Showing posts with label newspapers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label newspapers. Show all posts

04 September 2012

Tribune Tuesdays: Woman, Dog-Lover

From: The Oakland Tribune, 06 March 1912, Page 2, Column 1

Hold Funeral of Woman, Dog-Lover

 ALAMEDA, March 6--Mrs. Mary Dillman, known as "the dog woman," was buried today from an Alameda undertaking parlor, after her body had been kept by an Oakland undertaker pending the expected arrival of the woman's husband from the East.

Dillman has not appeared or sent word and the responsibility for the burial was assumed by Mrs. J. Kreft of this city, with whom Mrs. Dillman formerly lived. Mrs. Dillman died in the East Bay Sanatorium from the effect of injuries received when she was run down in Oakland about three weeks ago by W. G. Davis of Alameda, an automobile dealer. She was a great dog-lover, and had twenty canine pets at the time of her death. The dogs have since been chloroformed by the humane society as there was no one to look after them.

Mrs. Dillman was living in Fruitvale at the time of her death, having left Alameda after the court ordered her to get rid of her dogs as a sanitary measure, the board of health causing the woman's arrest.
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28 August 2012

Tribune Tuesdays: Refrain from Attacking

From: The Oakland Tribune, 06 March 1912, Page 11, Column 2

Promises to Care for Family He Mistreated

 W. F. Gillespie, arrested for beating his wife and mother-in-law, was released from custody this morning by Judge Mortimer Smith on his promise to refrain from attacking his family and to work for the support of his wife and four children. The case was continued to April 6, and Gillespie placed on probation till that date on the request of his wife, who declared that his assistance was absolutely essential to the support of the family.
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21 August 2012

Tribune Tuesdays: Beaten by Highwaymen

From: The Oakland Tribune, 06 March 1912, Page 10, Column 5

Victim Beaten by Highwaymen
Amil Anderson is Attacked by Thugs and Beaten Unmercifully

 Leaping upon Amil Anderson of 1749 Eighty-first avenue without warning, as he passed the corner of East Fourteenth street and Eighty-first avenue, last night, two highwaymen knocked the man down and beat him mercilessly. The two men gave Anderson no chance to turn over his money, but attacked him and after knocking him to the ground, kicked and beat him until he was unconscious. Nothing was taken. The attack occurred at 930 o'clock last night.

Thefts reported to the police are as follows:

James McNamara, 1309 Regent street, Alameda, pockets picked while on county line car on San Pablo avenue, leather purse containing $9.50 taken.

H. A. Powell, 2703 Dwight way, Berkeley, furniture valued at $20 taken by burglars from house at 921 Myrtle street.

Earl Pedlar, 675 Eleventh street, overcoat stolen from Oakland high school.

O. F. Woods, 424 Third street, garments valued at $25 taken from room.

Mrs. H. Wilson, 483 Ninth street, room entered, garments valued at $30 taken.
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16 November 2011

The Full Story

I love newspapers, because they give us so much information, but sometimes what we learn is so tantalizing, I can't help but wish I could get the full story. Like this Want Ad from the 02 November 1912 issue of The Oakland Tribune:
REFINED young lady (blond) is desirous of meeting dark complected gentleman between 30 and 35, temperate habits, medium height, comfortable income; object matrimony; no triflers. Box 87??, Tribune.
Of course, who knows what her "object" really was, but I can't help but imagine a petite young woman dropping off this want ad at the Tribune offices. I wonder if she ever found what she was looking for? Judging by what I remember from dating, probably a whole lot of "triflers!"
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03 October 2011

Free Online Newspaper Archives

Recently I received an email on Ancestry from a member of an Iowa-based genealogical society, containing information about one of my ancestors. In the email, this woman kindly referenced their online newspaper archive, which was hosted by NewspaperArchive.com. The newspapers (mostly historical, some more recent), were free to access, and needed no NewspaperArchive membership to view.

