An Idle Thought

Some of you may have noticed that I am writing a weekly column for the Sherburne County Citizen and the West Sherburne Tribune. The column doesn’t always appear, but that is the chance you take when writing for a newspaper. The point of all of this is that because I am writing more, it is becoming a bit more difficult to write exclusively for this blog. I will try to put together some interesting writing, but it may be a bit less often.

Anyway, while surfing the columns of historic newspapers in Sherburne County I came across an interesting, brief comment that says a great deal about life and family duties in Sherburne County around 1900. Published in the Sherburne County Times, 21 April 1898, it reads: “Mrs. J. H. Sherpardson’s nurse has gone to the city, and J. H. has to do the household work now.”

This is interesting that the fact the newspaper takes note of J.H Shepardson having to “do the household work” implies he hasn’t done it for some time. The poor man has to suddenly take care of himself while his wife recovers from some unknown illness.

Am I reading too much “between the lines” of this report? I don’t think so.

Finally, sympathy for J. H. Shepardson is 114 years too late, but I think we should all express some (sarcastic) pity for this man. And recognize the hard work of his wife and all women of that time.

This is all just idle thinking while I have a moment.

Tennessee Newspapers to be Dgitized

For researchers in Tennessee the good news is that digitized newspapers will be available for research in two years. The even better news is that, often, newspapers published information that crossed the borders. This same work may be useful for Georgia research.

http://chronicle.com/blogPost/U-of-Tennessee-Wins-Grant-to/24906/

And thanks to Leland Meitzler and his blog, www.genealogyblog.com for bringing this article to my attention

New Digitized Newspapers

A new resource that is very cool has come on-line. I haven't had much opportunity to work with it, but the Digital Library of Georgia has posted a collection of Atlanta newspapers on their webpage. The newspapers seem to be every word searchable which is a great resource for genealogy and family history. You may want to explore the page for yourself at:


http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu

This is interesting stuff.

Digitized Newspapers in North Carolina

The following webpage came courtesy of Laura Carter and Elaine Nell. Some interesting digital newspaper pages have come available, on-line, from North Carolina.

You may want to check this out:

http://www.archives.ncdcr.gov/Newspaper/index.html

More Documents Every Day

The National Archives has a backlog of 400-500 million pages of records that need to be processed. Footnote has uploaded 60 million images and is adding more than 1 million news records each month. Meanwhile, the Family History Library in Salt Lake City has committed to digitizing their entire collection of more than 2.5 million reels of microfilm.

This information came courtesy of an editorial by Tony Burroughs on cnn.com. His point is one worth emphasizing, that new records are coming available every day. Because of this enormous increase in accessibility of information, the work of family history is never done. Because of this ever increasing abundance of information, Genealogists and Family Historians can never say we have searched every record and every document to find our ancestors.

The discovery and release of new records and documents is not simply an event from national institutions. Everyday, local historical societies and libraries make available new resources. As a local example, the Atlanta History Center acquired a spectacular newspaper collection in 2001. It has been processed and has been available to researchers for the past three years. The finding aid is just now being prepared for on-line research. In this collection are newspapers from North Georgia that were unknown to exist fifteen years ago! As these papers become more accessible it is exciting to think about the new information about our ancestors that will emerge from these pages.

Other examples of new document discoveries include plantation records becoming available in South Carolina after a repository re-processed a finding aid. Or, in South Georgia, loose records from Tattnall County have just recently been indexed and abstracted.

Militia rosters, orphanage records, and other resources are being uncovered each day. Truly, the access to information and resources increases with each sunrise. This is good news for all of the Genealogists and Family Historians in the world. This means our work is never done, and new resources are constantly being made available for use.