Step 10: Newspaper search
Ok I have to warn you all that this was the most hopeful and frustrating aspect of this research path. But here goes. Using a popular newspaper database (which I'll call database #1), and using the surname and a slight variant (removing the s at the end as the family currently spells it) and the State and City, up came some OLD GERMAN newspapers! But these databases usually have a way of getting you close to the article where the name appears by throwing a yellow tint where your search term appears. And that was not going to work since the newspaper was not in English (darn AI!). As newspapers go these were only a few pages each, but large. I could not get the larger paper to print, to download and open. So I reached out for help.
I reached out to FamilySearch volunteers but that went nowhere.
I reached out to the Historical Society in the very town where these newspapers had been printed in the 1840's. I felt that they might give the names of recent immigrants to the town, perhaps news of a baptism or church membership or - what I would love - the names of new citizens.
A volunteer from the Historical Society contacted me and I tried to send to him from the database to his e-mails the newspapers. But that didn't work either. Finally weeks later a person who volunteers there and said reading OLD GERMAN was easy for her and that she was willing to accept a donation, blessed us with heroic work. She went on another database (which I'll call database #2) and summoned up the same newspapers.
She got back to me and said she thought basically the surname had not really come up, that what it all was, was gibberish.
What a dissapointment!
However I had a third party in San Francisco who is certified to read OLD GERMAN documents go to a library there where yet another database was on their computers (which I'll call database #3) and same thing.
I may always wonder if I could print out these newspapers in the original size on that size paper and put them in the hands of an OLD GERMAN reader if indeed they would find the surname but enough time had been spent on this!
However, newspaper searches sometimes do pull up interesting and useful information so I can't tell you not to do them!
Posts in this series will be brought up using the label PA-GERM research path
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