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March 10, 2012

Lots of Drama and Tragedy in Chronicling America Newspapers online

The Salt Lake Herald.  October 15, 1889
If you haven't visited the Library of Congress website for Chronicling America, you should. You can search historic newspapers pages from 1836-1922 for free. It's pretty incredible

In fact I just spent an enjoyable couple of hours finding all kinds of data on my extended Vollick and Follick ancestral lines. The great thing about this website is that the search terms you use are highlighted on the newspaper page so it's easy to find and enlarge to read.

Some of my new finds included a sad story of a 15 year old boy's death - the result of a hunting accident in Utah.

Another was a scandalous story of one of my Follick branches - a married man whose wife just had a baby, they go to live with her Follick parents, she is very ill and her husband seduces her 16 year old sister! He went to prison for 2 years over that affair. It's all very tragic but we all love those little tidbits don't we?

One obituary I found for Nancy Follick nee Parker included a photograph of her. How I wish I could find something like that for my direct ancestors!

So start your search and enjoy!

3 comments:

Celia Lewis said...

I could get lost in newspapers! Only 2 hours, Lorine? You must have had a timer set! Even if one doesn't find details on one's ancestors, I've seen that there's ALWAYS "something" very interesting on the pages. Good reminder to go dig!

Olive Tree Genealogy said...

Celia, I had to stop to write this blog post! :-) I'm back at it, have been for a couple of more hours.

Think I should get ready for the day though since it's already 1 pm where I live!

Sheryl said...

Another thing that is very useful about the Chronicling America website is that you can save a link to the page where your article is located. Making it easier to refer to the exact article being discussed.