Now, I have a subscription to NewspaperArchive, but imagine my surprise when I did a little sleuthing, and came upon the fact that they actually have a number of these sub-sites that offer free newspapers (and, in a few cases, city directories and township records)! These sites span the country (I did find a few international ones), and, I imagine, are available thanks to some working agreements made between these various institutions (publishers, libraries, historical societies) and the site itself. There's some great local and niche publications (schools, military regiments) available, for free, right now, to anyone.

Researchers in Iowa can particularly rejoice; NewspaperArchive is located in Iowa, and as such has made a number of agreements with Iowa libraries, so the pickings there are particularly hearty.

I figured I might as well get these subsites into a list, hoping that there's some useful information here for other researchers. I did not include in this listing sub-sites that require a full NewspaperArchive subscription to view the newspapers. This list is intended to catalog only those sites offering completely free access.

Enjoy!

Arizona:
Arkansas:
California:


Illinois:


Indiana:


Iowa:


Kansas:


Massachusetts:


Missouri:


Nebraska:


New Mexico:

New Jersey:

New York:


North Carolina:


Ohio:


Pennsylvania:
Texas:
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18 May 2011

Thoughts on Digital Newspapers

Anyone who has been following this blog for any amount of time knows that I am interested--nay, obsessed--with the information to be found in local newspapers. I owe some of my most interesting family history tales to information found in newspapers. Newspapers have provided me with information on deaths, marriages, births, and even--in one case--established a family connection that broke a tenacious brick wall.

I love newspapers so much that I spend a great amount of time indexing and transcribing them. As I type out stories and items about people I have no connection to, I am hoping that others can make use of the information I find, and that they will consider doing the same for items they run across. It's that great genealogical sense of gifting, that largesse of family history research we all share. But I do it with particular imperative.

Because the truth is this: we cannot sit on our laurels and wait for technology to open the information in newspapers to us. Too often, perhaps, genealogists and researchers today think it useless or a waste of time to index or transcribe certain resources, because they feel like "they'll just get digitized" or "they're already searchable anyway."

While digitized newspapers are a huge boon, they are not, unfortunately, the end of the line. Anyone who has ever used searchable newspaper databases does (or ought to) know the extent to which those databases are hampered by the shortcomings of OCR technologies. Very few databases are accurately and fully indexed (and even these have mistakes). If you rely on search fields to research in newspapers, you aren't researching those newspapers at all.

Don't believe me? Try a test. Open any 19th century newspaper and look for a few names. Run a search on those names, and see if they come up. Do they? Or don't they? Depending upon the condition of the digital image (faded, torn, blurred, or irregular/unique fonts) you may get no results at all. How sure are you now that you've done your research? How sure are you now that those newspapers you thought you had checked don't actually contain information you may want or need?

So back to my original plaint: genealogists, researchers, lend me your keyboards. Do your part and transcribe a few items of interest next time you're thumbing through a newspaper. Post them to a blog. Email them to a message board. Just don't "wait" for technology to give us the gifts lurking in newspapers... if we leave it up to computers to read our newspapers for us, those gifts will be an awfully long time in coming.
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14 July 2009

Tribune Tuesday: Jenkins Knocked Out

Items of interest from today's edition of The Oakland Tribune, back in 1891.

JENKINS KNOCKED OUT

Last week a farmer named Jenkins, residing near Fruit Vale, hired a man to work for him who soon developed a great fondness for articles about the house that did not belong to him. So frequent became the thefts that Jenkins was compelled to discharge the man, who took his revenge by waylaying his former boss and badly beating him. Jenkins received some severe bruises from the man's fists and has been kept at home for several days in consequence.

From The Oakland Daily Evening Tribune, 14 July 1891, Page 1, Column 3
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30 June 2009

Tribune Tuesday: Drank Warm Water

Items of interest from today's edition of the The Oakland Tribune, in 1891.

DRANK WARM WATER
The Berkeley Ice Supply Gave Out Yesterday

There was a great demand for ice yesterday at Berkeley and so great had been the demand on the two preceding days that the supply gave out about 10 A. M. yesterday and no more could be obtained until in the afternoon. During Saturday and Sunday the only ice dealer in town sold two tons of ice and yesterday the central telephone clerk was kept busy most of the time answering calls for ice.

