Sunday, February 26, 2012

Daniel Williams In The Newspaper: Chicago Fair of 1893

OK, so here's where I am so far tracking down my GGF, Daniel Williams (1852 -1920) and his trip to the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. He was chosen to take a large lump of coal from the Ocean Mines of the Consolidation Coal Company in Western Maryland where he worked as a foreman in mine number 16. It's just the kind of detail that tickles the fancy of the story teller in me, so I must know more!

It's the newspapers of the day that I want, so first stop is to find out what newspapers were published in the area in 1893. The Library of Congress's Chronicling America project was go-to location. There I searched on state, then town. Cumberland MD had 64 entries for local newspapers and it was interesting to see the frequency with which they came and went over the years!

The "finalists" on my list to track down for Cumberland are the Cumberland Evening Times (1892 - 1916) and the Cumberland Daily News (1890 - 1923). While talking to Mom this morning she shared that over the years one leans left the other right, politically.

Chronicling America's search for Frostburg MD produced one entry that had relevance and that's the good old Frostburg Mining Journal, the FMJ. It was published from 1871 to 1913.

None of the above are available online, much to my dismay. So now I have to figure out how to get this research done by remote control.

I was at a little workshop on US land records and happened to mention that I had paid $25 to get a copy of my 5th GGF's land sales in 1816 and 1817 and his will. One of the ladies in attendance "hrumphed" with great disdain at my not having gone to upstate New York to track them down myself. Of course it would have been exquisitely better to have gone there and dug through the archives my own self... no telling what I might have stumbled into. But it simply was not possible. Likewise, I need a work-around to browse and get a copy of the relevant articles in the FMJ and Cumberland newspapers.

Picture of the day from Aunt Betty's Archive:


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