Don’t you just hate it when you can’t find an item in the newspaper?
The problem may be with the collection and not the newspaper or your eye sight.
I am working on an Obit (06 Oct 1898) and I created a tree for Mrs. W. M. Wolf so that I could put a screen print of the newspaper obit on her profile page. Once I created the tree, I got a hint for her marriage record and picked it up because it fit all the criteria. I decided to see if I could find the marriage announcement in the same newspaper that had her obituary.
The marriage date was May 17, 1894 so I went to the Google News Archive newspaper collection to see if they had that date available.
Once I pulled up the newspaper collection for that year, month and days I saw that May 17 issue was not available.
Having worked with the newspaper collection for many years I knew that sometimes the previous day issue will have part of the next day’s newspaper so I opened May 16, 1894.
I looked at the number of images they listed for this 1894 newspaper and saw 2 of 36 which I know must hold more than just that one day issue because in 1894 the newspapers did not have many pages; some only had four pages.
MAKE A NOTE FOR YOUR FILES:
“If you see large number of images, BE CAREFUL and check dates of each newspaper page.”
I zoomed in on the top of the first image to check the date:
The date of the newspaper matched the title Google News Archive gave to the collection, so I move to the next page.
Here is where I saw a problem.
I am looking at what is suppose to be page two of the May 16, 1894 newspaper but instead the page I am looking at is dated May 21, 1894.
I looked at the remaining 34 images and I found that they too were not pages for the May 16, 1894 newspaper; in fact they were of many other dates.
The Deseret News – May 16, 1894
Image 1 of May 16, 1894 is the front page for that date but the rest of the images are for some other dates.
Image 2 – page 2 thru page 3 of May 21,
Image 3 – page 4 thru page 7 of May 23,
The other images have multiple pages and multiple dates per image so I will not give the image #
page 4 thru page 8 of May 28,
front page of May 29
page 6 thru page 8 of June 1 also front page of June 2
page 2 thru page 12 of June 2
front page thru page 8 of June 4
front page thru page 5 of June 5
page 4 thru page 7 of June 6,
page 6 thru page 8 of June 7
front page thru page 8 of June 8
front page thru page 12 of June 9
front page thru page 5 of June 11
page 4 thru page 8 of June 13,
front page thru page 8 of June 14
front page thru page 8 of June 15
So the lessons you should take away from this small posting are:
- The Google News Archive collection may have an error
- A collection with a large number of images for a particular date may contain other dates
- Always check the date at the top of the newspaper image
- If you find an error make a note of it and report it to this blog
I hope this posting has given you some new information.
Thank You.
Jose from Clarkston, Michigan
See three (3) items for your files
- Link to Mrs. W. M. Wolf obit: https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Qr9LAAAAIBAJ&sjid=_zADAAAAIBAJ&pg=2276%2C6530558
- Link to tree that was created to hold screen print of obit:
Mrs Johnson Wolf 1898 – Utah – Family Tree
Owner: josemunoz2546
http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/83147804/person/38471420904
- Text of marriage item:
Utah, Select County Marriages, 1887-1937
Name: Walter M Wolfe
Gender: Male
Age: 35
Birth Date: 1859
Marriage Date: 17 May 1894
Marriage Place: Utah, Utah, United States
Spouse: Caroline M Johnson
Gender: Female
Age: 22
Birth Date: abt 1872
Genealogical Collection 
Thanks, Jose! Kind of scary to think of all the errors out there!