Zoom Presentation on 21 September - Pandemics and Genealogy

The great Spanish Flu epidemic killed millions of people around the world including over 600,000 deaths in the United States alone. There's a good chance there are Spanish Flu deaths in your family. The video embedded below shows some cases and goes on to explore how the Spanish Flu has many parallels with our Covid-19 pandemic. Schools were closed, masks required, and many sporting events were cancelled. One sporting event that was cancelled was especially near and dear to the hearts of us in the Pacific Northwest. The final game of the 1919 Stanley Cup was cancelled, and so the Seattle Metropolitans didn't have the chance to repeat their 1917 victory over the Montreal Canadiens.

Using Online News Resources

May meeting of the North Beach Genealogical Society was about using Online News Resources. Click on any of the charts below to bring up a full-size version, from which right and left arrows will bring up following or preceeding charts and the associated notes. To view an image even larger, right click on the bigger version (not the thumbnail) and then click "Open image in new tab." Clicking on THAT image will make things even larger.

Using Newspapers for Genealogical Research

Library of Congress - Chronicling America

Received from Michael Dindinger via email on February 9, 2020

Michael provides us with an update on doing research with newspapers. This post draws primarily on Genealogy’s Star by James Tanner. Posting used by written permission received by Michael. You might also want to check back with Michael's Family History Learning Moment, entitled "Michael Reads the Newspapers."

Seattle's Special

Seattle Public Library
Wikipedia Photo by Ɱ

Seattle Public Library (SPL)

The SPL is one public library in a different league than any other in this series. Not only is its main branch also a FamilySearch Affiliate library, but it has America’s Genealogy, the Seattle Times going back to 1895, and Sanborn Fire Maps that I have not found anywhere else. Most libraries only have Sanborn maps of the State the library is in. The Library of Congress has many maps from locations around the US, but none after about 1920. Seattle has newer and more Sanborn maps. Some of this material is not available even on the big “pay” genealogy sites. And we haven't even mentioned that SPL also has a large genealogy collection if you visit them in person. Seattle has done a lot of stuff wrong, but the library is done right. There are some advantages to living in the region's largest city.

Michael Reads the Newspapers

by Michael W. Dindinger, via email on September 17, 2019

FAMILY HISTORY LEARNING MOMENT
Michael's main sources for this post:

The Family History Guide
FamilySearch Research Wiki

Since digitizing and storing thousands of images of newspaper pages on the Web is expensive, free online collectons of digitized historical newspapers are rare. However, modern day newspapers are increasingly found for free online. Free access to “historical’ databases can often be found at local libraries in larger communities.

Proquest Newspaper Access from Libraries

If you go to one of the library sites that offers Proquest news feeds, there are literally well over a thousand of them. Partly to experiment with how to better create tables for this and other blogs, here are a sampling of them. To cut down the number, I sorted based on the oldest starts to publication (older items are always of interest to those of us looking for stuff on relatives that died or were newsworthy during living memory). I then started cutting out ones that didn't cover much period or only started recently. That left the list below, which is still pretty long even after I eliminated 90% of the sources.

For those that have forgotten, libraries that offer this Proquest feed, that have reciprocity with Timberland Regional Library card holders, include: North Olympic, Pierce County, Seattle, Washington State Library. You can also access these publications via the US Newsstream (in a bit harder to use form) which is available through TRL itself.

Regional Library Access

There has been a fair amount of concern/discussion about paid versus free genealogy sites. Many feel that the "big" sites want to get as much money out of the researcher as possible. However, these are not simply "big businesses" that run television commercials. Most of them offer free access to people using libraries that subscribe to the services. Almost all of them offer free access to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. That organization estimates this is a value to its members of around $900 per year. In short, you can spend a lot of money on research sites, but you can also access the information inexpensively, or even for free.

Library of Congress Newspaper Archive

There are a number of newspaper archive sites that provide ways for people to bring up stuff about their ancestors. One of the best known is newspapers.com, which is a paid site that is run by Ancestry. Timberland Library System subscribes to "Newspaper Archive" which you can access for free from home if you have a TRL Library Card.