Crowdsourcing, 1836 style: Thomas Garrett

Old newspapers are full of fascinating little tidbits for family historians. If you're like me, though, it's not always your own family that you find. While browsing through microfilmed papers at the Ohio History Center a few weeks ago, I came across this notice in the October 5, 1836 edition of The Ohio People’s Press, published in Columbus:

"Information Wanted

My Father, James Garrett, died at Balston, Saratoga county, N. Y. in the year 1810, leaving two sons, and a daughter named Nancy. 

     At the age of four years, I was given to one Zera Beach, who then kept a tavern near Balston Springs, but afterwards removed to Champlain, in Clinton co. N. Y. and in whose family I remained until 8 years ago. 

     My brother, JAMES GARRETT, for whose discovery this notice is made, was given, at our father’s decease, to some family to me unknown, and of which I have never been able to make any discovery. 

     Any information on the subject, from any source, will be gratefully received. 

     Printers throughout the U. States and Canada are respectfully solicited to give this one or two insertions, and oblige a family of orphans. 

THOMAS GARRETT   

Manhattan, Lucas co. Ohio, July 27, 1836" (1)

Reading this, it struck me that newspapers were the Facebook of our ancestors’ time. Social doings, political comments, marriages, divorces, births, deaths, personal announcements, even requests for help from sympathetic strangers—all this and more found its way into the newspaper.

Merriam-Webster defines crowdsourcing as “the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers.” (2) It’s a new word, one we associate with social media in the digital age. But as this notice shows, it’s hardly a new concept.

The Boston Pilot, for instance, published thousands of missing persons notices for Irish immigrants over a 90-year period. The notices were often submitted by relatives in Ireland seeking information on loved ones whose whereabouts in America were unknown. Today, those notices are a valuable resource for genealogists trying to connect Irish immigrants with their families. Boston College has created a free searchable database of these "Missing Friends" notices, Information Wanted, to assist researchers. 

But back to Thomas Garrett. I find myself wondering how widely his plea for help was published. Was he ever reunited with his brother James? It’d be nice to think he was.

I wonder, too, if anyone researching the Garrett family today will find this digital reposting of his plea. Maybe it will help someone connect Thomas, James, and Nancy Garrett as the children of James Garrett, who died in Ballston, Saratoga County, New York, about 1810. 

You never know. In any case, I rather like the idea of bringing Thomas’ 1836 search to the World Wide Web in 2014.

--Shelley

1. "Information Wanted," The Ohio People's Press (Columbus, Ohio), 5 October 1836, p. 3, col. 3.

2. Merriam-Webster Online (www.merriam-webster.com: accessed 29 November 2014).

Hiram College Tuition in 1872

Old newspapers are always fascinating. Even when I don’t find the obituary or whatever I’m looking for (which happens more often than not), I usually turn up something of interest. Consider the following advertisement for Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio. It ran on the front page of the Portage County Democrat, published in Ravenna, Ohio, on January 10, 1872:

Hiram College

Hiram College offers the student a choice of six courses of study: Biblical, Classical, Scientific, Ladies’, Teachers’ and Commercial.

TUITION

Common English Branches, Algebra, Composition 

       and Natural Philosophy, per term…..$7.00

All other Studies……$10.00

Penmanship (daily lessons)…..$6.00

Penmanship (complete course)……$15.00

Complete Commercial Course…..$20.00

Instrumental Music…..$12.00

Use of instrument one hour per day…..$2.00

Incidentals…..$1.00

      Students in the Commercial Course can have access to the College classes upon further payment of five dollars per term.

Calender, 1871-2  [sic]

First Term commences—Tuesday, August 22, 1871

First Term closes—Friday, November 17, 1871

Second Term commences—Tuesday, Dec. 5, 1871

Second Term closes—Friday, March 1, 1872

Third Term commences—Tuesday, March 19, 1871 [should be 1872]

Third Term closes with Commencement day, June 20, 1872

      Board $3.50 to $4.00 per week. Good facilities for self boarding, by which students materially reduce expenses.

