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Archiver > ORLANE > 2004-02 > 1077349058


From: Lester M Powers <>
Subject: Re: [ORLANE] Re: Oregon newspapers
Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2004 23:37:38 -0800


Sherry

I realize that some folks are housebound, and others
live a bazillion miles out in the wilderness, but I
recommend ever so strongly that, if there's any way you
can make it to a local city public library, *NEVER* get
obits through the kind services of a volunteer!!!!!
Always read the old newspapers yourself. Always, always,
always, always. If you have a volunteer do the lookup,
you miss all the fun stuff.

My great grandfather John Gilbert Powers moved from
Springfield, Lane Co, Oregon to Palouse City, Whitman Co.,
Washington about 1878 or so. I looked up his marriage
notice in the Palouse newspaper (1880s) and found it.
Then cranked back through the film to discover that his
wife, and my great grandmother, had run a petition drive
to oust the Palouse postmaster and replace him with
herself. She won. Some months after her marriage, she
became the Secretary of the local Women's Christian
Temperance Union (noteworthy because her son, my
grandfather, was a heavy drinker). And awhile after that,
some teenager practically blew the roof off of great
grandfather's store while examining one of the guns on
sale there, an event that disconcerted the other
customers. Back at Lane County, while looking for great
great grandfather Benjamin's obit, I found great grand-
father going on jury duty and all this A.S. Powers
electioneering -- with the smear campaign against him in
the other paper still to come.

Every bit of all this wonderful stuff would be
completely missed if I had asked a volunteer to just look
for obits and marriage notices.

Normally, you would visit your local city library
and ask to see the United States Newspaper Project's
National Union List of newspapers, then go with
interlibrary loan from there. But for Lane County, it
is better to go with the website Jim Pearson mentions
as quoted below, rather than the Union List, and then do
interlibrary loan. ALWAYS go shopping at random for
neat stuff on newspaper films for many months to either
side of the event you are looking for. You may find some
astonishing goodies about your ancestors. At worst, you
will get a feel for their environment. (Palouse, for
example, was a very low-crime area, except that there
were a quite a few gun duels, and the Chinese railroad
workers were accused of claimjumping at the mines there
a quite a lot. One man who beat his wife was tarred and
feathered, literally.)

A volunteer will give you an hour with the old
newspaper, but I like to spend a week on a newspaper film.
Even if all else fails, there's the humor. At Palouse,
the local minister published an apology -- seems that
the paint used to paint the pews was defective. So, well,
after services, when the congregation tried to stand up,
welllllllll. Well, that's when they discovered that the
paint on the seats of the pews hadn't dried very well.

Lester Powers


On Fri, 20 Feb 2004 21:35:09 -0800 "James Pearson"
<> writes:
>
> > Where would I write to try to find an obit for 1918 and
> maybe
> > some kind of a death notice for 1896?
> > It has been a couple of weeks since I wrote the genie angel
> > volunteer for Lane Co, and she has never responded, so where would
> the
> > biggest library be, that would have the newspapers for look-up's?
> >
> The largest collection of past Oregon newspapers is at the
> University of
> Oregon Library.
>
> http://libweb.uoregon.edu/guides/newspapers/
>
> They participate in Inter Library Loan. Good luck.
>
> Jim Pearson
>
>
>
>
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>
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