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Archiver > PAALLEGH > 2003-07 > 1057340450


From: Al Lenkner <>
Subject: Re: [ALL] Ancestry/Genealogy.com census, newspapers, etc.
Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2003 13:40:55 -0400
In-Reply-To: <1d2.d2c2f42.2c370484@aol.com>


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David,

That is a "caveat". Other than a few cities, most of the newspapers are
for very small towns and my family has been in Pgh since they emigrated.

I was so annoyed while searching the newspaper section that, if I spied a
strange name in any particular paper, I went back to page where you input
your selection and keyed that name in, just to see if it was indexed for
that newspaper and that page on that day. I guess that I had about a 50%
rate of finding that name for that date on that page of that
newspaper. That's unacceptable. My name is Lenkner but one of the
returns/hits was for some military officer back in the late 1800s named
"Blenkner" who lives in Ohio.

I guess that the option may be viable for some but, if your ancestors have
always lived in a large city like Pittsburgh, it's a complete waste of money.

Al


At 12:25 PM 7/4/2003, you wrote:

>Ancestry has indeed always had the 1900 census IMAGES, though they're not one
>of the years INDEXED. Genealogy.com has 1900 with both IMAGES and INDEX.
>The same is true of 1910.
>
>I've recently subscribed to the Ancestry "historic newspaper" option as well.
> No, the indexing is not perfect. And, the issue years available for the
>papers offered are not plentiful. Having said that, though, I still think
>it's a
>worthwhile option, provided you're working on several families in the area
>served by the paper offered for the timeframes specified. And, as a
>caveat, not
>everyone "got their name in the paper" in the mid 1800s (I've been working
>with the Cumberland MD Alleganian scans--3 different 2-yr runs from the
>1840s,
>50s, and 60s). You'd either died (and someone paid for a death notice or
>obit), were either having you estate settled or were settling someone else's
>estate, had a stray cow wander onto your farm or were mentioned as
>assessing the
>value of said cow, were a legal official, a voter registered in a particular
>district whose list was published, had a business with an ad in the
>paper.....that
>kind of thing. Remember, a great many marriages and deaths, property
>transfers, and the like were NOT published in the papers of that period.
>Incidentally, the above-mentioned cow assessors were my first two "hits"
>for the
>Cumberland Alleganian in 1846. They were a father/son pair in one of my
>lines, and
>the neighbor complaining of the stray cow lived 5 farms away. Nothing
>earth-shattering, but still a nice little snapshot, plus the notice
>mentioned the
>location of the farm in relation to Cumberland.
>
>The scans are pretty clean, and magnify quite well.
>
>David in Richmond
>
>
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