From: The Oakland Daily Evening Tribune, 30 June 1891, Page 5, Column 1
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16 June 2009

Tribune Tuesday: The Yosemite Park

Items of interest from today's 1891 issue of The Oakland Tribune.

THE YOSEMITE PARK
The Military Driving Out the Cattle-
An Old Prospector Lost in the Mountains-Deep Snow Still Lies on Glacier Point

WAWONA, Cal., June 16.- Lieutenant Davis and a party of ten men returned last night after a trip of ten days patrolling the newly made Yosemite National Park. They were ordered by Captain Wood to go through the northern part of the park in search of sheep and cattle which were said to be in that section. They went through the Little and Big Hetch Hetchy valley and as far north as the snow line would permit, but found no sheep in that section and but very few cattle. The owners of these were getting on to their own lands as rapidly as possible. The party found an old man who had gone into the mountains prospecting and had been lost. He was nearly famished for the want of food but recovered under proper treatment. The party returned by the way of Yosemite and Glacier Point, and found the snow on the point five feet in depth in many places.

From: The Oakland Tribune, 16 June 1891, Page 1, Column 4
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09 June 2009

Tribune Tuesday: A Dangerous Bathing Place

Items of interest from today's 1891 Oakland Tribune.

A Dangerous Bathing Place in the Hills Near the Cable Road

The old quarry just below the bridge on the gravity loop on the Piedmont cableline, which for years has been filled with water, is again being used by the Oakland young hopefuls for a swimming pond. Every day as many as ten or twelve of these youngsters sport through the cold waters of the pond, and evidently enjoy themselves. As the cable cars pass by the s[?] visions of limbs rapidly disappearing in the water may be seen. This pond has a history. Formerly it was an active quarry and much stone was taken from it. One day, however, a man struck a spring and before his fellow workmen could get their tools out of the way the place filled up with water, hiding the cars on the tracks and all the implements used in working the quarry. Frequent accidents have happened here. Only recently a boy was drowned, and it was impossible to find his body until Professor Fleming in a diving suit discovered it under the wheels of a car at the bottom. The place is dangerous and hardly a summer passes by but some injury or fatality happens.

From: The Oakland Tribune, 09 June 1891, Page 8, Column 2
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02 June 2009

Tribune Tuesday: Starving

Items of interest from today's edition of the The Oakland Tribune, in 1891.

STARVING
An Old Man Adrift in the Bay
FOR THREE DAYS WITHOUT ANY FOOD.
Floating About Almost in the Very Track of Ferry Steamers
Rescued by Oakland Men Just as the Tide Was Carrying Him Out Between the Heads to Sea

Deputy City Engineer Wison [sic] is one of the crack yachtsmen of the coast and passes nearly every Sunday coasting somewhere near the Heads. He is captain of the sloop yacht Pilgrim and for his trip on Sunday last secured the company of City Engineer Morgan and Mr. Miller. They left Oakland creek early in the morning and moved out through the Golden Gate, where, after tacking about they sailed for home again. It was getting dark as they came in, but it was light enough for them to see something dark floating in the water between Goat and Angel islands, and heading for it they found it to be an old hulk. It appeared to be abandoned, but on coming alongside they found an old, gray-haired man stretched inside suffering from some great prostration.

They revived him with spirits and when the old man was able he told them the story of how he came to be thus adrift. It was as follows:

"On Thursday last," he said, "I bought this hulk for $5 from a man in Oakland. It was lying at the foot of Grove street, and it was my intention to take it to San Francisco and room in it there, for rent is too high- more than I can pay. Getting an oar, therefore, I left Oakland creek with the tide at 12 midnight on Thursday and tried to row across the bay. The current was too strong, though, and I was gradually carried away and drifted on toward the gate. Morning came and I was out of the line of the ferry steamers, but I tried to attract their attention, failing, however, they doubtless thinking that I was a fisherman. So the day passed on without my being noticed and then night came still without relief. To make a long story short, I have been drifting about for three days without food and water and was feeling pretty nearly done for when you sighted and rescued me."

