GENEALOGY CHALLENGE 2021 - Newspaper Clipping

GENEALOGY CHALLENGE 2021

Newspaper Clipping - January 16th entry of a 31-day challenge to post a document, photo or artifact on social media every day in January.  

by Nancy Gilbride Casey

 

Newspaper research is one of my favorite types of research to do. It is stunning how much information can be found on our ancestors, "back in the day." 

While we now turn to Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms, earlier generations took to the newspapers to keep up with the comings and goings of their friends, families and neighbors. Everything was in the newspapers: who was visiting whom, was sick, getting married, fell into a well, died a horrible death, got a new job, had a baby, etc.

For me, newspaper items have ultimately helped me confirm relationships I had theorized about, but lacked the proverbial "smoking gun." 

A favorite example in this category is an obituary I found while on my very first on-the-ground research trip in March 2019 to Scranton, Pennsylvania—home of several of my paternal ancestors. One stop was the Albright Memorial Library's genealogy room, where I scrolled through microfilm images of old newspapers. 

In particular I was looking for a few obituaries of ancestors who had died in this city, and especially for my great grandfather John Joseph Gilbride. He died in 1937 in Cleveland in a boiler explosion and I had Cleveland-area obits. In this time period, if a person moved, often obituaries would be printed in the city they came from as well, to keep former friends and neighbors informed.

I had also been reconstructing John's family, including his father Michael Gilbride, his second wife Mary Gallagher, and their children. John was the only child of Michael and his first wife Catherine Ryan, who died in 1881 at Danville Asylum in Pennsylvania. But I had not yet found anything in writing connecting my John to Michael and Mary's family, so I could not be absolutely certain that I had the right Michael.

I found the proof I had so long sought that day in three paragraphs from the 24 July 1937 edition of The Scranton Times.¹

The obituary included not only John's name and current residence, but the maiden name of my great grandmother, the names of their four sons (including my grandfather Joseph), and the names of his half-siblings noted as his "brothers and sisters"— and including all his sisters' married names. All of these facts were identical to the facts I had pieced together regarding his family.

Of particular note is the mention of "his mother, Mrs. Mary Gilbride." This is the same Mary Gallagher who married Michael after John's mother's death. John was just a year old when his mother Catherine was sent to Danville, and about 5 years old when she died in 1881. Michael and Mary married in 1885 when John was about nine years old. Mary would indeed have been the only mother John would have known.

This one small clipping confirmed about two years of research into my great grandfather and his extended family, and was one of several finds which made the entire trip to Pennsylvania worthwhile.

NEXT UP: Childhood Artifact

¹ John Gilbride, obituary, The Scranton (Pennsylvania) Times, 24 July 1937, page/column unknown; citing Albright Memorial Library microfilm.