“You
live as long as you are remembered.” – Russian Proverb
Previously, we discussed
newspapers.com and the newspaper archives that they have digitally published which
are easily accessible through their website. While they have thousands of
newspapers available, there are still many more digitized newspapers hidden in
the webpages of local libraries and other archival sites.
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| Reverend John F. Woodfin 4th great-grandfather |
While working on my family’s genealogy, I was hunting for more information on the life of my 4th
great-grandfather, Rev. John Franklin Woodfin. From United States Census
records and his death certificate, I knew that he was born in Buncombe County,
North Carolina and he died in Transylvania County, North Carolina. These areas
are adjacent to one another. With this information, I decided to search to see
if any newspapers from the time that Rev. John Franklin Woodfin lived were
available online. As it turned out, I was in luck.
There is a website called DigitalNC (www.digitalnc.org), which has worked to digitize North Carolina
newspapers and make them available and searchable online for free. DigitalNC is
a project of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources,
UNC Chapel Hill University Library, and the North Carolina Digital Heritage
Center. Through limiting my searches to the years that my ancestor lived (1830-1914)
and entering his surname, I was able to find several snippets in a local paper,
The Sylvan Valley News, about his life. I was also able to find his wife (my 4th
great-grandmother), Emily’s, obituary.
There are also many other resources
out there, similar to DigitalNC. For example, by visiting the State Library of
Ohio website (www.library.ohio.gov),
and visiting their genealogy page, you can connect to the Chronicling America
National Digital Newspaper program. The Chronicling America project was started
in 2005 to digitize newspapers across the country. The project is a partnership
between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
At the State Library of Ohio website, you can view newspapers from the project such
as The Cincinnati Labor Advocate, the Marietta Daily Leader, and The Ohio
Democrat, among many others.
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| An excerpt from the Sylvan Valley news about John Franklin Woodfin Click to enlarge |
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| An additional excerpt from the Sylvan Valley News about John Franklin Woodfin's sermon Click to enlarge |
While large-scale digitization
projects for newspapers like Chronicling America and DigitalNC are tremendously
valuable; when doing genealogy research, don’t
underestimate the power of the small, local library! I also have ancestors from
Wheeling, West Virginia. When searching for additional information, I was pleasantly
surprised to find that many of the Wheeling-area newspapers have been digitized
by the local library and are available to search through a quick link to a site
which hosts the digitized images of the newspapers.
As you are searching for your
ancestors whether in newspaper records, or elsewhere, don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Check your local library,
check your state library, the Library of Congress – anywhere you can think to look. If you are seeking, you shall find!
Links to websites mentioned above:
Library of Congress Genealogy Page - https://www.loc.gov/rr/genealogy/
Chronicling America - https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/
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