Then I redo my research by either following specific branches of the family tree or investigating ancestors as their birth/marriage/death anniversaries pop up. Rotating newspaper sites paid off this week when I finally discovered where and when two ancestors in my husband's family died--raising a new genealogy question as well.
Elizabeth E. Bentley Light
The Bentley branch has been a special focus of my research into my husband's family tree. My husband's 3d great-grandpa William Tyler Bentley uprooted his family from upstate New York about 1835 and settled in Elkhart County, Indiana with his wife Olivia and their seven children. Alas, Olivia died just a few years later. William left for California a decade later, during Gold Rush fever, and most of his children soon also left Indiana to farm or ranch in California.
William's daughter Elizabeth married widower Emanuel Light on June 13, 1847 and they began their family with two sons, William and Frank. William only appears on the 1850 US Census, so I suspect he died young, before Elizabeth and Emanuel moved to central California late in 1853, bringing along his two children from his first marriage. In California, the couple had two more children, even as one of Emanuel's older sons died.
Obits for Elizabeth and Emanuel
Using my subscription to newspapers.com, I searched for Elizabeth and Emanuel's death notices. I had a vague idea of when they died (before 1900) but nothing specific. Within minutes, I had obituaries for both of these ancestors. Emanuel died first, in January of 1896, in Winters, California, a rural section of the state west of Sacramento. His obit noted that Emanuel had made his home on "the eastern slope of a range of mountains" since 1890. His survivors were listed as his wife Elizabeth, three sons, and one daughter. The survivor count must include his son from the first marriage plus two sons and a daughter with Elizabeth.
Elizabeth's obit was published in May of 1897, saying she died only 16 months after her late husband Emanuel. Again, her surviving children are noted as three sons and one daughter, very likely her husband's son from his first marriage plus two sons and a daughter with Emanuel.
On the 178th anniversary of Elizabeth and Emanuel's wedding, I'm glad to be able to add their death dates to my family trees, all because I redid my research in a newspaper database.
It used to be that we kept research logs, in part, to remind us not to go back to somewhere we've already searched. Today, it's the opposite. With more and more records becoming available, we need to revisit the same record sets to find the record! Times have certainly changed with the digital age.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely agree with you! I rotate my subscriptions so I can redo research and find records that weren't available in the past. TY for commenting.
DeleteI love that more and more newspapers are being digitized, especially in California with the help of the California Digital Newspaper project and Ancestry (newspaper.com). I hope the CDNP can survive the funding issues at UC Riverside.
ReplyDeleteFingers crossed about funding for this and other newspaper digitization projects. TY for leaving me a comment.
DeleteGreat idea to rotate newspaper subscriptions. I am always looking for new websites. In Germany so much is available online now. It's hard to keep track of all the new records.
ReplyDeleteNice works. Newspapers are the best!
ReplyDeleteNewspapers are so great for research, with all the information that can be found in them. I'm glad they came through for you. Even better that you wrote about the discovery on the anniversary of their marriage.
ReplyDelete