Station to pick up another of Singer’s sisters for a farewell visit to their dying sibling Marion when a car slammed broadside into their Honda Civic. Her husband was hospitalized with two fractured ribs.

“She was the family matriarch and my best friend,” Resnik said of his grandmother. “I called her my hero.”

Singer, the youngest of five children, all girls, was born and raised in Brooklyn. She graduated from Jefferson High School in 1942. A fan of the big band music of the day, the former Elayne Lieberman was at a Manhattan dance hall, her grandson said, when she met Irving Singer not long after his discharge from the military in 1946.

The couple married two years later and subsequently moved to Levittown, where they raised two children.

When the children had grown, she became a career bookkeeper, working until she was almost 70 for a variety of local companies.

His grandmother may have been diminutive in stature, but she had a giant heart, Resnik, of Mastic, said.

As relatives fussed over her at a recent family barbecue, tripping over each other to cater to her, she just waved them off, insisting that there must be some tasks to which she could be assigned, Resnik recalled. “She was very petite but she had enough love in her to feed an entire city and more. She constantly wore a smile.”

In addition to her husband and grandson, Singer is survived by two daughters, Hope Martinsen of Afton, N.Y., and Cindy Nadelbach, of Levittown; three sisters, Pat Eagen of Manhattan, Marion Seplow of New Hyde Park and Bea Krebs of Brooklyn; and two other grandchildren, Josh and Lauren Nadelbach.

The funeral was yesterday at Boulevard Riverside Chapel in Hewlett followed by burial at Wellwood Cemetery in Pinelawn. Family will be sitting shivah in Levittown until tomorrow, relatives said.

Donations may be made to the American Liver Foundation, P.O. Box 5218, Toms River, N.J. 08754-5218.
Copyright (c) 2004 Newsday, Inc.


GenealogyBank has more than 112 million obituaries and death records.

Search all of the more than 3,500 newspapers and other resources on GenealogyBank for your ancestors.

Click here and give it a try right now.
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On the Road Again – Delaware Genealogical Society

I am on the road again.

Last night I had the opportunity to speak to the Delaware Genealogical Society about GenealogyBank.

Hat’s off to the Society and particularly to DGS President Phoebe Doherty, her husband Tom and to the incoming DGS President Fran Allmond and her husband Charles for their invitation and hospitality. The Union City Grille was a great place to eat.
What a terrific group. The hall was packed and they asked lot’s of questions ranging from the coverage of Delaware newspapers in GenealogyBank and a non-stop presentation of the variety of examples found in historical newspapers.

Newspapers are a terrific resource. They give us these details and more.

GenealogyBank has more than 1 billion names – and we’re adding more than 4 million articles every month.

Give it a try right now – only $9.95.

Private William Christman – first burial in Arlington Cemetery May 13, 1864

The first burial on the grounds of what would become Arlington National Cemetery was on May 13, 1864.

Private William Christman was buried in the rose garden in front of General Robert E. Lee’s home in Arlington, Virginia. He was serving with Company G, 67th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. Click here to see his headstone.

In May 1863 Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton ordered the creation of the “Freedman’s Village for the protection of the Black man and his family, upon the Arlington estate, belonging to the Rebel General Lee.” The Liberator, 15 July 1864.

June 15, 1864 Secretary Stanton ordered that the grounds around the Lee home be used as a military cemetery – which would soon be known around the world as Arlington National Cemetery.

The newspapers of the day loved it that the Lee home and grounds were used to house and give the freedmen a new start and a military cemetery to honor the nation’s war dead.

“How appropriate that Lee’s lands should be dedicated to two such noble purposes – the free living Black man whom Lee would enslave and the bodies of the dead soldiers who Lee has killed in a wicked cause. Let this record stand to the everlasting credit of Secretary Stanton.”
The Liberator, 15 July 1864.

In GenealogyBank you may read many more articles about the creation of Arlington National Cemetery and the Freedman’s Village. Look for them in the Historical Newspapers and in the Historical Documents which includes the US Serial Set – where there are also numerous government reports detailing the progress of both operations.

Finding People with Common Names

Finding people with unusual names can be very difficult but it is easy to find them on GenealogyBank.

Today I was looking for Henry B. Platter and his good wife, Rachel (Bittinger) Platter. The Bittingers are my cousins and many of them are from Garrett County, Maryland.

Now, Platter is an unusual name. It would be easy for a search online to bring back every record that spoke about cooking, kitchens, plates or platters.

On GenealogyBank, I was able to instantly zero in on records
about them.

With just a few clicks I was able to find a dozen documents
about the Platter family. I began opening them one by one.
The first hit came from the historical documents and was a pension request by Henry’s wife, Rachel Platter. I quickly discovered Henry had served in the Civil War, a private in Company A, Second Regiment, P.H.B. Maryland Infantry and received a pension of $72 a month (certificate No. 1045070). (This is from: Pensions and increase of pensions for certain soldiers and sailors of the Civil War. Feb 5, 1925: Serial Set Vol. No. 8392, Session Vol. No.A68th Congress, 2nd SessionH.Rpt. 1385).

This is a terrific document – it gave me a lot of details about the family. The record showed that he and Rachel had married on March 12, 1867. That would have been hard to find anywhere else.

It also states that he died on October 4, 1923 leaving her in need of assistance; how long he had served in the Civil War and that his disability was caused during the war.

This document showed that she owned her own home, the value was $500. Perhaps her house looked like this one. It is a picture of her nephew Charles “Wooly” Henry & Sarah (Hoover) Bittinger and their family in front of the family home in New Jerusalem, Garrett County, MD.

It was taken in 1937 just a few years after Rachel Platter had requested a pension. Perhaps Rachel had a similar home.
(Photo by Arthur Rothstein; Library of Congress Photo LC-USF34- 026095-D).

Wow. It’s great that
GenealogyBank has been digitizing so many documents. I never would have found this one on my own. It was easy to find it online at GenealogyBank.

Their names, marriage and death dates, military service; details about their house, their income – bingo, there it was – all this family history in one document.

GenealogyBank added over 42.5 Million family history records last year and added another 2 million just this week. It now has over 216 million historical newspaper articles, obituaries, government and historical documents online. records and documents online.

Give it a try right now. It’s available at a great “get acquainted” rate – only $9.95 for 30 days.

I found documents that gave me the details I needed for my cousins in the back hills of Maryland ….. what will you find?