1886 Review of the Years News

Another important section in the old newspapers, also used to draw in customers, was the section which reviewed the passing year.

Again as a good example of this type of reporting we will look at the ”Weekly Chronicle a newspaper of Bluffton, Indiana which was published on January 6, 1887” .

I have seen other newspapers employ this reporting technique and I think it is very beneficial in finding lost relatives for the family tree even though the detail is not there as it would have been in the original newspaper.

The year end review may include the name of some person in your family tree who had an obit in the newspaper but that issue was not photocopied. By looking through a similar section in your relatives home town newspaper (if the newspaper had one) you may find a missing clue. Especially if your relative was a promenent member of the society. Even if your relative is not mentioned in this section there are clues which might help you narrow down your searches. As you will see in the catagories below important events are listed by month so if you know that “such and such” happen around the same time as the death or birth then you have a month identified in which to look.

If you do find a name in the various sections (see below) then you will know that your relative was mentioned in that newspaper on a particular month and perhaps will be able to narrow down the date of that particular news item.

By looking through the year in review section you will save countless hours of looking through newspaper after newspaper for that illusive relative and as I mentioned above, the newspaper where your relative was cited may no longer exist.

I captured only part of the screen (screen Print) for this illustration because the type is real small and hard to read even on the original newspaper and putting the whole item in a photocopy would require lots of cut and paste time.

Below are the sub-titles that the editors put on the item titled Record of the Year

Important Occurrences of the Twelve-month Arranged in Chronological Order.

A Brief Synopsis of the Most Notable Political, Social and Financial Happenings.

Necrology of 1886 – Death’s busy Work in the Ranks of the World’s Distinguished People.

The Casualty Record – A catalogue of Accidents Involving Loss of Human Life.

I hope this write up will give you one more tool in your genealogy tool box and will help you in your quest to find long lost relatives.

Thank You.

To View the Original item,
Select Weekly Chronicle in box below :