Two Helpful Videos from Ohio History About Using "Chronicling America" Newspapers

Today has turned out to be a day for administrative tasks (i.e. my ongoing location cleanup) and for brushing up on search techniques.

I found a few nice videos from the Ohio History YouTube channel with great tips to use while searching content in Chonicling America (or any other newspaper database).

"Historical vocabulary are the words used by people living at the time to describe contemporary people, places and events. Watch this video to learn more about historical vocabulary and why it is important to use it while searching Chronicling America and other digital newspaper resources."

"Watch this video to learn some tips for working with online translation tools in order to access the information contained in foreign-language newspapers on Chronicling America (http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov). You may also find this video helpful if you’re working with other foreign-language printed materials."

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Searching for Matilda Biddle Porter in the Newspapers Using "Data Visualization: Journalism's Voyage West"

My 3rd great grandmother Matilda (Biddle) Porter (1846-1927) died in Lincoln County, Oregon. After she and Orville Tracy Porter divorced in 1888 she was found living with son Chester Porter in 1900 in Albany, Linn, Oregon (which she rented), and then with married daughter Alice in 1910 at 705 West Fifth Street, Albany, Linn, Oregon.  By 1920 she was renting and living alone on 112 Olive Street, Newport City, Lincoln, Oregon.  Seven years later she died in that county.

Despite using a range of terms, I did not get any results for her in my subscription databases (Newspapers, NewspaperArchive, and GenealogyBank) nor in the free Historic Oregon Newspapers (with the exception of her divorce notice in 1888).


What newspapers were known to be in Lincoln around the time she lived and died there?  One can check the Library of Congress' U.S. Newspaper Directory this way:

But I need visuals!

Instead, I decided to use a visualization of that information from "Data Visualization: Journalism's Voyage West (I did a Fantastic Find post of this resource last year).

This visualization plots over 140,000 newspapers published over three centuries in the United States. The data comes from the Library of Congress' "Chronicling America" project, which maintains a regularly updated directory of newspapers. 

Closeup of Oregon, with the year slider at 1930.  The newspapers published in Lincoln, Oregon (at least known by the Library of Congress) were the "Newport journal" and "Yaquina Bay news," neither of which appear to be digitized online anywhere (yet). Clicking on the newspaper titles takes you to the LOC Chronicling America website.

Using the "Libraries that Have It" tab reveals that the "Univ of Oregon Libr, Eguene, OR" has "Newport journal".

"Univ of Oregon Libr, Eguene, OR" has "Yaquina Bay news" as well.

I assume this means the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon.  The UO libraries include Knight Library, possibly the first place I should check for the microfilm of these newspapers.

Both newspapers are at the Knight Library.

Ooh, the microfilm can be borrowed (interlibrary loan)?  Nice.

So at least now I have a lead on where to go and who to contact in order to search these non-digitized newspapers.

If I write up a research plan for additional research on Matilda I can use this information.



© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Fantastic Find: FamilySearch article "United States Newspapers"

I've been asked how I find so many articles in newspaper databases.  Most of it entails having plenty of practice learning all the vagaries  of any given database.  Though most of my searches come up without meaningful results, I find the process fascinating, so I just keep trying.  Okay, I'm a bit obsessive.

The FamilySearch article, "United States Newspapers," has a great section, "Identifying and finding newspapers in an area," that can really help you know what might actually exist.

In particular, they mention the Chronicling America project, which I use a lot:

1690-present: The Library of Congress' Website Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers contains information about America's newspapers from 1690 to the present, including the locality each paper covered, its title, publication years, and current locations in various repositories. The database is searchable by place or title. After using this source to identify newspapers in your ancestor's locality, we recommend you use both this site's listing of repositories as well as OCLC/WorldCat to find repositories in your area that have the newspapers in question. Chronicling America also contains a growing collection of digitized newspapers published between 1836 and 1922, and is planned to become a comprehensive source for digitized U.S. newspapers from that time period.

For example, my 3rd great grandfather, John Nosler (1800-1864) in Winterset, Madison County, Iowa.  In his estate file I found the following newspaper clipping:

A lot of interesting stuff on this page.
Madison Co., Iowa, probate case files, John Nosler (1864), confirmation by E. W. Fuller for publishing notice, 5 February 1866; digital image, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : 6 Feb 2016). 

I went to the Chronicling America to see if I could find out where and IF this particular issue of the Winterset Madisonian was available so I could see the "Original Notice" in its original context.

There are two options at Chronicling America that I use most often to see what might actually be available; "All Digitized Newspapers, 1836-1922," and the "US Newspaper Directory, 1690-Present."  The latter directory contains all known newspapers to the LOC, and may or may not be digitized (most haven't been yet).

As of this posting, there are 153, 642 titles listed in the directory.

I selected Iowa and the county Madison to search:

The first page of results of all newspapers (digitized or no) known to the LOC, from Madison County, Iowa, where my Noslers were for a while.

I didn't find any place that has the 1865-1866 run of the Winterset Madison that I was searching for (darn it!).  However, I chose the Winterset Madisonian 1874-1880 on the second page to see what libraries/archives have this run of the newspaper, just for an example.  Here is part of the results, showing how sporadic holdings can be (sometimes a library/archive only has 1 issue), but also leads where individual issues might possibly be, even if not online.

NOTE: I did a blog post last August about Data Visualization: Journalism's Voyage West, which uses Chronicling America's records to give a visual representation of where newspapers were from the Colonial American era to modern America.




© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.