This ended the old man's narrative, and as he said he still desired to go back to San Francisco, the Pilgrim towed him and his old bulk there and moored him in Mission Bay. Then the Pilgrim set back for home and reached her headquarters at Oakland creek at 5 o'clock yesterday morning.

"The old man and his bulk were drifting out to sea," said Captaim Wilson to a Tribune man this morning "when we picked him up. The tide was running out fast too, and it would not have been long before he would have been through the Golden Gate."

From: The Oakland Tribune, 02 June 1891, Page 1, Column 7
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26 May 2009

Tribune Tuesday: The Alta is Dead

This day in the Oakland Tribune, in 1891:

THE "ALTA" IS DEAD
The Last Issue of the Pioneer San Francisco Journal

The Alta California, the pioneer journal of San Francisco, has ceased publication. The last number of the regular daily paper was issued this morning. Today all the employees were discharged, except H. G. Cohen, the manager, and H. Spear. A small sheet will be printed daily for one week to complete publication of legal advertisements now running in the paper.

The reason for the suspension is that the paper does not pay expenses and the owners are tired of running up a deficit.

From: The Oakland Tribune, 26 May 1891, Page 1, Column 7
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19 May 2009

Tribune Tuesday: Caused By Gin

A new series I am starting, sharing items of interest from this day's Oakland Tribune, back in 1891.

CAUSED BY GIN

Mrs. Rousch Tells Why She Chased Her Sick Husband in Alameda

Mrs. Peter J. Rousch was examined before the Lunacy Commissioners this afternoon. It was asserted that she dragged her dying husband out of bed and threw him upon the floor and then pelted him with dishes and other articles. Mr. Rousch was compelled to leave home, and is now in a hospital in San Francisco. The lady stated that her husband is a drunkard, and while he was ill he drank some liquor and it made him insane. When she was out of the room he hurriedly dressed himself and ran out of the house and went to a saloon. She denied that she had pelted him and driven him from home. In explaining some of her own queer actions, she said that she had been in the habit of taking too much gin occassionally and that was the cause of her trouble. Judge Greene gave her some good advice and discharged her from custody.

From: The Oakland Tribune, Tuesday 19 May 1891, Page One, Column 5
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01 May 2009

A Capital Idea! [Quick Tips]

I was sitting at my computer in my home in California the other day, ruing my lack of digital access to a certain year-span of Charleston, South Carolina newspapers. I had been making good progress researching a particular family of Charleston (we'll call it family "A"), but realized that my goal of searching on family members in newspapers was impeded by the gap in digital coverage. Frustrated, I decided to shift gears and pick up on some research on a different family (family B) living 155 miles away in the state's capital, Columbia.

As I was poking around in a very robust archive of Columbia papers, which included the year-span I was ruing just moments before, I decided to give in to a whim and searched on the surname of family A in the Columbia paper archive.

Imagine my surprise when the search yielded five results from 1908, all pertaining to an ancestor who had been arrested and tried for embezzlement during his work with a railroad company! Needless to say, I hadn't heard about this mini-scandal from family members, so the articles took me completely by surprise. As the ancestor was eventually acquitted of all charges, it was probably a case of "best left to forget", which the family tried to do, and moved on accordingly.

Days later, when doing a search in a newspaper archive for Augusta, Georgia, I tried the same family A surname, and found another article on the arrest and trial, this time with more details than even the Columbia papers offered. The embarrassment for the family was obvious--I could almost hear them moaning, "how many papers are they going to print this in?!?" The re-occurrence of the articles has led me to plan on making a thorough search in national-scope databases for occurrences of this ancestor's name in this time period. It's something I had never thought to do before, but armed with this new knowledge, I am excited to see what tidbits and details other articles may mention. At the very least it will keep me busy until the day I have access to those Charleston papers... either in-person or via the internet.

