Fun with old newspapers

I was researching my great great grandparents (my maternal grandmother’s grandparents) this weekend and was on a quest for their death certificates. Alas, I have not found the death certificates yet (they died in Colorado, which doesn’t seem to want to share copies of death certificates with people as distantly related as I am). But I did do a search on the Pueblo, Colorado, library systemand located a citation for my great great grandmother’s obituary, which was published in the Pueblo Chieftain on November 5, 1945. I haven’t been able to put my hands on that obituary yet.

From the Kit Carson County Record, August 15, 1912

The search for the obituary put me on a quest for copies of any newspaper articles about them and I found the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection. It provides  images of Colorado newspaper articles from 1859 to 1923. That’s too early to find my great great grandparents’ obituaries, but I did find a few mentions of my people, including one that was kind of valuable.

I had seen on unverified family trees that my grandmother’s grandmother’s maiden name was McAdams (she was married to J. B.  Ruberson), but I had yet to verify that. But I found this fun little article about a visit from her nieces, whose last names are both McAdams, visiting her. (Ah, small town life.) To me, that provides some confirmation of the assertion that her maiden name was McAdams.

I’ve found several other places to read old newspapers (and I’m sure there are more). One is Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, from the Library of Congress. Another is Genealogy Bank, a paid service. And there’s NewspaperARCHIVE.com, another paid service. Don’t overlook the power of Google (which is how I found the Colorado Historic Newspapers, I think). And it’s also worth looking at the online public library systems in the area the newspaper was published in.

One of the things I love about family history research is the peek it provides into history. And looking at old newspapers is another great window into another time.