Canada Newspaper Local News: Difference between revisions

By the same token, the relationship between Minnie and Gertrude Fice would not be specified in the church record, or their father’s name given. It is therefore to the genealogist’s advantage to look at ''both'' records to obtain the maximum information.  

Weddings generated many other newspaper items, beginning with the engagement announcement.  

The danger in using engagement announcements is that they may not have led to a wedding at all. Many engagements are broken. Even including information about a broken engagement in biographies may be dangerous, unless all the characters involved are historical.  

Following the formal announcement of the impending wedding, various pre-nuptial parties might be reported in the newspapers and will add to our genealogical treasure trove.  

Not all the pre-nuptial affairs are showers, but include lunches, teas, ‘after-fives’ (cocktail parties) as well as evening parties, which do not presume gift-giving, but only celebration.  

Actual accounts of the wedding may include descriptions of the flowers and clothing, the bride’s dress getting detailed attention. <br>  

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Newspapers of the past enjoyed publishing jokes, usually of a mild kind acceptable to everyone, such as this from the ''Alberta Star'' of 13 August 1909: “According to a Springfield, Ill. paper, Charles I. Gosh was married the other day to Anne B. Damm. The bride revised her name downwards.”  

Reports of deaths in the newspaper might come in the brief form of a ''death notice'' or in a lengthier description of a life, the ''obituary''. Both are welcome to the genealogist. Contemporary death notices, often restricted by space in newspapers, are a combination of the two, giving the bare details of the old-time death notice, but also including information about the person’s life and interests.  

When searching for a death notice, researchers having a choice between big-city newspapers and smaller ones might choose the smaller because they can be easier to search and are more likely to have been indexed or abstracted. In many big cities, residents do not bother placing death notices in the newspaper because of the expense.  

There may be neighbourhood papers to use instead, but the family may have relied on word-of-mouth and the use of death cards. The ''Oshawa Daily Reformer'' of 4 January 1927 includes several death notices, all from out of town. A local death which we might expect to find there does not appear. Why would this be? At this time, the more common way of announcing deaths was using the death card. These were pasteboard cards, usually folded, which announced the death on the left hand side, with the person’s place of death and age, and on the right gave details of the funeral arrangements. The stock phrase ‘friends will kindly accept this intimation’ indicated anyone who wished could attend; ‘funeral private’ meant a personal invitation was required. <br>  

As time went on, towns grew larger and people no longer went through ‘the downtown’ on a regular basis. This made the death card display less effective. The larger urban areas had daily newspapers and thus a return to the regular announcement of deaths in the newspaper happened. Learning about deaths, and funeral information, from newspapers is now the standard, and obituary columns in newspapers from the late 1940s to the present will always be a rich resource for genealogists.  

We can see a pattern in the publication of death announcements in newspapers as society or settlement evolves:  

*In very large cities, some people may use neighbourhood or local newspapers rather than the large regional publication<br>

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*place of burial (often also in the obituary)

In the case of Mrs. Bardell, there is a list of pallbearers and also a list of flowers. While the names may be familiar, there are bound to be unknown ones. If there is a family member to ask, consult them about who these people are; they may be relatives whose existence is new to you. Another hint is that being asked to be a pallbearer is an indication of favour; therefore, cousins who are pallbearers are ‘close’ cousins (emotionally speaking). This is useful in understanding our family relationships.  

The flower list can also be useful in the same way. Since faraway attendees or flower-givers in the list often have their place of residence given, we can learn what happened to relations who have disappeared. If there are several bouquets from people of the same name, ask why: are they a group of cousins? There are several Johnsons on Mrs. Bardells list, who probably represent her daughter Emma’s family. The most interesting name in the list is A. Gray of Vancouver. Mrs. Bardell’s maiden name is given as Grey, but with the newspaper habit of misspelt names noted above, Gray and Grey might be the same family. A. Gray of Vancouver might be a brother or nephew whose location the family researcher did not know, and this clue will put them on the right track, using a Vancouver city directory, voters’ list or similar record.  

In the obituary section of Mrs. Bardell’s notice, the family background information is particularly valuable. It will be easy to find her family in England, because both a year and place are given, with details about her parents’ names and her father’s age at death. While all of this might well have been found elsewhere, the one detail which would probably have been lost in the mists of time if not recorded here is ‘leaving a wife, Ann, with five small children whom she raised ''without parochial assistance''.’  

*&nbsp;Mrs. May was buried from a funeral home, at a time when most funerals were still conducted at home

''Cards of thanks'' are notices from the family to those who called or sent flowers when a relative died. They are occasionally still seen but have been largely replaced by personally-addressed cards supplied by the funeral home. In fact, direct notes of thanks were always considered more appropriate than the blanket notice in the newspaper.  

''In memoriam'' notices are remembrances, usually published on the anniversary of the death of a loved one.  

While these memorial notices are unpredictable in publication and hence impossible to search for, finding them by accident is an added bonus to our research. While these two examples are from a time recently after the death involved, some can be seen which mention a death many years earlier. These are the ones which will probably be the most useful in genealogical research.  

Accounts of inquests can be very useful for providing details about how a relation met their death; about illnesses they may have suffered and about how others reacted to the death. While most inquests which will be reported in the newspaper probably involve a violent or otherwise sudden death, they can be helpful. Coroners’ records have a low survival rate, and those that exist may be sealed by the relevant government jurisdiction for long periods. The newspaper item may be the only source of information. Also keep in mind, in criminal cases involving death, that the account of the inquest in the newspaper can add to the court files which researchers will find in the provincial archives.