If at First You Cannot Find, Search, Search Again

 

The farther back in time we go to trace our ancestors, the more likely it is that we'll encounter snags when the pen-and-ink handwriting of past centuries encounters the digitization process more agreeable to today's computers. I learned that this week while unraveling the family history trail of my third great-grandmother Delaney Townsend and her husband Andrew Charles in 1850s Florida.

Turning to local newspapers can be a handy secondary resource when our ancestors fail to appear in the usual documents of the era. As I mentioned yesterday, I was elated to discover a brief insert in The Floridian and Journal pinpointing the date of Delaney's husband's 1850 death. I had searched for the family's names in the collection at GenealogyBank, and that one article had been my sole result.

I was grateful for what I could find there—if it weren't for that newspaper entry, I wouldn't have found anything—but I still wondered what had become of the rest of the extended Charles family in Madison County, Florida. I spent the evening pulling up links to legal documents regarding the administration of the various Charles estates.

Early this morning, in my ongoing email conversation with fellow genea-blogger Charles Purvis, I discovered a friend of his had passed along a news clip from GenealogyBank concerning another Charles obituary: for Andrew Charles' mother, Rebecca.

"That's funny," I thought. "Why didn't that show up in my search results?"

I went back to my GenealogyBank account, logged in, and tried my search for Rebecca Charles once again. Nothing. I returned to Charlie's email, took a look at the newspaper source and date—The Floridian and Journal for April 3 of 1852—and honed my search terms until there was no wiggle room left for the search engine. It had to find the article.

Perhaps there were grunts and groans out in the ether as the search engine complied with my query, but there it was, just as Charlie's friend had sent it.

Died at her residence at Charles' Ferry, Suwannee River, on the 25th January, Mrs. Rebecca Charles, in the 58th year of her age. The subject of this notice was raised in Buncombe County, N. C., and emigrated to Florida with her late husband before the change of Flags—having lived where she died upwards of thirty years, rendering efficient aid and comfort to many a weary traveller now living to testify to the hospitality of her house—Mrs. Charles connected herself with the Methodist Episcopal Church some years ago, and although she never made high pretensions to piety, her friends and relations have abundant reason to believe they mourn their loss not as those who mourn without hope.

Having found the insertion only after several tries, I wondered why the article hadn't shown up on my first search attempt. Looking at the faded newsprint, I figured it might have been possible that the optical character recognition could have run afoul of the faded letters in the name Rebecca. For that reason, I toyed with using different search terms to persuade the search process to come up with the desired result. The winning combination was to use only the surname, plus select the specific newspaper name—fortunately, there weren't too many options in that part of Florida in the early 1850s—and the specific year.

That experience, of course, prompted one of those "notes to self" moments. When using a search engine to find records in documents with variable imprints—either newsprint or faded handwriting—don't be discouraged when the search brings up zero results. Try, try again. Vary the search terms. Experiment with spelling variations. Check out whether "less is more" is the motto for that website's operation. Despite ink blots, faded print, torn pages, whatever you do, just keep searching. 

Image above: Clipping of "Obituary" for Rebecca Charles from page three of The Floridian and Journal, published April 3, 1852, in Tallahassee, Florida; courtesy of GenealogyBank.com