Small items in the news – Showvaker

Many times you will come across small items in the newspaper that help you with a name or a date; like this one.

 

I did a search for the name “Showvaker” and one of the links got me to the page but not to the exact item. I had to hunt around the page to find “Snowvaker”.

 

Many times in old newspapers, in the Google Archive collection, not all items are highlighted to be picked up by a search [I’ve covered this topic many times in the blog] so Google now scans the page and finds a link close to where the name appears. In the past they did not even to that; they only took people to an exact match for the highlighted item.

 

So you can see below that the name “Showvaker” is not highlighted, but a story below it is highlighted. I was able to get to the page in this way. Once on the page I brought down the link box and made sure it contained the link address for the highlight. I copied that link to put on my screen print of the “In Memoriam” item that I put on the tree.

 

 

Below is the screen print I put on the Ancestry dot com Family tree that has Jacob R Showvaker on its branches. — https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/tree/113199745/family

 

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Gettysburg-Times – Jan 21, 1942
See above this link for a memorial poem

https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=r9clAAAAIBAJ&sjid=PfwFAAAAIBAJ&pg=3190%2C4054455
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On this small item I get a confirmation of Jacob’s death date, as it says “…passed away two years ago today”. By noting the header of the Google Archive image, “Gettysburg Times – Jan 21, 1942”, I can set the death date for Jacob at 21 Jan 1940 or close to that date. I don’t say it is the exact date because the newspaper might have put it on a different issue or maybe ran the item on a couple of days not realizing the message “…ago today.” In any event this small item gives us a confirmation for the month and year of Jacob’s death. Many times this will be the first time we see the mention of a death date and the small item will be the clue we were looking for.

 

So always check out the small items and if you get a link that has nothing to do with what you were searching for, remember your quest might be on that page, so look for it.

 

I hope this blog post will help you in your future newspaper searches.

 

Thank You