ROOTS & BRANCHES

I’ve crossed paths with Kerry Scott, who resides in New Mexico but still has a portion of her heart squarely in the Midwest, a number of times over the years.
She was one of my editors at Family Tree Magazine for a brief time, but I’ll always remember her for turning me on to what was then a great tool for U.S. historical newspapers, an online map that could be changed to any year in the newspaper era and then tied to Chronicling America’s “U.S. Newspaper Directory” for more information.
Unfortunately, that online map tool went away when the Adobe Flash platform on which it was built died, but Scott has continued use newspapers in ways emulated by few others.
She recently shared one of her discoveries on Facebook and has given me permission to share her victory lap.
“I have this third great-grandpa, Johann,” Scott wrote. “Nobody knows when he died. It was too early for vital records, there’s no cemetery record, nobody has a Bible with his date … it’s just a blank. There are a bunch of descendants, and nobody’s ever known.”
Scott wrote he had been found in the 1860 U.S. Census but not the 1870. “The dynamics of this family are such that it wasn’t even a sure bet that he’d died by 1870; there was a very good chance he’d run off instead,” she wrote.
So she worked on a project in which she’d get microfilmed newspapers from his area—none have been digitized, she says—via Interlibrary Loan, drive downtown to the main library, and view them on microfilm. Interlibrary Loan, often abbreviated ILL, is a service in which many repositories participate and allow their holdings (sometimes limited to microfilm copies) to circulate to other participating libraries.
Scott worked comprehensively on these newspapers. “Like, all of them,” she wrote. “I can do a full year of the county seat’s newspapers in about three hours, and I’ve covered 12 years so far.” (Many county seat newspapers were four-to-eight-page weeklies in this era)
“It’s a lot of hours,” Scott mused. “The library staff all think I’m nuts, and so do the other genies at the library. I am That Crazy Lady Who’s Always At That One Microfilm Reader, Squinting,”
But then, she wrote, their was vindication. “I found a probate notice. Johann didn’t run off; he died. All of my crazy is paying off, and friends, I am the gloatiest gloater ever to gloat.” She went on to note that she would be sharing with the many relevant cousins after a day of celebration.
Scott said the technique works if you have the time. “Aside from nailing my primary target, I’ve got a zillion other little useful tidbits, and so much more context and info about this county where my people were very early settlers. Every time I’ve done this, it’s paid off. It’s totally worth the time investment if you can swing it. Read those papers!”
Belated Happy New Year, Kerry Scott … and here’s to everyone getting their genealogy research off to the good start!