Pay attention to newspaper dates!

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:

1. The Google News Archive collection may have an error
2. A collection with a large number of images for a particular date may contain other dates
3. Always check the date at the top of the newspaper image
4. 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

1. Link to Mrs. W. M. Wolf obit: https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Qr9LAAAAIBAJ&sjid=_zADAAAAIBAJ&pg=2276%2C6530558
2. 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

3. 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