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While something like a birth announcement or an obituary helps us fill in our family trees, the newspaper is also a great way to get to know your ancestors’ daily lives. My 4th great grandfather, Joseph Duram, is an amazing example of this. From newspaper records, I have pieced together quite the narrative about his life.

According to his headstone and census records, Joseph W. Duram was born on 18 August 1798 in the state of New York. He can first be found in the town of Mentz, where he and his wife Minerva, daughter of Seth Higley, sold their land to Archibald Wilson in 1822. The family is still in Mentz in the 1830 census. We pick them up again in the town of Waterloo, where in spring of 1833 Joseph advertises in the paper for 50 men to work at the dry dock in Waterloo. He is also selling a canal boat. Later in 1833 he also purchased the saw mill with Ebenezer Metcalf from the heirs of Elisha Williams. This venture failed, and a sheriff’s sale of his and Metcalf’s land commenced in the fall of 1837. His daughter Nancy had married David Hamell the previous year. He further petitioned for bankruptcy in Auburn in March of 1843. He was also elected constable that year. He appears to have repurchased the boatyard he advertised for in 1833 again in 1845. His wife Minerva died of apoplexy (stroke) at 48 years old on 23 November 1847. He remarried the following year to Mary Himelberger. He continued to fail in his business ventures, and the boatyard where he built boats with his family was auctioned off in 1850. The continued strain of these business failures may have contributed to the family’s decision to move west to Michigan, approximately in 1853 (though he was purchasing land in preparation by 1848). By his headstone, Joseph died on 6 October 1857 in Michigan at the age of 59.

A full if tragic life, laid out in the newspaper articles of the day.

Need assistance reconstructing your ancestor’s movements? Email us at info@weavingthetapestrygenealogy.com for a free estimate!

We just posted about finding additional information, like date and place of death, in the newspaper when traditional records like death certificates cannot be found. But the best thing about a full obituary is that often we can find so much more than just this data!

Remember Martha Crakes from our last post? This is her obituary in full. What additional information can you find?

Just from this document, we know that Martha:

• Was born in Yorkshire County, England on 15 August 1786
• Emigrated to the United States in 1828, first setting up home in New York
• Moved to Huntington County, Indiana in 1830
• Moved to Madison Township, Indiana (near South Bend) in 1876
• Died on 15 September 1878 in Madison Township, Indiana
• Had a son named Thomas

What next steps could we take?

• Check Yorkshire birth records for any Marthas with this date of birth, or close to it
• Check marriage records in Yorkshire for a woman named Martha marrying a Crakes…perhaps finding one that matches a Martha with the birth of 15 August 1786
• Check ship records for 1828
• Check the 1830 census for both New York and Huntington County, Indiana
• Check subsequent census records through 1870 in Huntington County
• Look for a headstone matching her information in the Madison Township area
• Follow up on her son Thomas

All this data and steps for following up, just from one obituary! Unfortunately, a published obituary isn’t as common as we would like it to be, but it is often a very useful tool when it can be found.

Unfortunately, sometimes we just can’t find that one birth record or census entry that we need. An excellent alternative to traditional sources of genealogy information is the local newspaper! While not always available, a newspaper article can be an excellent way to fill in missing pieces in an ancestor’s story.

Newspaper repositories are scattered far and wide. There are some large databases, like Newspapers.com or the British Newspaper Archive. If you have a subscription or access via library or free trial, these are a great place to start. The Library of Congress has some digitized papers online, as do many local libraries or universities. Try searching for “newspaper archive <city, county, state, or region>” in your favorite search engine.

As an example, this is the method I used to find the death information for my 4th great grandmother, Martha Crakes nee Watson. Her obituary was published in the South Bend Tribune and gave me her date and place of death.

Here at Weaving the Tapestry, we’re well-versed in looking at alternative sources to find information about hard to find ancestors. Check out what we have to offer!

We’ve worked back through John’s life to the very first moment: his birth.

I already know from his death certificate his birth date, and from his marriage record his birthplace. But for completeness, I now search for his birth record. In addition to good genealogy and sourcing practice, it’s possible that the birth record will have contradictory information from the marriage or death records that needs to be sorted out.

As before, if you aren’t already familiar with sources of birth records either to request as an eligible relative/researcher or to search what is publicly available, you can start by searching for “birth records <city, state, or country>”.

Instead of Ancestry, this time I’m on FamilySearch (an excellent free resource) in the “Michigan Births and Christenings, 1775-1995” database. My search is:

Even though this is accurate to what I’ve found in other records, the search returns no results! When this happens, it’s best to remove some information to increase the chance your search will return something. I like to start with location. Instead of Bridgeport, I will enter Saginaw (the county in which Bridgeport resides). The record I’m looking for is now the first result:

If this doesn’t work, try removing or using soundex or partial search for the last name, or giving a range to the year. Slowly expand your search to give you more results to sort through. As always, be careful for duplicate names and find some corroborating information. Sometimes this all fails, and if you have the patience you can find the record by going through scanned images page by page.

While the birth record does not give me any additional information, it does support the information I’ve already found through other sources and is a good cross check and record to add to my record of John.