Here’s the next in my occasional series of bite-size Quick Tips. Click on the Quick Tips tag for my other Quick Tips. Because I tend to write longer posts, I wanted to provide a quick-to-read (and quick-to-write) post every couple of weeks on a small topic that pops into my head. I often find myself glad that I’ve paid attention to a small detail!
Ignore nothing
I’ve been doing my share of newspaper research lately. (I treated myself to a six-month subscription to Publisher Extra on newspapers.com recently.) When I do a newspaper search on my relatives I often unearth tiny mentions of them that seem unimportant and not worth the time to download and process.
I’ve learned that these small mentions can be important additions my research and that I shouldn’t ignore them. Case in point: I downloaded an article from the Owensburg Owensboro (Kentucky) Messenger-Inquirer from 16 Jun 1903 that offered a single sentence about my great grandfather: “Mr. Elmer Adams’ horse ran off Sunday morning and tore his buggy all to pieces.” (It was part of a larger article full of single-sentence updates about residents of Sacramento, McLean, Kentucky including a mention of Elmer’s mother’s funeral.)
I’m so glad I downloaded it because later, when I was trying to figure out when Elmer moved his family from Kentucky to Oregon where my grandfather was born in 1904, this became a data point on my timeline. It helped me narrow down when he might have left Kentucky.
Now I remind myself to go ahead and take a few minutes to download each piece of information I find (in a newspaper or elsewhere), no matter how trivial it may seem at that moment. It just might come in handy later!
