Thursday, March 12, 2015

Get the Obituaries -- all of them.

Curt Witcher (#CurtWitcher) of the #GenealogyCenter at the Allen County Public Library ( #ACPL ) in Fort Wayne, Indiana, recently posted a blog about making sure genealogists track down all possible places that an ancestor's obituary might be published -- not to forget Religious Newspaper, Foreign Language Newspapers, etc.  

Well, that is great advice, up until you run into my great grandfather, George Tobias.  I have two obituaries for G-Grandpa.  Unfortunately, each provides a radically different story about where he was born and how he ended up living in Northern Michigan.   One claims he was "born in Rhode Island 83 years ago and when a small boy moved to northern Michigan ..."   The other states he was "born at Black Lake [area near Cheboygan, Cheboygan Co, MI] and came to Cheboygan as a small boy with his parents."  

Each go on to give pretty much identical information.   So, the conclusion that this provides?   Two people were the source of each obituary.   Either may be correct.   Either may be wrong.  In the case of G-Grandpa's birth place, I have to dig much deeper because I can rely on neither source.

#Genealogy #Evidence #Obituaries

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