I saw an obituary for Joanne Pioszak in a 1950 newspaper and I created a family tree, on Ancestry.com, to hold the screen print of the obit.
Once I created the tree, other family trees came up as hints for the Joanne tree and I was able view death dates for her relatives. Since I had the Ludington Daily News collection open to Joanne’s obit, I thought I would try to find the obits for the new death dates. The one obit (Joanne’s) allowed me to find eighteen (18) more newspaper items and fourteen (14) of those were obituaries. You can see a larger view by clicking on the item.
If you find an obit in a newspaper it is possible that other family members have also been featured in that same newspaper. The Ludington Daily News collection on Google News Archive has many issues from many decades of the newspapers printing (23,774 issues). The Pioszak family stayed in the area so there are many items about their lives featured in the pages of the newspaper. Although I was primarily looking of obits, I was able to find marriage announcements and visit announcements.
Many newspapers printed the comings and goings of the people in the town and in those small items you will sometimes find the maiden names of the daughters who left the community. The small items will also provide a clue for where to look for the children who were mentioned in the previous census records. What happened to Johnny Willow who was mentioned in the 1900, 1910 and 1920 census? A small item in a Ludington newspaper might saw “Mr. and Mrs. Willow sent the week visiting their son Johnny and his wife June who now live in Lansing.” With that small item we would know to look for a marriage between Johnny and June and also for other small items about the Willow family which might give us new clues.
The branches on the Joanne Pioszak family tree have these surnames: Cross, Firestone, Greenwald, Henke, Masse, Miller, Nowicki, Ozdzch, Paetschow, Pasinki, Pioszak, Rohmoser, Thompson,
and by finding the obits for these family members I was able to add many people to the tree.
Many new names of people were mentioned in the obits and as I added those names to the tree I was able to get new hints and new family trees that had that particular branch of the family.
Some of the death dates were not found in the newspaper because the newspaper collection has issues missing, but I am sure someone could find the obit in some other newspaper collection or some other family tree now that they have the information on this tree.
I hope this post gives you new ideas for your quest to fill out your family tree.
Thank You
Jose, M.Ed
from Clarkston, Michigan
Blog: https://newspaperproject2012.wordpress.com/
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===== Link to Joanne Pioszak’s obit =====
Ludington, Michigan
Ludington Daily News – Jun 24, 1950
https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=4ZYtAAAAIBAJ&sjid=uEIDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6986%2C2857818
Ludington Daily News
23,774 issues
May 18, 1870 – Dec 30, 2006
Genealogical Collection 
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