So what's the lesson here? Obviously, not everyone we're researching "makes the paper" in other states (for better or worse), but who's to say that they didn't? Papers in a state capital often include items of interest from all over the state- so there's a perfect place to start on searches when you don't have access to the papers in the town or time that you need. Think outside of the geographic box when performing your digital newspaper searches; you may just find something of intrigue and import which you never even thought would be there!
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07 November 2008

Public Domain Sherpa [Quick Tip]

As a quick follow-up to a previous post on determining copyright status of a particular work, I wanted to note the very handy, very user-friendly calculator with a very cool name, The Copyright Sherpa! Almost fun to use, and totally worth giving it a try.

Also, the Open Knowledge Foundation Wiki has a list of other useful public domain calculators for many countries including the United States here.

Enjoy!
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08 September 2008

Google Newspapers Announcement

Google's Official Blog today got around to announcing the new newspaper archiving project it has undertaken recently, which I covered last month.

One interesting tidbit is buried in the post:
You’ll be able to explore this historical treasure trove by searching the Google News Archive or by using the timeline feature after searching Google News. Not every search will trigger this new content, but you can start by trying queries like [Nixon space shuttle] or [Titanic located]. Stories we've scanned under this initiative will appear alongside already-digitized material from publications like the New York Times as well as from archive aggregators, and are marked "Google News Archive." Over time, as we scan more articles and our index grows, we'll also start blending these archives into our main search results so that when you search Google.com, you'll be searching the full text of these newspapers as well. (Emphasis added).

I love the fact that we are looking at a future integration between the news archive search and general google searches. Imagine a day when you google an ancestor's name and see newspaper articles as results!

What the article doesn't address is the issue of access to what the above excerpt references as "archive aggregators", which, in this case, invariably means sites like ancestry.com and newspaperarchive.com (to name two I have noticed in search results). I have subscriptions to both of these sites, so google's search function is quite helpful for me. But what about general users who are unlikely to have subscriptions to these sites? Will there be a per-article access feature? Will the sites simply be shilling their annual subscriptions to searchers?

I'd personally love to see free access to searchable online newspapers within the next few years, especially since a huge bulk of historic newspapers are public domain; I doubt it will happen, but it sure would be nice.
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03 September 2008

Newspaper Indexes-California [Reference Shelf]

I have compiled here a list of indices to California newspapers and obituaries, arranged by county. I have focused on indices of historic newspapers (1940 and earlier), to the exclusion of more modern indexing projects. I have included here obituary indices, which seem to fall under the auspices of this listing.

I hope to maintain and update this listing as new sources are discovered. If you know of any pre-1930, California county newspaper indexing projects that are not listed here, please let me know by leaving a comment below.

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29 August 2008

Google News Archive Search [Reference Shelf]

Google's News Archive search now has some very useful content and features, making it a necessary stop on the research path for genealogists. Whereas the Google News archive used to span 30 days, it now searches historical content from sites such as NewspaperArchive, Google Books, Ancestry Newspapers, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlanta Constitution, and The New York Times Archive, giving the archive a span of over 150 years, and fabulous breadth of content. Articles are marked with ($$) where access is limited by charge. Results from subscription sites work seamlessly if you are logged in to your paid account.

Accessing the Archive
To access the Google News Archive search, visit Google News. The link to the archive search is located in the upper left-hand corner:



Enter your search terms in the search field:



And you'll see your returns in a pretty typical Google search format:



This is well and good, but Google takes it one step further with a handy option to view your results along a timeline, a very interesting way to visualize the coverage of your particular topic across time.

Using the Timeline
The "Timeline" link is at the top of your search results:



Clicking on this link shows you an interactive and clickable graph of the results from the archive search according to years. In this case, of course, the higher the bar on the graph, the more results found in the news that particular year:



Let's say I'm especially interested in researching news reports about the 1905 outbreak of yellow fever in New Orleans. I can click on the ten-year segment in the timeline for 1900-1920, and the graph breaks down into individual years for that decade:



As you can see, the block for 1905 shows a much larger results return than other years in the decade. I can continue to click on the segments I am interested in until I reach the months of 1905. As the yellow fever outbreak began in July and ran through the bulk of the late summer, we see a correlating result list in this graph:



Clicking on the individual months will show only the search results for that time period, allowing me to follow the chronology of the outbreak coverage across months. Very cool!
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23 August 2008

Digitized Newspapers [Reference Shelf]

The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions has posted and updated a listing of international newspaper repositories.

