I’ve been working on processing my backlog of newspaper articles that I downloaded during my burst of newspaper research in June and July. I don’t know about you, but when I’m doing newspaper research (or, really, any genealogy research), it can be tempting not to go to the trouble of downloading everything I find because it doesn’t seem important enough. And when I’m in the midst of a research session sometimes the downloading (or printing or copying, if I’m actually looking at paper documents) can seem so tedious that I only bother with the big stuff.
Come to think about it, that’s one advantage of short, frequent research sessions that I should add to my post The value of daily research. Since I don’t get bleary-eyed or weary during short sessions, I’m more likely to make the effort to download everything.
In any case, this week, as I was processing some newspaper articles, I was so happy that I had taken the effort to download even the tiniest articles. For example, there was an article in The Clinton Eye of Clinton, Henry, Missouri about my grandmother, Susie Jeffries Brown (1907-1999), having her tonsils and adenoids out on August 26, 1919. I didn’t think much of it when I downloaded it, but as I processed it, I noticed that the surgery took place 50 miles from her home in Rockville, Bates, Missouri and that it happened two days after her twelfth birthday.
I paused to think about whether 12-year-old Susie might have spent her birthday full of trepidation about the surgery and I wondered how long she stayed in the hospital. Was she served ice cream? (That always seemed to be the best part of getting your tonsils out when I was a kid.) It prompted me to do a little more research and I learned that by 1919 tonsillectomies were growing more prevalent (in fact hers was one of three mentioned in the newspaper article!), though they exploded in popularity in the 1920s. (If you’re as big a nerd as me and feel like digging into the topic, you can read The Rise and Decline of Tonsillectomies from The Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (vol. 62, No. 4, October 2007) at JSTOR.)
I was lucky enough to have known my grandmother, who died in her 90s when I was in my 30s. But I almost always think of her as a senior citizen. Sometimes I think of her as a mother of young children, as I recall stories my mother told me about her childhood. But I don’t know much about my grandmother’s childhood, mostly because I was lousy listener as a kid and young adult.
So this little newspaper article added to my understanding of my grandmother’s childhood and, perhaps more importantly, gave me reason to think about her as a child.
Whenever I’m tempted to skip downloading something, I’m going to remember that trivial things can often provide great clues when taken together with other clues found over time. That makes them important to capture. But even when they’re truly trivial, they can provide valuable little insights.
I was delighted to read this post! I did some deep newspaper hunting on a couple. Through the articles from their birth announcements to their obituaries. So much richness in walking through their lives via newspaper articles. From high school plays, musicals (small town, folks!) to rushed marriage with the WW2 having been declared. These two kindergarten classmates went on to college, a career in education, and having 8 kids of their own. I actually made a book for their children from the clippings. My favorites, I think the stolen coronet and the winner of a KFC chicken dinner, which 2 years later, makes me laugh. Newspapers, they have a story to tell!
I love it! Such slices of life, right? I learned from newspapers that my paternal grandparents were doubles badminton champions while my father was growing up. He never mentioned it!
wow! there must be a trophy somewhere!
If so, I haven’t seen it. But that would be a fun treasure to find!
I liked the musing about the ice cream. It reminded me of a young-Bill-Cosby-before-he-was-a-lech comedy album that had a whole segment on getting ice cream after having your tonsils out. I still sing, “ICE cream, we’re gonna get ICE cream!” whenever I have it.
That made me laugh out loud, Christy! I love that you sing before eating ice cream.
No detail is too small…like you, however, I download articles but don’t always have time to go through them. So many projects and so little time! Occasionally I do blog about articles I find when I discover absolutely fascinating tidbits that I know will interest people – like the one about my great-uncle who hopped into the driver’s seat of a horse-drawn milk van in England during the 1930s and took it a few blocks before abandoning it. When brought up on charges in court he said he’d always wondered what if felt like to drive one of those milk vans. The judge dismissed the charges 🙂
That’s a great story. I love it when I come across tiny details in my backlog because it motivates me to keep going with busting my backlog. (And, in theory, should help prevent me from creating one, though that seems to be a different story.)
I think we’re often a little too hard on ourselves about not being the “perfect” genealogist…I remind myself that I fit this in while working full time – there’s only so perfect things will be when I can’t devote all my time to it.
You’re speaking my language, Teresa!
I was able to fill an entire 2 binder with articles about Mom and her family and friends from the time she was seven until a bit after she graduated from high school. Lucky that the newspapers for the town had been digitalized for that period. It took awhile, but I underlined in red the names of family and friends. Mom and her brother, along with siblings and cousins, enjoyed sharing memories. Hard work, but worth doing.
What a wonderful gift you gave your mother, uncle and cousins! It is so great when we come across a newspaper bonanza like that, even it feels tedious and overwhelming. Good for you for sticking with it!