Down Another Dead-end Rabbit Hole, Searching for Abel Armitage

Some other blogger, probably Randy of Genea-Musings, posted that Chronicling America had added new newspapers.  I thought, Oh, maybe they'll have some Steubenville newspapers, or maybe there will be a reference to Abel Armitage this time when I check.  I periodically return to ancestors I'm still trying to find and search for their names.  This time I was so hopeful.

And, yes!  There was a reference to Abel Armitage in the Wheeling Sunday Register, November 15, 1900.  Well, I thought, it could be him.  He would have been nearly 80 that year.  Maybe it's an obituary.  So I clicked through.

The first thing I noticed was that there were only 22 pages in this newspaper.  The next thing I noticed was that there were no highlights, even as I scrolled through the links to the pages.  Not a single highlight.  What could this mean?  Surely Chronicling America wouldn't send me to a newspaper that didn't have a reference to the man whose name I typed in.

I began looking at the images page by page.  No highlights.   Well, I thought, after I finish looking for highlights on all the pages, I'll just have to search page by page.  When I arrived at page 11, I saw community names as headings.  One of them was Tiltonsburg, a small town near Steubenville.  I began to search for Abel's name.  And, YES!  There was "Abel Armitage."  Oh my heart, could it be my Abel?

You know how you see the name first, then stop reading because you're so excited?  After that moment of excitement I read the whole sentence:  "Mr. Abel Armitage is looking happy over the arrival of a boy."  No, my heart, it is not your Abel.

Definitely not my Abel, not at age 80 (with a wife not much younger) having a baby.  The disappointment set in.  

Two men named Abel Armitage is one too many, in my opinion.  My great-grandmother, Elizabeth, was born to Abel and Eliza (Hartley) Armitage.  Eliza died not long after Elizabeth was born, and a few years later Abel married Ann Bell.  Abel and Ann named their one of their sons Abel B. Armitage.  Usually I see him as Abel Armitage, without the B, which makes it uncertain which Abel I'm reading about.  But clearly, the Abel in this article is not my great-great-grandfather.

I'll just keep searching now and then or when a new collection becomes available.

I love the old newspapers that had gossipy columns about the goings-on of people in the community.  It allows me to put together just a little more about the lives of ancestors.  If only I could find an obituary or even a notice about the last years of my Abel Armitage in one of those newspapers!

—Nancy.

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