The listing includes a PDF documenting United States newspaper repositories state-by-state including digitized and microfilmed collections. I have abstracted the digital (online) access sites below for your convenience. There is more information and links to programs in the original PDF.

I have also added online digitized newspapers not in the IFLA list, and have marked those resources with an asterisk (*) to demarcate them. I have restricted this listing to archives with free access. Sites with paid access to historical newspapers are many, and outside the scope of this list.

Alaska
Tundra Times: 1962-1997

Arizona
Casa Grande Dispatch: "Digital archive going back to 1912."

California
* California Digital Newspapers

* Chronicling America

El Clamor Publico: 1855-1859.

District of Columbia
* Chronicling America

Florida
Boca Raton Newspapers: Various mid- to late-20th Century.

* Chronicling America

Georgia
* Georgia Historic Newspapers

Hawaii
Hawaiian Language Newspapers: 1861-1927.

Ho’olaupa’i – Hawaiian Newspapers Collection: 1834-1948.

Illinois
Barrington Review Online:1914-1930.

Dziennik Zwiazkowy: 1908-17

Illinois Digital Newspaper Collection: Various 20th Century.

Quincy Historical Newspaper Archive: 1835-1890.

Kentucky
* Kentucky Digital Library

* Chronicling America

Louisiana
* LOUISiana Digital Library

Maryland
Early State Records Online: Various 19th Century.

Massachusetts
Barnstable Patriot newspaper archive: Various 19th Century

Provincetown Advocate online: 1918, 1931-1934 and 1936-1967

Minnesota
Winona Newspaper Project: 1860-1946

Missouri
Chillicothe Newspaper Archives: 1889-2006.

Historic Missouri Newspapers Project: Various

Nebraska
* Chronicling America


Nevada
Las Vegas Age newspaper digital collection: April 7, 1905-1915, 1917-1922, 1924

New Jersey
Atlantic County Digitized Newspapers: 1860-1923

Historical Cranbury Press: 1880-1926

The Red Bank Register: June 27, 1878, to October 23, 1947

Silent Worker, 1888-1929

New York
Brooklyn Daily Eagle online: 1841-1902

Cornell Daily Sun: 1880-1979

Freedom’s Journal: 1827-1829

The Friend of Man: 1836-1842

Northern New York Historical Newspapers

Suffolk Historic Newspapers: Various 19th Century.

* New York Times

* Chronicling America

Pennsylvania
Access Pennsylvania Digital Repository

Lancaster County Digitization Project

Lancaster Farming newspaper: 1955-1983

Nazareth Item (Nazareth, PA)

Pennsylvania Civil War Newspapers: 1831-1877

Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project: Various mid- to late-20th Century.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Valley of the Shadow: Civil War Era Newspapers

South Carolina

The New South Newspaper: 1862-1866

South Dakota
South Dakota Newspaper Digitization Project

Texas
* Chronicling America

Utah
Utah Digital Newspapers: Various

* Chronicling America

Virginia
Richmond Daily Dispatch: November 1860 through December 1865.

Valley of the Shadow: Civil War Era Newspapers

Virginia Gazette, The: 1736-1780

* Chronicling America

Washington

Historical Newspapers in Washington

Wyoming

Wyoming Newspaper Project: 1849 and 1922

Multi-Regional

* Small Town Papers

* Cornell's Making of America: Mostly magazines and periodicals from 1850-1879

* Paper of Record


[Link to ILFA via ResourceShelf]
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05 August 2008

Chronicling America Update

The Chronicling America website recently updated its newspaper database to add more than 73,000 pages. The update also brings in newspapers for two new states- Nebraska and Texas.

Check out the expanded collection here.
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