      For catalogue or further information, address B.A. HINSDALE, Pres’t 

                                                                                             Hiram, Ohio

I did a quick check using the Measuring Worth website, and found $10 had the same relative purchasing power in 1872 as $197 does today. I have a hunch the incoming Class of 2018 would find that a pretty attractive course fee.

It’s interesting to see the curriculum offerings, too. I wonder what classes were offered in the Ladies’ course of study? The fact that Penmanship was listed separately in this little advertisement suggests it was popular. With the decline of teaching cursive handwriting in elementary school, will we eventually see Penmanship on college class schedules again?

Western Reserve Eclectic Institute at Hiram, Ohio, 1858; from the Hiram College Archives

Hiram College was founded as the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute in 1850, and has a proud history of higher education. My father-in-law and at least three of his ancestors attended Hiram at one time or another. He also has a family connection by marriage to one of its founders. So the accidental discovery of this little ad might lead me into a little more investigation.

That’s the fun thing about newspaper research. You never know what you might find, cranking through the microfilm on a summer afternoon.

--Shelley

Photo credit: "WREI-Hiram" by Unknown - Hiram College Archives. Via Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WREI-Hiram.jpg#mediaviewer/File:WREI-Hiram.jpg

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Another Reason to Love Old Newspapers: Fair Results

Another Reason to Love Old Newspapers: Fair Results

Newspapers can be a great source of information about ancestors and their communities. Ads, news articles, opinion pieces, pictures, notices, social tidbits, and the occasional obituary all combine to create a fascinating snapshot of that particular time and place. Even if your ancestor’s name doesn’t appear in the paper, it’s like having a window on their world.

Last week I found another feature to love—and a lot of names—in a listing of winners from a local fair. Here in the Midwest, county fairs are still big events. Every county in Ohio has one. Farmers bring all sorts of livestock and produce in to be judged, and people submit baked goods, clothing, artwork, youth projects, and more in various categories. If fairs are popular now, imagine how important they were to our ancestors, particularly farm families. Many towns had their own fairs, in addition to the county and state fairs.

Winners from the 1869 Pataskala Agricultural Society fair, held the last weekend of September in Pataskala, Ohio, were published in The Newark American on Friday, November 5, 1869. The results took up a full broadsheet page. Here’s a short sample:

As you can see, there are a lot of names here. This is the kind of detail that can help round out a family history or ancestor profile—and it’s just plain fun, too. Imagine knowing that your ancestor won the prize for best 3-year-old stallion, the second best apples, the best pair of wool socks, the best canned blackberries, or the second best oil painting. Wouldn’t that be a neat fact to know?

What I particularly like are all the categories that gave prizes to women. Women’s names are notoriously difficult to find in many types of records. But here they abound. Married women are noted in this paper by their husband’s names, such as Mrs. Jas. Montgomery, who wove the best 10 yards of linsey. A number of unmarried women are named, too. Miss F. J. Pierson, for instance, apparently was quite good at making ruffled clothing.

I just stumbled upon these fair results, but if you go looking for them, keep in mind that most fairs were held in late summer and early fall, when produce was ready for market. The results may not appear until weeks later, though. Fortunately, due to its size, the feature should be easy to spot. If the community wasn’t large enough to have its own paper, look in papers published in nearby cities or the county seat.

Of course, the reason I was going through the newspapers to begin with was to search for an obituary, which I didn’t find. But I always seem to find something to distract interest me as I’m browsing page-by-page through the microfilm. Old newspapers seem to be good breeding ground for squirrels—the kind that lure me away from whatever task is at hand. They bound across the pages, inviting me to follow, look, and read. This time, they led me to something potentially useful. Now I want to look for fair results for some of my ancestral families. Anyone else for the fair?

--Shelley

Photo of tomato competition courtesy of Adam Fagen via Fickr.com (http://www.flickr.com/photos/afagen/) under a Creative Commons license