From October 1831 to October
1921, The Boston Pilot,
the city’s Catholic newspaper, helped people locate their relatives and friends
through advertisements in its “Missing Friends” or “Information Wanted” column.
Widely circulated throughout the United States and Canada, the weekly newspaper
featured ads from recent immigrants seeking family and friends they had lost
touch with or who had relocated. The “missing” may have been in the country a
few months or many years. With its large readership, the paper served Catholics
of different nationalities, with a high percentage of Irish readers. Not all
ads had a Boston connection.
These ads not only serve as a
replacement for missing ship manifests, they sometimes offer great detail about
your ancestors. You may learn the missing person’s birth place or hometown,
age, marital status, maiden name, alias, name of ship, departure port, arrival
port, travel dates, intended destination, last known residence, usual
occupation, employer, physical description, and more. The person seeking
information may include relationship and residence as well as a way to contact
him/her.
In 1989, the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) published its first volume of The Search for Missing Friends:
Irish Immigrant Advertisements Placed in the Boston Pilot 1831-1920. The
book series concluded with volume 8 in 1999. Several years later, NEHGS offered
a CD-ROM version.
Boston College created the first
online database of advertisements for Irish immigrants
published in the Boston Pilot.
Currently, it does not cover the full run of newspaper issues. Free.
NEHGS’s AmericanAncestors.org web site includes the database under the
title: Irish Immigrant Advertisements, 1831-1920 (Search for Missing Friends).
Membership required.
Ancestry.com lists the database under the title: Searching for Missing Friends: Irish Immigrant Advertisements Placed in The Boston Pilot 1831–1920. Subscription required.
The official newspaper of the
Archdiocese of Boston, The
Boston Pilot is still published today.
If you haven’t had much luck
finding your ancestors’ obituaries and death notices online, you may need a few
strategies to improve your search results.
As an example, at
subscription-based GenealogyBank.com, a simple search for Honora Williams
(with the death year and state specified) turned up two hits—not for her
obituary, but for her husband’s, since he died in the same year. Using a few
tricks, another search found the desired obituary and death notice for Honora.
Widen Your View
Search results will list which
newspaper editions match your query, but sometimes there’s more than one hit
within one issue of the paper. Zoom out in case your search terms (often
highlighted in yellow) show up several times on one page or on several pages.
Clicking on the results link may bring you to a death notice, and if you’re not
looking for more, you may miss an obituary with photo or an article about
funeral arrangements on the same newspaper date.
What’s in a Name
At first, try only the surname in
the name field. Sometimes people used their initials, middle names, or nicknames
throughout their lives, only to pull out their legal or more formal names on
odd documents. My Abigail Louise has been recorded as Abgail, Abby, Abbie L.,
Abby Luie, A. Luisa, Louisie, Louisa, and Louisa A. Her daughter Theresa shows
up as Thressa and Tessie, while Marguerite is often misspelled Margaret.
Skipping all the alternatives and adding a date may make it easier to search
for someone.
If you’re looking for an uncommon
first name, like Honora, use that in the name field without a surname.
Try alternate spellings, since
names may change over time. Plus, misspellings and mistakes were not uncommon
and typos happen, especially when newspaper deadlines are looming. OCR or
optical character recognition works best on clean, easy-to-read copy—and some
old newspapers are tattered and worn, with ink smudges and bleed-through,
producing poor results or even gibberish.
Look for a woman under her
husband’s name, even if she’s a widow. Doing a search on “Louis Williams” with
the year and state brought up the obituary for Honora. Why would that happen?
In the headline she was listed under her husband’s name and her first name,
Honora, was mentioned later in the article. That’s because some searches look
for a certain number of words or spaces between two joined search terms. In
older newspapers, sometimes first names weren’t even mentioned, just a reference
to “Mrs. Williams.”
Use only part of the surname as a
search term, in case a name is hyphenated and part of it is carried to the next
line. In this example, the “iams” in Williams may produce results, while “Will”
may pick up unrelated men named William as well as probate matters.
Narrow by Date or Keyword
If the name produces too many
results, add to your search terms. If known, include a year and then update the
sort field from “best matches” to date order (“oldest items”). That way, you
can go directly to the death month. You may want to include a wider date range,
to pick up any probate or estate proceedings that can happen months or even
years after a death.
Adding a relative’s name may
focus the results. Searching for “Williams” and “Cooney” (her daughter’s
surname) found an article on Honora’s probate.
Include more details if you still
have too many results. Add a town, city, or street name to your keyword search.
(However, in cases of city newspapers, it may be a community or
neighborhood—like the North End—mentioned instead.) Add a description or job
title, such as attorney/lawyer or pianist.
Location, Location,
Location
You may be able to narrow your
search to a specific paper, city, or state. Check the database for a list of
newspaper titles (see example for GenealogyBank.com). Then click on a title and search. Also, from the
homepage of GenealogyBank.com, you can narrow your search by state.
If a newspaper you’re looking for
is not online, still look. Some obituaries tell other newspapers to copy the
notice. (That also gives you clues to follow up about previous residences or
other relatives.) In one case, my ancestor had a brief death notice in his
local newspaper. However, a newspaper editor in a nearby town wrote a full
obituary a few days later. In it, the editor mentioned reading that death
notice and expanded on it with great detail about my ancestor’s life and
character. It turns out the editor knew my ancestor well, since he owned a
business there.
Some newspapers pick up
sensational or curious stories, even though an event happened hundreds or
thousands of miles away, and the person would be unknown otherwise. For
example, a 10-year-old boy died by falling between parked railroad cars. This
story was picked up in several states, with some of the accounts containing
additional information, particularly about the extent of his injuries.
Skip the Categories
Don’t limit yourself to
obituaries and death notices. You may find classified ads and legal notices
about settling an estate, a news story about an accident or investigation,
marriage notices of children (daughter of the late Honora), or mentions in the
society or local news pages.
Review the Collection
Still having no luck? Not
everything is online and different newspaper databases have different
collections. You may find an obituary through Legacy that is not available at Ancestry.com, Newspapers.com, FamilySearch, or other
genealogy databases. Also, newspaper collections are always growing, so check
back at a later date.
If you know the death date and
location, see if a local library will check obituaries in their newspaper
collections or request newspapers on microfilm through interlibrary loan.
And, if your search produces no
results, remember, not everyone had obituaries or death notices written about
them.
