Think about all the newspapers that could have printed something about your ancestor. There are more possibilities than just the nearest one. For my ancestors in southern Hancock County, Illinois, there were newspapers in nearby towns such as Warsaw and Mendon. There were several newspapers in the county seat of Carthage and newspapers in Quincy, Ilinois--a good thirty-five miles away and in a different county--also published news and gossip from those areas.
Don't just research one or two really close papers and ignore others--find out whether they published "gossip" from outlying towns or not.
I grew up, and my family is from, a small town in south Jersey, about 25 miles NE of Philadelphia. The online newspapers for my neck of the woods are scares, but I found several articles on family members in the Phila papers, so it pays to check out the "big city" papers!
ReplyDeleteI want to let you know that your blog post is listed in today's Fab Finds post at http://janasgenealogyandfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/2013/04/follow-friday-fab-finds-for-april-25.html
ReplyDeleteHave a great weekend!