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:

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/02/daniel-williams-in-newspaper-chicago.html

Daniel Williams and The Chicago World's Fair of 1893: Coming Up Empty

My search for more info about my GGF, Daniel Williams (1852 - 1920) and his trip to the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 (see post below) is coming up empty. There's tons of information about the event itself but Daniel William's role as envoy remains lost to me... at least for the moment.

Sometimes it's the search itself that brings me nearer to my ancestors and all those small details that I accumulate along the way add to my deeper understanding of their life and times. I really don't know what it was like to work in a coal mine but this search had brought me places I might never go.

Here's a for instance. Was searching one of my favorite sites for my target area, Western Maryland, at http://www.whilbr.org/CoalTalk/index.aspx. See there at the bottom of the page? Where it says "Coal Mining Resources"? Well if you click through you are taken to a very nice video on YouTube about mining from the Frostburg State University's Ort Library Special Collections at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Glim9dO50L8

It's this tangential stuff that fills in a lot of the blanks in the lives of my ancestors:)

Photo of the day from Aunt Betty's Archive:

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/02/daniel-williams-and-chicago-worlds-fair_25.html 

Daniel Williams and the Chicago World's Fair of 1893

Here's how my latest research project got launched. I was trying to find out more about the mystery photo (below) of my GGF, Daniel Williams. We know he worked for the mines but how did the clothing and gear fit into his work? Can we find out even more about him by following the tracks of this photo? Hopefully, yes.

So I put out some inquiries and Cousin Jo Ann C. wrote back that she thought they had on miner's hats with lamps. Good observation!

Then Aunt Betty wrote this and I'm off on another trail as well:

Daniel worked for the Consolidation Coal Company as a foreman

at mine #16 at Ocean, MD which is about a mile from where he lived.

He was chosen to take a large lump of coal from Ocean Mines

to the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.

WOW! He took a large lump of coal to the Chicago World's Fair in 1893! Here's a link to the epic event on WIKI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition

It was the Gilded Age and nothing was "too much", or too new for that matter. It was the first time that a wide area was bathed in electric light at night and by all accounts it was a magical sight! There's so much written about this event that you can (and I did) lose yourself for hours in the swim of information!

Of course general googling around leads me nowhere in finding the specifics of this effort of Daniel Williams. Now it's on to newspapers of the day, locally. In Chicago, it was just one of thousands of ventures to make the Exposition a success. But in the hills of Western Maryland it would have been newsworthy. Wish me luck!

Photo of the day from Aunt Betty's Archive:

The URL of this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/02/daniel-williams-and-chicago-worlds-fair.html