When You Get Just the Clippings

My mom was an avid reader of newspapers.  Not only did she like to read them, she liked to clip articles, obituaries, cartoons, poems, and any other item that took her fancy.  As a four- or five-year-old child I followed in her footsteps, at least as far as the clipping went.  One December, possibly after having discovered and learned how to use scissors, I began clipping "articles" and stuffing them into my little desk in our kitchen.  Mom was not happy to see the desk overflowing with long strips of newspaper.  While I could use scissors just fine, I obviously couldn't tell where one article ended and another began.  My older brother persuaded me that since Christmas was coming and so was Santa, I should get rid of the clippings and not cut any more.  I'm sure Mom was grateful to my brother for his intervention.

The sad thing about the articles my mom clipped is that she didn't include newspaper information.  No name, no date, no city of publication.  (Though she sometimes included a family relationship.)  All those wonderful obituaries and so many of them said things like "...died on Friday... in the city" or some other information that was not helpful without other details.  Perhaps, to my mom, seeing a newspaper article about an event in a person's life somehow validated the event.



Mom cut out the three articles above.  The first is the announcement of her own marriage to my father; the second is an obituary of Gust Froman, one of my father's great-uncles; and the last is an obituary for William N. McClelland, the husband of one of my father's Doyle cousins.  The last two are not relatives whose information would have been written down with specific dates included, at least not in information my parents kept.

I can imagine my parents trying to remember the date of one of these deaths by remembering what else had happened in close proximity to the date.  "Was that the year we bought the new Ford?  The leaves were beautiful colors when we drove to the funeral so maybe it was in October."  "No, I think we'd already had the new car several years...."  And it would go on until they finally remembered the probable month, date, and year.

It takes a lot of research to find the location of a news article like these when the only information is what's in the article.  These are the steps I follow when I do this kind of reverse research.

1. I check FamilySearch, Ancestry, etc., for any information about the person but especially about where he lived at the oldest age I can find him alive.  The hope is to find a death certificate.
2. After I've found a death date and location, I search for newspapers that were published locally at the time.
3. Next I search to find whether those newspapers are available online and where.  If not, I try to find whether a library local to the decedent has the newspapers.
4. I contact the library to learn whether the newspapers were microfilmed and are available for inter-library loan; whether they have a clippings database that's searchable online; whether they have someone who will search newspapers and send a clipping; or whether they have any other kind of service for obtaining a copy of the clipping.  It helps if I have the date of the newspaper.
5. If I find the newspaper online or can obtain a microfilm, I perform a date-by-date and page-by-page search for the obituary.
6. When I finally find the source of the clipping I record the heck out of where I found it and how the next person can find it too!

If several newspapers were published in the area, it multiplies the work.  And the fact is that some newspapers published several versions each day, each varying from the other with not all the same information included.  Often, only one version is available.

This is the minimum information I record for a newspaper clipping.  I may also include the search process, the names of any librarians or others who helped, the cost, etc.
> name of newspaper
> location of publication
> date of publication and edition
> title of clipping or if in a group of small articles, title of group
> page and column of clipping
> location where I found the newspaper
   > if a physical library I include the address and phone number
   > if online, I include the website name and the url to the image, plus date of access

If you have other tips for finding sources of clippings of obituaries and news articles like these, please share!

If you have clippings, NARA's Preserving Newspaper Clippings is a brief, helpful article.  The Archive Lady: How to Preserve Newspaper Clippings offers more detailed information about preserving clippings.


And should you like to create your own newspaper clipping, use The Newspaper Clipping Generator.  (I'm not sure how you would handle documentation, though.)

This post was written for Amy Johnson Crow's 2019 version of 52 Ancestors.  The post topic for the week was "In the Paper."

--Nancy.

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