Recently I have changed my work schedule to 4 ten hour days with Monday being an extra day off. Since I have been very frustrated with finding the time to go on genealogy field trips, I decided to take my extra day off and once a month to go to libraries, archives and etc.

My first Monday off, I trekked over to Hillsboro (Oregon) to visit the public library which is an hour long drive. Since I was in the neighborhood, Hillsboro being the county seat for Washington County, I had been wanting to go to the County Clerk's Office and pick up the marriage record of my great grandparents.  Earlier in the week I emailed the office to ask if they housed those records and the procedure on how to get the record.  A nice email came back and asked me for the names of who I was looking for so I answered them and got a fairly quick response with the book and page number.  I printed the email and took it with me to their office and in a few minutes they printed off a microfilmed copy of the record and I paid them $4.00. These folks were very pleasant. The information on the record didn't give me any new data, but now I have the proof.

The purpose of my visit to the library was that I knew that they had the microfilmed newspaper called the "Hillsboro Argus" and for a long time I have wanted to get copies of the obituaries of 2 sets of great great grandparents and great grandparents and their siblings. My May and Hutchison families arrived in Washington County around 1886 and a good group of them are buried in the Arcade Cemetery which you can find the stones and inscriptions on "Find-a-Grave". Several of these families had settled in the little communities in the county and had died there as well. I knew that I could learn more about where the children lived and married names for the daughters. 


Going on a Monday had great advantages!  It was quiet and not so busy.  The reference desk was so helpful and patient and helped me set up my films, and even sold me a flash drive so that I could download the records right onto the drive.  Brilliant me, not even thinking about that!  Being armed with death dates and systematically looking through the films, I found a good portion of who I was looking for. I ended up with 18 obits all in all.

This was found this on the April 23, 1903 Issue Page 1:


Daniel Hutchison was my 2nd Great Grandfather. I wrote a post about him at: http://deliasgenealogyblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/weekly-genealogy-prompt-26-daniel.html

Was this an easy project?  At times it was. The newspaper was published weekly for decades so that narrowed down the search tremendously.  Other times, the film was extremely blurry and even trying to focus the reader didn't help matters. For years they fitted the death notices all over the paper probably wherever they had space.  That made it very hard to scan and find them.     

Was this a worthwhile project?  I learned a few things in the obituary posted above:

Death place. Was not aware he died in the hospital or which one. I was mistaken in learning that he died in another county and city.  Big correction for my records.
 
Did not know he died of paralysis and suffered from a stroke in 1893.  I knew from the 1880 and 1900 censuses that he was not in good health.

Reafirmation of death date.  Civil War pension file stated date of death and so did his gravestone.  Oregon began recording death dates in 1903 just after he died no death certificate has been found.

Did not know he belonged to the United Brethren Church.

Marriage date and to whom and where.  This would have been a great find if the record had not been located earlier.

Birth date and place.  Very valuable resource!  Secondary source but great to have.
 
My May and Hutchison families arrived in Washington County around 1886 and a good group of them are buried in the Arcade Cemetery which you can find the stones and inscriptions on "Find-a-Grave".  Several of these families had settled in the little communities in the county and had died there as well.  The 4 Hutchison children married 4 May children which produced 4 sets of double cousins!  Later family married 2nd cousins.

Taking the time to research original records can glean much information in learning more about your family.  These newspapers are not likely to be digitized anytime soon.  If they are, I can fine tune my search and look for daily ancedotes and their more day to day activities.  I wish I could have read everyone of those older newspapers!

1 comments:

Becky Thompson said...

What a fabulous and worthwhile trip you had, Delia! That's really making good use of an extra day off. sorry you hve to put in 10 hr days to get that extra day tho! You really struck it rich with 18 obits! Thanks for telling us about it!